Partial Solar Eclipse

About a week ago, I was finally able to observe the second solar eclipse of my life – a partial eclipse with a maximum coverage of about 50%. The only other eclipse I have observed was another partial solar eclipse in May 2012.

Visualizing Time: An Essay

If time were stopped, would this falling pen look blurry to us?

Time can be a very confusing subject. It has a past, a present, and a future, but the future keeps changing and the present is always moving, while the past grows larger. Although most people think they understand time, they often get confused when they try to describe it. To help visualize and understand time, many people compare it to a very familiar concept: a line.

Feeding Hummingbirds

It's that time of the year when I get the most hummingbirds at my feeder. It's hot, and the fields are brown, but the little whirring birds make summer fun the whole season long.

B17: The Killer Vitamin

What is a vitamin? I don't mean the different types of vitamins or the shops where they can be bought. I mean, what makes something a vitamin? Perhaps a vitamin is only a useless chemical that serves no purpose, and is therefore called a vitamin to make it seem useful when it really isn't. I prefer to think of a vitamin, however, as an essential chemical that our body needs to grow and survive.

Did You Know...

I recently added a "Did You Know" app to the sidebar of my blog. The app randomly picks a math/science/technology fact from a list, and displays it. I had to write the app myself (with JavaScript and HTML), because Blogger doesn't have an app like that built-in, and even if it did, I like to have control over my things.

To get technical: the data is stored on Firebase. The app reads the data from Firebase, and adds it all to an array. There is no way to tell how many items there are without reading all of them from Firebase. The app then looks at how many elements are in the array (call that number a) and then randomly chooses a number b from 1 to a. It then takes the bth element from the array, and displays it. (I know, I didn't have to store them all in an array, but it's easier that way.)

Because of the data storage method, I can add new facts very easily: I just have to go to Firebase and add the new fact to the database. Of course, my app updates as soon as I add the new data. I can also set up the app to read data from a different Firebase location, so I can easily have multiple apps with different themes. Here's a screenshot of a Minecraft-themed app, for example:

If anybody is interested in putting a version of the app on their blog, let me know! I'd be happy to set up a version of my app with another theme, such as astronomy, animals, or sports. I can also change the style to make the font pink or green, or give it a purple background, before I send you the code. The possibilities are endless.

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