Tick-tock

Getting down to the wire now. If I can just stop looking up information about Socorro at 3 am, I'll actually get some sleep!

I leave in two days, on Friday. I think I've got mostly everything packed. I did the last laundry today, and in the morning, I'll do final packing of clothes, so that I can sort what I need for the trip itself from what I need when I get there.

I'm taking three days to get to Socorro, so that I can (finally!) stop off at Hovenweep National Monument, which I've been trying to get to for what seems like forever.

On Friday, I go get the rental car at the airport at 9 am, bring it home and load it. Then I go to Spanish Fork, to have a last lesson on my pony. This is, remarkably, exactly on the way. From there, I think I can get to Moab before it's too late. That's the biggest driving day, what with all the car business first thing in the morning.

Saturday, I'll head to Hovenweep, and then around through Cortez, CO, and down to Gallup, NM.

Sunday, I'll drop straight south through Zuni Nation to route 60. Turning east will take me past (well, through, actually) the VLA. I'm really looking forward to seeing it again. It makes me proud of my species.

I should be in Socorro by early afternoon. That will give me time to swing by my new digs, and change to emergency plan B, if necessary. Also, it will give me time to stop off at the store and pick up a few things. I'll stay in a hotel on Sunday night, because on Monday, I:

a) move into the apartment
b) show up for my first day at work
c) return the car to the Albuquerque airport
d) come back to Socorro via the shuttle

None of that necessarily in that order. It's going to be a really, really busy day!

Tuesday is an AOC-wide CASA meeting. This is critical to my project. (AOC=Array Operations Center, the name of the place I'll be working. CASA=er, something, probably with Analysis in it. But it's the new software package that runs the new instrumentation, and does the data analysis. Did I mention that it's new?)

Gustaaf (the person I'll be working with) is going out of town for two weeks starting on the 13th, so I am under some pressure to come up to speed pretty quickly on the status of the project, current issues and concerns, and so on.

I'm nervous, excited, jittery, homesick already, and having a hard time sleeping. Or maybe that's just the economy.

Sometimes, it's the little things...

Today, I have no emails in my inbox. Ahhh...

See, this is how I work. I get an email from someone, and I do one of four things:

a) delete it immediately, because I'm not going to buy those pills that make me longer and stronger. Nope. Don't need 'em.

b) answer it right away, if it's actually quick and/or easy.

c) leave it in my inbox, if I can't get to it just then, but will some time soon.

d) delegate it to someone else.

So, only about every other year or so, is my inbox actually empty. Today is one of those days. I also have only one more work-related item on my to-do list. I do believe I'm almost ready to go to Socorro!
____________________

Zeroth draft has an interesting thought about 'personal hells'. Hmmm... my own personal hell... Probably this: Delayed at the Salt Lake City airport, indefinitely, with nothing to read, and 'CNN: fear-mongering airport edition' playing loudly, without pause, 24/7. (Why SLC? Because the drinks are so tiny and expensive that there's no way I could find oblivion.)

Anything could happen!

So, economy and global disasters aside...

Today, I got pinged by my liaison at NASA, who had not heard yet about how the grant turned out! This meant that I got to spend about an hour composing an email brag about all of the marvelous things that happened because of this $1 million earmark to the 'foolishness' of a planetarium (thanks so much, McC, for proving that you are anti-science AND anti-education in one simple sentence!). What fun! Not only did we create all the modules, and a survey of core standards, and all the other things we said we'd do, but we also started Science in the Parks, served approximately 34,000 people over two years, reached the at-risk, disadvantaged community, ran a conference, published papers, etc., etc. Not bad for $1 million.

Let's run a couple of numbers. $1 million divided by 34,000 is $29 per person. And that doesn't count the people who are being affected by the shows being shown in other planetaria! So far, we have shows currently being shown in seven other planetaria across the country, each of which conservatively sees about 4,000 people per year. So that's another 28,000 people. And that's just this year, and doesn't include last year, but never mind. So we're looking at something like $15 per person. It's even less, if you think of how people have benefited from our publications and so on, but those are really hard to count, so let's just keep it at $15. It's a nice, round, three latte number.

