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ValleyFair VS. Nickelodeon Universe

samanthapha — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:54:01 +0000

ValleyFair VS. Nickelodeon Universe: “ Oh my gosh, here it comes. Ahhhhhhh. Whaooo look how fast that goes. It’s super fast. It’s like one glance and it’s gone. Look at all those other rides that we can go on. And look at that price, mom can we go to the Amusement Park”? Valleyfair and Nicke
Courtesy arthur vivnes

“ Oh my gosh, here it comes. Ahhhhhhh. Whaooo look how fast that goes. It’s super fast. It’s like one glance and it’s gone. Look at all those other rides that we can go on. And look at that price, mom can we go to the Amusement Park”? Valleyfair and Nickelodeon Universe are the two largest amusement parks in Minnesota. Let's start out with our first option, the outdoors amusement park. After many, many years of investing money into Valleyfair, it is what it is today.
Valleyfair is an amusement park located in Shakopee, MN. It was opened in 1976 and was originally themed as a Coney Island styled turn of the century amusement park. Valleyfair is the largest amusement park located in the Midwest. It has over 75 rides, and 8 roller coasters. The most famous rollercoaster at valleyfair is the “ Wild Thing”.
The Wild Thing features a 200-foot, 60-degree drop and it runs 74 mph making it the fastest rollercoaster in the world. It was design as a out and back steel coaster with two "S" curves, one tunnel and 360-degree spiral, tubular steel tracks. The Wild Thing is home to the one of the longest low-gravity zones of any coaster in the world. Also the soak city water park is located in Valleyfair where you can go swimming. There is also a challenge park that is separate from the other rest. You’ll pay extra and requires Valleyfair admission to participate. The daily price is $37.99 per adult, $16.99 per senior (i.d is required); it's free for 2 year old and younger. Admission to the park is $10.00. You are free to go on any rides once you are in the amusement park. Most rides you would need to be 48’ tall to be able to go on it. Valleyfair opens seasonally from mid-May through September. The time when it opens or close depends on which day you are going. But then in the summer it is mostly open at 10:00a.m till 10:00p.m.
Enough about an outdoor amusement park, how about an indoor amusement park. It was first named Camp Snoopy, and then the Park of MOA and now it is named Nickelodeon Universe. It is an indoor amusement park located inside of the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. They build new rides, and replaced it with some of the older ones. They have over 27 rides and 5 roller coasters. The most famous ride at Nickelodeon Universe is the “Spongebob Sqaurepants Rock Bottom Plunge”.
This rollercoaster is the first rollercoaster themed to Spongebob Sqaurepants. It is the shortest rollercoaster to date, standing only 67 feet tall; yet it has a 97degree drop. This rollercoaster ride is based on the Spongebob Sqaurepants episode
“Rock Bottom”. Spongebob Sqaurepants Rock Bottom Plunge is known as the world's tallest indoor freefall roller coaster. The daily price for a Nickelodeon Universe wristband is $29.95. Admission to the park is free. Rides and attractions require varying numbers of points. Because it's indoors, the park is open year-round whenever the mall is open, which is pretty much all the time. It is open at 10:00a.m – 9:30p.m on Monday thru Thursday. 10:00a.m -10:00p.m. on the weekends.
Valleyfair and Nickelodeon Universe both have the excitement that everyone wants to feel. No matter big or small there is always a ride for you. Many peoples enjoy both Valleyfair and Nickelodeon Universe because these amusement parks have the excitement and thrills that make you want to raise your hands, and get your mind twisting, and yet make you want to scream.

Minnesota State Fair Judging

dellax28 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:51:25 +0000

Have you ever wonder how the judges judged on your projects? Well as you can see, Minnesota State Fair have many different kinds of contest, and different contest have different judging, depends on what kind of theme it is.
Rabbit contest: A picture of one of the winner for the Rabbit contest
Courtesy Mn state fairOne thing for sure is that the judges are the only one who could award the ribbons. Judges in the 4-H uses a system call the Modified Danish Judging System. The Modified Danish System is where the project is judged by the requirements that are needed. The system is fair. Any project is welcome and children who enters the contest will get a ribbon no matter what because it shows the effort that they use to put in their work and it helps them to improve on it like what they need to focus on and what is their weakness and strongest point. In this contest a score sheet is use. A score sheet is a sheet that the judges use to write down their comments and thoughts. The Danish System is a system that does not compare projects to each other. Unlike the other competitions, the judges compares projects by the design, creative ideas, sizes, looks, and many others. For more information go to this site: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:xzCAnFM25BwJ:aces.nmsu.edu/4h/docume...

