#foothill college

[kalyan-gullapalli]

Post # 144

How fast are you moving when you are sitting still?

Andrew Fraknoi is a retired astronomy professor, renowned for his lifetime of work making astronomy more popular to students and general public. Though he looks like anybody's uncle, from 1992 to 2017, when he retired, he held the position of Chair of the Department of Astronomy at Foothill College in California.

He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), a scientific and educational organization aimed at finding out if there is intelligent life outside earth.

But he is a teacher at heart. He founded Project ASTRO, which set up partnerships between volunteer astronomers and 4th-9th grade teachers. Each astronomer adopted one classroom for a year, visited at least four times, and worked with the teacher to do hands-on activities in astronomy. The program still operates in some schools around the country. Later he founded Family ASTRO, a project to design activities, kits and games to help families share the excitement of astronomical discoveries.

One of his courses at Foothill college was called Physics for Poets. It was an extremely popular course on Albert Einstein's life and work. In this course, students learnt about areas of modern physics that Einstein had a role in creating, and then read novels, stories, and poems, and heard music influenced by Einstein's work and ideas. Just before Andrew Fraknoi's retirement, the college sent a memo to the student body to warn them that this would be their last chance to attend this very popular course, so they better not miss it. In 2005, this course won the "Innovation of the Year" award from the League of Innovation.

Andrew Fraknoi also started a newsletter, specifically for teachers - The Universe in a Classroom.

In March 2007, he published an article in this newsletter - How fast are you moving when you are sitting still? I found the article on the internet while I was searching for something else. And I found it interesting. Hence this post.

Imagine you are taking a nap on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Are you at rest?

Fraknoi asks us to consider the following:

1. Earth spinning on its axis: We are sitting on a sphere, rotating at 1600 kms/hr. So, if we are on the equator, we are also moving at 1600 km/hr. This speed decreases as we move away from the equator till it becomes zero at the north and the south poles.

2. Earth revolving round the sun: No matter where we are on the Earth, we are moving at a speed of 107,000 kms/hr (more than a lac kms/hr!) around the sun.

3. Sun's motion: Now, the sun is one in the ocean of stars in our galaxy. Each star is moving, sometimes in a random way, sometimes in a pattern around another celestial body. Fraknoi states that the Sun is moving at the rate of 70,000 kms/hr roughly in the direction of the bright star Vega, in the constellation of Lyra.

4. Sun's motion around the center of the Milky way: In addition to motion of individual stars within it, the entire Galaxy is in spinning motion like an enormous pinwheel. So, the Sun spins around the center of the Milky Way at a speed of 800,000 kms/hr.

5. Milky way moving away: The Big Bang, which is an accepted theory for the creation of the universe, is a huge explosion, because of which galaxies are moving away from each other. The Milky way galaxy is moving at a speed of 2.1 million kms/hr.

So on that Sunday afternoon, when I took an hour of siesta, I travelled 2-3 million kms in this universe!!!!!!And didn't feel a thing.

That sets me thinking, gives me a perspective.

There is this humungous force at play, that has the capability to propel stars at millions of kms/hr, and at the same time make my heart beat and my lungs breathe, on their own, without me having to put an effort, even when I am asleep.

For a while, let's not name the force or give it a form or organize it into an -ism. Let's just sit in awe and wonder at its enormity!

I wonder, why this force doesn't shout out its presence, make its impact felt more directly, why it silently goes about its job, allowing its subtle presence to be felt, only by ones who choose to feel it?

And I wonder, when such Grace is available to me, why do I ever worry about anything? Why don't I just acknowledge that Grace and revel in gratitude?

[succygirl]

Making succulent arrangements for our April plant sale :)

[succygirl]

Construction class this quarter we’re learning how to put pavers in. I was dubbed The Princess of Pretty (yes the teacher called me that and yes i brought my flower crown to wear on my hat) and was in charge of choosing a design and what we were going to do. Construction class almost always does projects that benefit the horticulture program in some way, these aren’t just pavers to do for learning (I mean they are but also) this is a permanent path going to the Permaculture garden so we’re not all just walking through mulch. Eventually another path will go on off this but that will probably be the next class. 

[succygirl]

We finished our walk way!

The school's President and Dean came up to put the last two bricks in and we finished off the sand afterwords.

I also talked with the president about creating succulent table arrangments for an event the school is having later. No details on when but getting the school's staff involved with the hort department and noticing us will be a big help in keeping our program alive and kicking!

[succygirl]

Today we worked on finding all the irrigation zones/stations and their valve boxes in the Permaculture Garden! With 9 stations hooked up and almost no idea where these stations went to it was... a day. BUT, I got a walkie talkie and had a lot of fun! We still have no idea where the valve boxes are for stations 1-6! We think they MIGHT be under the chicken coop so... that’s a problem for another day.

