Tag: science

2024 Total Solar Eclipse

Photo from the 1999 total solar eclipse in Paris. This is the corona stage where the moon has completely covered the sun so that the corona is now visible.
1999 Total Eclipse in Paris, photo by Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be Wikimedia Commons.

Pleasant Hill was in the path of totality for this year’s total solar eclipse. So I’ve been looking forward to this since the partial solar eclipse we had in 2017. The timing of that was was such that we were having Open House at my school for the start of the school year the next day. 7 years seemed like a long wait. Man, where did the time go?

Last year, I bought 50 eclipse glasses for my students and was able to give some out to the seniors I had in class before they graduated. Then a few months ago, I attended a Zoom meeting for science teachers about the eclipse. And thanks to that, I wound up ordering 50 eclipse cards (instead of glasses that you put on, it’s just a card you hold in front of your face when you want to look). So I was well stocked.

I’ve had them out on my demo table all week and kids and staff were taking some. And someone else (the ESC, I think) wound up donating enough glasses so every kid and their parents could have some. I still gave more away as kids wanted aunts & uncles and grand parents to be covered. However, I still had several left over, which I shared with anyone that I could.

My friends, Judi and Elsa, live up in Michigan and were in the 98% coverage area. I made sure they had glasses, too. And then Elsa had the bright idea to book a room in a hotel in Lima so that they could be in totality. I was thrilled for them, but didn’t want to join them to watch in Lima. I REALLY wanted to see the eclipse from my back yard. However, I drove up to Lima yesterday and met up with them for supper at The Met.

I found there was a park connected to a bike path that wasn’t too far from their hotel, so my plan was to go there, walk around the pond/lake/whatever and walk a bit of the bike path. The weather was lovely (a little chilly, but I had a jacket) and the park was nice. The bike path was fun since it dipped into underpasses to cross the roads. I was there not quite an hour before I returned to my car. About the time I had gotten to the park, the girls had gotten to the hotel. They told me their room number and I headed their way.

Before the trip, we’d looked at a couple of places to try eating and we settled on The Met, which is in downtown Lima. I had braced myself to call ahead and they said they weren’t taking reservations, but there were plenty of seats. So we had supper there. I had a Korean barbecue chicken sandwich and fries. And for dessert, I had crème brûlée. I was happy with my meal and really happy with my dessert. Oh, and they had a cider on tap from Marysville, OH. It was bright green and tasty.

My drives to and from Lima were fine. Mom had been worried about there being too much traffic due to the eclipse, but that was saved till today, apparently. I was only a little late getting Linus his evening pills, so all in all, a good day.

Today was the special day. Today was the day for the Eclipse. We had the day off school because of traffic concerns (probably wise in retrospect). I slept in, goofed off in my loungies, had a nice slow morning. I finally headed out around 11am to get a LabQuest and temperature probe from the school. Back in 2017, I graphed the change in temperature during the partial eclipse as part of a citizen science initiative. I decided to gather data again this year. I set it up on my recycle bin in the shade and started recording the temperature every 30 seconds.

I headed back to the school to check out the Total Eclipse at the Park. There weren’t a lot of folks, but I did get to fist bump the woman who came up with the theme and shirt. (The front had Total Eclipse at the Park and the back had Turn Around along with a silhouette of the monument. Brilliant. I wore it yesterday and today.)

I had a nice chat with her, Mary (Kinney) Vannus, and a few others. The time flew and soon I needed to think about getting back home in time for some lunch & an eclipse. Oh, but first, a walk by the Exchange to see what all was going on there. It was a lot busier than the park and they had some food trucks. But I didn’t want to wait in line so I headed on home.

While the eclipse started, I made my lunch and kept checking on the shrinking sun. Then I sat out on my glider and turned around to look at the sun and the progress of the eclipse. It’s amazing how light it is out even when so much of the sun is covered. But when totality hit, it was dark enough to see Venus. (Supposedly Jupiter was above the sun, but I didn’t see it myself). And the corona surrounding an empty space where the sun once was. Wow – so cool. The birds were a little quieter during the event. But I definitely understood what the astrophysicist in charge of the Zoom meeting meant when he said (his first words in the meeting) “A total solar eclipse is an emotional experience.” Damn straight.

