Kiva.org for gifts that are actually loans, how ovens work, thinking about temperature around your house, pluto might have an ocean, Google has more servers then you, and may other things like your license plates are being tracked.
We are a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world.
Lyle and Miles chat about ovens…
An oven is a thermally insulated chamber used for the heating, baking or drying of a substance.1 It is most commonly used for cooking. Kilns, and furnaces are special-purpose ovens. The first being used mainly for the fabrication of pottery and the second being used for forging.
We then talked about fire temperatures by color…Temperatures of flames by appearance
“In an attempt to raise the profile of worthwhile science education projects, Science magazine has started handing out the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education, or SPORE. This week’s award is going to a project called Open Source Physics. Started by a group of college professors, the site offers simulation software on a wide variety of topics in the physical sciences (including astronomy), accompanied by guides and lesson plans that help integrate it into the classroom.”
“When NASA’s New Horizons cruises by Pluto in 2015, the images it captures could help astronomers determine if an ocean is hiding under the frigid surface, opening the door to new possibilities for liquid water to exist on other bodies in the solar system. New research has not only concluded such an ocean is likely, but also has highlighted features the spacecraft could identify that could help confirm an ocean’s existence.”
The numbers are mind-boggling.
“The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the District of Columbia is engaging in widespread tracking of citizen’s movements using automated license plate readers (ALPRs).”
“We all know that Quicksort is one of the fastest algorithms for sorting. It’s not often, however, that we get a chance to see exactly how fast Quicksort really is. The following applets chart the progress of several common sorting algorthms while sorting an array of data. (This is inspired by the algorithm animation work at Brown University and the video Sorting out Sorting from the University of Toronto (circa 1970!).)”