Out in the world, we have $700 billion to bail out investment banks. I'm not saying that's not a good idea, or even that it won't help more people in the end. I'm just saying that it's going to cost a lot more than $15/person. Even if it helped every single person on the planet, it would cost $108/person! But we always knew I was better than W. ; ) I know. I said economy aside. But I'm only human.

Also today, I got to write a letter of recommendation for a favorite student. I LOVE doing that. It always makes me feel like I'm actually a useful person, working for a wonderful, magical future, in which all my favorite students rule the world. Sigh. It's so pretty then. In the magical future. Ahhh...

And, I got to spend some time figuring out what to do for next year's Miller Education Project class, verified my housing arrangements for Socorro, put a 'roof' on the chicken coop, found that Xmas decorations are already up at Lowe's, complained to Lowe's management about it, picked up copies of the latest eco-mags with enviro-physics articles, listened to Science Friday, learned about the recent decrease in the solar wind pressure and the low sunspot numbers, and also the new companies starting up that do complete turnkey solar installations, got some more money for the planetarium, delegated several decisions that need to be made, and walked the dog. It's only 2 pm. I wonder what will happen next!

The last couple of days...

...have been busy! I've been packing up to go to Socorro---it's harder than you think to pack for six months. On the one hand, it's a long time, and I have to make sure to remember a can opener. On the other hand, it's not forever, and so I don't get to just throw everything in boxes! It's a lot like leaving for college, actually, except that so much less of my life is taken care of---no dorm furniture, no dorm food, no roommates with whom to share stuff.

I've also been catching up on my enviro-blog, and a hundred little small things that I wanted to get done before I head south. And, I've been doing a bit of homesteading, as a way of controlling my economy jitters. I haven't been running, because I somehow (not running) stressed a tendon in my foot, so it needs the rest.

Today, I had to run in to the office and do a lot of paperwork, to close out the big grant, and open the new contract with NRAO. So that took a while.

But then I went down to the Union, to see what's new. I wandered into the bookstore, which I hadn't been in for a while. I was in the textbooks section, where I found several books that I can use to fill out my enviro-knowledge. A fortuitous discovery. Way to go Zoo, Geo, Geog, and Soc!

They also had a display of banned books, which I always appreciate. So does the bookstore. I can never walk past a display of banned books without buying at least one, in protest of censorship, and support of the First Amendment. Maybe that's silly, because it's clearly a marketing ploy, and who's going to notice, really. But on the other hand, The Grapes of Wrath? Banned? Really? Ugh. The world is not a pretty place, and literature helps us understand it better. Pretending that it IS pretty does not make the ugly go away. But finding out how other people think about it can make it easier to think about it yourself. I can't even imagine my life without The Grapes of Wrath, or Huckleberry Finn, or A Wrinkle in Time. I mean seriously. A Wrinkle in Time?! That was the book that taught me that the Universe could be so much bigger than I ever imagined. It was also the first book I ever read where the girl genuinely got to be both troubled and a hero. Don't even get me started on Of Mice and Men or The Catcher in the Rye. The Handmaid's Tale or Harry Potter. The Bluest Eye or I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Oh, how much less my life would be without these magnificent ideas, magnificently expressed.

Some people must be very frightened. All the time. Of everything. How dreadful.

Ho-hum, one of THOSE computer days.

Once in a while, you get one of those computer days that make you wonder why you have one.

The cable is intermittent. So I went to Comcast's website, where they had a chat feature. I figured I'd try it instead of calling. I got a swift response. But then the guy told me to go turn off the cable modem, and do a bunch of other things, and then turn it back on, and let him know what happened. He never did understand that then I wouldn't be able to tell him what happened. See. Because he's not the only chatter. See.

And then I neglected to save frequently. Until finally the helpful software said, 'Unable to save.', when I finally tried to do so. Ummm... help could not help. Ummm.... no help on the interweb. No 'save as' available. D'oh. Work lost.