Although I was alone in my backyard, I was in two group texts. Mom, Dad, Amy, and Madeleine (Troy & Yellow Springs) and Elsa & Judi (Lima). So I wasn’t really alone during the experience. That was pretty damned nifty. Also, my next door neighbors and their kids were out. The dad kept telling the littlest to be sure to look through the eclipse glasses. When the corona appeared, I called out to them that it was safe for the kids to look without the glasses. I think the little were pretty impressed. I know us adults were. 🙂

I left the LabQuest to record more temps (actually almost forgot about it) and the temp took a dive during the eclipse. Most of us thought it felt cooler as totality came and went. I’ve updated this post to now include the graph. The temperature changes were different – partial eclipse around 1.5°C versus the total eclipse at 3.2°C. Literal cool beans! 😉

A graph showing data from 2017 during the partial eclipse (this one hovering around 30°C, first going up a little, then dipping down to lower than the starting temp, then moving back up to a higher temp) and data from the 2024 total eclipse (this one hovering around 23°C, first going up a little, then dropping down to below 20°C, then moving back up to a little warmer temp).
Graph with the 2017 partial and 2024 total eclipses. The change in temp for Aug 21, 2017 was around 1.5°C while the change in temp for Apr 8, 2024 was around 3.2°C.

tldr: Total Eclipse, absolutely amazing. It was an emotional experience. 🙂

Happy Mole Day!

In the US, it’s between 6:02am and 6:02pm and the date is 10/23/13, so that means it’s Mole Day! 6.02×1023 is the number of things (atoms, molecules, elephants, moles) in 1 mole of that material. Think of a dozen (12 things) on speed. Lots & lots of speed!

To celebrate the day, my chemistry students got to take a quiz on stoichiometry (using balanced equations to determine amounts of material – using molar mass, among other things). Lucky kids! Physics, OTOH, tested their platforms for the Egg Drop competition.

Each year, I alternate platform and carriage. Last year was carriage (put the egg in the carrier and drop it) so this year is platform (drop the naked egg onto the platform). The band director rents a scissor lift each year for marching band, and he’s been kind enough to let us use it since the loss of the second & third floors of the school building. So we test from three heights – 1m above the platform, ~4m above the ground, and ~8m above the ground (which nearly maxes out the lift).

To win the competition, the dropped egg has to survive all three drops onto the platform (though everyone gets 1 redo per height) AND be the shortest off the ground. The previous record was 11.5cm tall. This year, the FOURTH place team beat that.

The students had some very imaginative ideas. One pair brought a wonderful handmade trampoline that performed well (and would have been a contender in prior years). The winning team (whose platform was only 6.5cm tall!) made theirs with lemon cake, vanilla pudding, and fruit-flavored marshmallows. Heh. It was terrific watching it land from the highest drop. A splat & a crater in the pudding, but it was just fine. (To prove it, the young lady licked the pudding off of the egg. Heh.)

We had a tie for 3rd place (both were 10.5cm) so the tie-breaker is always a vote from the class on best appearance. Any other year, I suspect the box o’ bras would have won (“well, they’re known for their support” claimed one of the teammates) EXCEPT they tied the team who made theirs out of Twinkies – and then shared the (thankfully un-egged) Twinkies with the class. Heh.

Today was probably the coldest day we’ve had the Egg Drop contest on – and there was snow on the ground on my way in to school today. But despite the chill, we had fun outside watching the eggs fall and, for the most part, survive.

31 Days – 31 Books (day 22): Done with grading edition

Woohoo! I am FINALLY caught up with grading! OK, so students were taking the final exam today and I’ll need to grade it tomorrow, but the lab reports are GRADED! Woo! I’ve probably been behind for 8 of our last 9 weeks on this. Procrastination’s bad, m’kay?