The Modified Danish System Award:
Blue/Purple Ribbon - First place
Red Ribbon - Second place
White Ribbon - Third place
Where everyone gets a ribbon

The Danish System Award:
Blue Ribbon - First place
Red Ribbon - Second place
White Ribbon - Third place
or No Awards at all

To see some winners who have won a ribbon for the rabbit contest Click here: http://mn4h.smugmug.com/search/index.mg?searchWordsShort=rabbit&searchTy...

El Niño is here!

JGordon — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:48:15 +0000

That's right, folks, whether you wanted him around or not, El Niño has come, and he's going to break your head open! (Climatologically speaking he will.)

One way to describe El Niño might be to say that it's a global weather phenomenon associated with an upwelling of warm water off of the Pacific coast of South America, occurring every two two five years, which causes all sorts of oddness around the world, from droughts in Australia to major flooding in South America, to heavy rains and increased wave erosion in the Pacific Northwest.

Another way to describe El Niño might be this:

(Actually, I'd encourage someone to write something better than this wimpy little post on El Niño. There's a lot to say about it, and it affects billions of people around the world. Check it out, teach us something we didn't know.)

Adventures in Public Transit

Jack — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:24:17 +0000

After standing for over thirty minutes in ninety-degree weat
Awkwardness on the Light Rail
Courtesy Mentor Buzzher, being in awkwardly close proximity with a number of colorful people, and encountering many awkward situations in general, I was beginning to rethink my view of public transportation.
At first, I wanted to experience the Metro Transit system and the Hiawatha Line light rail firsthand, since I, like many other suburbanites, have never used public transportation at all in the Twin Cities. I also wanted to conduct some sort of moderately scientific experiment testing how efficient the routes given at the Metro Transit website and Google Maps were. I wanted to see how the buses and light rail really were like, and how convenient they were to use for someone who's never used them.
For this excursion, we planned to take the bus from the Science Museum to a light rail station in Minneapolis, take the light rail to its terminal at the Mall of America, and then take a bus directly back to the Science Museum. On June 23, we started out on this journey through the urban labyrinth.
The first hint of problems came when I checked my watch as we were leaving. It was 3:44. The plan was to leave at 3:30, so we were already 14 minutes behind schedule. The bus which we were supposed to take had just come and gone by then. Since it was a "Limited Stop Bus Route", we had to wait for 30 minutes in the sweltering weather for the next bus. Instead of moving off the plan, we decided to just wait. By the time we finally got on the bus, we were supposed to already have been at the station.
The bus ride, the first Metro Transit bus ride I've ever been on, was predictably awkward, but at least it was cool, and on schedule. We were dropped off near the Lake-Midtown light rail station. After getting our hands blackened on the nearly molten rubber of the escalator guide rail, we arrived at the platform. The light rail was on schedule, and the ride was almost pleasant, despite the uncomfortable seats. It felt generally smooth and fast, and it felt especially quick while traveling through the tunnels at the airport.
When we arrived at the Mall of America, it was 5:18. The Metro Transit website said we would arrive at 4:33. There was time to get some ice cream before we had to take the bus back. I had planned to spend about 30 minutes at the mall, which we just about did. Then, we were to take bus #54 back.
By then, I stopped keeping track of the time. On the bus back, I had some encounters with some people who can only be described as "colorful." I tried to avoid eye contact and avoid getting talked to, and while I succeeded in that respect, my awkwardness level was seriously increased to quantities abnormal even for public transit. Relief came when I exited the bus.
At the beginning of the excursion, I wanted to measure the accuracy of the itineraries given by Metro Transit. They were actually pretty accurate, but they, like many other computer systems, failed to account for the inevitable human delays and mistakes. We ended up over 40 minutes past when we should have returned, but if we had actually started on time, it wouldn't have been so.
If I had to describe public transit in one word, it would be "awkward". However, with experience in transit the awkwardness can hopefully be wiped away, and I might actually feel comfortable riding the bus or light rail, someday.

As a side note, the 5th anniversary of the opening of the Hiawatha Line was on June 26, 2009.

the beautiful burning falling stars

jack duke — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:41:05 +0000

Errrrrr boom pow ohhh la la the night sky lights up for 3 seconds. Burning fireballs of red green and orange. Sparks fall and completely disappear before your eyes. The day of celebration is upon us the great 4th of July. America’s most celebrated events every year. The Independence from England. Each state in America has there own special way of celebrating Independence Day. Each ends with the most anticipated moment, the fireworks.

