The SciSchmooze
1 June 2026
Hello again science fans,
Salam sejahtera sekali lagi kepada peminat sains,
About 300 million people speak Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia.
This SciSchmooze focuses on fun.
The explosion of ping pong balls pictured above is one of hundreds of fun stunts – science stunts – Mark Rober has created over the years. He – a former NASA engineer – is now in the middle of creating public school science curricula complete with teacher training materials – a $60 million endeavor – to be supplied completely free. He has years of experience making science fun and will soon be sharing that fun in schools world-wide.
If you have gone to a demonstration/protest to express your dissatisfaction with the gutting of good science by this administration, you already know how fun that was. You joined like-minded folk on a serious mission while eliciting hand waves and horn honks from other like-minded folk. Perhaps you even struck up a new friendship. Those gatherings are growing and continuing, so i encourage you to continue in this serious fun for science (& for peace & morality & politics & justice & .…)
A good source to find a demonstration/protest near you is Action Together – West.
If you are like me, adding a new word to my vocabulary is fun. Allow me to offer you this one:
Kakistocracy: Government by the most inept, corrupt, or unprincipled individuals.
RAFFLE
Science t-shirts continue to jiggle my funny-bone. Bill won the above t-shirt for his wife with his guess of 225. (The eOracle had laid down “226”.) So let’s continue with a science t-shirt of your choosing. Just send an email before noon Friday to david.almandsmith <at> gmail <dot> com with your guess of an integer from 1 to 1,000.
ENVIRONMENT
I enjoy building models, putting puzzles together, and SCUBA diving (not recently, though). Therefore these projects look like fun – AND they are restoring reefs.
The divers above are assembling concrete pieces into a picturesque artificial reef near Pom Pom Island, Malaysia where the natural reefs were destroyed by decades of dynamiting to gather fish.
This diver has just finished tying pieces of coral to a wire frame that is supplied with a mild electric current. Low voltage electricity promotes coral growth!
Another project in the “Environment” realm is using sharks to measure ocean temperatures at various locations and depths. The measurements were integrated into a computer-generated climate model. Result: the forecasts improved. Frankly, it must be fun to return such an elegant – albeit dangerous – animal back into its natural environment with its own internet connection.
PHYSICS PHUN?
¿Want to learn “why” we perceive time to move slower in a fast-moving space ship zooming past us? It’s called time dilation. You can show yourself that time dilation is true by watching this animation of “light clocks”.
Experiments reveal that the speed of light is the same no matter where or how you observe it.
— Our earth-bound light clock on the left is a flash of light bouncing between lower and upper mirrors.
— The interval that the earth-bound flash goes from bottom to top and back is one “tick” of time.
— A rocket ship travelling from left to right has an identical light clock.
— The astronauts in the rocket ship perceive their “tick” of time to be just as quick.
— We see the rocket ship’s flash moving at the same speed as ours but it has farther to travel.
— Therefore we see that the ship’s clock is running slower than ours. Time Dilation!
— Conversely, the astronauts zooming by us conclude that our clocks run slower.
— The faster the difference in speed, the slower the other clock runs for us.
YOU now know “why” we perceive time to move slower in a fast-moving space ship zooming past us!
Einstein is usually credited with giving us the mathematical formula for relating time to speed, but credit instead goes to Hendrik Lorentz in the 1890s. Lorentz, however, did not believe that time dilation could be ‘real’.
If we did not adjust the clocks in the Global Positioning System – GPS – satellites taking into account Einstein’s theories of Special and General Relativity, locations would be off by another 10 kilometers every day.
FUN NERDY VIDEOS
250 to 250 – Heather Cox Richardson & Friends
One-minute videos celebrating our 250th Anniversary
How to weigh things on the ISS – Sophie Ardenot – 1.5 mins
Nifty!
Biorock Electrified Coral Reefs – Clint Hansen – 2 mins
Who’d of thunk?
Cannabis Plastics? – Cup o’ Joe – Joe Schwarcz – 3 mins
Cool, man.
¿Is AC the Wrong Kind of Electricity? – Sabine Hossenfelder – 7 mins
AC/DC
Energy Policies: Denmark & the U.S.A. – PBS NewsHour – 8.5 mins
No brainer?
New York Preparations for the Next Superstorm – PBS Terra – Maiya May – 11.5 mins
¿Are you listening, Zohran?
Mark Rober & the Future of Science Education – TED – 14 Minutes
Explosions, falling squirrels, fart spray, and science education
Laser Light Opens a New View of Reality – NOVA PBS Special – 14 mins
Einstein’s Gravity Waves!
¿What’s Hidden Under Antarctica? – HUGE If True – Cleo Abram – 18 mins
Not just more ice.
Restoration of Chile’s Chabuco Valley – Apex Origin – 20 mins
Importance of apex predators in a Chilean ecosystem
Black Hole Apocalypse – PBS NOVA & GBH Boston – Caitlin Saks – 25 mins
The existence of Black Holes is predicted by Einstein’s equations.
Radium – Tales from the Periodic Table – Ron Hipschman – 49 mins
My parents gave me a radium-dial watch! (but took it back)
Einstein’s Crumbs – StarTalk – Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jana Levin – 53 mins
His ideas are still leading to insights and Nobel Prizes.
Have a fun week!
Dave, Bay Area Skeptics
“Es ist die wichtigste Kunst des Lehrers, die Freude am Schaffen und am Erkennen zu wecken.”
“The most important art of the teacher is to awaken the joy of creating and discovering.”
— Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-born theoretical physicist