Leonid Meteor Shower Tonight!

The Earth will be passing through the heart of the debris left by the tail of comet Tempel-Tuttle. This debris burning up in our atmosphere should produce quite a show of meteors in the sky. For the US, the best time to watch for meteors will be in the early morning hours on Nov 17.

Find your way out to the country if you can, and find a dark sky away from the light pollution prevalent in cities.

The radiant (or apparent source) of the meteor shower rises about local midnight (wherever you are), so don't expect to see anything before that. The radiant will rise in the east, but the meteors will shoot in all directions, so if your eastern sky is lit by a nearby town, you may want to look a different, darker direction.

Looks like it will be cloudy here tonight - hope you have better luck with clear skies! You may want to look for remnants of the meteor shower in the early morning hours on the 18th, if your weather is bad tonight.

SPS Zone Meeting!!!

Coming up Nov 20-21, Augustana Physics Club will be hosting the Society of Physics Students Zone Meeting! Theme: Galileo vs Einstein!

There will be demos, speakers, contest, food ... check out the meeting webpage for more info.

Physics club will be meeting twice next week in preparation:
**Tuesday at 11:30 to get as much ready as we can - decide on demos, who's working what when, finalizing quiz questions, making signs and programs, making buttons, etc
**Thursday at 11:30 to finish up preparations, such as making nametags, and of course to eat pizza!

If you are an Augie student or alum and are planning on attending the meeting, let me know and I'll get you registered. If you are from another school, you can register online at the meeting website.

Blog Contest is Back

I posted this question a little bit ago, but it got little action, perhaps because it was hidden among my babblings about autumn and other things.

Here it is again, Whitey's gift certificate to the first correct and complete answer!

Suppose you hold a spring and let it hang vertically. It will be stretched out due to the weight that is hanging from it (or even just due its own weight). What will happen to it, if you let go - let it fall freely (by free-fall, I mean that gravity is the only force on it - assume no air resistance)? Will the top accelerate up or down? Will the bottom accelerate up or down? What will happen to the amount of stretch - same? more? less? Hmmm.... Free Fallin'!

I Love Halloween!

I love Halloween! It was a bummer that we didn't have many students dress up this year - not even for extra credit! But W had a good joke on Dr. van Howe and his lab UNOLA. Pretty funny!

Dr. van Howe himself dressed up - he thought a Roman would be appropriate for an engineering adviser, since the Romans were such good engineers. He was too shy to wear it to the faculty dining room, so he just wore his Japanese headband - as Karate Kid, I guess.

Well, I didn't have enough sense not to wear my costume to the faculty dining room, so I was explaining relativity to one and all throughout lunch!

What was I explaining? Well, I wasn't just a witch. I was a spacetime graph. At the peak of the hat was an event (me changing my clocks back to standard time tomorrow night). The only things that can effect this events are things that can reach it at the speed of light or less. If you graph all the points that connect to the event at the speed of light or less, you get a cone - the light cone. That's the cone of my hat - the light cone.

Any event outside the light cone cannot affect me changing my clocks, nor be affected by it. The events outside the light cone inhabit a spacetime region called elsewhere. That's the brim of my cap - outside the cone!

We Have a Boat!