|
GALLERY
High Altitude
Brian K. Barnett
NASA flies two high-altitude WB-57's from Ellington Field in Houston. On 5 November 2004, Colonel Andrew Roberts piloted one of the WB-57's on a 5.5-hour flight to rendezvous with the recently launched Aura satellite. The WB-57 carried ten experiments that made various measurements to validate the sensors on the Aura while the aircraft was cruising at the bottom of the stratosphere at an altitude of about 18 km (about 60,000 feet). More.
COLUMNS
 Classics: "The Amateur Scientist Classics" A Primer on Soap Bubbles
Shawn Carlson
Forrest Mims' World of Science
by Forrest M. Mims III
Editorial: Doing science at museums: A new opportunity for citizen science
by Forrest M. Mims III
Mind of a Theorist: What
is heat?
George E. Hrabovsky, President, MAST
Puzzle 'Toons by Brian Mansfield
Wanderings with Ralph Coppola
Mathematics Corner: What is infinity?
George E Hrabovsky, President. MAST
Eye on the Sky: Eye on the Sky: The December Sky by Paul Curtin
Got a comment? Write
to us!
We welcome your comments. Please
include the following in your e-mail:
1. Always include "TCS Letter:
OK to Publish" in the subject line to give your permission for
us to publish your letter. This saves us the time of having to
request your permission.
2. Always include your first and
last name and your telephone number. We cannot acknowledge or
publish e-mails without your first name, a valid e-mail address
and a telephone number for possible verification.
Letters may be lightly edited for
spelling, grammar and style.
|
|
NEWS
The Society for Amateur Scientists attends NASA's Earth Explorers Institute
The Citizen Scientist columnist
News from the Galileo Astronomical Society of Pokhara, Nepal
Wanted: Contributions to The Citizen Scientist
Backscatter. Views and responses from TCS readers.
FEATURES
Why is My Cup Two-Tone?
John W. Dooley, Physics Department
Millersville University
Conrad Miziumski waved me into his office one day and tapped his coffee cup with a pencil. I heard the usual tone. He tapped again, with a grin that said, "Can you explain it?". More.
Black Holes and Gravitational Waves
Scott Little
Black holes are created when a star whose mass is greater than a certain limit (called a Chanrasekhar Limit) collapses and forms a void with a gravitational force so strong not even light can escape. Black holes emit Hawking Radiation, after Stephan Hawking. The Hawking Radiation is given as kT = hbarg/(2pi c) = hbarc/(4pi rs) More. |
PRODUCTS
The
Sun and Sky Monitoring Station by Forrest M. Mims III.
An excellent product for beginning scientists,
seasoned amateurs (or even professionals) looking for a new challenge,
or someone trying to come up with a reasonably self-contained science
fair project. Briefly stated, this kit gives one the instrumentation needed
to track accurately the total sunlight in a given time period, measure
haze and water vapor in the atmosphere.
Click
here to order.
|
3 December 2004