Day22 – Book on your shelf with the most pages

Hmmmm, one of my many science textbooks, or Ronnie Barker’s tome? Let’s go into my library and see!

*time passes*

Ah! While I was walking into my library, I thought “No! It’ll be The Merck Index.” And I was right. 1606 pages BEFORE it gets to the specially numbered appendix (at least one of those sections was 300+ pages). I suspect it even beats my CRC Handbook of Chemistry & Physics (which has sections that start over in number, and I had no desire to add up a bunch of numbers. Besides, the Merck has much thinner pages and is slightly wider than the CRC.)

For comparison, All I Ever Wrote by Ronnie Barker was 736 pages. But turns out it wasn’t even my most paginated non-reference book. I thought “oooh, bet one of the Harry Potter’s has it beat!” and indeed, Order of the Phoenix is about 30 pages more. But then I looked at Inheritance by Christopher Paolini (still not read) and it’s over 800 pages. Thankfully, my George RR Martin books are eBooks.

(OK, is it obvious that I’m a nerd? I mean, I have a Merck (20th birthday present – I’ve now owned it over half of my life) & a CRC (gift from the Dow Corporation after my freshman year of chemistry – so it’s even older!) and I love talking about page numbers…)

The rest of the 31 days:

Day1 – Book you are reading right now
Day2 – The book you want to read next
Day3 – Your favourite Book
Day4 – Book you hate
Day5 – A Book you can read again and again
Day6 – A book you can only read once (no matter you love or hate it)
Day7 – Book that reminds you of someone
Day8 – Book that reminds you on a certain place
Day9 – The first book you ever read
Day10 – Book from your favourite author
Day11 – Book you once loved and now hate
Day12 – Book that a friend recommended
Day13 – Book that makes you laugh
Day14 – Book from your childhood
Day15 – 4. book from the left on your shelf
Day16 – 9. book from the right on your shelf
Day17 – Close your eyes and get any book from your shelf
Day18 – Book with the most beautiful cover
Day19 – Book, that you ever wanted to read
Day20 – Book that you read at school
Day21 – most stupid book you read at school
Day23 – Book on your shelf with the least pages
Day24 – Book where nobody would expect you read/loved it
Day25 – A book where the main character is almost like you
Day26 – Book you would read to your children
Day27 – A book where the main character is your idol
Day28 – Thanks God this book was made into a movie
Day29 – Darn, why did they make this book into a movie?
Day30 – First erotic book you ever read
Day31 – Book series you are collecting

Science Update

Just a brief update regarding chemistry et al. Of late, I have felt less worried about the curriculum and my coverage of it (or maybe just less overwhelmed) and have actually been quite excited of late.

Last week my students got to do a lab on colorimetry, which was great. Today one of the classes analyzed their results and they all had excellent data. It was the first time most of them had done volumetric pipetting and several of them proved to be adept at it. Some even liked it. 🙂 I, personally, love getting to play with volumetric equipment like pipettes, volumetric flasks, and burettes. You feel like a REAL chemist with that kind of glassware. 😉

I just started a chemistry class through Illinois State University (I’m getting a collection of out of state universities for my education) that’s tied in with Flinn Scientific’s video demonstration series. It’s on atomic and molecular structure. I think that will prove to be very beneficial for the course I’m teaching now. (London forces? I haven’t taught those in YEARS.)

Physics and Advanced Problems are doing pretty well as well (though I’ve just realized both classes are doing research projects at the moment – now I feel sorry for the kids in both classes!)

So, yay for science!

Fun with Grignard Reagents

Second week of Survey of Organic Chemistry and I’m still having fun and learning lots. Hotter’n Hell with more hotter to come, however. The only drawback, IMO.

This weekend, I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (or as I call it HP7.2) with the folks. We all agreed the movie was great. And it had my favorite scene from the book in it. (I have an LJ icon that spoils it, if you want to hunt for it.) The audience actually cheered when the scene occurred, myself included. Our only drawback was having to sit in the front row to see it.

