E. Michigan University - Day III Physics, Physics, Physics

So yesterday (Wednesday) was a fairly busy day; last blog ended talking about identifying teeth, really, really old teeth and the morning class I taught with Sarah. We also had to teach a second class that night! Yeah, college is not like grade school, you definitely aren’t home by 5:00pm. This class ran from 6:00pm to 8:00pm and then we had a physics group meeting afterwards. This whole concept of working late makes me glad I’m a rubber chicken and not a real student! 

This class also had presentations to give too, and for this round of presentations, the students said to feel free to act like the age group that the presentation experiments were geared towards; come on who doesn’t want to act like a K-6^th grader again at times! First up was a “fog in a jar” presentation really similar to “cloud in a jar” but on a larger scale. Again, there were matches involved so the “young-ins” had to be hands off for this but it was still a very neat demonstration and got lots of chatting among the class of how it could be modified for older chicken...  I mean children! We also had a “Tornado in a Jar” presentation; did you know with clear liquid soap, vinegar, and water you could create such a stir in a jar! Granted you do have to swish the water in the jar around… it’s a good arm workout and science in one! 

We also touched on how the Earth’s rotation is the cause for day and night and did a really cool demonstration of this in the dark. Lucky me, I’m not a chicken who is afraid of the dark. We also talked about the Sun in this presentation too! You know me, always happy to talk about the sun. Then we moved on to the seasons and discussed the different between weather and climate. This activity allowed us to color again, I always enjoy coloring; we also learned about the major climate regions of the Earth. 

Lastly, we had presentations about the rock cycle and weathering and erosion again, which for a chicken; I’m getting really good at identifying rocks! After all we did that earlier in the day as well! For this activity, we got to see samples of actual sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rock and try to identify them ourselves! This activity was more so for the 4-5^th grade levels so we had to behave somewhat… no more acting like second graders for this one, we were big kids now! 

We finally got home around 9:20pm where I promptly crashed because of too many late nights in a row! Then as you know, silly Sarah, who DID NOT go to bed early slept in and we were late for class today as a result. But that’s ok because she was up talking about the NASA Tweetup for STS-133 which I’m rather excited to attend myself; but no matter how much I squawked she wouldn’t wake up! 

Today was full of actually getting work done so sadly for a chicken it wasn’t that much fun but I still got to run amuck somewhat. We also did some walking around campus, for meetings and to get food, you know the usual. We also were a bit too excited to do anything more than squeal on Twitter and Facebook with excitement about the upcoming Florida trip, which I’m sure Sarah’s professor didn’t find to amusing. I for one am not in trouble, I’m a rubber chicken after all, albeit a VIP, I’m not really the student; poor Sarah when she returns back to campus. HA! I’m free!

We then had to sit in on physics class again, where we got our take home quizzes back and we didn’t do too shabby. We got an 88%, not the greatest but still, for a chicken, that’s darn good! I don’t know what Sarah got but at least I got a decent grade. After physics, we got to go to the Astronomy Club meeting at EMU where everyone was thrilled to see me. I had a nice introduction and gave out some SDO goodies to those that wanted them and overall gave everyone a good smile as they heard about my travels. Then after my introduction came the real fun part. We had a speaker about “The Martian atmosphere through the eyes of a computer” in which the presenter Dr. P (sorry, Sarah didn’t catch the spelling of his name) discussed his research regarding computer simulations of the atmosphere on Mars. It was really interesting; we learned about some upcoming missions like MSL and MAVEN, as well as how the Sun (YAY! Sun got double mentions today) affects the atmosphere of Mars. 

After such a busy day, a girl is happy to be back home and resting, at least until my next adventure which starts tomorrow; I’ll be flying to Florida for the NASATweetup and to see STS-133 launch. Hopefully I will also get to meet R2A, Astrorobonaut’s twin at the Press Site since he will be there! We did have some last minute packing to do, which required Sarah to pull stuff out of her closet, one of which was her hockey bag. We all know what a big hockey fan I am so I thought I’d try some of it on for size; I quickly learned they need to make VIP rubber chicken sized hockey gear… it was way too big! 

Now that I’m packed and my story is written, well at least for my time at Eastern Michigan University as a graduate student, I think it’s time for this girl to get some beauty rest. I will say though, all this Earth Science stuff was pretty cool, and since you can’t major in Astronaut, I may just pick a major focusing on Earth & Planetary Sciences so I can learn more about our lovely planet we call home and how it relates to other planets!

Helping with fog in a jar. 

Me during day and night demonstration. 

Helping teaching about climate. 

Back in the role of a student, listening intently about rocks! 

Walking to get lunch. Please no chicken crossing the road jokes...! 

I am not in TX anymore. I need a coat. Note the changing trees, yea it means winter is coming to the north. 

Enjoying the view Astro_Box as he flew  in a T-38 over Discovery waiting on the pad. 

Getting ready for Physics! 

Enjoying the Astronomy Club Talk. 

After the talk I felt I needed a closer look at Mars so, we went to see the model. 

Since this is the Detroit Red Wings Hockey land (hey, I am a San Jose Sharks chick), I had to try a
some hockey gear on. As expected - I need VIP size.