October 4th - the birthday of human space travel - what happened?

54 years ago Sputnik was launched into orbit becoming the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. since then we have put dogs, monkey, men and over 2000 jellyfish in space, not to mention on the moon, built the international space station, and sent probes all over the place. Today my science class launched water rockets in celebration of the launch of Sputnik. did anyone else do anything special celebrating today?

I think that October 4th should be just as important as independence day or Thanksgiving -I mean, this is HUGE, I mean there's a holiday for everything else now so why not one of (if not the) most important days of Earth's history?

so happy first orbit day!!!

Pendulums and fractals!!! :D

  I have been learning about pendulums in science class lately and I think they're super cool so I decided to post about them.

So at school we did an experiment to see whether there was a relationship between the length of the string and the period of a swinging pendulum. To find out we timed the period with different lengths of string to see if we could find a pattern. we found that there is in fact a relationship because it takes longer for the string to reach the farthest point when it is longer and a shorter time when the string is shorter. We graphed our data and found that the line appears to be straight but then near the end it dips. we did more tests and found that no matter what lengths you use for the graph it dips at the end. It turns out that it was a fractal.  a fractal is a complex geometric pattern exhibiting self-similarity in that small details of its structure viewed at any scale repeat elements of the overall pattern.

Pierre de Fermat's birthday (today is August 17)

Today is Pierre de Fermat's birthday, so i decided to post 3 cool things about him. :)


!. the guy was born in a museum! is that cool or what?
2. he was a lawyer and a mathematician (i dunno, it seems to me like that is an unusual combination)
3. he was given credit for "early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of the then unknown differential calculus, and his research into number theory." (wiki)


HAPPY BIRTHDAY Pierre de Fermat'!

Lions

Lions are one of the four big cats in genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae.  Some of the males  are more than 250 kg, and they are the second largest cats in the world, the first being the tiger. Wild lions live in sub-saharan Africa and in Gir Forest National Park in India. However, they used to live all over the world, in fact, they were the most widely spread large land mammal besides humans. They were found in most of Africa, from southern europe to india, and in the Americas from Yukon to Peru. Lions are now considered a vulnerable species as they have seen a population decrease of 30 to 50 percent in the last 20 years that may be irreversable. The cause of the decline is not fully understood, but habitat loss and coflict with humans are most likely doing a lot of damage.

In the wild lions live 10-14 years, but can live longer than 20 in captivity. Male lions rarely live longer than ten years in the wild because of the constant fights with other males. A pride of lions usually consists of related females and offspring, and a few adult males. Groups of females hunt together, preying on wildebeast, impalas, zebras, buffalo, and warthogs. lions are typically predators though they will sometimes scavenge if the opertunity presents itself. Lions don't generally hunt humans, but some have been known to.

Lions spend most of their time resting - about 20 hours per day. Lions can be active at any time, but their activity peaks after dusk with socializing, grooming, and defecating. they have some bursts of energy off and on through the night hours until dawn when most og the hunting takes place. They spend about 2 hours every day walking and 50 minutes eating.

Human-like robots: not just science fiction anymore:

Isaac Asimov's (author of "I, Robot") world full of robots working alongside humans may not be as far away as most people think -  but in real life the robots will look and act (somewhat)  like humans - not machines. Roboticists are working on making robots look and act more human, and are further along than people suspect. there is already robots in testing that can look as much (if not more) like a human as Data from Star Trek TNG.  There are many possible uses for such machines such as doing chores around the house, babysitting, and giving speeches for people on their absence. Of course, fitting them into our daily lives may be difficult as they would creep people out at first, and no matter how much they deny it, many people are afraid of change. Will we be working alongside robots and talking to them as if they were human in the upcoming decades? Perhaps, but there is still a lot of research to be done.

opinions

note on opinions:
opinions stem from personal experience/memories.
personal experience is controlled by ambition
the amount of ambition one has has to do with their ego
ego begins with one's creativity capacity.
the more creativity capacity one has, the more ambitious they will be, which in the end controls many of their actions and opinion is stemmed from personal experience
media influence also has some effect on one's creativity capacity and therefore affects opinion


what is the significance of opinion? different people would answer different things; this shows how complex our brains actually are. you design your own answer.

Could you be an astronaut?

Read this and find out!

There are three types of astronauts: Pilot Astronauts, Mission Specialists, and Payload Specialists. Pilot astronauts are either mission commanders or pilot of the space craft. To be a pilot astronaut, you have to be an United States citizen, have at least a bachelors degree in engineering, physics, mathematics or biology, and have logged one thousand hours of flying time in a jet aircraft. There are also strict physical fitness requirements. A mission specialist works with the commander and pilot, helping with shuttle operations such as monitoring the crew's use of fuel, water and food, conducting experiments and participating in space walks. A mission specialist must be a United States citizen, and have at least a bachelor's degree in engineering, physics, mathematics or biology, and have three years of related professional experience. The third type of astronaut is the payload specialist. These astronauts are not official members of the astronaut corps. They are professionals in physics or biology and skilled in working shuttle equipment.