On Sunday, I headed to mom & dad’s before I left for Indiana in order to catch the Women’s World Cup Final. Mom and I sat and watched and cheered (and sighed) as the game progressed and went into extra time. So I wound up heading to uni later than I’d intended. Picked up a Filet o’ Fish & large fries from Maccas on the way (bad me).

Yesterday I went to The Laughing Planet Cafe, a local restaurant that serves interesting burritos. I ordered the Pestato with basil pesto and it was yummy. And for supper, I hung around on campus for a while reading, and then went to Hartzell’s Ice Cream for a Blizzard-like item with chocolate soft serve, Reese cups, and peanut butter. Very yummy, but it didn’t last the whole 25 (hot hot hot) minute walk back to the dorm.

Today for lunch, I went to Basil Leaf Vietnamese Bistro. I ordered the Vietnamese salad, which according to the menu is “lemongrass grilled with spring roll served over soft rice vermicelli noodles, fresh bean sprouts, basil/mint, carrot, lettuce and crushed peanuts.” I had it with pan fried tofu and it was very yummy (though the mint leaves were overpowering and I took the last few out).

After lunch was lab. Once again, long jeans & closed-toed shoes made for hot walking outside, but are very important for lab safety. Our task today was to make a Grignard reagent (an organometallic compound that makes for a negative carbon and is great for making C-C bonds. We used it to make either Crystal Violet or Malachite Green (both dyes, among their other uses). Our group was going to make Crystal Violet but nearly everyone else was too, so we made Malachite Green instead.

It was pretty neat. We tried to be as anhydrous as possible since water reacts with the Grignard agent even more readily than the organic compound we were using. And our instructor told us that the reaction works better if you speak with a French accent. My partner and I opted to not do this, but wound up with the reaction working fine. However, there was a group who wound up not making a dye at all. Still, we had enough of the two dyes to do some tie-dying afterward. I tie-dyed two socks (one in each) and my fingers. And now, apparently, am dying the bathroom counter here in the dorm. Oops!

Here’s a photo of my dye-job (which doesn’t look as nice as it did earlier today):


Malachite Green and Crystal Violet socks (with multi-fiber samples beside them).

Tonight I had yogurt & granola for supper (yay for my cooler) and then went off to see HP7.2 for a second time. This audience weren’t quite as appreciative of my favorite scene, but they’re from Indiana – what do you expect? 😉

I can has Limonene?

I was hoping to have the chance to post last night, but I’m still not able to access the WiFi on campus. I spent some time at Panera last night (and some money on supper) in order to get somewhat caught up, but figured I could post when I returned to my dorm. Alas.

Anyhoo, I’m back at Bloomington’s Indiana University campus, staying in a dorm this time (hence the difficulty with the WiFi – the hotel was easy). Today we had our first lab, which meant I had to wear long pants & closed-toed shoes. And it’s f*****’ hot here!

Still, the lab was fun, and we isolated limonene from orange peel using distillation. We then tested it with a polarizer to show that it was a chiral molecule (lemon has the other-handed stereo isomer of limonene in its peel). We were also going to examine it with IR, only the machine was being a butthead. Kate, our instructor, will get us the IR graphs tomorrow from our compiled limonene.

I’m enjoying the organic review (and some may be new stuff, rather than stuff I’ve simply forgotten) and got a lot of the first homework set done last night because I had no Internet to distract me. May have a similar case tonight. At least I purchased the 4-book set of Song of Ice and Fire for my BeBook before I left cuz it’s been a good read. Book 5 not yet available electronically from my library.

I’ll get more details later – not having supper here, gonna have yogurt back at the dorm (provided it isn’t spoiled yet). So guess I’d best upload this & log off.

If you want to find me, look in the lab!

