1000 miles!

Speaking of bikes, I just passed the 1,000 mile mark on my new bike! That's an unimpressive average of just over 4 miles per day over the last 7.5 months.

Fortunately I've only fallen off twice, both times being when I forgot I was clipped into my pedals soon after installing them. And to any concerned parents out there, yes, I always wear my helmet, despite a "study" that suggests not doing so actually decreases your chances of getting hit by a car.

Seemed like a fitting post for Earth Day. Anyone want to bet whether or not I can break 2,000 at my bike's 1-yr anniversary in September?

Cue the Proclaimers song . . . now.

YTVotD

Holy insane biking, Batman:



The guy is Danny MacAskill, probably the best street trials biker out there. It's filmed in and around Edinburgh, and, if you've ever ridden a bike in your lifetime, is dang impressive to watch. Especially the part with the tree at around 3:05. Watch and be amazed.

Tax Day!

Hope you got your returns in on time. Thanks to Kate, we already have our refunds! Here's a tax day-themed post for you all with an infographic from Good Magazine.

Where Your Tax Dollars Go:
Also, happy birthday to the nieceling!

Unreal Estate

There is a lot in the news recently, with the economy in the tank, about how it's a good time to buy a house and that prices are good and low. Well, unfortunately the people selling their houses in our neighborhood didn't get the memo. In fact, we - along with everyone else in our neighborhood - actually got a memo from our friendly local real estate brokers congratulating us for living in an area where housing prices are staying strong and definitely not following the state-wide and national downward trends of becoming a "buyer's market." Harrumphf.

Anyways, lest you think we are exaggerating, I present to you exhibits A, B, and C. Note - all three houses are literally between a stone's throw and a long home run in distance from our current (rented) residence.

A: House #1 - 3 BR, 2 BA, 1,600 sq ft - $968,888

B: House #2 - 3 BR, 2.5 BA, 1,460 sq ft - $935,000

C: House #3 - 3 BR, 2 BA, 1,384 sq ft - $848,000
I can vouch for the fact that while these houses are decent, and I'd be happy to own any of them, they by no means would be considered one of the "nicer" houses in the area.

Sigh. Well, so that part of the so-called American Dream (or maybe the New Zealand dream is more accurate in this case) is going to have to wait for a while...

Homemade Fog Machine

Just thought I would share one of my favorite new Physics demos with the blog. We're currently covering fluids and thermodynamics and I thought this was a really great and cheap way to demonstrate work, internal energy, and phase changes. All you need is one of those 12 oz disposable clear plastic water bottles that you have in your recycling bin (any kind).

Peel off the label so you can see through the bottle. Put 1/2 inch of water inside the bottle and put the lid on. Twist the bottle until it forms a little "bow tie" shape. It is important to do this in one fluid motion. This will make some alarming noises and feel a little scary - probably a good idea to point the lid away from people just in case.

Let go. The bottle should "bounce" back to its normal shape. Inside, you should see whitish fog form. If you take the lid off, you can make fog rings by squeezing the bottle. This will only work once per bottle.

What's happening? When you twist the bottle, you are compressing the gas inside it. This increases the internal energy of the gas, warming it up and also causing more water to enter the vapor phase. When you let go, the gas rapidly expands to fill the new larger volume of the water bottle. This quickly cools the gas and causes the water vapor to transform back into water, or fog.

Let me know if you give it a try!

Birthday Poems

For today I will try something new:
It's fun - see, Jeff did it too!
I hope it won't make you doze,
Soon we'll be back to prose
But 'till then - normal blogging, adieu!

Now I don't want to sound like a preacher,
But that Kate, she really is quite the teacher.
It's physics her students learn,
Maybe to work someday at CERN,
But that's not her only great feature.

Far from it, great qualities she has aplenty.
Of canines, baseball, and cuisine she's a cognoscenti.
I'm so happy we met
And though we've got no Corvette,
Can you name a husband who's content? (Me.)

Now I am off to make birthday cake.
Chocolate hazlenut's the kind that I'll make.
I wonder what she'll wish for...
(Probably for Carolina to swish more)
Wish me luck in my attempts to bake.

So today is my sweetie's big day,
The third day in the month before May.
(Don't tell her I told,
but 29 is how old)
So join in a hip-hip-hooray!

Making Lemonade

Well, Duke may be out, and Carolina may be rolling, but yours truly is still the queen of HORSE in THIS household.

Utah Trip

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to get to take a trip to Salt Lake City to visit our college friends Steve and Sarah, as well as to do some skiing with them and other Greenmen that came to visit! Sarah already beat me to the punch with pictures on her blog, but I thought I'd include a few here to show you how beautiful the Wasatch in the winter are and how much fun we had. My pictures are online, and Gordie took some nice ones too that are also up.

Day 1 at Solitude - lots of snow all day long!


Somehow we managed to survive...


Our group at Alta, Day 2


Steve leading us to one of his favorite spots at Alta


Gordie drops in!


Silliness


Erin is happy to be out in the snow!


The beautiful vistas over Snowbird's Mineral Basin (Day 3)


Ari, Steve, Steve, and Sarah

Tom's snow-beard


Steve and Sarah at Snowbird


Hooray, fun trip

Thanks, Steve and Sarah for hosting us - and it was great to get to see your dogs and the city, too. Hope we can do it again sometime! For anyone else out there considering a ski trip to Utah, the mountains are really quite impressive and we all had a blast exploring them. Maybe next year we can get everyone to come out to California for some Tahoe adventuring...

A moral quandry

When I was in high school, the most common cheating was "borrowing" homework answers. Cheating on a test was a much bigger deal, and I can only recall one instance where I knew of people cheating on a test.

By all accounts, cheating is much more prevalent in high schools these days. So far in my teaching career (3 months), I have caught and referred two students for cheating on a test, and there were two more that escaped for lack of hard evidence. It creates quite the dilemma for a teacher. Should I...

A) Make my tests as cheat-proof as possible. This creates problems in its own right - more work creating and grading multiple copies of the test, photocopying students' answer sheets to ensure they don't change them, strict rules about bathroom breaks and what students can and cannot do after they're done with the exam, calculator and cell phone monitoring, and constant vigilance.

OR

B) Create "normal" tests and make students take ownership for their own behavior.

I'd love to be able to use option B - I feel like high school should be "practice" for real life, and students of that age should be able to make their own ethical decisions. But if a student is caught cheating, there are major consequences, including failing a course for an entire semester and notification of any college they may have already been accepted to. So, what to do?

Uvas Canyon

Saturday morning offered a rare, brief window free from both lesson-planning and rain, so we went out to explore a new park nearby which purported to have some good waterfalls. Given the recent consistently heavy precipitation we've been having, this sounded like a good option. Uvas Canyon is maybe 45 min South of us, kind of towards Santa Cruz but further East. The many waterfalls were nice - kind of reminded me of hiking in New England where the trails often follow a rocky creek through the woods. Banjo, as always, loved getting to romp around a bit and sniff a bunch of new smells. And apparently this place is ladybug Mecca. Check out the conglomeration of little red bugs below! There were masses of them on rocks, trees, sticks, leaves, you name it! Strange. Although our sighting was apparently not an isolated incident - I've since learned they like to winter in Santa Clara county. It's fun that we are still - after five years living in the Bay Area - still discovering new places to explore!

Ladybug convention on a mossy rock

Closeup of some of our ladybug friends

Group shot, sans Tom