This is what the UK looks like at the moment, covered in snow. Clicking on the image will load a high resolution (250m per pixel) version (3400×4400 px, 3.02MB).
The imagery comes from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite’s Rapid Response System which provides near real-time imagery of the Earth’s surface.
The fantastic Sense About Science has an end-of-year wrap-up of all the science-related nonsense that celebrities have been spouting this year.
Sarah Palin, who is just a horrible person:
“[I don’t] believe in the theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea [or] monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”
Heather Mills:
“[When you eat meat it] sits in your colon for 40 years and putrefies, and eventually gives you the illness you die of. And that is a fact.”
Shilpa Shetty:
“I avoid carbonated drinks – they sap all the oxygen from your body and make your skin wrinkly and dehydrated.”
Anthony Worrall Thompson on the benefits of being a locavore:
“Locally produced food is better for your health because the ingredients are far more nutritious than something that has been shipped from thousands of miles away.”
Suzanne Somers went for the double:
“[They] put poison in [Patrick Swayze’s] body … Why couldn’t they have built him up nutritionally and gotten rid of the toxins?”
“I’ve come to realize that [birth control pills] weren’t safe because is it safe to take a chemical every day? And how could it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation?”
There were a couple of clever design features in the hotel room I stayed in recently.
Every other “fold” in the shower curtain was split from ring-to-ring. If you bunched up the curtain you could easily remove it in one motion, making the curtain much easier to change.
The curtain rails were cleverly designed to keep light out. One rail runs behind the other so that when you pull the curtains together they avoid that annoying little slit of light that sometimes gets through. I honestly can’t think of a good reason why this isn’t standard in people’s houses – I guess maybe it’s because most people don’t have suitable rails, but rather a pole-and-ring system as in the curtain example above.
The television programme, Strictly Come Dancing, can be used to demonstrate the concept of resolution.
Normally there are four judges on the show, but towards the end of the run the number of judges was increased to five with the addition of ballerina Darcey Bussell.
So why was Darcey Bussell added?
At the beginning of the show there are 16 couples, of varying ability. There is therefore likely to be wide variation in the judges’ scores. Towards the end of the show, after the lower-ability couples have been removed, there is far less difference in their performance.
For example: in Week 3 the difference between the highest and lowest score was 16 points out of 40 (40%). In Week 14 (the final week) the difference between the higest and lowest scores was 4 points out of 200 (2%).
The addition of Darcey Bussell as a fifth judge increases the resolution of the scores. With four judges the biggest possible difference between two couples is one-fortieth (0.025) of the total; by adding a fifth judge the resolution becomes one-fiftieth of the total (0.020).
Imagine trying to measure the length of some unknown object. Would your measurement be more accurate if your measuring stick was divided into forty segments, or fifty? The greater the number of segments, the more accurate the measuring stick.
Source: Strictly Come Dancing (Series 7) from Wikipedia.
For some of the groups I teach I begin each lesson with a very quick ten-question quiz. The last quiz of the term was a bit different.
Question 1
Who would win in a fight between Batman and Superman?
I was disappointed by pupils’ answers to this question. Despite Batman defeating Superman in Dark Knight Returns and Superman giving Batman a powerful kryptonite ring as a precaution in case he ever steps out of line, most pupils thought Superman could defeat Batman.
Question 2
What did I have for breakfast?
Nobody got the correct answer (Sugar Puffs) and some of the incorrect answers were a bit frightening.
You can download the Ten Question Quiz Template (.PDF, 8kB). I shrink it down on the photocopier to fit four-per-page.