SmartWater answers

 Here are the answers to the SmartWater post:

Which area in the US is the first to use SmartWater to fight crime? Southwater

What difficulties did the British ex-Police Officer talk about with regard to bringing criminals to court? When he was a police officer, he knew who his criminals were but if he didn't have enough evidence, he couldn't bring them to court.

What happens when a person breaks into a business that is protected by SmartWater? They get showered with SmartWater.

If that person is caught, what does the police officer do to show the effects of Smartwater CSI? He uses a blue light to show up the the speckles of green on the person's clothing.

How do they know if that particular person committed the crime they are investigating? Each droplet can be linked to one location only and no other.

How can SmartWater be used in the home? It can be used to mark valuable possessions.

Is Fort Lauderdale enthusiastic about using SmartWater? Yes. They have embraced the idea with gusto (lots of enthusiasm).

What is going to happen in the neighbourhood of South Middle River? Residents are going to receive kits to mark valuable possessions.

How is it going to be financed? Money from a Trust Fund will be used to pay for the kits.

"We're going to roll it out in Fort Lauderdale..." Can you explain this sentence? To roll something out is to introduce it gradually in a planned way. So this sentence means that they have a plan to gradually introduce Smartwater across Fort Lauderdale.

Give 3 synonyms of  "criminals" and which were mentioned in the commentary. Robbers, crooks, burglars.

More posts coming - remember to subscribe!!

Answers to the Extreme Engineering post

Oops - a little later than I wanted but here are the answers to the last post and keep looking for more posts at the end of the week!

Answers to the Extreme Engineering post

Questions

What kind of technology holds the promise for a transatlantic train system? Maglev train technology

How fast might these trains travel? 5000 mph

What problem needs to be solved? Air resistance.

What happens as you travel faster? How much power would the trains use if they travel in a vacuum? The same amount of power as a train travelling at 200 or 300mph outside the vacuum.

When was vacuum tube technology invented? A century ago.

What was it used for? It was used in factories and offices to send small objects and documents around.

How does it work and what happens to objects placed in the tube? Air is pumped of a tube to create a vacuum. With no air, there's no air resistance to any object going through it. If an object is given a push, it goes into the equivalent of instant freefall and is literally sucked through the tube.

Where are engineers currently doing experiments on vacuum tube technology and Maglev trains? MIT

Can you describe the experiments they are doing and what happens to the speed of the train when it is in a vacuum? A miniature maglev train is placed in a tube that represents the transatlantic tunnel. Smoke is added to show the presence of air. The train slides slowly. Next all the air is removed with a vacuum pump. Now, when the train is added, its speed is tripled. Without air to push it back, the train slides completely unimpeded through the tube.

How long is the experimental tube and how long is the proposed transatlantic tunnel? It is 6 feet long and the transatlantic tunnel would be 3000 miles long.

Does the narrator think the experimental tube can easily become reality? He says, "Of course, removing the air from a 6 foot tube is one thing. Turning a 3000 mile long train tunnel into a vacuum is quite another matter." This implies that he thinks it will be difficult to make it become reality.

Hope you managed to get all those long answers! Send feedback below - I would love to hear from you!!

Answers to Steampunk

Well, it looks like people enjoyed the Steampunk post! Here are the answers to the questions....

Questions for the Introduction and Steampunk Craft

How is the world of Steampunk described right now? It's growing, it's hit a tipping point, it's mainstream.

In what way is it not purely Victorian? It's kind of Victorian but yet it's futuristic as you have these futuristic steam-powered contraptions.

What different elements create the world of Steampunk? Art installations, movement and performance.

What influence did the Industrial Revolution have? It made us forget how to make things with our hands. Steampunk is a world that never happened and has an alternate timeline to the development of the world after the Industrial Revolution.

What two kinds of power are combined in Steampunk? Steam and electrical Tesla power.

What does the narrator (Joey aka Mr Grymm) like to do with antiques? He likes to refurbish them or repurpose them if they can't be mended.

Questions for Steampunk Music

What inspired the narrator to start writing pieces of music about Steampunk? He visited a friend's house and saw Steampunk things lying around.

What connections did he make with the instruments? The instruments like the French horn and bassoon have complicated plumbing which looks very like steampunk design. The contrabassoon has crazy metal valves and tubing that in a Steampunk scenario, really fits the bill.

What is he aiming to do with this style of music? He is trying to make sense of the richness of the world to take the listener beyond the mundane things of day to day life.

