International Space Station Resources

International Space Station Resources

Since watching the beautiful and moving timelapse video put together with images from the International Space Station, I’ve become curious about everything Space Station! There are a number of different resources I’ve been using to find out about life on board the Space Station and also the support that it requires to function.

Twitter
Space Station Twitter Pic
@Space_Station This is the Space Station’s Twitter account and my main source of info for all things Space Station. This account also retweets tweets from the astronauts on board so it’s a great place to start finding out about who is up there, what it looks like and the sorts of experiments and work they are doing right now.

Websites
NASA Space Station website Lots of info here on what’s going on “Off the Earth, For the Earth” including links to ‘Space Station for Students’ where you can take part in experiments and look at cool resources from the Space Station, and the related ‘Space Station for Educators’.

The European Space Agency has information on the International Space Station and the parts of the Space Station that the ESA has responsibility for.

Where is the Space Station right now? This website shows … Read more...

Reflections on the world outside my window

Reflections on the world outside my window

I’ve just seen one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring videos I think you could ever see and it has moved me so much I want to share it with everyone!

Flicking through tweets from @curiositydotcom one caught my eye – Feel what it’s like to fly over Earth aboard the ISS in this stunning time-lapse video”. Time lapse videos really interest me and so this got me curious. 

[kad_youtube url=”http://youtu.be/GOAEIMx39-w” maxwidth=600 ]

 

To me that is just breathtaking. That’s our world – a ball in space! I’ve looked up at the stars before and tried to imagine our place in the universe, but this just blew me away. It also makes you ask questions like, how on earth do they figure out how to build a space station! Just how does that work?! How is it possible? It really incredible, and it’s cool to be inspired to think about these things.

So to NASA, David Peterson, Don Pettit and all the other people who have ever worked to make the space station possible and bring it to the people back on earth – thank you. I didn’t think I’d ever see anything like this.… Read more...

Questions and Curiosity

Questions and Curiosity

Recently I’ve become completely fascinated by the website tweetping.net. Tweetping shows realtime Twitter activity from around the world in a beautiful way – when a Tweet goes out a little light appears on the map locating the place where the Tweet came from. The tweet lights start appearing when go to the website and it’s beautifully displayed. Here is an example taken after 15 minutes at lunchtime GMT…

Tweetping Map Lunchtime UK

I think the reason it fascinates me so much is because it makes me ask so many questions. It gets me curious! For example, does everyone in Japan and South East Asia use Twitter?! why do the lights coming from the USA seem to stop half way along? is that bright light to the right of the middle coming from Istanbul? do people use something else in China? is that Pretoria in South Africa? why is it brighter than Cape Town? does the brightness on the map reflect population size? is that why there are fewer lights in Australia? but then what about India? does it reflect the wealth of an area? connectivity? 4G? what does it look like at different times of the day?

I can offer answers for some … Read more...

Why is it called a butterfly?

Why is it called a butterfly?

It’s not got butter on it! It should be called ‘big-wing-fly’…

And so the conversation with 6-year-old continued, with much laughing over the name of the beautiful creature – the butterfly. So why is it called a butterfly? No one knew, but a quick look in the partner database (aka Google, thanks Peter) brought up a few suggestions:

  1. because they would flutter around milk while it was being turned into butter
  2. because witches that took on the shape of the ‘butterfly’ stole milk and butter
  3. it was really called a ‘flutterby’ but that got mixed up
  4. because the first butterfly to come out of hibernation (yes, this one hibernates) in the summer is the male brimstone butterfly and it is yellow, the colour of butter

There doesn’t seem to be any clear answer, all of these sound like they might be right – what do you think?Read more...

How can bird’s feet stay on electrical wires?

How can bird’s feet stay on electrical wires?

This was the question from the curious 6 year old as we drove along. Answer offered by adult: “Because their feet don’t conduct electricity. Electricity doesn’t pass through their feet because of what their feet are made of.” Question from other adult: ” What are their feet made of?” Well, no one in the car knew. Were we even right with our first answer? It turns out we were not!

Here is the simplest explanation I could find, from Rocky Mountain Power:

The bird is not grounded. It has not created a path of lesser resistance for electricity to follow. If the bird simultaneously touched two wires, the difference in resistance between the two wires would create a path through the bird and it would be electrocuted.

Well there you go! Apparently it works ok for small birds, but overhead electrical wires can be quite a danger for larger birds.… Read more...