Fascinating…

The Incredible Shrinking Proton That Could Rattle the Physics World | 80beats | Discover Magazine: “But the big story this week in Nature is that we might have been wrong all along in estimating something very basic about the humble proton: its size.

A team from the Paul-Scherrer Institute in Switzerland that’s been tackling this for a decade says its arduous measurements of the proton show it is 4 percent smaller than the previous best estimate. For something as simple as the size of a proton, one of the basic measurements upon with the standard model of particle physics is built, 4 percent is a vast expanse that could shake up quantum electrodynamics if it’s true.”

Of course this has major ramifications for how we view the current model of the nucleus, atom and the quantum world.

As we continue to learn more and more about the quantum world (using the LHC and other particle accelerators), we’ll continue to run into problems like this… which is why we need you all to hurry up and become scientists.

Pretty cool use of an NXT…

…Niko, the N900-powered Lego robot, looks poised to take over Twitter (video) — Engadget: “a machine called Niko that has Lego Mindstorm NXT 2.0 components for a body and an N900 for a brain. The bot has been under construction for a few weeks but it has just made its YouTube debut with the short video posted after the break, showing it roving around and taking a photo whenever it bumps into something.”

Love that they replaced the NXT’s brain with a Nokia N900.

You can follow (and command) Niko on Twitter.

Next week, we’ll start our studies on “Fluid Dynamics” which is Chapter 11 in your book.

That’s just a fancy term for how forces affect fluids.

Sounds boring?

Nope, it’s fun. You’ll see.

How are Pascal’s, Archimedes’ & Bernoulli’s principal applied at a water park?? – Yahoo! Answers: “How are Pascal’s, Archimedes’ & Bernoulli’s principal applied at a water park??”

We’ll be taking Pascal, Archimedes and Bernoulli to the water park next week.

Bring your Dihydrogen Monoxide Coats!

Ben H. and Evan present Newton’s Laws via Halo

Awesome.

Nice (stick around for the ending)…

Newton’s Set of Laws! The Song

Full of Awesomeness (watch via Vimeo if you’re at school since YouTube is blocked):

8th Grade Students at Spartanburg Day School tackle the ideas and implications of string theory… 1 minute at a time.

YouTube Link

Here are a few video highlights from today’s session… enjoy!

Here’s a note for parents:

Dear Parents -

During our Trip to Washington D.C., I thought it might be informative, entertaining and interesting for you to follow along with some of our exploits and excursions around the capital city.

- If you’d like to get a few glimpses into our trip, I’ll be sending out updates, pictures and videos via Twitter at http://twitter.com/griffinscience

- You can also follow along if you’re on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/griffinscience

- As always my contact info (mobile, email, etc) is located here: http://griffinscience.com/contact-mr-h/ if you have any questions or need to get in touch while we’re on the trip.

Here’s To a Great Trip!

Sam Harrelson
Middle School Science
Spartanburg Day School
mobile: 864-381-7374
sam.harrelson@sdsgriffin.org
http://griffinscience.com
http://www.twitter.com/griffinscience

This is very cool:

Challenge: Steve determined that he needs to look at five ‘pip’ (black dot) locations to uniquely identify each number. Can you explain why? Are there any other arrangements of five sensors that could work? Remember that each number could physically be rotated to four different positions, and you need to detect it no matter how it is stuck in. Answer on Monday.

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