The fireworks you see during the 4th are remote controlled detonators that set off a spark in the wick of the firework. The firework is airborne like a rocket to explode that burst from its shell into the sky. This sets off a chemical reaction made up of different colors of gun powders blended together into flammable balls. The flammable balls than explode in star shapes of many different colors that everyone enjoy every year on the Independence Day.

Why do we here the explosion before we see it???
Light reaches our eyes before sound reaches our ears because light travels faster than sound. Light travels at the rate of 186,282 miles per second, while sound is much slower, 1,087 feet, or about 1/5 of a mile, per second.

The biggest reported firework in the history of firework lies in Japan weighing in at The 1,543 pounds, 54.7 inches in diameter and burst to a diameter of 3,937 feet. Ladies and gentleman the big boom from doom .the boom boom pow from the Hokkaido Japan the one and only Universe I.

fireworks
Courtesy jack duke

Deadlier than Titanic: Sinking of the Sultana cost more lives

Thor — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:19:41 +0000

No iceberg needed: This drawing from Harpers Weekly in May 1865 showed the wreckage in the aftermath of the explosion aboard the Sultana while it was cruising the Mississippi River near Memphis. It's believed more people died in that accident than aboard the Titanic, which sank in the north Atlantic in 1912.
Courtesy Thatcher131Hanging around in the museum lobby yesterday, I came across a cute little exhibit put together by the Mississippi River Visitor Center. And the information is provided just blew me away.

Have you ever heard of the Mississippi riverboat the Sultana? I hadn't either, but it's story is a tale of even more tragedy than the sinking of the Titanic. Heading up river on April 27, 1865, with a overflow load of passengers, one of the Sultana's boilers suddenly exploded near Memphis, Tennessee. The ship was carrying mostly Union Army soldiers who had just be released from Confederate prisoner of war camps. It's estimated that up to 1,800 passengers died when the Sultana quickly sank. Slightly more than 1,500 passengers died with the sinking of the Titanic.

About 300 to 500 passengers were survivors. Due to the changing course of the river, remains of the Sultana were found in a bean field in Arkansas in 1982 about two miles away from the current path of the Mississippi River.

Intrigued? Want to learn more? Read a narrative account of the Sultana here.

New bite-sized salamander discovered. Commence biting.

JGordon — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:43:14 +0000

The patch-nosed salamander: Think of how many dimes you could fit in your mouth! And this would be easier, because salamanders are so soft!
Courtesy University of GeorgiaOh, happy July 8, Buzzketeers! A brand new salamander has been discovered in a Georgia creek! (In several Georgia creeks, actually.) And it represents not only a new species, but also an entirely new genus! This is the first time in fifty years that a new genus of four-legged animal has been found in the United States.

But that’s not the best part; the best part is that this new salamander is small enough to easily fit in your mouth! At just two itty-bitty inches, the salamander is in fact small enough to easily fit into a baby’s mouth. An average adult could probably fit dozens of these things in his or her mouth! (This is assuming that said mouth isn’t wired shut for some reason. The salamanders may be able to fit up a straw whole, but I’m guessing that it would make more sense to blend them up first, in which case one could still get in plenty of salamanders by volume, but determining the number of individuals might be hard.)

The researchers are excited to study the new genus, and hope that, being among the smallest salamanders in the world, the new specimen might tell them something about the evolution of miniaturization in salamanders. And when they’re finished with that, they can just toss the little suckers in their mouths, and maybe eat them.

An Amzing Fact about Titanic

iamlionrawr — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:47:44 +0000

There are incredible stories about the titanic. Many unherd of. But did you know that if the captin retired before the titanic, there may have not have been a crash. The captin decided to speed up the trip and change the speed of the boat. Becuse of that, the ship was unable to change direction of the route and hit the ice berg.

How Accurate Are The Weathermen?

shaunalynn10 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:00:19 +0000

How Accurate Are The Weathermen on T.V.?

Have you ever gone outside inappropriately dressed for the weather because a weatherman said it was supposed to be 80 degrees and it was 60 degrees? I have, but weathermen are not to blame. For the most part they are 80-90% accurate with their predictions. But like I said they’re PREDICTIONS not a 100% guarantee. As the weather is forever changing, meteorologists use high technology such as dopplar radar, satellite pictures, barometers and other technology to predict weather. They can never be exact because weather is not an exact science. So I took my experiment outside and i measured the humidity, wind, and temperature then I looked up a few weather stations around the Twin Cities to see whose predictions were closest to the predictions I got. They were all similar about 80 degrees and partly cloudy(which it was outside).With humidity 35-40%. The only thing very different was the wind. I got 1mph and the weather stations got 10mph. For more information visit these links.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/428846.html

Tomorrow may be your day to bet the farm

Thor — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:37:57 +0000

In the early hours of tomorrow, a neat numerical thing will happen. Just six seconds at the clock hits 4:05 a.m. we'll have a time date alignment, for just one second, of 04-05-06-07-08-09. Learn more about the math fun you can have with time and dates at this link.

