PLN 21

The article, “Dream Car: The Ariel Atom 2” by Alan Bellows reviews the performance of the Ariel Atom 2 car, which is like a supercharged go-cart. This little car has about 600 horse power per ton and weighs around .6 tons. The car manufacturer believes that, “if the car doesn’t need it, it hasn’t got it”, meaning that the car doesn’t have a windshield, doors, a roof, windows, but it does have seatbelts. This car can also go from 0 to 60 in 2.9 seconds, if you can shift fast enough. It is a British made car and straight out of the box it costs around $36,000 (£20,000). It is not street legal in the United States without the “road pack”, which adds tail lights, head lights, blinkers, windshield and wipers. This matters to me because when I’m older I would like to try to buy one of these cars. This matters to the world and education because we can learn how to better engineer cars to have better gas mileage and better all around physics.

PLN 19

The article “Free fall from near space” by Daniel Lew reviews the story of Joseph Kittinger and his amazing free falls from near space. He first started out in the aviation by joining the Air Force and became an experimental pilot. While with the Air Force he flew high altitude balloons as high as 102,000 feet, which is almost out of the atmosphere. While piloting these hot air balloons he would take measurements and when he finished he would have his co-pilot float the balloon back down to Earth while he jumped and parachuted to the ground. He would free fall for about 55,000 feet until he pulled his ripcord and landed. Joseph Kittinger broke many aerial records and free-fall records. He helped the United States discover many things about the atmosphere, while exploring ways people could live in space. As a test pilot, he flew at 632 mph to test the gravitational stress on the human body. This is important to me because Joseph Kittinger showed me that preconceived ideas of human limits are often wrong. This matters to education because it proves there are no limits to the capabilities of man. This matters to the world because Joseph Kittinger provided valuable insights as to the unlimited capabilities of mankind.

PLN 20

Don't, Don't, Don't vs. Do, Do, Do by Will Richardson describes how the author made a presentation at a school to help teachers with their teaching methods. When he read the packet the school provides their students, it described what students couldn’t do with the computers at the school. As he read it, he thought that if he were a student at the school he would “beg” not to use the computers, because you could barely do anything with them according to the packet. The author’s position is the student packet shouldn't talk about what you can't do, but what you can do on the computers. A positive message will inspire students to think of what they can do rather than what they can’t do. For example you can publish your work on websites and you can edit your papers to make them better and help students learn. The author pointed out to the school they should try to encourage rather then discourage. Some say “use the carrot not the stick”. Inspiring people by pointing out what is possible and emphasizing the positive side of things will produce better results, instead of having students think what they can’t do. Students will think of how much they can accomplish and how to improve their computer skills. This matters to education because it can teach us how to better educate students today. This matters to the world because all people need to learn to lead in a more positive way to produce better results. This matters to me because to become a successful leader I must learn to lead in a positive way.

PLN 18

The article “Barnstorming” Marisa Brooks is about WWII and how there were a huge number of planes left over. The government took these planes and sold them to the people for as little as $200 when it cost $5000 to make them. They sold the planes to anyone that they wanted because pilot’s license weren’t required back then for people to be able to fly a plane. This is when the flying circuses started. People could fly without being licensed began flying circus entertainment businesses. This matters to me because I learned that flying circuses were real and not some story out of a movie. This matters to the world because it shows the origins of the flying circus and why many people became interested in flying. This matters to education because we can learn how to be safer in flying because there were a few accidents here and there.

PLN 17

The article "The truth about truth serums" by Alan Bellows talks about what truth serums are made of and why they are and aren't reliable. Truth serums are only concentrated doses of alcohol, which makes you a little slower with worse judgment. They were used by the FBI, CIA, KGB and the DOD. They were used mostly during the cold war and people were tempted to bring them back after 9/11. In "truth" though, they don't work, because when you inject someone with truth serum they could say anything they want. This matters to me because now I know the "truth" about truth serum. This matters to education because now that we know that what we use now is relatively ineffective that we can refine it to make it better, and that is also why it matters to the world.

PLN 16

The article "The Relics of Mu" by Jason Bellows talks about what the ancient city of Atlantis is to the Chinese. It is Mu, and they think that the people that were the people of Mu could fly and drank a magic drink that stopped aging. A man by the name of Kihachiro Aratake was diving off of the coast of China and found underwater ruins that could have been related to Mu. There the divers found stairs and walls but no tools or doorways. This matters to the world because we could learn a lot from these people and how they lived. This matters to education because we could learn better schooling methods and improved architecture. This matters to me because it would be interesting to see where these buildings came from and why they are underwater today.

