Curating resources & sharing stories to empower teacher & student ownership, wonder, and daring.
The French decided to put the Metric System into place because almost every country in Europe had their own system of measuring. It made it difficult to communicate for trade and business purposes, so the International Metric System (SI) was begun…
Continue reading “The Metric System – What and Why? (VIDEO)”
It seems pretty straight forward that most people would like to appear intelligent. A great way to not appear intelligent is to mispronounce words, phrases and cliches. You might be extremely smart–even a book worm, but could you be doing it wrong? Keep reading to see our collection of words & phrases you might be saying incorrectly:
Continue reading “You’re Saying It Wrong – Words & Phrases (VIDEO)”
People have been getting together to discuss texts in newspapers, books, and letters since the invention of the printing press. Dennis Adams over at the Beaufort County Library website wrote a brief article on the history of book clubs, mentioning “literary salons of Paris,” which were social gatherings of the higher class (writers, politicians, artists) that were done regularly in a private place of residence. In some of these gatherings, the hostesses were authors themselves. Coffee house settings were also popular, although slightly less formal, and more common among the men. Keep reading to see how Book Clubs have shaped our literary society:
The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a long, drawn out process that just proves that changing human nature is a slow process. Civil and human rights have been a prevalent topic of political discussions since, most likely, the beginning of people grouping themselves together to be governed.
Stars– what are they made of? Mostly, just hydrogen and helium on fire out in space. The sun closest to us is our Sun, which has been burning for 4.5 billion years! Stars burn for what seems like forever, but eventually, they run out of fuel and stop being stars like we know them. What happens to the stars is dependent upon how big they are: for example, our Sun is relatively small, which means it goes through it’s fuel more slowly than a bigger star.
Think of it this way: have you ever noticed how dads eat way more than their daughters? Of course, the reason seems obvious–it’s because dad’s are bigger and need more “fuel” to keep them going. The same with a semi-truck vs a sedan, and a big star vs a small star. The bigger it is, the faster it will use its resources; the smaller it is, the less energy it needs and therefore doesn’t consume as much.
When our star runs out of hydrogen, it will begin to collapse in the core. That collapsing causes the star to get really hot, which makes the outer layers of the star expand. Expanding cools the star slightly and it becomes a Red Giant. Maybe you’ve heard of the red supergiant Betelgeuse? It’s the red dot you can see in the sky, close to Orion’s Belt!
After our sun becomes a red giant, it will start using helium as fuel. The star will compress and shed layers, compress and shed layers, until it becomes a White Dwarf star.
Bigger stars don’t stop fusing when they run out of helium and hydrogen, they fuse all the elements down the periodic table until getting to iron. After fusing iron, the gravitational pull inside the star gets so massive that the star can’t hold up any more. It implodes, then explodes, and all that’s left is a neutron star. Neutron stars are extremely dense, because it took a star with 5x the mass of the sun and compacted it all into something the size of a small city. Below is a picture from NASA of a neutron star.
With the biggest types of stars, when they finish fusing all their materials and collapse, the gravity pulls so hard that a star that was originally 10x the mass of the sun is swallowed and condensed into something around the size of a pea–better known as black holes. Black holes have such a giant gravitational pull that light doesn’t even escape! There are even things called supermassive black holes, and they’re believed to be at the center of every galaxy.
Want more?
Check out NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, which is a great source for fascinating photos!
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Special thanks to Carla June Carroll (has her bachelor’s in Astronomy!) for helping out with this show. We couldn’t have even began to do this without her help!
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Sources:
Featured Image: Tom Hall
From the beginning of education, children are assigned reading materials to complete over the summer in preparation for the next term’s classes. Most children find that doing summer reading in elementary school isn’t difficult, but as they get older, a social stigma develops and it becomes less convenient to read over the summer. In college, it is almost unheard of for students to purchase text books early and begin reading the material for the classes. Teachers at upper levels don’t require summer reading, because with age come more responsibilities that leave little time for reading.
Most sources agree that the biggest benefit that comes from reading is a higher intelligence and greater general knowledge than those who don’t read regularly. Fellow blogger Glen Stansberry at LifeDev.net had this to say about the wealth of knowledge open to anyone with a library card:
Continue reading “Why Summer Reading Is Important In Our YouTube Age”