Microfossils

Well it's been raining for four days! I found a collection of microfossils in my old classroom. My original plan was to post one of these every once in a while, but . . . I did them all over the past four days. I've also created a new catagory called "Lessons." If you click on that link then click on Microfossils, it will lead you to the table where all of the information is shown. Some of these samples are spectacular!

Animated GIF

Speaking of Johnson Space Center. The new website they created for Expedition Earth and Beyond had an animated GIF to show a series of images from the International Space Station. I decided to do that with my "Latest Arrivals" on the Home page. It really looks cool!

Johnson Space Center

Sorry there wasn't much activity on the site this week. I was away at Johnson Space Center in Houton. I'm working with two math teachers and another science teacher on lessons for students to use astronaut images from the International Space Station (ISS) in their proposals. The idea is that the student studies some feature or happening on the surface of the Earth, writes a proposal, and then asks Houston to have an astronaut take a particular image for them! While we were there, we got a tour of a lab that is designing a laser for the next Mars rover mission. The laser will be aimed at a rock outcrop and reduce a section of it to a plasma! The rover will then do a spectral analysis of the plasma. The lab was filled with samples. They had a section of a table filled with sand samples from Antarctica. I was envious! They allowed me to photograph the vials! That is my new international sample this week!

Microfossils

I found this neat collection of sand containing microfossils when I was cleaning out my classroom. For the next couple of weeks those will be the only samples I post unless something really neat comes in the mail!

Welcome!

This is a new blog I've created for the Science of Sand website. Hopefully we will get a group of folks together to decide how to, or show how they have used the data provided on my site. For the first year of the site, I dedicated myself to collecting sand from all 50 states, and as many countries as possible. Things have gone very well. Many states have only one or two samples, but others, such as California and Florida, are well represented. I have taken a minimum of two photographs of each sample. The first is a simple image showing the sand as it would appear in your hand. The second was taken with a macro lens that magnified the sample about 9.2 times. Some samples have more images at lower magnification based on what was contained in the sample. In addition, I've also included an image taken from the International Space Station or the Shuttle showing the general area. In some cases people also included images they took when they collected the sample. There is a HUGE amount of data. The question now is what to do with it. Hopefully during this second year ideas and lessons will evolve. Please consider joining the blog and becoming a part of this adventure.

Clear Skies,

Charlie Lindgren