Fall is upon us and so the seasons change. But can you explain why the seasons change? It is surprising how many people cannot accurately explain the reasons why our seasons change every year. In a famous short video Harvard graduates demonstrated how even very educated people often don’t understand basic science. When dozens of …
Did June 30th seem just a little longer than usual? Well, it actually was. It was exactly one second longer than a normal 24 hour day. If you were looking at the website for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) where the official time for the United States is kept on June 30 at around …
I think our Beautiful blue planet may have been mis-named. With over 70% of the Earth’s surface covered by water maybe we should have called it the planet “Ocean” (or Oceanus)? Either way it would probably have been more accurate. And as flat as the horizon may look in this picture of the Atlantic, these …
Did you know that there are over 1500 active volcanoes around the Earth? Many are located in the “Ring of Fire” surrounding the Pacific’s Rim. There are amazing pictures and videos of active volcanoes that you can see at VolcanoLive.com. The Villarica Volcano (Pucon, Chile) 3/2015 You can also see the connection between Earthquakes and Volcanoes …
On Friday, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake occurred in Nevada shaking buildings and roadways throughout Las Vegas. With another significant earthquake in the news this weekend, I thought I would add a further post about our shaking earth. It’s interesting to see where earthquakes strike each day. A great website that plots all the latest earthquakes …
You may have noticed a lot of news reports about earthquakes lately. People forget that earthquakes are actually very common. The USGS (United States Geological Survey) estimates that several million earthquakes occur around the world each year. Many go undetected because they hit remote areas or have very small magnitudes. We just had a noticeable …
