Electricity is so much a part of our everyday existence that we don’t even stop to think about what it is and how it works. (Shocking, isn’t it?) It’s become especially prominent in recent decades with the creation of electric vehicles or EVs. (Tesla immediately comes to mind, however, Ford makes an EV truck, and Caterpillar has a massive 240-ton, 22-foot tall mining truck that uses batteries.) Electronics projects use electricity, too. It’s possible to build computers with Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards. And, of course, electricity is used in batteries for phones, remote controls, and other ..read more

We may not have found large green aliens populating our closest space neighbor, but many robots call Mars home. Humans have been sending robotic explorers to the red planet for more than 40 years in the name of science and adventure. These robots have provided us with photos, scientific data, and a completely new view of Mars. Let’s meet some of these space exploration superstars. Viking 1 and Viking 2 Courtesy of Planetary The first spacecraft ever to touch down on Mars, these machines gave humans a never-before-seen look at the planet. Both touched down a few months apart in 1976 but continu ..read more

Astronauts have been taking pictures of Earth for as long as humans have been going to space. And that means we have a lot of pictures of our home planet taken from high above—more than 4 million, according to NASA, all freely available for scientists, teachers, and even you to browse online. Researchers often use these photos to track things like how the Earth’s features are changing over time or changes in nighttime lighting in cities. Emergency responders even take advantage of photography of natural disasters to help people during events like hurricanes or wildfires. If you have ever wante ..read more

Throughout history, there are many examples of “mash-ups”. Mashing up two or more things that don’t go together can create funny, interesting combinations. The ancient Egyptians had Bastet, with a cat head and a human body. In Russian folklore exists a creature called Alkonost, with the head of a woman and the body of a bird. In the US, we have jackalopes: rabbits with deer antlers! Sylvar on Flickr In computer history, an interesting and, sadly, mostly forgotten mashup is Clarus the Dogcow. Susan Kare created Clarus while creating a font called Cairo, which is full of odd characters called di ..read more

Not a Bot? Prove it! History of CAPTCHA https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/81927/surprisingly-devious-history-captcha CAPTCHA and Duolingo https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/860884062/recaptcha-and-duolingo-luis-von-ahn How CAPTCHA was made into a Bussiness https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit/submission/recaptcha-the-brilliant-business-model-that-only-one-man-could-create/ CAPTCHA facts for Kids https://kids.kiddle.co/CAPTCHA Academic Kids Encylopdiea https://academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Captcha Earth, Wind, and Fire Powered What is Renewable Energy? https://www.alliantenergykids.com ..read more

My Middle School students learned about Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion, which states that for every action (force) in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If object A exerts a force on object B, object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A. Ultimately, forces result from interactions. Students were given an engineering challenge with the goal to build a Ball Run Game using cardboard, construction paper, hot glue, tape, and paint where the winner would be determined by the game that has the ball which takes the longest to travel through the design. Students used TinkerCA ..read more

Have you ever wondered where all the energy we use to power our homes comes from? Currently, it comes from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil, which are very harmful to our planet. But scientists and engineers have been coming up with many ways to take advantage of renewable energy sources that are more in harmony with the Earth. Geothermal Power One of the coolest natural phenomena in my opinion is the volcano, an amazing display of molten rock coming up to the earth’s surface at superheated temperatures. Places like Iceland are absolutely full of them. Because of the natural abundance of ..read more

Are you a robot? Of course not. But you do use the internet, so you have likely been asked to prove that you are not a robot by completing a simple puzzle. This challenge-response test is known as a CAPTCHA or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Catchy right? The history of CAPTCHA can be traced back to the early 2000s when the internet was first really taking off. Back then, bots, while still fairly simple, had already started getting into trouble by creating email accounts or spamming comment sections on websites. To stop this activity, researchers at ..read more

Gravity Batteries in Abandoned Mines Renewable energy sources like wind and solar work well when there’s wind and sunshine. Gravity batteries only require a long shaft to drop sand and extract energy by braking to slow the fall of sand. Sounds weird but it works. And there are lots of abandoned mine shafts around the world connected to a power grid, with 550,000 mines in the US alone. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/2/825/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a42613216/Scientists-turn-abandoned-mines-into-gravity-batteries Musical Elements All chemicals like Zinc, Hydrogen, and Ir ..read more

One day you are working along nicely on your computer, and (it seems like) the next day it is out of date… not enough memory to handle the operating system upgrades and not enough power to run programs. So, you have a computer that you can’t use anymore, but it seems like a waste to toss it out. A great project for an older machine that’s perhaps destined for landfill or a more eco-friendly option like an electronics recycling center, is to try and install a Linux operating system on it and give it a new life. Let’s look at how we can do this. The first and most important step of this entire ..read more