After what seems like the longest section ever, we've finally made it to Section 3/4! While I pat myself on the back, feel free to scroll down to see what we have done so far in this long-awaited section. If you really want to, you can even scroll down to see what we've done in Section 2 and Section 1. Only if you want to. But it is highly recommended. Just saying.
When looking for another video to give a review on, I stumbled upon this one. I really wanted to learn about this because I was always confused on how leap days and leap years worked. I would see on different social media sites what day it would be if we didn't have any leap days or years. It was always something crazy, like it being July when in reality we were still in winter months. I always wondered how we figured that out, and why. In this video, I learned that the amount of days that the Earth revolves around the sun is not easily divisible. There isn't an even amount. Neil said that it would take about 365.25 days. That being said, the small margin could become a very big problem if we ignore it. This is why, every four years (.25 x 4), we have a full extra day in the year. He talks about how we take that day on the fourth year and give it to the neediest month. This would be February. Then he goes on to recount that it isn't perfectly 365.25 days, it's a little less. This means that every time we put in an extra day, we are over-compensating, and in return, every 100 years you need to take out the leap year that would have been there. But by taking out that extra day, it over-compensates in the other direction. This means that every 400 years, you need to put in the leap day. This all came to fruition in 1582, which I though was super interesting. I was really interested in learning about this because I have a friend who was born on a leap day in 2000, which was a year that should not have had a leap day, but ended up having one because it was divisible by 400 years. So close. Learning about this was really interesting and I actually found out a lot about this topic. It kind of reminded me of math, which was kind of weird, but I guess that math and science go hand in hand. As most people know, I absolutely loved reading and watching The Martian earlier this semester. When trying to come up with some extra points on my blog, I searched up some cool science videos. I stumbled upon this one. I loved listening to Neil's interview that we were showed a couple months back, so I thought, why not mix both together. Upon watching this clip, I found it very humorous. The person narrating is not Neil, but he does include clips of him throughout the video. I was very interested in what he had to say, because I am by no means a science-y person. Throughout reading the book, I was very intrigued and curious. The questions I was asking myself mostly revolved around how realistic this book actually is. Coming from a knows-nothing-about-Mars point of view, it all seemed perfect. But knowing what I know from the many months of chemistry I've endured made me question it a lot. Although this video is very humorous, I actually learned a lot about the science behind a potential trip to Mars. I learned that there hasn't actually been and man missions there, which I was super surprised about. I had assumed that there was, but it was nice learning about anyways. I even learned about botany, and what botanists do. I enjoyed it. |
Zoe Valentin"I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this." -Mark Watney (The Martian) Archives
June 2016
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