But, I started packing for Socorro! So that's good. I need to buy another can opener. Or maybe I should just take the one we have, and leave John opener-less. Devious. That's what I am.

Nesting...

It's kind of bad for me to have too much time to listen to NPR. Especially when the world is as unnerving as it has become this week! I get all jittery when they start saying things like 'worst financial crisis since the Great Depression', and 'additional 3 TRILLION dollars of public debt'. That always makes me run for my calculator, and find out how much I, personally, owe. $40,000, in case you were wondering.

It inspires a nesting impulse. Yesterday, I made and canned a year's worth of jam, from our own grapes. Today, I made pickles, and granola. I feel a strong desire to plant food (we are reading: 'Small-scale grain raising'). Turns out we probably could raise enough wheat and corn to fill our needs right here on our 1/2 acre. And now that the 'victory chickens' are laying, we might live through it all.

It's not that I really think it's all about to go in the crapper. It's just that I don't know that it's not. If you see what I mean. And I don't actually see anyone with a plan, anywhere. Except maybe Google, which seems to be the only place in America that has caught on to the whole idea that eventually, the oil will be gone, and all fossil-fuel based solutions will buy us a year or two at most.

It doesn't help that the University has apparently just been asked to cut 2% of it's budget. That doesn't sound like much, until you realize that enrollment is actually UP. This always happens when the economy goes bad, because everyone tries to get re-educated, so they can find a new job. So we now have more students to teach with less money. Again. I suppose I should just be thankful that my office has a light switch.

OMG!

AN EGG!!!!

I'm practically as proud as if I laid it myself.

Here's a picture! It's beautiful!

I don't know which of our ladies is responsible. But here's a picture of the proud mamas also. BTW, thanks, Mom, for the names: Larry, Daryl and Daryl. Much improved over The Black One, The Stupid One, and The Other One. Ha!

Another talk...

So, tomorrow, I give a talk at the DaVinci Academy. I have been working on it in my head for several weeks, and sketching out some of the ideas I want to incorporate (mainly, I'm trying to articulate my mental file-drawers of specific scientific interconnectedness-es, as a visual. oy. I think I need more dimensions than I know how to make in my computer.)

I Keynoted the whole thing up today, and then decided I didn't like the way it came out. So I deleted it, and started over.

Wow. Imagine that. I have time to decide I don't like something. And then I have time to do something about it. That has not happened to me since... ummmm...

Maybe I shouldn't think about that.

In other news, we now have TWO enormous cabbages from the Eastern bloc CSA. All I know how to do with cabbage is make coleslaw. We did that with the first one. They might make good bowling balls...

Hooray! and frustration...

The neurologist assures me that my MRI looks clean to him, and he thinks I should just 'continue to avoid risk factors'. It's unlikely that I'll have an aneurysm. Hooray!

An interesting sort of turf challenge today, which probably actually isn't one. A colleague, who once accused me of 'lowering standards' with a course proposal for high school students, has raised his... head, and wants to propose an environmental physics class. Sigh. He suggests we lower the course number to 1000-level, and that the department 'should work together to develop a suitable course rather than as individuals'. This drives me crazy, because the course has been on the books for the 15 years that he's been here, and it's not until the year that I decide to do something about it that he decides to do something about it. Grrr... I'm overly sensitive, no doubt.

I lost my temper, wrote and deleted three emails, and then wrote and sent one in which I told him what I'd done on the course and tossed the ball back in his court.

I'm taking the rest of the day off, because I am not going to have brain surgery!

In other news...

Also this week, I built a new chicken coop. They think it's the best thing ever. We already have the start of a gorgeous pile of compost.

And, I went running three days this week so far. Today, for the first time, I forgot I was running while I was running. In other words, I stopped paying attention to how hard it was, and was thinking about something else. That's progress! Nine more miles on my sweet shooz.

