afongen » Science http://afongen.com/blog Sam Buchanan's weblog Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:07:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Fantastic NASA video http://afongen.com/blog/2008/09/30/fantastic-nasa-video/ http://afongen.com/blog/2008/09/30/fantastic-nasa-video/#comments Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:46:09 +0000 Sam http://afongen.com/blog/?p=1041 NASA has this stunning video of the moon orbiting the earth from the point of view of the Deep Impact spacecraft, 31 million miles away. Just watching the earth rotate is impressive enough, even for someone raised on science fiction movies. But then: whoa! What’s that?! The moon passes through the scene. Wow.

It seems so simple, but it blows me away. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched the video. I remain astonished by how big the moon is compared to the earth. Every time I watch it, I’m left with an overwhelming sense of how inconceivably huge the universe is. And here we are, just floating in it.

]]> http://afongen.com/blog/2008/09/30/fantastic-nasa-video/feed/ 2 Periodic Table coolness http://afongen.com/blog/2008/08/30/periodic-table-coolness/ http://afongen.com/blog/2008/08/30/periodic-table-coolness/#comments Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:27:07 +0000 Sam http://afongen.com/blog/?p=1027 Through two completely different paths, within an hour I discovered two different and very cool sites about the Periodic Table of the Elements. First, the source for the coolest periodic table poster I have ever seen, periodictable.com:

periodic table of the elements poster

Poster of the Elements. Wow!

Next, a project from the University of Nottingham, the Periodic Table of Videos. They’ve done a short video for each of the elements. Here’s sodium:

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