Cleaning the 16inch Telescope Mirror

Thanks to Prof. Delano, we were able to bring the 16-inch lens down.
It requires some cleaning up after about 40 5/6 years. The controller was also not functioning properly. The previous posts on observatory can be found here...
Follow AlbanyStargaze @twitter.

 The concave reflector. Yes, it needed cleaning!

 

How to inspire your students?

It is said that it takes a whole village to raise kids...
The statement reflects the power a teacher has during the grooming of the kids in the classroom and beyond.

Some teachers took the parabolic flight, defying gravity and doing the experiments designed by their kids.

I think in the wake interest in increasing the number of students in STEM, one can devise NSF projects for such fun and inspiring projects.

How do you inspire your students?

What is Information?

What is Information?
Is it the data that you collect? Is it the statement that your mother makes when advising not to go outside in the dark? Or is it what you think on what you know about what you are thinking?
Defining information is not so trivial.
Try it, feel free to share on comments.

Seaswarm: Autonomous Oil absorbing robot

When the Gulf oil spill occured, attempts were made to clean it manually. It required deploying thousands of workers and still only few percentage of the spill was collected.  The spill had very bad effects on the environment. Just google gulf oil spill in pictures.
Now researchers at MIT have come up with an autonomous robot to collect the oil from such spill. The video below shows how swarm of networked robots can be used to collect such spill.
The idea is nice because it does not need human intervention. Once left on the spill site, it can work spontaneously.



http://web.mit.edu/press/2010/seaswarm.html

Some Deep Sea Videos

I am left wordless...