Science and technology news from Hopkinton Independent School

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Cassini Flying Through Ice Chunks

NASA's Cassini probe is flying VERY close to one of Saturn's tiniest moons. Why? Well, it sounds like a bit of a far-fetched stunt, but NASA wants to fly the probe through a cloud of flying ice chunks from a giant geyser, to find out if there's life under the surface of the moon.

But don't take MY word for it...

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Bad Monkeys

Through out India, monkeys run wild and live as a part of society in some cities. In one Indian town though, things are out of hand. Four monkeys jumped on the balcony of the mayor, and while trying to fight the monkeys off, he fell of the balcony and died. The people are starting to not like that the monkeys are "invading" the cities. There is a good reason. India's towns and cities are expanding fast and taking the monkeys homes. What do you think, do the monkeys have rights, or should they leave.

NuVinci Bicycle

Fallbrook Technologies is starting to manufacture a bicycle with a "infinite" gears. It is called NuVinci transmission. This transmission works by having ball bearings around a hub that are kept in by a input disc (attached to the chain from the peddles) and a output disc (attached to the rear wheel). The pull handles on the front cause the whole transmission to tilt therefore increasing to a different gear deppending on the amount of tilt. To learn more about the bike click on THIS!

Big Bang

this is a website about someone's trip to Mt. Tambora.  Mt. Tambora still holds the record for the biggest volcanic eruption since 1815.  Here are some questions to answer about Mt. Tambora:

  1. How far did the elevation drop during the explosion? 
  2. When did the first and second eruptions occur? 
  3. The first eruption's column was about 44 km heigh.  How heigh was the second eruption's column?
  4. How hot was it when the volcano erupted? 
  5. How long did the "whirlwind" last?
  6. How many people in total did the eruption kill?
Good luck! 

Feel free to only answer a few of them!

Here's the link:

 

a different "Big Bang"

Have you ever heard about the biggest volcano eruption in history? Some names that might come to mind are Mount St. Helens or even Krakatua, but as big as these might seem they are not the biggest. The biggest and maybe the least heard of is Tambora. In April of 1815 the volcano on a island in Indonesia erupted enough lava to cover the whole island, and killing most of their people. There was an estimated of 60,000 deaths but that wasn't the only problem. The ash from the volcano went into the air and caused some nasty problems. Because of the disturbance cattle would not eat and the crops would not grow. This caused a huge famine worldwide. The reason that the BIGEST volcano eruption is not know as well is because of the communications at the time. The only was to communicate with other countries was by ship. With this lack of communication few people even knew that there was a volcano eruption to begin with

http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0604-04

Kors, Joshua Big Bang

Mini-Cat Cars

Introducing the new car of tomorow! The mini-cat car is a car that is environmentally friendly and fuel efficient. This car is cheap to assemble and cheap to fuel. The mini-cat car runs on compressed air, and electricity which is safe for the environment and the air tanks are easy to get rid of. The compressed air can't catch fire and won't leave harmful vapors that other cars have. The car also doesn't need sparkplugs or batteries to run so there is less matenance needed. The mimi-cat car is environmentally friendly and is the safe car of the future.
Here are the links so you can learn more about the mini-cat car.

http://www.theaircar.com/acf/air-cars/energy-storage.html

http://www.theaircar.com/acf/

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Weekly Math Puzzle and ScienceNewsForKids.org

Did you know that http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/ publishes a weekly math puzzle? Here's the link:

Check it out! You can submit comments and solutions, and the page links to lots of other interesting science and math features.

Monkeys run wild

NEWS FLASS:
MONKEY POPULATOIN PROBLEM IN NORTH INDIA. MAYOR KILLED ON HIS OWN PORCH BY THESE MONKEY MENACES.

That's not just jiber jaber to make a paper famous. it's true just look here at

If your a monkey person go to India the monkey population is maching the humens at estimated 20,000 - 25,000.
This is high!