It's Gettin' Hot in Here!

No, this is not another global warming article -well, not the current global warming, anyway, but the ultimate global warming: the end of our sun, and life on Earth as we know it!

You may remember learning about the lifecycle of a star in 6th grade Earth Science. You also may have been subsequently disappointed to learn that our sun, as magnificient and life-giving as it is, is doomed to end in a less-than-dramatic fashion - instead of an amzing supernova explosion, it will become a red giant, burn off the bulk of its mass in a last-gasp effort of nuclear fusion, and finally fade away from a white dwarf to a black dwarf - a celestial whisper instead of a bang.

Scientists have long estimated that the sun (and solar sytem) were roughly 5 billion years old, and the sun middel-aged, giving roughly 5 billion years before it dies out. Now scientists Robert Smith, from Britain's University of Sussex, and astronomer Klaus-Peter Schroeder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico have made new calculations prediciting the end of the Sun 7.6 billions years from now.

"After a billion years or so [when the Sun begins it's expansion to a red giant] you've got an Earth with no atmosphere, no water and a surface temperature of hundreds of degrees, way above the boiling point of water," Smith told Space.com. "The Earth will become dry basically. It will become completely impossible for life of any kind to exist. It's a pretty gloomy forecast."

Read the original MSNBC article here. To see another article about an extrasolar planet currently undergoing this scenario, read here. To refresh your memories about the lifecycle of a star with interactive activities, click here.

Onlie Quizzes - Repost

Click here or here to access some online quizzes. Want some CRCT practice? Try here. After submitting your answers, you can e-mail the results to me for credit. Need some math practice? Try these.

Although these quizzes are form a different textbook, most of the chapters correspond to our book.

Good luck!

Did You Know? Shift Happens.

Watch the video - note what facts surprise you the most. You might want to watch it more than once. What do you think this means for you and the class of 2012? Your kids? Does this change the question, "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

I love the stat that most people are training for jobs that don't even exist yet. I look at my daughter, who is 20 and a college junior. She is majoring in English, yet many of her classes have been in web design and writing for the web. She is an artist, yet lately she has been working with computer manipulations. She could someday work for a web designer or game company writing story lines or designing graphics - there is no college major for that...yet.

Read this article in the Marietta Daily Journal about the Wheeler Robotic team - note how it talks about Southern Poly Tech adding a new major - Mechatronics. That would've sounded like science fiction when I was in the 8th grade.

Charged Up About Electricity!

Batteries. Lightbulbs. Things we use everyday that we don't even think about. If you lived 150 years ago, you wouldn't think about them either - they didn't exist!

Have you ever wondered how they worked?

Energizer has a great Learning Center and Duracell has some FAQs. A great source for information is HowStuffWorks. Find out about batteries, lightbulbs, capacitors, and solar cells.

Read a little about these and try to summarize it in your own words. Could you explain it to your folks? Could you explain to to a little brother or sister? Any new knowledge gained? Any surprises?

Find another topic that interests you - tell us what you learned!

Experiment: Make Your Own Battery

Some Websites to Get You Started!

You are certainly not limited to these, but it will save you some searching time! Feel free to post questions about the project on the "Comments Page" (No, AC, that won't count for effort points).

Cool Cosmos - lots of links to other sites about the electromagnetic spectrum

Waves of Energy (at Discovery School) - scroll down and click on The Electromagnetic Spectrum Tutorial

The Electromagnetic Spectrum (at Windows on the Universe) - you can change the level to beginner or advanced and even change the language to Spanish. Check out the Explora Tour, too

The Electromagnetic Spectrum (at NASA) - more information

How the Eye Sees Light (at Neuroscience for Kids) - good for projects on visible light and the eye

Electricity Links - lots of links for magnets and electricity

Light and Optic Links - lots of links for light, color, and optics

Sound Links - lots of links for sound and acoustics

Remember: when citing websites, use the URL for the page you actually find the information, not the page from which you followed a link! Google, Yahoo, & Ask are not sources - they are search engines. Wikipedia is an OK place to start (they often have great links at the bottom of their articles), but it can never be considered a definitive or final source.