Category: video

Live from 1500 Meters Deep

Link to live video feed from the ROV ROPOS surveying a cable on the ocean floor at the Juan de Fuca midocean ridge.

Live science. The remotly operated submersible ROV ROPOS is surveying an undersea cable recently laid across the the Juan de Fuca midocean ridge.

This scientific expedition will be going on until the end of August, and there’ll be live feeds every time the rover is deployed (which depends a bit on the weather at the surface).

If you have questions, they’re also answering your tweets.

Right now, the rover’s heading toward the caldera of the axial seamount volcano. It should get there some time tonight (if they don’t have to stop for anything). So far, we’ve seen dumbo octopuses, crabs, weird fish, brainless worms, sponges, deep sea corals, starfish and lots of pillow basalt. The basalts are unsurprising because these are the rocks produced when volcanos erupt under water.

Dumbo octopus (from the ROV ROPOS seafloor gallery at Interactive Oceans).

Build Your Own Solar System: An Interactive Model

National Geographic has a cute little game that lets you create a two-dimensional solar system, with a sun and some planets, and then simulates the gravitational forces that make them orbit and collide with each other. The pictures are pretty, but I prefer the VPython model of the solar system forming from the nebula.

The models starts off with a cloud of interstellar bodies which are drawn together by gravitational attraction. Every time they collide they merge creating bigger and bigger bodies: the largest of which becomes the sun near the center of the simulation, while the smaller bodies orbit like the planets.

This model also comes out of Sherwood and Chabay’s Physics text, but I’ve adapted it to make it a little more interactives. You can tag along for a ride with one of the orbiting planets, which, since this is 3d, makes for an excellent perspective (see the video). You can also switch the trails on and off so you can see the paths of the planetary bodies, note their orbits and see the deviations from their ideal ellipses that result from the gravitational pull of the other planets.

I’ve found this model to be a great way to introduce topics like the formation of the solar system, gravity, and even climate history (the ice ages over the last 2 million years were largely impelled by changes in the ellipticity of the Earth’s orbit).

National Geographic’s Solar System Builder is here.

Signs of Water on Mars?

Water is necessary for life as we know it, which is why the search for life on other planets and moons in the solar system has been focused first of all on finding water. NASA now reports signs of water on Mars. Salty water perhaps, and even now there is no direct evidence that it is water and not some other fluid, but this is the first evidence of there being liquid water on Mars today.

The video above explains, and the BBC has a good article.

Match Stick Rockets

A great, simple, and slightly dangerous way of making rockets. There are a number of variations. I like NASA’s because they have a very nice set of instructions.

How to make a match stick rocket. By Steve Cullivan via NASA.

With a stable launch platform that maintains consistent but changeable launch angles, these could be a great source of simple science experiments that look at the physics of ballistics and the math of parabolas (a nice video camera would be a great help here too) and statistics (matchsticks aren’t exactly precision instruments).

The Spirit of the Law

A You are the Ref strip by Paul Trevillion.

Every week, artist Paul Trevillon poses, in text and cartoon form, some truly idiosyncratic situations that might come up in a soccer match in his You are the Ref strip on the Guardian website. Readers get a week to propose their solutions and then referee Keith Hackett give his official answers.

It’s a fascinating series, the subtext of which is that, while there is a lot of minutiae to remember – the actual diameter of a soccer ball is important for one question – the game official is really out there to enforce the spirit of the laws, enabling fair and fluid play to the best of their ability. This is a useful lesson for adolescents who tend toward being extremely literal, and have to work on their abstract thinking skills, especially when they relate to questions of justice. For this reason, I find that when refereeing their games it’s useful to take the time during the game, and afterward in our post-match discussions, to talk about the more controversial calls.

The Future of Stuff

The Story of Stuff is a pretty commonly used video that starts the conversation on resource use and consumerism. The video below, “Full Printed,” takes a look at the future and how technology, particularly 3-D printers, might reduce the environmental costs of the things we use.

FULL PRINTED from nueve ojos on Vimeo.

Update

There are already some places for 3d printing.