Great American Eclipse

As I post this, the "Great American Eclipse" is days away. NOVA released this video today as eclipse chasers are nervously monitoring cloud-cover forecasts and making their way toward the path of totality.

I worked a bit furiously to craft this question set for those who might find it useful.

GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE at TPT

Explore the spectacular cosmic phenomenon of a total solar eclipse. In April 2024, the Moon’s shadow is sweeping from Texas to Maine, as the U.S. witnesses its last total solar eclipse until 2044. This extraordinary astronomical event is plunging locations in the path of totality into darkness for more than four minutes–nearly twice as long as the last American eclipse in 2017. Learn how to watch an eclipse safely and follow scientists as they work to unlock secrets of our Sun–from why its atmosphere is hundreds of times hotter than its surface, to what causes solar storms and how we might one day predict them.

Participants include Amir Caspi, Craig DeForest, Jon Ghahate, Kelly Korreck, Judith Nakamura, Tyler Nordgren, Hakeem Oluseyi, Mathieu Ossendrijver, Sam Parks, Anjali Piette, Jenna Samra, Grant Tremblay, Anjali Tripathi, and Michael Wong.

For additional eclipse content, see:

ECLIPSE OVER AMERICA (2017)

TOTAL ECLIPSE (pre-2017)

From Ann Arbor to Asteroids

ANN ARBOR (c. 1984) I settle into booth in the recently opened food court area in the basement of the Michigan Union to work on a Physics 401 problem set. It's early afternoon, and I am fueled by a slice and a soda—sorry, pizza and a pop (this is Michigan!). The fellow undergrad preparing the square pizzas at Parcheezi is Phil Plait. And $2.85 was all you needed for that lunch. 

Later that evening, I visit my neighbor at the Mary Markley dorm to finish the 401 problem set. He's a year younger than me, and super brilliant. His name is Dan Durda and, like me, he can be found in the audience at the monthly AstroFest presentations produced by Jim Loudon. We attended those gatherings religiously!

SACRAMENTO (c. 1996) I'm a fan of Homicide: Life on the Street (predecessor to HBO's The Wire). The guy playing drug kingpin Luther Mahoney is Erik Todd Dellums. Many actors relish playing the bad guy, and Dellums is clearly eating up this role.

(2015) I've been asked to introduce Michio Kaku at the Sacramento Speakers Series. It's a rare non-wedding, non-funeral occasion for which I am willing to dress up. I do my best to hype him up for the large auditorium crowd.

BOZEMAN, 2024. I'm writing a question set to accompany Asteroids: Worlds that Never Were, an episode of How the Universe Works. The episode is narrated by Erik Todd Dellums. It features astronomy experts Dan Durda, Phil Plait, as well as physicist Michio Kaku.

ASTEROIDS: WORLDS THAT NEVER WERE at TPT

From icy worlds with more fresh water than Earth to flying mountains of pure metal, asteroids shaped our past and promise much for the future. Could these enigmatic space rocks hold the key to how life in the Universe arises and is extinguished?

Comets: To Catch a Frozen Wanderer

In 1996 and 1997, comets had quite a moment. Comet Hyakutake and Comet Hale-Bopp garnered attention worldwide. Some people used the passage of Hale-Bopp for nefarious purposes that ended tragically.

I recall Hale-Bopp being much more celebrated, but Hyakutake being much more beautiful in the sky.

In any case, comets can burst onto the scene with little notice. What are they all about? We begin with an episode from How the Universe Works. Comets: Frozen Wanderers provides a nice, comprehensive lesson on the nature of comets. It holds out hope that ESA's Rosetta/Philae mission will be able to get up close and personal with a comet.

PBS's To Catch a Comet picks up the story from there, providing a moment-by-moment account of Rosetta's rendezvous with Comet 67P. A great story with challenges and nail-biting moments.

As always, I have questions.

COMETS: FROZEN WANDERERS at TPT

We follow the odyssey of a comet as it sails through space, watching every move as it evolves from a chunk of ice and rock into an active nucleus engulfed in a gaseous haze. What we learn is a revelation; comets are even more mysterious than we imagined.

TO CATCH A COMET at TPT

On November 11, 2014, billions of kilometers from Earth, a spacecraft orbiter and lander did what no other had dared to attempt: land on the volatile surface of a comet as it zooms around the sun at 67,000 km/hr.

Hunt for the Oldest DNA

Sometimes the inspiration for a scientific breakthrough is an apple falling from a tree. Sometimes it's a race between a train and a light wave. And sometimes ...

Sometimes it's a dog pooping in the rain.

Sequencing DNA that's more than a million years old was thought to be impossible. And it was. Until it wasn't. Breaking that barrier is a story of scientific perseverance laced with frustration, anti-bullying vibes, and real consequences of failing to solve an as-yet insoluble problem. Success was never guaranteed, and it came at a price.