I decided to rent the studio apartment in Socorro, and got that all set up. And I solved the problem of the arrival date. The apartment isn't available 'til the 6th, and I was supposed to be there on the 1st, and I didn't want to move twice, or live out of a rental car (I'm not going to have a car while I'm there) for a week. So, I was hanging out laundry, when it suddenly occurred to me that I should just not get there until the 6th. chuh. So I got all that sorted out.

And I only yelled at the radio a couple of times, due to our politicians acting like children. Focus, people! We have bigger problems, remember? I don't care about lipstick comments, from either party. Tell me how you are going to help me do something about climate change.

And today, retirees...

It was the President's luncheon for WSU retirees. In attendance, a lot of people I didn't know, but also:

the guy who used to own my house!
and
an Ott!

So it was fun to be there, and tell them all about the awesome things that are going on in the planetarium and the department.

This also solved another problem for me---I'm giving an invited talk at APS Four Corners + Texas in October. I was invited purely because I am a dynamic speaker, not because anyone was particularly interested in my research areas. No really. It's true. They said I could talk about anything I wanted. So originally, I planned a talk about how to do a successful outreach program---I think a lot of people could use some ideas about this. But then I was losing my nerve, given that the audience is, you know, physicists, and would they really be interested? But then, during my talk today, I found my angle. You could look at all this outreach stuff as a way of following the money. It's getting harder and harder to fund research projects unless they also have an E/PO portion that has some kind of demonstrable impact. There you go---the hook I needed. So I came home and submitted my abstract.

Phew.

So then, on Tuesday...

We had a Miller Education Project meeting, where we got to talk about the Science Safari that Adam and I ran this summer. It was great to be able to talk about all the wonderful things that happened on the trip, and we even got to give Steve Starks his very own geiger counter! He was pretty amazed by it, I think. He didn't know what to do with it exactly, but that doesn't matter.

So, now added to the plate, is three more trips for next year. Fortunately, I only have to do one of them! Adam is going to team up with someone from English (probably) to do a Science and Reading/Writing/Literature Safari. I'm sure he'll have a better title than that. John Armstrong, Michele Zwolinsky and Bonnie Baxter, from Westminster, are going to team up for Astrobiology, probably visiting Great Salt Lake and Yellowstone to look at extremophiles. (I should remind them about ISU---I'm sure Linda would let them visit to play with radiation-hardened bugs...) And that leaves one. Maybe Adam and I will team up again. Or maybe he only wants to do one next year... but I'm supposed to send him some ideas in the next couple of days. Maybe Dan Bedford and I could do one about environmental issues---including climate change and alternative energies. Somebody owns those wind turbines north of town... hmmmm...

ISU Physics is not as cool as we are.

Monday, I had the opportunity to give an invited talk at the Idaho State University Physics Department seminar---a department with the same number of faculty and undergrads that we have.

Every time I go someplace else, I re-affirm how outrageously good I have it here at WSU. This Department totally rocks. At ISU, five faculty attended the seminar, two of whom were not physics faculty. That means that three, count 'em THREE, of their thirteen faculty were at the colloquium. Apparently, this happens every time. The room was nearly full of students, but very few faculty were there to participate. This is really bad, imho. Why, you ask? I'll tell ya.

Science is a social endeavor, just like every other human endeavor, and students need to see scientists interacting with each other, especially across field lines, so that they can understand that their professors don't know everything. Why is that important? Because it means that it's ok that THEY (the students) don't know everything. And, it gives them a sense of scientists as life-long learners, who are open to new experiences. And, it helps them know what to expect when they give talks at conferences or job interviews. I can not even imagine how they are supposed to learn how to deal with the occasional hostile question if they've never seen it done. Nobody can ask hostile questions like a physics professor! ;)

It's also bad because of what it says about the culture of the department. In our department, if someone doesn't show up for seminar, we chase them down. We go knock on their door---'Coming to seminar today?' We check up on 'em to make sure they're all right, and not sick, or overburdened, or unhappy, or just grumpy. In a department this size, if you are not coming to seminar, there must be something wrong with you.