On Friday, the staff were given a tour of the new building, and I finally got to to see my lab with the permanent furniture in it. It’s just as I planned it (yay!) so I’m quite excited. Looks like we’ll get to start working in our rooms in early August. So once the folks and I return from our visit to see Amy & Rachel (yay – A&R!), I’ll be able to start unpacking.

My new lab, let me show you it!


The lab side of my classroom. There are 24 stations (48 drawers), gas, water (hot & cold), electricity. There’s a way cool fume hood (with a sink!) and a safety station (eyewash & shower). Wow, an eyewash station in the lab! How cool is that?


My desk/demo station. I’ve got water & gas as well!


Demo table from my POV. There’s even a filing drawer. I’ll have a computer on the desk, too.


The chemical storage room. Lots of storage for the chemicals. And the huge flammables & acid cabinets – wow!


The sink & safety station in the storage room. There’s also a skellington cabinet and microscope cabinet for the biology teacher.

The loose furnishings will arrive next week. I’ll be getting desks similar to what I had in the original building (but without asbestos in the table tops). Seeing my lab has gotten me excited about school starting again! 🙂

Science Day Saturday!

On Saturday, I spent a day at Boonshoft Museum of Discovery attending a number of workshops designed by Boonshoft, the Dayton Regional STEM center, and others. The workshops were fun and informative. The lunch was free and tasty (catered by University of Dayton). And I got to do experiments. A great day, in other words. I tell of the day in photos and video.


Solar Home (of sorts)
Solar Home (of sorts)

A sample solar home complete with window, inside insulation, solar panel, and ceiling fan. So cute I had to take a photo.
Ceiling Fan up close
Ceiling Fan up close

Nice view of the ceiling fan and the inside insulation.
Science on a Sphere
Science on a Sphere

One of Boonshoft’s newest attractions is Science on a Sphere. 4 video projectors (one visible as the lens flare) shine onto this 3-D globe. In this instance, "The Blue Marble" video is playing. Created out of actual satellite photos of the Earth from orbit.
Water Rocket #1
Water Rocket #1

The first of two rockets which we built. Foam nosecone & card stabilizers (three). I spent more time building this one. (And, with its crappy appearance, it shows!)
Water Rocket #2
Water Rocket #2

In this one, we had foam stabilizers (glue-gunned on) and a paper cone. The video is of this one flying.


If you look carefully, you’ll see one of the foam stabilizers (black in color) fall down before the rocket itself lands.

In other news, it looks like autumn has finally agreed to join us. Yay!

Happy Equinox!

Yay, it’s autumn! My favorite season. And we’ve got lovely weather this week (albeit a smidge warm during the early evening). And some of the trees have started their color change.

I’m feeling pretty good of late. I seem to have a handle on my college courses. I’m enjoying my classes at school. I got to go to some science workshops on Saturday where I learned some stuff, thought of several lab ideas, and won a doorprize. Free science, free food, and free prizes – those make me happy. (OK, so the doorprize was something for an elementary science teacher, but it was still cool winning it.)

The kids had a day off today while we teachers had inservice. So I got to have Panera for lunch. Yum! I’m pretty warn out from the inservice (meetings always wear me out more than a full day of working – I have NEVER figured that out), so I think I’ll head for bed early. And read. 🙂

Ah, it’s so lovely to sleep with open windows. And soon I’ll need the comforter when I sleep with open windows. Yay! Let’s hear it for autumn!

I’ve missed my calling!

Forget teaching – I should have been a science writer for MacPaper! I’ve gotten my grades back from my scientific writing course. We had to analyze two science articles and compare to the original studies. Then we had to write two New York Times-style articles on two science studies. And finally write two USA Today (MacPaper)-style articles on two other science studies. And I got 9/10 on five of the assignments and 8/10 on one of the two NYT-style articles. Go me!

For those of you who’ve subscribed to my scienceblog feed (tls_scienceblog) you’ve gotten the first two assignments already and the other four will show up over the next five Wednesdays. My favorite headline is with the last article that I wrote: Bigger Weapons or Bigger Testes – Choose Only One. Heh – how can you not read an article with that title?