Science – Page 8 – Willem's Planet

July 12, 2015August 22, 2017

Friday/ it’s a goblin shark

It’s Shark Week on Discovery Channel here in the USA .. and here is a goblin shark gobbling up a fish. These stills are from the Discovery website, here. This creature is a living fossil – in that it is the only one remaining from a family of sharks with a lineage dating back 125 million years. Its specialized jaws can snap forward to capture prey. The elongated flattened snout is covered with ‘ampullae of Lorenzini’ that enable it to sense minute electric fields, as little as a 10 millionth of a volt.

July 1, 2015July 1, 2015

Tuesday/ the Venus and Jupiter conjunction

There was a smattering of stargazers and their telescopes out at Volunteer Park on Tuesday night when I walked by there. I soon found out the excitement was over the two brightest planets in the night sky – Venus and Jupiter – that were to appear very close together in the night sky. They only appear to do so, though, because of their locations in the night sky. At the time of the conjunction, Venus was 49 million miles from Earth while Jupiter was more than 10 times farther, 564 million miles. Check out this video from NASA. As time goes by, the planets appear closer together.

June 28, 2015June 28, 2015

Saturday/ Greenwood car show

We went to the annual Greenwood Car Show on Saturday. It is organized by the Greenwood Knights and a fundraiser event for local non-profit organizations. Vintage car owners are invited to exhibit their driving machines along Greenwood Avenue North in the Greenwood and Phinney neighborhoods of Seattle.

IMG_3881 sm — Here’s the scene at Saturday’s Greenwood Autoshow. This is a 1970 second-generation Corvette Stingray. The chrome bumper on the front soon after disappeared (in model years after 1972).

IMG_3906 sm — This restored Seattle City bus hails from 1963. It is 40 ft long and seats 51 people. The bus was built in Loudonville, Ohio and dubbed a “Transi-Cruiser”, one of a fleet of buses that enabled Seattle Transit to extend service north of 85th Street to 145th Street.

May 9, 2015May 9, 2015

Friday/ the Relativity Express

Check out the pages from my Time-Life Science Library book that I bought for $7 from Amazon. I remember the book from when I was growing up, and I wanted it especially for the explanation of the effects of relativity, illustrated by a fantastical train called the Relativity Express and the doings of the evil Agent X. The Relativity Express will get you there in a flash : it travels at ¾ the speed of light !

January 8, 2015August 22, 2017

Wednesday/ the common cold

230px-Rhinovirus — [From Wikipedia] What the (evil) rhinovirus molecule looks like up close.

One of the 200+ virus strains implicated in the cause of the common cold have infiltrated my system. So I ran out to the pharmacist on Wednesday night. Help! I said, I need something that will make my nose stop running and sneezing, but still leave my sinuses clear so that I can fly on Thursday. He gave me an antihistamine, which seemed to help. I don’t have a fever, so it’s probably not the flu. I read on line that one can actually have the flu and not run a fever!

November 11, 2011August 22, 2017

Thursday/ food pyramids

Below is my personal little ‘food pyramid’ from the lunch cafeteria here at work, clockwise : orange juice drink, tofu with greens, white rice, potato with red pepper, green beans with pork bits, chicken thigh. Very nice. Below it is the old food pyramid which has since been replaced by a new one in 2002. The new one looks much more complicated. And I suppose the steps says ‘it’s not only about food, make sure you get enough exercise’.