But what a story it is! Watch the program. If it's something that works with your curriculum, consider using the question set with students. It's written with them in mind: to keep them actively engaged without ever boring them. (And welcome to NOVA's 51st season!)

HUNT FOR THE OLDEST DNA at TPT

For decades, scientists have tried to unlock the secrets of ancient DNA. But life’s genetic blueprint is incredibly fragile, and researchers have struggled to find DNA in fossils that could survive millions of years. Then, one maverick scientist had the controversial idea to look for DNA not in fossils or frozen ancient tissue – but in dirt. Join the hunt as scientists decipher the oldest DNA ever found, and reveal for the first time the genes of long-extinct creatures that once thrived in a warm, lush Arctic.

Participants include Tom Gilbert, Ross Macphee, Mikkel Pedersen, Maanasa Raghavan, Maureen Raymo, Alexandra Rouillard, Natalia Rybczynski, Astrid Schmidt, Beth Shapiro, Niobe Thompson, and Eske Willerslev.

For more DNA content, see:

Human Nature

Secrets in our DNA

Astronomy Crossword Puzzles

Who needs astronomy crossword puzzles? I have no idea! But if you do, I have some you might like. When I make crossword puzzles, I include appropriate chapter key terms; everyone does. But where most creators stop there, I take things further. I fill those awkward empty spaces (large enough to grow farm crops). I bring in non-key terms from the chapter, terms from previous chapters, science, math, general knowledge, pop culture, and randomness. That's among The Lessons of Phyz Advantages.

The good people at OpenStax have published Astronomy 2e on their site. Chapters 2-30 have key terms. So I am making crossword puzzles for those chapters. This post will grow one puzzle at a time until all puzzles are finished. Some chapters have very few key terms; those chapters are combined into a single puzzle.

My favorite use case is to distribute the next chapter's crossword puzzle on unit test day. That is, give out the Chapter 2 puzzle on Chapter 1 test day, and so on. It's nice for keeping the room quiet while students finish the test at different times from one another. You might naturally worry that students wouldn't have a chance with a puzzle filled with as-yet uncovered vocabulary. And you'd be right, except that I filled my puzzle space gaps with words they already know from previous chapters or general knowledge. Often the acronyms and initialisms are, well, very straightforward. The clue for NIST is National Institute for Science and Technology. I gave students the duration of the next unit to complete the puzzle.

2. Observing the Sky: The Birth of Astronomy at TPT [Free]

Word Count: 107   Word Crosses (Puzzle Score): 166

Key terms: Accelerate, Apparent, Astrology, Celestial, Circumpolar, Cosmology, Ecliptic, Epicycle, Equator, Geocentric, Heliocentric, Horizon, Horoscope, Parallax, Planet, Poles, Precession, Retrograde, Year, Zenith, Zodiac

Selected additional terms: Aquarius, Arabic, Aries, Astronomy, Cancer, Capricornus, Constellation, Copernicus, Diameter, Flat, Galileo, Geyser, Hubble, Jupiter, Leo, Libra, Magnet, Mars, Mercury, Meteor, Milky, Mol, Moon, Nasa, NIST, Nobel, Ophiuchus, Optics, Owl, Pauli, Pisces, Planetarium, Polaris, Ptolemy, Renaissance, Sagittarius, Scorpius, Sputnik, Starlink, STP, Sun, Syene, Taurus, Uranus, Virgo, Voyager

All puzzles include an online option for tech-savvy users who can upload files to a server space. Here's a sample of an online version.

https://phyz.org/crosswords/02-Birth

3. Orbits and Gravity at TPT

Words: 105   Puzzle Score: 162

Eclipse Over America (2017)

The Great American Eclipse of 2024 is April 8. And that's coming right up. I made it to totality in 2017, so I understand the addiction that eclipse chasers feel. I knew exactly what was going to happen, when it was going to happen, where it was going to happen, and why it was going to happen.

None of that mattered when it actually happened. An expletive passed my lips involuntarily. 

I'll chase totality in April, as well. In any case, NOVA produced Eclipse Over America in conjunction with the 2017 eclipse. For reasons that elude me, they have not posted the episode to YouTube, nor have they made it available to PBS Passport subscribers. Amazon's Prime Video seems to have it available for purchase, though they have it mislabelled as a season 17 episode. Apple iTunes seems to need you to buy they whole season (44) to access the episode. I found a streaming copy of it on Facebook.

