Neptunium

Sometimes in my blog absences, I even wonder where I've been or what I've been doing that makes me forget to post or not have time to post. I am sorry to update you with the fact that I've been in school, teaching, working out, or at home - so really I have no excuse (well maybe one since I now go to bed at 9:30).

Excuses aside, here are some home videos of my newest toy educational tool - the Diet Coke and Mentos powered car. This thing is a real beauty when it 1) is propelled straight and 2) does not fall apart. I'm hoping to try and get a set of these in my placement in the hopes of taking my kids outside and letting these suckers go using them for a lab activity.

And to answer your question, yes, I ran out in front of a car to save the piece of the Diet Coke and Mentos car that fell off. Nothing comes in the way of science, not even motorized vehicles.

Fun Fact: While neptunium is rarely found in nature, you still have a small amount of it in your house. Smoke detectors use americium (an element you'll hear about 2 posts from now) to generate alpha particles that interact and detect smoke particles. When americium generates alpha particles, it breaks down into neptunium!

Uranium

A story from teaching - I got my first "teacher gift" the other day :)

I usually stand outside the classroom door and greet my students as they walk in and one of my kids said to me "Ms. Labbate, I have a Christmas present for you." He walked to his locker (about 10 feet from the door) and was digging around in his bag for a time before coming back to me with a clenched fist. Mind you this kid is a jokester, so I often have trouble taking him seriously, so when he asked me to hold out my hand, I was skeptical about what was about to be dropped into my palm. Five rocks. And not just average rocks collected while bored at the bus stop, but five gorgeous shiny rocks that must have come from a rock collection of some sort. Not being a rock connoisseur, I had no idea what kind of rocks these were but graciously smiled and said thank you. I still have no clue what to do with them, so they are sitting on my counter top in my apartment. It's the thought that counts, right?

Not much else exciting in Michigan, except that it's 50 degrees in January - clearly I should be blogging about global warming.


Historical Reference: The Manhattan Project, a group of scientists who built and tested atomic bombs during World War II, had only enough uranium to build one bomb, so they never tested their creation before dropping it on Hiroshima.

Fun Fact: Red orange Fiestaware made prior to 1942 is famously radioactive and will set off Geiger counters, as its glaze contained uranium oxide.

Fun Fact Take Two: It is illegal for a single person to own more than 15 pounds of natural uranium.

Protactinium

Happy (belated) New Year!! As you can tell, my New Years resolution did not involve posting on the blog more, lest you would have seen at least 3 posts from 2012 by now (my apologies).

Things are almost back to full swing in Michigan. The alarm is set for a dreaded 4:30 a.m. wake-up call tomorrow as it's the first day back to school and while I'm excited to see my kids, I am really hoping that my hand does not hit the snooze button too many times!

Not too much else to report from Michigan. I spent the past two days traveling back to "the mitten" and trying to get things back to normal at my apartment today (if you're wondering, I failed at this - nothing is unpacked). However, I was greeted with a lovely package at my door after racquetball with a new cookbook (!!) and Fool Me Twice, one of the books I blogged about over break! Because my semester is not crazy yet, I'm excited to get some extracurricular reading in and Fool Me Twice is first on my list! You can probably expect a post on it because if you haven't guessed already, I kind of love science and politics.


Fun Fact: When it was originally discovered by German physicists, Kasimir Fajans and O. H. Gohring in 1913, protactinium was named brevium.