PLN 15

The article “An island is born” by Marisa Brook talks about how the island of Surtsey was created in 1960. What matters about this article to me is that this was an interesting article that relates to what I am learning in science class right now. How it is important to the world in that it could be a large break through for the scientific community because we can see how life begins on a newly formed island without much human contact. This also relates to education helping the scientific community by being able to learn how life forms, where it forms and how it forms to introduce to students. In 1960, a fishing boat was sailing and saw smoke rising from the water. They though it was another ship on fire so they sailed closer but it turned out it was an underwater volcano erupting. After 3 years of eruption the island was measured at 174 meters tall and about 2.8 square kilometers long. Following the eruptions, scientist closed the island off because they didn’t want anything to be brought to help out life there. Soon the scientist discovered various forms of plants and later found a bush on the island. They also learned that migrating birds were using the island for a resting spot. The island is still closed to the public and still doesn’t have many forms of life but it will and when it does, it will be a scientific breakthrough.

PLN 14

The article “The Daedalus Spacecraft” by Allan Bellows talks about a massive plan to send a space craft. It would be moving at 76.6 million kilometers an hour or 1/8th the speed of light, propelling towards another star to see if there was any life there. This project was thought of in the 1980s but never agreed on because of the cost and the rareness of the element Helium -3. The fuel would power the nuclear reactor engine. Atoms would be bombarded with explosions and explode at 250 times a second to propel the rocket forward. The rocket would have 3 main objectives: (1) use current or near-future technology; (2) it must reach its destination within a human lifetime and, (3) the spacecraft must be designed to allow for a variety of target stars. The rocket would also have 3 main parts. The fuel tanks and combustion/exhaust 1 and 2 and storage for the pods that would exit off of the craft to go exploring elsewhere. All of the crafts would be able to take pictures of what they were flying by but would not be able to stop and explore. The cost of receiving the extra fuel and installing it on the craft while letting it be able to carry all of the fuel would slow it down too much. The Daedalus spacecraft idea has been hung up because people want the space program working on something more achievable and because of the cost. They might reconsider if it was a world effort instead of just a single country attempt.

PLN 13

The article “The Most Powerful Bomb Ever Constructed” by Allan Bellows talks about how the Soviets during the Cold War built the most powerful nuclear bomb in the world called the Czar Bomb. This bomb yielded 10 trillion pounds of force, while the US warheads only yielded 40 billion pounds. Since the Soviet’s goal was to beat out the US in the nuclear arms race, they built the biggest and best nuke. They skipped all of the mathematic equations needed to estimate the explosive power of the bomb. When they detonated the bomb up the flash could be seen for 1,000 kilometers and the mushroom cloud reached 60 kilometers high. The diameter of the blast was about 40 kilometers which was much larger than they estimated. During the hour of the blast most radio communications were disabled. Also, when photographers were sent to the bomb site to record the effect, they reported that the ground was completely flat and that all of the rocks were smoothed over by the blast. This showed that the blast was 10 times more powerful than anything ever produced. Though the Soviets never actually used this bomb or any other type of bomb during the Cold War, there was always the threat that they would. They knew that if they sent nukes over to obliterate the US then we would retaliate and destroy all life on Earth.

PLN 12

The article “The Timber Terror” by Alan Bellows talks about the Royal Air Force during WWII and what kind of planes they invented to out run the Germans. The RAF sent out requests for airplane ideas. One company, De Havilland, had the idea to use wood instead of metal because metal was in short supply. The plane wasn’t accepted for a long time because the RAF didn’t like the idea of a wooden plane. De Havilland was persistent through making major and minor adjustments to the plane which included removing and making lighter engines. When De Havilland had thought that they had perfected the Mosquito, as it was later called, they talked to their man on the inside of the Royal Air Force named Sir Wilfred Freeman. After they conferred with him, the Mosquito idea was approved. The Royal Air Force made some additional adjustments and tests. They discovered that the Mosquito could reach 392 miles per hour with a full bomb load. The plane could out run the Germans planes any day and they did. The planes were also transformed into other types of planes like fighters. They were used to complete more than 28,000 missions during the war. The missions included freeing prisoners of war, destroying Gestapo head quarters and bombing German head quarters. Though none of the remaining Mosquitoes can fly, the original design was saved and is being remade.