 |
| 
 A Frost Flower from the Texas Hill Country
Glenda Wolin
Assistant City Editor, San Antonio Express-News
Frostweed season arrived at the end of 2007. My curiosity won out over the cold, and I went out in the 37-degree weather one morning (it got down to 24, but I did wait a bit) and looked closely, and sure enough, they were there. |
|
 |
|
Leaving Science: Occupational Exit from Scientific Careers
Anne E. Preston, Russell Sade Foundation, New York, 2004, 201 pages.
ISBN: 0-87154-694-9
Reviewed by Michael Reed
Anne E. Preston is associate professor of economics at Haverford College, Pennsylvania. In Leaving Science, Prof. Preston describes some of the reasons why people leave their careers and majors in science for other fields, such as medicine and law.
|
|
|
|
|
|
A Calculated Risk: Going Where No Foam Has Gone Before
Mark Valentine, Electrical Engineer
A few months ago, Forrest M. Mims III, the editor of The Citizen Scientist, received an inquiry from an upper-level physics student that led to a brief (or perhaps not so brief) account of how I discovered the “Steam Battery.” Essentially, this is an arrangement that produces a voltage across a sample of black ESD (Electro Static Discharge) foam when human breath is applied to one side of it.
|
|
|
|
Poorman's Space Program
The Thermal Test Chamber (TTC) for Near Space Instruments
There are several simple tests that you should perform on an experiment before launching it into near space. One of those tests is the thermal test in which an experiment is chilled with dry ice to temperatures similar to what the experiment will experience during its mission.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dirty Snow
Vincent Giovannone
It has been reported that snow containing soot will melt more rapidly under sunlight than pristine snow with little or no soot (see here, here and here). Through observations of roadside snow, which contains many impurities, including crystals of road salt, it is evident that sunlight melts dirty snow more rapidly than clean snow.
|
|
|
|
This Week at Hilton Pond
Bill Hilton Jr.
Executive Director
Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History
York, South Carolina 29745 USA
This was a particularly exciting week, for we captured and banded our first broad-billed hummingbird (Cynanthus latirostris). For details and photos, please visit the 1-7 January 2008 installment of
"This Week at Hilton Pond" As always we include a tally of all birds banded and recaptured during the period, plus a few miscellaneous nature notes.
|
|
|
|
|