ECLIPSE OVER AMERICA on TPT

On August 21, 2017, millions of Americans witnessed the first total solar eclipse to cross the continental United States in 99 years. As in in total solar eclipses, the moon blocked the sun and revealed its ethereal outer atmosphere—its corona—in a wondrous celestial spectacle. While hordes of citizens flocked to the eclipse’s path of totality, scientists, too, staked out spots for a very different reason: to investigate the secrets of the sun’s elusive atmosphere. During the eclipse’s precious seconds of darkness, they gathered new clues on how our sun works, how it can produce deadly solar storms, and why its atmosphere is so hot. NOVA investigates the storied history of solar eclipse science and joins both seasoned and citizen-scientists alike as they don their eclipse glasses, tune their telescopes, and revel in the eclipse that spanned the continent.

Participants include Amir Caspi, Nicky Fox, Holly Gilbert, Don Hassler, Jason Kalirai, James Klimchuk, Bill Murtagh, Tyler Nordgren, Mathieu Ossendrijver, Jay Pasachoff, Steven Tomczyk, and Constantine Tsang.

The Universe's Total Eclipse is an older eclipse documentary. And I have questions.

Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul

A few years ago, we began seeing a spike in unscheduled fire alarms at my school. The culprit? Boys vaping in the bathrooms during class. And the leading vape product among teens? Juul.

Juul was a phenomenon. It burned bright and it died young. Its story is instructive. And packs a few surprises. At its heart, it's a story of when moving fast and breaking things, the celebrated Silicon Valley ethos, goes sideways.

This is a great lesson in marketing literacy. It also involves engineering, venture capitalism, and public health.

NOTE: This program is rated TV-MA (MPAA equivalent: R). Profanity is not bleeped. Instructors will want to pre-screen the episode to assess propriety for their students. 

BIG VAPE: THE RISE AND FALL OF JUUL at TPT

In this docuseries, a scrappy electronic cigarette startup becomes a multibillion-dollar company until an epidemic causes its success to go up in smoke.

1. THE SPARK

Two Stanford graduates set out to disrupt the tobacco industry by creating a sleek new product for adult smokers but run into a series of struggles.

2. FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Upon launch, Juul rolls out an edgy campaign targeting youth culture until the popular ads come under criticism and spur new regulations from the FDA.

3. WHERE’S MY JUUL?

Viral social media videos and word-of-mouth send Juul and its flavor pods flying off shelves- and into the hands of kids, causing nationwide outrage.

4. OVERNIGHT BILLIONAIRES

A landmark deal makes billionaires of Juul's founders but leaves other employees torn. A health crisis linked to vaping jeopardizes the company's future.

Biology Crossword Puzzles

With Conceptual and AP Physics crosswords covered, I moved on to Chemistry. Physics vocabulary is fairly pedestrian. We do our intimidation in the form of mathematics. Chemistry vocabulary wanders deeper into the esoteric: stoichiometry right off the bat. Pnictogen? Chemistry's got some words. 

Now that Chemistry's covered, it was time to move on to Biology. Intro Biology has very little math, so it brings the words. So many words that live their best lives within the confines of the study of life sciences. Endoplasmic reticulum arrives early and it's got plenty of friends.

Like the Chemistry puzzles, the Biology puzzles are aligned with an OpenStax online textbook. I chose Concepts of Biology this time. While nature may abhor a vacuum, I abhor crossword puzzles with yawning gaps and empty spaces. This time, some gaps were filled with terms from "100 Words Middle School Students Should Know" from vocabulary.com. Others were filled with terms from science, mathematics, geography, pop culture, and randomness. Students will be amused and surprised to see some of the terms that show up in these puzzles.

1. Introduction to Biology at TPT [Free]

Word Count: 108 · Puzzle Score (word crosses): 170

Core terms: Applied, Atom, Based, Basic, Biology, Biosphere, Cell, Community, Control, Deductive, Descriptive, Ecosystem, Eukaryote, Evolution, Falsifiable, Homeostasis, Hypothesis, Inductive, Law, Life, Macromolecule, Method, Molecule, Natural, Organ, Organelle, Organism, Peer, Phylogenetic, Physical, Population, Prokaryote, Science, System, Theory, Tissue, Variable

Selected additional terms: Acronyms, Adversary, AI, Air, Amber, Animal, Cheetah, Civic, Contortion, Cpu, Density, Divide, Earth, Elephant, Emu, Exodus, Eye, Gem, Hasten, Jupiter, Jut, Leopard, Lion, Mercury, Meter, Muscle, Navel, Neon, Neptune, Onion, Orion, Paris, Physics, Pluto, Quotient, Recluse, Slope, Twitch, Typhoons, URL, USB, xy

I posted this one online so you can see how the online version plays. Here's the link:

https://phyz.org/crosswords/01-Intro2Bio

2. Chemistry of Life at TPT

Words: 107 · Puzzle Score: 172