Presented in collaboration with the Association for Middle Level Education.

Jokes You Can Use:

Why was the broom late for work?

Did you hear that Oxygen and Magnesium are going out?

Did you hear about the two antennas that got married?

What is ET short for?

Eileen Award:

Scoopit:

Twitter:

Facebook:

Google+:

iTunes:

eMail:

Advisory:

From rotary to Siri: How the phone numbering system came and went

The recent death of John E Karlin of Bell Labs, the father of the push-button phone and other innovations, has sparked a lot of reminiscing about land line phones. According to the New York Times, Karlin was also "the most hated man in America" for killing the named exchanges (like Butterfield 8). However the story of how our phone numbers got to be the way they are is a much longer and more interesting one.

In 1950 it got really interesting, with the introduction of area codes. The designers wanted to minimize the number of numbers people had to dial, so all the area codes were set up to have 1 or 0 as the second number. The switches were set up so that if first number dialed was a 0 then it went to operator. If the second digit was 1 or 0, then it was an area code. If the second number was another number, then it knew it was a local rather than long distance number. That's how it was going to distinguish between 7 and 10 digit numbers.

http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/number-crisis-world-zone-1.html

Bazooka shoots ping-pong balls at Mach speed

The magic of physics can turn the mundane into something marvelous. Mark French, a mechanical engineering professor at Purdue University, designed a supersonic air-powered ping-pong ball cannon that shoots the lightweight object at speeds so fast I would consider the device a lethal weapon of science.

A ping-pong ball reportedly blasts out of the special cannon at speeds equivalent to Mach 1.23 -- nearly as fast as an F-16 fighter jet.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57569069-1/bazooka-shoots-ping-pong-balls-at-mach-speed/

Ocean Facts:

In celebration of the upcoming premiere of DinoFish on Nat Geo Wild (Sunday, April 1, 10pm EST/PST), I’m excited to present the first of what we we hope will be a long series of comic strips by Dr. Byron Beekle. We will be presenting a whole series of these comics today and through the weekend, we hope you enjoy.

http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/30/amazing-ocean-facts-premiere/

Telling the Truth

http://gawker.com/5982653/something-tells-me-john-is-lying-about-not-eating-those-sprinkles

MIT Media Lab

http://learn.media.mit.edu/

The Shame of Smell...

http://www.retronaut.com/2013/02/when-tears-of-shame-smell/

Blend into the environment

http://bencebakonyi.com/index.php?/projects/transform/

Things that fit perfectly into other things

http://thingsfittingperfectlyintothings.tumblr.com/

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or [email protected])

INTERVIEWS TO EXPLORE STUDENT IDEAS

By the way, I added a Twitterverse to my bi-monthly Michigan Science Matters Network eBlast. Check it out at:

http://www.msta-mich.org/educator-support/84-science-matters/256-science-matters-e-blast-january-24-2013

From the Twitterverse:

#mschat every Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Resources:

http://thisishangingrockcomics.tumblr.com/post/42546243887/actual-diary-entry-from-when-i-was-in-5th-grade-oh

Copy Right Poster

http://edudemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/teachers-copyright.jpg

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

A Cleaner Internet

We make iPhone, iPod and iPad apps as well as browser extensions that declutter the video viewing experience.

http://clea.nr/

Web Spotlight:

Killing Lincoln

http://killinglincolnconspiracy.com/

Dio

Make your own space.

https://www.dio.com/

News:

Disease and sleep: Recent studies find new links