Happy Halloween

This is a video my sister shared with us. Oliver can't get enough of it. Either can I. Hope you have a Happy Halloween.

P is for Pretzel

Earlier today, we made pretzel shapes. Oliver made a 6 (and a 9) all on his own. Then we shared a quesadilla and dipped it in sauce (salsa with sour cream). This was followed by dancing to this song and riding in the laundry basket.

Good times. Really.

Old Food

So remember that this blog is called "boiled pizza"? In case you didn't catch that strange title or how odd it is, that is indeed the name of this blog and you can find out the reasoning behind it here.

I've started to wonder if someday I'm going to make boiled pizza for my family. I mean, this past week, I got terribly close to doing worse. I almost gave Jess and Oliver moldy bread in the form of french toast. My reasoning went like this: I didn't want to waste the bread and I knew that french toast was made with crusty day or so old bread, and I thought maybe eggs and milk could work the same magic for week old, moist wheat bread, with a moldy smell.

Come to find out: Eggs and milk (with a little cinnamon) toasted to perfection and added syrup are no match to bread mold. No magic. No mold masking. Just gross french toast. Hmm.

But I ate it. I don't know why. Frugality, cheapness, guilt, hunger. A mixture of all of those things. Then I went to the internet to find out if eating bread mold is okay. Turns out it is not a good idea. It's not the same as eating bleu cheese. And I waited for the stomach pangs.

But they never came! Fortunately for me, eating moldy bread is like eating bleu cheese. Or making it into french toast works some kind of magic. But that does not mean I'll be trying to salvage another moldy loaf any time soon.

I watched Antiques Roadshow last night

I noticed that the show that was airing was filmed in Salt Lake City, so I thought, "Hey, I'll check it out. See if I recognize anyone."

Sure enough, my uncle was featured, sharing his wares! Good times.

Yep, I know this isn't science, but it is cool nonetheless.

Just one of the things we do around here

Make a car (more specifically, a Lotus) out of pillows and ask Dad to take a ride "in the back".

bp's science: decibels (v.1)

The other day I was talking to Jess about how loud a train whistle is. I was bugged and using hyperbole, "That thing is 150 decibels I tell you!" I am learning that I like quiet, and train whistles are not quiet. But then I got to wondering, is 150 decibels even a lot? What does that even mean? Was my guess high or low? I didn't know.

Well, I got lucky. 150 decibels is A LOT. In fact, the take off of a spaceship rocket is 130 decibels and that is a dangerous level of sound for your ears.

Let's look at some other sound measurements. Keep in mind that a 10 decibel increase means that the sound has increased ten times in loudness.

- 0 decibels is a sound you can just barely hear (like a pin dropping)
- 10 decibels is a sound of someone whispering 16 feet away
- 80 decibels is a pneumatic drill 66 feet away (think road construction)
- 100 decibels is a rock concert (that's why you should use ear plugs at those things)
- 120 decibels is a jet taking off 330 feet away

So, I'd guess the train whistle I'm talking about is 90 decibels. It is loud! But I think that's the point.

Facts and figures from my valued volume of The Dorling Kindersley Visual Encyclopedia.

went to the airport the other day...

... and the cop on security duty near the drop-off zone was watching a movie on her laptop inside her car.

Needless to say, I parked my car and went inside to help the travelers with their bags.

bp's science: in the future, precious cargo will be sent to earth through beams of light (or maybe neutrinos) (v.1)

title note: if any of you have been on Space Mountain at Disney World (only Disney World, not Disneyland), it is this statement that is repeated again and again as you wait in line. Hilarious stuff.

Yesterday a good friend of mine told me some neat scientific news. She mentioned that scientists have measured that subatomic particles, neutrinos, have been measured as going faster than the speed of light.

What?! Really?

But Einstein said that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. He said this when he came up with the Theory of Relativity. Remember the twin paradox?



So how'd this happen? A team of scientists shot a beam of neutrinos underground from Geneva to Italy, 454 miles away, and measured how long it took (This is where we question how in the world neutrinos travel underground through the earth. Come to find out, they can travel through just about anything without hardly being affected). Once the neutrinos got to Italy, it was found that they took 60 nanoseconds less than light. Doesn't sound like much, but over a distance of 621 miles, neutrinos travel about 66 feet more than light in the same amount of time.

This is such a crazy finding that the scientists who measured the discovery are apprehensive. They are asking that their results be retested, remeasured, checked, and rechecked by other scientists. Some scientists not affiliated with the team suspect experimenter error instead of major finding. It will just take time to find out.

If neutrinos do travel faster than light then Einstein's Theory comes into question and has to be reworked. However, I'll second my opinion with that of a scientist who said, "If relativity turned out to be wrong, it's very, very close to being right." We shall see.

Read more here, here, and here.

As a side note, after talking to Jess about neutrinos, he gave his 2 cents on the matter:
- Now Superman's motto will be, "Faster than a speeding neutrino!"
- A baseball player who's really fast at stealing bases could be called "The Great Neutrino"
- And he's already working on a getting a copyright for a nutrition drink that "Gets you nutrition fast!" It's called the Nutrino©.
Hilarious stuff.