Archives for the 'amusement' Category
Talking with the planets
Published on 2 Feb 2007 at 10:25 am.
4 Comments.
Filed under amusement, physics, planets.
A few days ago I was trying to get across to someone just how big the Solar System is. I have an exercise that I do with my students in which they build a scale model of the Solar System. I don’t mean making just the planets to scale, but also putting them […]
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A Martian Christmas Gift?
Published on 5 Dec 2006 at 12:22 am.
4 Comments.
Filed under Mars, amusement, astrobiology.
Are you looking for that perfect Christmas gift for an astronomer? Here’s a nice little stocking stuffer. It is a Mars microbe (sort of). Actually, it is a little stuffed toy made to look like one interpretation of Mars life. It is from a company called Giant Microbes that sells all […]
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How much would I weigh?
Published on 30 Nov 2006 at 7:50 pm.
14 Comments.
Filed under amusement, physics.
When the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon they wore spacesuits to protect themselves from the vacuum of space, and they had to carry all of their air and life support equipment with them. These spacesuits weighed about 180 pounds here on Earth, but when you look at the astronauts on the Moon, they are […]
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Interchanging planets
Published on 4 Nov 2006 at 2:15 pm.
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Filed under amusement, planets, skywatching.
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Here’s just a fun post. It isn’t really all that scientific or realistic. It is just something that I wondered about. You see, when you look at the different planets from Earth, they appear different brightnesses. Venus blazes away at magnitude -4.5 at its brightest. Mars can get as bright as -2.9, somewhat brighter than […]
