Astronauts for hire!

When you were little did you dream of someday being an astronaut and getting to fly in the space shuttle?  Well, even though NASA has ended the shuttle program for the foreseeable future, they are hiring astronauts.

Here are the educational requirements and the actual job posting:
Applicants must meet the following minimum requirements before submitting an application. 
1. Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution in engineering, biological science, physical science, or mathematics. Quality of academic preparation is important.
2. Degree followed by at least 3 years of related, progressively responsible, professional experience or at least 1,000 hours pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft. An advanced degree is desirable and may be substituted for experience as follows: master's degree = 1 year of experience, doctoral degree = 3 years of experience. Teaching experience, including experience at the K - 12 levels, is considered to be qualifying experience for the Astronaut Candidate position; therefore, educators are encouraged to apply. 

This could be you!!

  

SCVTS Mole Day 2011

This year's Mole Day went off without a hitch.  We had a full house at 6:02am in F11 - and despite the fact that no one in the room had gotten eight hours of sleep that night everyone was excited to celebrate.  The Chemistry 101 students made some great mole models in honor of the day, as well as some beautiful works of art.

  

 You may be wondering why these ladies are laughing...

Muriel was practicing

                                                                    her rap and dance moves...

And last but not least....

...here is a Mole Day Rap, presented by Aaliyah, Devon and Laura.  

How to get rid of a Nobel Prize, and fast!

Imagine you're a world-famous physicist working in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1940.  You've been sheltering Jewish physicists who fled German troops for years, and the Nazi party knows it.  In fact, two Jewish scientists have sent their solid gold Nobel Prizes to you for safekeeping.  Now, Nazi troops are literally marching through the streets of your city looking for you.  You NEED to get rid of these medals, but how?  CHEMISTRY - that's how!

S is for Science, and that's good enough for me

Sesame Street has announced that this year's new season of programs with be focusing more on STEM instruction (that's Science Technology Engineering and Math for those of you not in the education world).  So if you still tune in to watch that childhood favorite you can help Cookie Monster do an experiment on density, or watch Super Grover "unleash the power of Obser-vation... vation.... vation......"  This is all being done in an effort to help America's kids improve their STEM skills, which I think is great.

Speeding past the speed of light?

Researchers at the CERN particle collider near Geneva announced that they measured neutrinos traveling FASTER than the speed of light.  That was previously though impossible, according to Einstein's theory of relativity.

These are just initial findings, there's no scholarly paper out yet, but it looks like this could be the physics discovery of a lifetime.

Video games can be useful!

Scientists created a game called Foldit where players can try different ways of folding proteins into three-dimensional shapes in hopes of actually finding the real shapes of molecules.  Scientists have been trying to figure out the shape of a protein that causes AIDS in rhesus monkeys for 15 years, and using foldit some game players found it in ten days!

Here's the story and the journal article announcing the discovery.

Here's a link to Foldit - you can play it yourself!