Week of May 26, 2014

Seniors, this is it! Congratulations on all you’ve accomplished! Juniors, you are doing great, too…and you’re about to be the seniors. That’s awesome.

Before the year ends, you have your exams. Below are the senior and junior exam schedules. All of my physics classes will take their exams during their regular class period and not the lab period.

Senior ExamsJunior Exams

This Week in Astronomy
Seniors, your exam is on Wednesday. I’ve provided star maps, so the only things you need to bring are a pencil(s) and a calculator if you wish to use one. For my remaining two juniors, we will keep moving forward with eclipses. 🙂

This Week in AP Physics
Your two remaining lab reports are due on Friday. You will have time in class to finish conducting those experiments

This Week in Physics
Sixth period: You will take your electric circuits unit test on Wednesday. (Third period has already taken their version of it.) We will spend the remainder of the week covering special topics of interest and perhaps reviewing for the final.

Uncool Science of the Week
No more bananas? A fungal disease is spreading globally that is wiping out farms that produce the banana we are all used to, the Cavendish banana, and extinction is a distinct possibility. This has actually happened before to another supposedly more delicious banana variety, the Gros Michel banana, which went extinct from a similar disease in the 1950s and was replaced by the Cavendish. Other banana varieties exist, but they are decidedly different from the yellow beauty that for so long has been standard grocery shop fare. The situation highlights the practice of monoculture, or cloning a species so that every plant grown is exactly the same…helpful in some ways, but when one plant is susceptible to a disease, they all are. This is certainly an example of how science impacts economics, politics, world hunger, and so on…What do you think about it?

Banana blight: Cavendish banana from Maracaibo