The Salamander's Skin

esheroux — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:17:02 +0000

Salamander
Courtesy USDALets say you are walking in the woods and you see a 12 point deer ahead of you. You sneek up quietly but not quietly enough. The deer hears you looks right at you and begins to charge. Before you know it its right antler has sheered off your arm! What do you do? Well if you were a salamander you would simple re-grow it.

For centuries scientist have wondered how salamanders regenerate limbs. In recent history they believed the tissue around the injury regressed into pluripotent stem cells (the kind we have all heard about that can morph into many different types of cells) and they reform into each cell type needed to create the limb.

This research was conducted to help understand how the salamander was able to do this amazing feat so that we could apply it to humans. Unfortunately, stem cells are not the easiest thing to work with but, that is old news now.

New research has shown that the salamander's cells do not regress but have memory that allows them to grow into what they once were. The memory is so good that the cartilage from the lower limb re-grows in the lower limb again.

The way scientist were able to do this was by engineering a florescent protein in a group of salamanders and transplanted only a select cells (skin, bone, muscle, etc) into embryos. After the embryos had grown, a limb was amputated. When it re-grew scientists observed that the glowing cells were not spread out amongst all the different cell types, as it would be if the cells had regressed into blank slates, but the florescent protein was only found in the original transplanted cell type.

Good new for us humans. This new finding may, although most likely not in our life time, make it easier to regenerate human organs.

Mayflies: skipping dinner and a movie

JGordon — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:50:37 +0000

Mayflies: Developing a sudden interest in trucks, apparently.
Courtesy adolson13Did things just get a little… sexier in here? By “in here” I mean in my local metro area? So did things just get a little… sexier in the Twin Cities?

Oh ho, I think they just did. I took my shoes off the write this post, and that’s part of it, but that’s not where it starts. No, it starts with thousands upon thousands of young adults—in the blazing prime of their life, really—with one thing on their minds, and not much time on their hands.

Yep, the mayflies have hatched. That is, they hatched about a year ago, and have just now completed their final moults into adulthood. Now they have anywhere between a day and just half an hour to do what needs to be done. In their case, it’s sex that needs to be done. Other than vague efforts at avoiding premature death via fish mouth or windshield, adult mayflies haven’t got a lot of distractions—while immature naiad mayflies spend months paddling around at the bottoms of streams and lakes eating algae, their mouthparts are vestigial (useless) when they reach maturity, and their digestive tracks are full of air. (Exactly when this occurs is based on temperature and humidity, so all the mayflies in a particular area will become mature at the same time.) So, as a young mayfly, asking a prospective mate out for dinner would be pretty much pointless even if you had the time.

It might seem kind of crazy evolving into a creature that only lives for a few hours and can’t do anything but fly around and try to have sex. But if that’s all you have to do, you can invest all your resources into ensuring that you reproduce, and if your whole generation is doing it at more or less the same time, your chances are pretty good. Plus, time is relative, and there are probably those who’d say that a life of just flying around and having sex would be okay. Assuming you didn’t get eaten by a walleye.

I’m going to put up a boring ol’ picture of a mayfly here, just so you know what to look for when you’re trying to avoid thousands-strong airborne orgies over the next couple of days. Hopefully, though, I’ll have some pictures of actual swarming mayflies soon. (I know where to find some, but if y’all are already on top of things, don’t hesitate to post your own!)

NOVA scienceNOW wants your video questions

NOVA — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:25:09 +0000

Want to ask an expert a question? We'll have NOVA scienceNOW's experts answer selected submissions. This is a rare opportunity, so come up with questions, make a video, and send it in.

Video questions will be selected and posted on the Cosmic Perspective page on the NOVA scienceNOW website and then be answered by our experts throughout the season of NOVA scienceNOW, via text on our website, with the last question being answered the day after the final broadcast, September 2, 2009.

For more details please go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/cosmic/2009/06/ask-your-science-...

NOVA scienceNOW wants your video questions

NOVA — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Want to ask an expert a question? We'll have NOVA scienceNOW's experts answer selected submissions. This is a rare opportunity, so come up with questions, make a video, and send it in.

For more details please go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/cosmic/2009/06/ask-your-science-...

For anybody who wants to be more like a bat

Gene — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:14:49 +0000

...and, let's face it, who doesn't? You, too, can master the art of echolocation.