Questions for Steampunk Theatre

Is Steampunk true to a particular period in time? No, it is not true to any particular period although it drifts towards the Edwardian era.

What does Steampunk give the performers? They have the freedom to create a new kind of space.

Is the performance a happy one? No, it's sinister.

Can you say why there are two Alices? There are 2 Alices because they are telling the story of a personality pulled hard in 2 directions with 2 conflicting sets of desires.

Questions for the Steampunk Haunted House

What is the aim of the "nightmarescape"? They were interested in the idea of "what is a nightmare", how could they make it contemporary and would people enjoy watching the performance.

Steampunk gave them the inspiration to do what? A lot of our work has to do with the collusion of disparate elements which might not otherwise be contiguous and putting them together to create new meaning.

Final section

What does Joey hope Steampunk will give artists and how does he view the future of Steampunk? He hopes that it will get artists to think more about their resources and what we are doing with our history, our yesterday and our memories. He thinks there is a lot out there and it (Steampunk) is growing

A new post about Extreme Engineering is going up today so check it out!

And for younger people, I have created your own blog so I will put something up for you in the next few days.

Answers to Aloysius Lilius and the Gregorian calendar.

 Here are the answers to the:

  Aloysius Lilius and the Gregorian Calendar post

Where was Aloysius Lilius born and in what year? He was born in Italy in

approximately 1510.

What was his profession and what was the year? He was a professeur of Medicine at the University of Perugia in 1552.

When did he present his manuscript to the Vatican? In 1576

What happened in the same year? He died.

Why did this system become known as the Gregorian calendar and when was it introduced? It became known as the Gregorian calendar because it was introduced by Pope Gregory 8th in 1582.

What do calendars pre-date? They pre-date the written word.

What was the calendar called that was used before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar? It was the Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar.

How inaccurate was the previous calendar and why was this a concern to the Church? It was supposed to correspond with the orbit of the sun but as time passed it was inaccurate by more than 10 days and this was important for the Church's important events such as Easter.

Describe how the Gregorian calendar works. It is a solar calendar of 365 days divided into 12 months with an extra day added on in a Leap Year to create a small adjustment for inaccuracies. 

On the American Dream scale, what score does Aloysius get and why? He scores 1 because he died before the Catholic church instituted his invention and as a result, he never reaped any benefits. 

Give the score for the Benefit to Humanity scale and the reason why. He gets a 5 here because the Gregorian calendar united the world under one, single understandable system

Finally, what score did he get for the Ripple Effect scale and why? On the Ripple Effect scale, he gets a 5 because today most of the modern world uses the Gregorian calendar.

I hope you did OK and see you soon - check out the hint on the original Aloysius link and see if you guess correctly!

Answers to Recolonisation of Seabirds

Answers to Recolonisation of Seabirds

Here is the link to the original post: Recolonisation of Seabirds 

What sort of Puffin is the film about and what is the name of the island they are on? It is the Atlantic Puffin and they are on Easter Egg Rock

Name some of the other birds that are mentioned. Laughing Gulls; Black Guillemots; Common, Arctic and Roseate Terns.

What did the actions of people do to the colony of birds on the island by 1887 and 1936? Hunters searching for eggs, feathers and meat, caused Easter Egg Rock to lose all the Puffins by 1887 and wiped out the Tern population by 1936.

What techniques were used in the 1970s to attract birds back to the island? They used decoys and recordings of busy Tern colonies to attract birds back to the island.

What happened in 1980 and 1981? In 1980, Terns returned to nest there and in 1981, 5 pairs of Puffins nested on the island after a 100-year absence.


Describe the accommodation for the researchers. 
They live in tents, have a wooden hut for a toilet and a solar powered research centre, which they call the Easter Rock Hilton, that serves as a both a kitchen and a conference centre.

What purpose do the numbers on the boulders serve?
They identify the burrows where the Puffins pairs nest and raise their young.

What is said about the relationship that Puffins have with their "partner"?They are monogamous and can last up to 30 years.

What do we know about the Puffin's ability to fly? They fly both in the sky and the sea.
  How deep to Puffins go to catch fish? 200 feet

Name some of the fish they bring back for their young. Sand Lance, Hake and Herring

What is "Head Flipping" and "Billing"? Head Flipping is when they make an abrupt toss of the head accompanied by a grunting sound and Billing is a behaviour that reinforces pair bonds. They tap each other's bills as if they are doing"la bise"!

Where else can this type of restoration work be carried out? Anywhere where recolonisation of seabirds is required and people are dedicated to conservation.