Here’s my very crudely drawn map of the Permaculture garden! Those trees on the left? No irrigation! There’s drip line wrapped around them all but is water going to them?? Noooo. Oh but the peppers behind them are totally watered from Station 9. So watered in fact....

That’s valve 9′s box flooded with water! There’s a break in the line between the gate valve on the left there and the valve on the right, so that needs fixing stat or the peppers aren’t gonna be watered! 

This is valve box #8. Someone decided it was a good idea to screw off the solenoid from the valve while the water was on for some reason, I’m very unsure why they did that as we knew the solenoid was fine but.... This is how we learn. The water shut off valve for this one? Right in the box with it. I got wet as I had to crouch there while turning it off. Thankfully it was hot and being covered in water was very refreshing. I’m afraid those watermelons were walked on quite a bit, not the best place for them but oh well. :/

TOMORROW I get to go to my Arboretum Society and hopefully diagnose their irrigation system. They keep calling their landscaping company in charge because the water isn’t fucking WORKING and they keep getting charged and saying everything is fine while everything is NOT FINE. Hopefully the Controller box isn’t locked and I can get into it, but if it is I can at least look at the valves and the sprinkler heads to see if any of them need to be changed/fixed. Probably only get to be there for an hour which is NOT enough time to find everything and see how it’s working but it’s a start.

[succygirl]

My Hort program is having a plant sale April 20th and by god these Echeveria (elegans maybe? They're not labeled) are going to come home with me. There's also some Sedum rubrotinctum that's looking like it might be variegated. I've been watching them all grow with OwO eyes all winter.

There's also a fuck ton of Graptopetalum paraguayense, ghost plant.

And tons of Aloe taking up the opposite side of the hoop house.

[sonyachristian]

Making every day count

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[greenbagjosh]

16 August 2003 - nebula at the Foothill College observatory

Some weekend in August 2003, circa 16 / 17 August 2003

Hi everyone Since returning to the USA on 13th August 2003, I have found it no longer necessary to make multilingual summaries of my stories, at least not for now. At some stage they will return.

I wanted to let you know about a time that I drove my mother to Foothill College on a Saturday night, possibly 16th August 2003. My mother wanted in particular to see the new star as part of Nebula NGC 3603 and the new star called Chandra. There was a public viewing at the observatory in the northwestern part of the campus. It is closer to the softball field than it is to the football stadium, practically on the opposite side of campus. Foothill College is a community college located in Los Altos Hills, off El Monte Road, Moody Road and I-280.

I came over on the Saturday evening from my then-apartment in Foster City, with a hamper full of dirty laundry. My parents allowed me to wash my laundry for free, and they also donated the detergent. At the time, only my mother was at the house, as well as our pet cat Eric. Other family members were away on their own personal business. I think that night, my mother asked me to stop by the Pollo Loco Mexican restaurant, on Grant Road just a little south of El Camino Real, in Mountain View, CA, to pick up a couple of burritos, beans, rice, guacamole, sauce and sour cream. I brought those home. This was a time, when I liked to have the hot sauce, so I had to bring mild sauce for my mother. I washed my laundry, we ate our burritos and after I put the washed laundry into the dryer, we had left in my Jetta, the car I had at the time, for Foothill College.

The way to the college was fairly straightforward. We would drive along Foothill Expressway to El Monte Road and turn towards I-280. I drove under the I-280 interchange, and went into the first entrance past the stadium. The campus has a one way roundabout ring. The best parking lots would be the ones in the northwesternmost section, namely 3 and 4. Foothill College is hilly, and some places may have an incline/decline. I found a good spot in lot 3.

We walked up to the observatory next to Lot 3. I think there were about 50, 60, 70 people in front of us. The line went a bit slowly, and it probably took an hour before we had our turn. At least it was not quite as long as it is to cross from Tijuana, BC, Mexico, into San Ysidro, California, USA. When it was our turn to see, we took about a minute to notice the supernova in Nebula NGC 3603. I was able to spot Chandra. It was really neat.

When we left, there had to be about 100 people waiting their turn. We went back to the car, drove home, I picked up my newly dried laundry, and drove home along CA-85 and US-101. Traffic was light at the time, so the drive to Foster City did not take too long, average speed was about 65 mph or 104 km/h.

Anyway, this more or less concludes the Summer 2003 vacation. Hope you have enjoyed it.

The next adventure will be in the Hong Kong and Macau S.A.R., as well as a layover in Tokyo Narita. Hope you will join me then.