Announcing NASA's Cassini Scientist for a Day 2012 Essay Contest for Grade 5-12 Students

Announcing NASA's 2012 Edition of the Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest

The Cassini spacecraft launched in October 1997 and has been orbiting Saturn since 2004.

The essay contest is open to students in grades 5-12.  Essays must be under 500 words.  

There are three essay topics to choose from: 

1.  Saturn's small shepherd moon, Pan

2.  Saturn's F Ring

3.  Saturn

Students choose one of these topics and write an essay about why they think this image should be taken by the Cassini spacecraft.  What questions do they hope will be answered by taking this picture?

The essay contest meets U.S. National Science and Language Arts Standards.

For contest rules, videos about each essay topic, a downloadable contest flyer, frequently asked questions, and more information, visit:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/scientistforaday/

The contest deadline is Wednesday, October 24, 2012.  All essays must be submitted by the student's teacher.  If the essay contest is used as a class assignment, please send the top 3 essays from each class, along with a list of other students who wrote essays for the contest.

All students who write essays will receive a certificate of participation.  Winners and their classes will be invited to participate in a teleconference with Cassini scientists.  Winning essays will be posted on the Cassini website.

For questions about the contest, e-mail scientistforaday@jpl.nasa.gov

Good luck!

Best wishes,

The Cassini Outreach Team

scientistforaday@jpl.nasa.go

Free Heroin, And Other Ideas That Won't Get You Elected

Earlier this summer, NPR's Planet Money assembled five prominent economists from across the political spectrum and gave them a simple task: Identify major economic policies they could all stand behind. In this podcast, they talk to those economists again. Episode 402: Free Heroin, And Other Ideas That Won't Get You Elected This time, we hear a bunch of the ideas some of them liked but others shot down — including free heroin for addicts, and $2 trillion in new deficit spending on infrastructure projects. It's amazing to hear the economists clash over engineering, beginning at the 7m30s mark. ASME has identified roads and bridges that nationwide need repair or replacing, to the cost of $2 trillion. Robert Frank, professor of management and economics at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, is for government spending. Russ Roberts, George Mason University economics professor, is his ideological opponent. Not so fast, Russ says. You can't trust engineers to make a decision where they might make money. As the saying goes, the fix is in. What do you think?

i.am.mars: reach for the stars with will.i.am

Driven by curiosity, will.i.am took a lifelong fascination with science and the arts and transformed it into a piece of music that made history on Mars. It was the first song sent back to Earth from Mars via the Curiosity rover. His early exposure to STEM changed his life growing up in east Los Angeles. Join the Science Channel for the epic journey will.i.am took with NASA on I.AM.MARS: REACH FOR THE STARS. The show takes you through the entire creative process from writing the song, to recording, to delivery on Mars' Gale crater and back. Questions for Discussion with Students

• How do the Arts contribute a culture of creativity needed to solve engineering projects?
• By looking and listening to the people in the NASA control room, what does it take to work well in teams?

Symphony of Science - Our Biggest Challenge (Climate Change Music Video)

The Symphony of Science is a musical project by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.



A musical investigation into the causes and effects of global climate change and our opportunities to use science to offset it. Featuring Bill Nye, David Attenborough, Richard Alley and Isaac Asimov. "Our Biggest Challenge" is the 16th episode of the Symphony of Science series by melodysheep.

Visit http://symphonyofscience.com for more science remixes!

Model Bridge Design

The mission of GarrettsBridges.com is to provide Excellence in Education and Customer Service to help students of all ages learn about model bridges. Model Bridge Design is the place where model bridge builders of all ages come to learn. Glean valuable tips and tricks from award winning builders for designing and building model bridges of various kinds, including Balsa wood, Basswood, popsicle stick and toothpick bridges. Whether you are building for fun or competition, a weekend project or school assignment, you will find something you can use here.

Save the Date: Nov. 3 Engineering Family Fun Day

The fifth annual “Engineering Family Fun Day” is coming Saturday, November 3 at Dreher Park in West Palm Beach. The goal of the event is to educate the community on the opportunities available in engineering and inspire an interest in the areas of math and science in young students in Palm Beach County.

Sponsored by the non-profit educational and service organization, The Society of Women Engineers Southeast Florida Section, the intent is to increase the students’ as well as their parents’, teachers’, and counselors’ knowledge of engineering and other technical fields.

The EF2D event involves sponsored booths. Each sponsor presents a hands on engineering related activity by which the students, parents, and engineers can interact with each other. For example, the Bottle Rocket booth teaches students aerospace engineering and the Making Polymers booth involves chemistry. Last year, Seminole Ridge SECME students challenged children to learn the physics of projectiles by making a popfly launcher with paint stirrers, a PVC pipe coupler and a ping pong ball. The minicatapults were sponsored in part by Lowe's Home Improvement of Royal Palm Beach, store #0654.

This year, Seminole SECME will make magnetic field maps of Mars. Then the participants make "field detectors" from simple objects to predict the locations of the fields. The big idea of this demonstration is that the Sun and planets have different magnetic properties. Sunspots are related to magnetism on the sun. Earth has a strong simple magnetic field with two poles. But Mars has no magnetosphere! 
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/topnav/materials/listbytype/Solar_System_Magnetism.html
http://mgs-mager.gsfc.nasa.gov/kids/magfield.html

(Click on the first picture to flip through a photostream of 2011 EF2D)

Banner Brainstorm: THINK, ADAM!

The Creation of Adam is part of a painting by Michelangelo in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The Creation of Adam
Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564)

Banner Brainstorm

What's Up for September 2012 - Observe & "Wink" at the moon this month

Celebrate International Observe the Moon night on September 22, and honor the memory of Astronaut Neil Armstrong by looking up and winking at the moon this month.