Seminar is a terrific opportunity to interact informally with the group---with your colleagues, and the students. It's a great opportunity to find out what people's interests are, and to recruit students to your research program!

Seminar is also, sometimes, a great opportunity to do some really wonderful doodling, or make an extensive list of things to do.

Finally, seminar is a really good opportunity to put yourself in your students' shoes. To attend a talk by someone you don't know, on a topic you don't necessarily understand, and probably don't particularly like. This keeps you humble when the role reverses, and you stand at the front of the room.

I can't believe they missed all that. Poor little chickens.

Oooooh... I'm so wicked!

I took the bus to the Smith's today, to pick up some items for the Departmental party.

I was feeling very virtuous, getting back to my bussing habits.

It's case-lot week at the Smith's. If you live in Utah, you know what I mean. If you don't, you should visit sometime, and someone here will be happy to explain to you what a person would do with a case of Duncan Hines cake mix, a case of tomato paste, and a case of chicken-in-a-can. But I digress...

I'm standing there looking at the books, which are all set out in stacks on a big table. And I notice something kinda weird. On top of all the books by Barack Obama, or Al Gore, or the book about the fight for the Supreme Court, or 'Under the Banner of Heaven', there's a different book. So that you won't know they are there. So I ran around and reshelved ALL of 'em! I put my liberal cooties all over that place! Tee-hee!

Never satisfied, am I?

So yesterday, I ran two of the three miles of the exercise loop, all the way from the Strong's Canyon bridge around to the soccer field at Mt Ogden Park.

So today, I ran from the bridge to 26th street, and then I thought, 'Why don't I just go up to the shoreline trail and go back that way?' Because it's really a long, steep climb from that spot, that's why!!! D'oh. So I only ran about a mile today, but I climbed and walked a really long way. Poor Cassie is tuckered out. (and so am I)

Off to finish my talk for Monday at ISU. But the weather is so incredible that it's hard to stay inside. Maybe I'll work on some prototype Environmental Physics projects instead. NO---bad sabbatical girl! Finish the talk! THEN go outside.

A morning at the library...

Is this not the greatest invention ever known to mankind?!

All the knowledge, real or imagined or invented, truth or fiction. All the ideas, nutty or cynical or inspired. All gathered together right down the road. And made available to you, for FREE.

Astounding.

I always see something I didn't expect. Today it was a magazine called 'Colors', with a cover in braille, and a CD inside, for the blind. It was printed in both English and Spanish, and had some of the most amazing and beautiful black and white photos. Lots of little essays about people who are blind and otherwise differently abled. I was captivated. My favorite was the one about the guy who navigates his town by birdsong. He 'knows he's close to home when he hears the birds', and he says, 'I didn't care about birds. Then I went blind.' Wow. I walked the whole way home more aware of my ears than ever. And, the story about the autistic and blind kid who learned to relate to the world through riding a horse. Everyone should be so lucky.

And then, in other incongruous news, I downloaded the entire Socorro newspaper, to read the police blotter, and decided the New York landlord is a crazy lady. In one two-day stretch, the cops got called out one time. A drunk guy was asleep in the back of someone else's pickup truck. Um.... dangerous Socorro? I really think she's a nut.

While I was looking at the classifieds, I noted the following:

Something fun: A 100-foot Pullman Railroad car for $39,000. It has two bedrooms and a bath. Don't you just WANT it? How much fun would that be to stick on a big ol' piece of land someplace?

And something sad: a 3BR, 2BA home for sale for $17,000. It's a foreclosure. That's just terrible. It makes me want to buy it and give it back to whoever got foreclosed on. How is it possible that this makes money for the bank? I went and played on a mortgage calculator, at 6.25%. A thirty-year mortgage on this property is $104/month! 15 years is $145/month. You have to go to a five-year mortgage to even approach rent on a 3BR apartment, at $330/month. How is it possible that we (as in we Americans, as in here's something good that could be done with MY taxes) can't keep this person in this house? Where is the Bailey Building and Loan? Where is FDR?

Oh please oh please, let it be the Dems this time...

