Hello Science and Rain fans!
What an amazing change in the weather in just a few weeks. The real climate change problems are not what was predicted 50 years ago for global warming. It’s a lot more complicated! Another thing to note is that there have been a lot of very cold swings in temperature that have been happening around the world. Right now I’m thankful that I got to see a bit of rain last night and today. Here’s a wealth of good reading Climate Truths: The big picture
As I mentioned last week, Einstein was in the news a lot 100 years ago. Back in the day… “talkies” weren’t in use yet, so what would a movie about relativity look like? How about this… Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained. In 1941, when talkies were common, Einstein recorded “The Common Language of Science”. I hope some of you were able to see Einstein! Celebrating 100 Years of General Relativity at Lick Observatory or one of the UC campuses, I really enjoyed it. The celebration of Einstein will continue for another couple of months at the explOratorium. This Thu evening (and running through Nov 27) Einstein Was Right will be on exhibit. It will include some amazing items including one of the glass plate negatives made in 1922 that was used to verify that Einstein was right. The After Dark talk at 8:00 will be a fascinating view of what science was like 100 years ago and how hard it was to “prove” the general theory of relativity. ( Note: That’s not all that will be interesting on the Pier!) Did you know that Einstein and Charlie Chaplin were friends?
Just a quick mention of NASA here. They do really hard and dangerous stuff. Rarely does it start out smoothly. Artemis 1 is an example of doing something really hard. But some of the successes are astounding. Consider that the little helicopter named Ingenuity sort of had a warranty for 5 flights has now flown 30 times!
As long as I’m mentioning things above the ground… Have you ever wondered how ants get in to your house? They are amazing little beasts who really inspired one of the great biologists of our time.
For me science is what inspires. I hope that you will be inspired by one or more of these (or the many more on our calendar)…
What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make Tue @ 7:00 (online)
September LASER Event Wed @ 6:30 @ Stanford
Making Science Count: Lessons from an Accidental Marine Scientist Thu @ 5:00 (online)
You Can be Powered by ShakeAlert – Earthquake Early Warning for All Thu @ 6:00 (online)
Family Science Day at College of San Mateo Sat @ noon @ CSM
Our listings are really oriented at short single presentations. Some things come up though that you really need to know about even if they don’t fit our calendar format very well. Everyday Astronomy: Orienting Yourself in Space, Time, and the Sky is one of those items. If you’ve never taken a class from Professor Fraknoi you have been missing a lot of what’s over your head! Go ahead, sign up for it, you won’t regret it. It will be some of the most informative lunches you’ve ever had!
Sometimes we forget or never learned some of the odd things about how we got to where we are today with science. Have you ever thought of how chemistry became what it is today? Alchemy used to be believed to be how the world worked. It has little similarity to chemistry as we know it today Pb to Au! Sort of like homeopathy and medicine! You have to love the symbols though!
Have an amazing week learning about how the universe works!
herb masters
Einstein: “What I most admire about your art, is your universality. You don’t say a word, yet the world understands you!”
Chaplin: “True. But your glory is even greater! The whole world admires you, even though they don’t understand a word of what you say.”
Upcoming Events:
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