Solar Eclipse

Did any of you West Coasters/East Asians watch the solar eclipse on Sunday? There were several areas around the Bay where one could go watch through nice amateur/professional telescopes (with sun filters, of course), but around the magic six o'clock time, Sak and I got too lazy to leave the house :(

Instead, we rigged together an impromptu pinhole sun viewing box.

It's a shoebox..with a viewing hole in the side, and a piece of pin-poked foil in the front.

You can't really see the pin-prick in the middle, but that's the point! The smaller the better.

We taped up any other light holes with more foil, and held it up to the sun!

What is this? The moon! Nay! It is the sun, covered by the moon!

A little closer..

Cool, eh? But not cool enough for Sak.  He decided he needed something bigger.

Yeah...

Unfortunately, I couldn't stick my camera in to take a picture, but the bigger box did make the sun's image a little larger! Nothing too fancy though. In high school astronomy, I had a borrowed telescope from my grandparents and a borrowed solar filter from my teacher that I used to photograph sun spots with.  I wish I had them for the eclipse! :P

Anyway, SF Bay only got about an 85% covered sun, so we didn't get to see the awesome ring of fire like the Pacific Northwest and Japan did.

The ring as seen from Japan! (source)

Astronomy is definitely my favorite subset of physics.  Space is just so cool!

Periodic Table!

So apparently there are two new elements being added to the periodic table!  They are some super heavy ones at the bottom that the average person doesn't really care about, and can only be made with particle collisions, but still! Pretty cool.

Elements 114 & 116 were found by Russian and Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientists. The latter of which is fairly close by home! But unlike Berkelium and Californium, I think these are going to be named after Russian things.

And of course, since we're talking science, let's see some fun tables!

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Science is fun! Do you have a favorite element?

Quake

Luckily,  my in-laws in both Japan and Hawaii are safe. We couldn't get through the phone to Sak's parents in Fukuoka, but we did get an email. *Whew*

Keep your prayers going though, 8.9 is devastating, even for the country most prepared for earthquakes. 

I hope your loved ones are safe as well!