After a good #ITeachPhysics conversation a few weeks ago about "radial" and "centripetal" I have a new question... I'm doing orbits for the next few days. When you are dealing with elliptical orbits (NOT circular) what names do you use for the following directions... #AstroEdu

Great piece by astronomer and SETI leader Jason Wright on the endless, exhausting claims about 3I/Atlas by Avi Loeb. "zero planetary scientists give Avi’s claims any credence... because he’s demonstrably wrong" sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...

a lil group shot of my cat loaf worry stones!! at this size are they even loafs? maybe they're cat cookies 🥹🤲

Jupiter says trans rights

The Wiki Science photo competition is running until mid-December! Be in to win cash prizes by donating your science photos for use in Wikipedia. Categories include people in science, microscopy, wildlife and nature, and astronomy. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons...

4. Other good charts, like this look at where and when certain behaviors are acceptable.

Dungeness & Dragons

Rainbow through the archway. This morning on Glastonbury Tor.

1. In a devastating decision for trans kids in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, the 6th Circuit has ruled students can bully trans kids by repeatedly misgendering them. Trans kids also are not allowed to return the favor to their bullies. Subscribe to support our journalism.

NEW COLLECTOR INTERVIEW! Many of you will know David Willis (@damnyouwillis.bsky.social) by reputation, but now the legendary comic creator & Transformers fan is taking us behind the scenes of his collection! With Dinobots, Hot Shots, Ratchets & Sunstorms aplenty --> tfsource.com/blog/2025/11...

spending Friday night waiting for a thunderstorm to pass so that I can start my telescope observations

A new logo provided by @aapthq.bsky.social We just had out Fall 2025 Meeting at Wittenberg University. Find out more sosaapt.weebly.com/fall-2025---...

Finding out that stars in the night sky go through different stages changes your understanding of the universe. Look at the life cycle of a star with our paper model! Find out more here: buff.ly/bnDW4qk #EduSky #iteachphysics #space #stars #supernova #scienceteacher

Cool fact. Pasco wireless force probes and carts only work with the hooks they came with. A longer threaded hook interferes w/the flex of the strain gauge and prevents them from being calibrated. The one on the right is correct #ITeachPhysics

#ITeachPhysics I'm trying a variation on a circular motion lab @joemilliano.bsky.social has written about before, using a force sensor while spinning things around on strings. The "good" part of this test from 10-20 s still shows a big variation in force. Do other people get similar results?

today, we will treat sewage. we will manage the foul remnants of our past, the health of our present, the hope of our future. days end, but the mission endures. because there will be sewage to treat tomorrow. but this day is today. and today, we will treat sewage.

My son sent this to me: How to play the Severnce theme song in Desmos. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdzH...

"I Was Waiting For The Sun Here" At Sovereign Land Of Frogs, An East Japanese Tree Frog. 2025/10/31.

In the 90s when I was in college I read "The Winner-Take-All Society" by Frank & Cook (1995) for an econ class. It had this passage about the "Lake Wobegon effect" which has always stuck with me: "60% thought they were in the top 10%, and 25% thought they were in the top 1 percent."

A true horror story for Halloween: “Our ai turned your article into a shareable comic” Ffs.

I couldn't capture a ton of sanderling footage this evening, but I got enough I hope it brings a smile to your face for 3-8 seconds ❤️😊 🪶

From a crewmember on yesterday's Teal 74 mission into now-Category 5 Hurricane #Melissa. As clear of an eye as you will see in the Atlantic basin.

we are just 13 paid subscribers away from a pretty big internal financial goal, can you help us get there?

I just made this video for my astro-for-non-physicist course on the solar system, to illustrate celestial motion. The separate clips are all winners/honorable mentions of the @astro4edu.bsky.social astrophoto contest 2022. So nice to have this material! 🧪🔭🎢

For your enjoyment (by @jagarikin)

🔭 Webb's Rho Ophiuchi Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI), www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/apod/a...