Answers - Dry Ice and Dunes

Hi everyone

Well it has been really cold over the past few mornings where I live and I was happy not to be living anywhere near the Mars North Pole ;-)

Here are the answers to the Dry Ice and Dunes on Mars post. I hope you did OK if you tried to do it. Watch out for another post coming along in the next few days....!
    
What kind of planet do we tend to think Mars is? We think of Mars as a dead planet, where all the exciting geologic activity happened millions of years ago.

What sort of planet is it actually? It's a dynamic place.
 

What is at the North Pole of Mars? Mars has a permanent ice cap made up of water ice at its North Pole.

What surrounds this feature? Sand dunes surround this feature.

What is the name of the rock found there and what is it likened to on Earth? The rock is called Basalt. It is like the rock found around Hawaiian volcanoes.

In what seasons does it get extremely cold? It gets extremely cold in Fall and Winter.

What happens to the ground when it is cold? The ground gets covered with a layer of seasonal Carbon dioxide ice (or dry ice) that's about 1 to 2 feet thick.

 

The sequence of events during Spring is described several times. List the main events in the final explanation that is given.  The dunes are ice-covered in the early spring. Some areas of the ice rupture and crack, allowing sand and dust to escape along with the escaping gas. The gas from the dry ice destabilizes the slopes, reshaping the dunes. 
 

How often does this happen? It happens every Spring.

What conclusion is offered with regard to Mars and Earth?Mars may look Earth-like but in some ways it is a very different planet.

Any questions? Send me a message using the box below.

About Tsunamis Answers

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 Hi all,

Here are the answers to the post About Tsunamis. If you find the link disappears - let me know in feedback! 

Oh, and just so you know, I use Dictionary.com for most of my definitions but remember to take context into consideration!

Part A Vocabulary

To trigger something	To start something			To sweep onto	To move steadily and strongly onto
To shift	To move position			To engulf	To cover completely
A landslide	A downward sliding of a mass of earth and/or rocks			To near	To get closer
To be thrust up	To be pushed up violently			To brake	To stop
The body of water	The huge volume of water in total			Onshore	On the land by the sea
The ripples	Little waves

Part A Questions

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How is an ocean wave caused ?

An ocean wave is caused by the effect of wind on the surface of the sea.

What 3 things can cause a tsunami and what makes it so different from an ordinary wave ?

A volcanic eruption, or a landslide or an underwater earthquake.

A tsunami happens when a huge volume of water, not just on the suface, but right down to the ocean floor, is shifted in one sudden violent motion.

Exactly what happens to the ocean bed when an earthquake cracks the ocean floor ?

One side of the fault is thrust up.

What is the effect of this on the water above it ?

It pushes up the whole body of water above the fracture.

Describe the height and length of a tsunami.

A tsunami has a small wave height and a very long wave length, mid-ocean.

What 3 things happen as it reaches land ?

The water onshore gets sucked back 'drawback) ; the shallow water on the shore acts as a brake, slowing the front of the wave down ; the back of the wave is still travelling fast so it rears up.

How is the wave described ?

A wall of water.

Does it break onshore ? If not, what does it do ?

No it doesn't break onshore, instead, it sweeps onto land, engulfing everything in its path.

Part B Vocabulary

A slab	A broad, flat somewhat thick piece of stone, wood or other solid material				Saw-tooth	Having a zigzag profile similar to the teeth of a saw
Sheer	Perpendicular, very steep				To loom	To come into view in indistinct and enlarged form
A geological fault	A crack in the earth's crust caused by displacement of the two sides				A spring	A coiled wire
Sharp	Having angular lines

Part B Questions

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On what date did the tsunami being described, take place ?

26th December 2004

Why was it of interest to scientists ?

It was such a big tsunami, they wanted to understand how different the earthquake was that had caused it.

What was below the ship ?

A vast undersea chain of mountains.

How have these been formed and over how many years ?

They have been pushed up over millions of years through the action of two tectonic plates.

What did the scientists use to investigate the seabed ?

Remote equipment.

What did they find first ?

A sheer vertical cliff with a sharp, saw-teeth edge that was evidence of the formation of a recent fault.

What did they discover next ?

A second, bigger cliff above the first.

What did this give evidence of ?

A megathrust earthquake.

What is the magnitude of this kind of earthquake ?

Always over 9.

Why did it happen on this particular date ?

After hundreds of years of the plates pushing together, the pressure that had built up reached breaking point on that day.

Hope you did OK! 

 Bye...until the next post!