Some advice...

for the RNC speech-makers last night.

If you don't have something nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all.

Attacking your adversaries is not a platform. It's just a stick.

If 'your people' have been in charge most recently, it's probably a bad idea to complain about how bad 'their people' have made it.

If your adversaries are offering you an olive-branch, take it. Otherwise, you are just being petulant and childish.

We have BIGGER PROBLEMS. Try to stay focused on the issues that government can actually do something about---foreign policy, the economy, energy policy, large-scale environmental issues. If we don't get those in hand, none of the rest of this stuff matters.

Is reading work?

I ask because when students show up at the door to my office, and see me reading a journal or a magazine, they think I am not working. Colleagues do this sometimes too. And if I spend the afternoon in the library, browsing through journals, that can't possibly be work. Can it?

I have this latent guilt whenever I sit around all day reading journal articles. This isn't REALLY working... it's... I don't know what it is, but it's not work.

Where does that come from, I wonder? I certainly don't read them for the art form! If I had some other job, I'd probably never pick up “A model for the formation of large circumbinary disks around post-AGB stars”; Akashi, & Soker, 2008, to read in the hammock on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon. It would be pure insanity.

Reading must be work. I think.

Progress...

So, I had the weirdest phone conversation yesterday. I'm looking for a house or apartment to rent in Socorro, and calling about the ads in the Socorro paper (how DID people get by before the interweb?!). I see an ad for a clean, quiet 2-bedroom house for rent for $500/month. Perfect! I thought. So I called.

Half an hour later, I'm practically convinced I don't want to go to Socorro at all. The woman owns two houses in Socorro, but lives in New York. She goes to NM in the winter to escape from the cold and snow. But she spent most of the time telling me how dangerous Socorro is, and how she won't go down there again, and how she can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there. Bizarrely inconsistent of her, at minimum, seeing as she owns not one, but TWO houses there. Completely weird, if you consider she's trying to rent them out...

I thought about it after I got off the phone, and realized a couple of things:

1) she probably lives in upstate New York, not NYC. I can't imagine anyone from NYC thinking Socorro was dangerous, even if people were getting shot every day. Mainly because there are so few people there that you'd just have to wait a couple of weeks, and all the gang members would be dead.

2) her examples of the dangerous things that could happen were stated in the following way: 'It's horrible. You could even get mugged there. I would NEVER live there again. It's just too dangerous. You can't even go out at night without people shouting at you.' Which could be true. It could also be true that she's had a bad experience that's tainted her whole outlook. AND it could also be true that she wasn't being very smart about where she goes and when, and with whom and in what clothes. I didn't spend four years in Camden, NJ for nuthin'.

3) I looked up the location of the house, and it's located right next to the highway, between the main highway and the business highway, right next to the WalMart. So. Maybe the neighborhood has gone downhill since the WalMart went in. Typically, these regions are pretty low rent.

So, upon mature consideration, I think I won't rent this house, even though she'd let me have a dog. If only because the landlord sounds mostly insane.

Right. Walking is good...

A little bit of running... because my legs are sore! Not painful, just sore. It's crazy to think that this whole time I only needed better shoes.

And... what I've been doing for actual work...

Thinking up activities for the environmental physics class, that's what!

One of my goals for the class is to de-mystify power generation. I don't think you can reasonably talk about the physics of wind towers or solar panels without first having people understand how electricity is generated and used in the first place. Watch people do it in places like Nepal, and you feel empowered (ha!) to try it yourself.

