Landing a Rocket on a Comet. Happening in the next 12 hours...

Landing on the moon - done
Landing a robot on Mars - done

Landing on a comet is a little trickier. Why? What do you think?

Why are we trying to do it?

Find out here

Follow it live from the people at NASA right HERE

teeny and HUGE Numbers

In Diploma Mathematical Studies we are starting the course looking at the story of Number and how we communicate all sorts of things with different types of Numbers.

You are all probably familiar with Natural Numbers and Integers but there are also Rational, Real and Imaginary numbers. When society needs more from mathematics to push through and develop in some way we develop new systems to make that possible.

Number types tell the story of society and its complexity.

Check out these sites:
FSU (where my dad did his doctorate) and their famous Powers of ten
and this famous video - it's old but the numbers are relevant



We have had these types of numbers in this blog before. Please visit or revisit for your mathematical enjoyment about the scale of the universe(s).

CLICK right here

This is HUGE!

Sorry about the lack of posts, I'm planning to make up for it.

And if you find something cool - a video or graphic or story that's mathematical, share it with me and I'll post it (referencing you of course).

It's about our universe, seconds after it began.

It's about theories and persistence

It's about patience and taking the time, a long time...

CHECK IT OUT HERE WOWOWOW

I love science and numbers

Pixels and the Scale of our Solar System

Check out this very cool If the Moon were the Size of a Pixel site, by Josh Worth.

It is very good at communicating the scale of the sun and the distance between planets.

CHECK IT OUT HERE 

IFLScience‏@IFLScience

If you track the relative positions of Earth and Venus over an 8 year period, this is the resulting pattern. pic.twitter.com/oRbXDxVVIB

from the wonderful sharing world of Twitter

Is there a 4th Dimension

After an interesting chat with Dreem in class I thought I would post this great video from the excellent Minute Physics Youtube Channel.

Teeny and Huge Things - magnitude

When we study teeny tiny things and large things from whales to the universe we use scientific notation and names.

Here are some of the sites we used in MYP5 today:

Scale of the Universe

cells and scale - slidy thing

And some more mathematical treats
xkcd measuring the universe

MYP5, Speed of Light - Good Geekery with Minute Physics. Minute Earth

Today we answered some of our bigger questions that emerged from wondering how long light from Earth takes to get to the moon.  We used this to explore scientific notation, exponents, large numbers and more.

When I have big questions one of my favourite Youtube Geekery Channels is minute physics - hope you like it too.

We wondered if light would travel forever in the universe and if we could see the light (from a torch) on the moon when we turned it on and off.  What can we see from the moon on Earth?

More questions emerged after these videos what is the speed of light in a vacuum (space)? what is the speed of light in water (space)? can animals see more stars than us?

Here are some cool geek videos that answer questions but make you ask even more...




and this for does the torch light beam widen and more