People in Europe say that Ukraine is standing between Russia and them. They understand supporting Ukraine. But people in the US don't understand that Black people are standing between them and fascists. As fascist attack Black people from the front, centrist and libs backstab their own defenders.🤷🏿‍♂️

Whipped up the core of this center of mass #Desmos while my class was taking a test yesterday, did a little more "fun" stuff to it this morning. If you were going to use it, what else would you like it to do? #ITeachPhysics www.desmos.com/calculator/m...

A reminder to all scientists & data viz people 🧪: It's Spooky Science Time. Adjust your models to use the paranormal distribution 👻from now until November 1st.

*interior, secret volcano lair* ‘…and if they do not give in to our demands we will destroy the symbol of their shining city on the hill. We shall tear down the White House!’ *handed note* … …. ‘Oh for fucks sake.’

☁️

#ITeachPhysics #Astronomy

Not only was it a great honour to interview JBB, she was also kind enough to sign a copy of my first ever, first-author paper, which I will have framed! Earlier that day, she heard a lot of fantastic talks from the early career scientists from our region as well.

I've said this before I think, but Sen. Markey is phenomenal. Warren gets more national attention and as such is more widely-known, but Markey joined the US House in my birth year of 1976 (moved to the Senate in 2013) and has been pushing for progress ever since.

🥁 New publication - Membrane Transport🎉 In Membrane Transport, students learn about the relationships between solute properties, concentrations, and mechanisms for crossing a cellular membrane. @edusky #cellMembrane #activeTransport phet.colorado.edu/en/simulatio...

This morning my ChatGPT quota was inexplicably exhausted. It took a while but I pieced it together. Voice mode somehow got activated when I went to bed. The bot then engaged in a 10 hour conversation with my snoring dog, answering questions the pup wasn’t asking and praising him for his insight.

Most of the juniors are away on a multiday field trip. Another teacher and I am about to go for an extended walk with the stragglers to the lake in town where a new floating boardwalk goes across the water.

Earthspark is a great #Transformers series with strong writing and characterization, good design, and a mix of classic and brand new characters. It also incorporates the human cast in a genuinely new way! If you like TFs and aren't too cynical to enjoy kid-targeted media, please give it a try!

Made a couple small changes to my potential energy function U(x) simulation: tangent line now doesn't change size as much, removed a bug in the velocity display, added "reverse" and "return" buttons into the main graph area. Same link: www.desmos.com/calculator/e... #ITeachPhysics #desmos

PhET is in #Atlanta for #NCTM2025!!  Stop by booth #1307, meet Cathy and Amanda - some of our math folks - and snag some awesome stickers. Join us on Friday for our session on Data Science lessons with PhET. #data #math #learning #mathisfun

This came up tonight and just remembering it made me laugh so hard. When my kid was maybe 8 years old, her friend came over and brought a folded paper fortune teller. Her friend did the whole routine on me, and when she opened the flap to show my fortune it said “you will have a fart”

I uploaded my first #college recommendation letter of the year last night, and discovered that #Naviance (the platform many schools use to submit college applications to the Common App program) now has an LLM-based "assistant" for writing these rec letters. #EduSky

This potential energy graph now has a roving tangent line that slides along the U(x) function to show the slope. I forget whose idea that was but I finally put it in! New link: www.desmos.com/calculator/e... #ITeachPhyscs #desmos

GUESS WHO'S BACK BACK AGAIN DOC'S BACK TELL A FRIEND That's right. It's time for part 3 of the FPS series; this time, a lot of assorted thoughts on what makes for good enemy design. This one was fun as hell to write. docseuss.medium.com/building-a-b...

A lovely tinge of lavender in the sky this morning before sunrise. Photo taken about an hour before sunrise in Glastonbury.

Listened to this @99pi.org yesterday: 99percentinvisible.org/episode/641-... Roman's discussion at around 19:00 about how designing for efficiency can be BAD really made an impression on me. Specifically, the bit about how (supposedly) making advertising more efficient destroyed journalism.

I like how the prompt on a lot of these--after the setup--starts with "Tell me, whoever wishes..." and then the question itself. Some are simple arithmetic, but q1 is dimensional analysis (might steal it) and q5 is a linear combination with three variables! #ITeachMath #MathSky