So I want to have them experiment with rotation-style generators.

a) force them to wind their own coils, and use rare earth magnets to either light an LED, or simply make the ammeter move. This requires some experimentation on my part first. Also may require a 'materials fee', paid at the bookstore.
b) we have these hand-crank generators that will light a light bulb. It's a step up in 'black-box-ishness' from (a).
c) then a tiny wind tower. Er, I was wondering. If you took two box fans, and plugged one of them in, and pointed it at the 'out' of the other one, it should generate electricity, right? You wouldn't want to actually DO it this way, obviously, but I think it would be pretty educational, particularly if you measure the power into the plugged-in fan, and the power out of the other one. Again, I need to experiment, because I've never looked inside the motor of a box fan.
d) then paddle wheels. We'll make some, and then head up Strong's creek to drop them in the water. This is the way the Nepali's do it. They light their houses this way, charge batteries for cell phones, even run small refrigerators. Might be that we could build these out of Legos. Seriously.
e) then a steam driven 'turbine'. This has to be smaller, again, obviously. But it's a good analog for most of the power generation we do. I think it would be great to do this with a hotplate and a kettle and a turbine, and a generator, and a power meter at both ends. Why? It's a great way to measure efficiency!
f) a tour of the power plant down at Delta

But then we have the sun. This is a completely different way to do it. And it's why it's taking so long to 'go solar'. I'm not sure if they can make their own solar cells---I have to ask Colin. And I'm not sure exactly if that would help them understand the physical principles.

First, they should understand a few things about sunlight.

a) measure the insolation at ground level, compare to the insolation at the upper atmosphere. Figure out where the rest of it goes. For this, we need photometers... or cell phone cameras? A camera being basically a photometer... They'd need to calibrate against something they know the brightness of. Or we could do it the old-fashioned way, using inverse square law and your eye as a photometer. They should certainly be able to do this math.
b) measure the intensity of the focused sunlight at the focus of the radio telescope.
c) build a solar hot water heater.
d) build a solar oven.

by now, they'd be asking, 'but what about electricity!' But for a number of purposes, it doesn't make sense to take sunlight, turn it into electricity, and turn it into heat for a hot water heater, for example. But, for other things, it does.

e) perhaps make blackberry solar cells? I saw someone do this at ISU, in a couple of hours, but I'm not sure how much prep went in behind the scenes.
f) experiments with solar panels: Lego, (again, we can do efficiency measurements by lighting it with a light bulb and measuring inputs/outputs), or the sweet little ones you can use to charge your cell phone or iPod. These run ~ $30. Again, if I charge a materials fee, I can get one for each student that they can take home afterwards! Sneaky.

But it's not all about electricity, and I've just taken up something like 12 class periods just doing stuff about electricity.

I have only one idea so far about global warming, food production, transportation issues.

a) the 'classic' greenhouse experiment, with the CO2 filled tank, and the regular airfilled tank, and the lightbulbs and the thermometers. Which reminds me to try emptying one or a couple of the CO2 cartridges from my soda siphon into a fish tank, and see if that works as well as blocks of dry ice. It should, right? As long as you close the tank afterwards? Presumably, the CO2 diffuses out of there eventually, if it's an open tank, and that's why Adam uses the dry ice for the bubble tank...

more play is required on these topics...

In which I discover... RUNNING!

Listed among the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten: don't run a single step until you go to a really good shoe store.

See, because I hate to run. It hurts. After three steps, my knees hurt, my shins hurt, and an hour later, my back and my hips and my calves hurt. Pretty much unpleasant from the ribcage down.

But when I told the guy at Peak Performance that I wanted to do a sprint triathlon before I'm 40 (that's some time in the next three years), he promised that with THESE shoes, I'd be having fun running, and I'd do one within a year. He spent an hour fitting me out with shoes that will protect me from my pronating self, and who knows what else. They cost me $100.

So I walked the exercise trail twice in the new shoes, and my back (specifically my sacral iliac muscles---common chick trouble-spots) didn't hurt afterwards. Then today, I had so much fun!!!! I walked until I felt like running, and then I ran until I felt like walking. Total running: 1 mile. Total walking: 2 miles. But the running was fun, and comfortable, and I don't hurt! Tomorrow, I bet I run a little more!

What does this have to do with sabbatical? not much, except that I figure if I spend the next year getting into better shape, I'll be able to *take the time* to run the loop every day, and that will help me last longer...

p.s. Go see the guy at Peak Performance!!! It's right behind the new Bingham's. Tell him I sent you. Your back will thank you...