Geocaching, Roses, Sparks, and Green Screens!

The Crew and I took another adventure the other day.  First, we went to the Children’s Museum in West Hartford.  The kids had a great time, got to pet a skink, fell in love with turtles, and had to be dragged out of the place after almost 3 hours.  A few pics…

Here is The Crew listening to the Skink demonstration. Crew is in lower part of picture. Hard to keep Little Buddy involved as he was obsessed with a "bunny rabbit" display that was close by.

A terrible picture of Little Buddy playing mad scientist with his own "Jacob's Ladder". I tried to get him to give a maniacal laugh but to no avail.

The Crew in the live weather studio set up warning us of a coming blizzard. The director (Little Buddy) had a bit of trouble keeping out of the shot. Please notice The Actress fully into character while The Analyst is far busier trying to figure out how all this works.

And of course when asked later what the best part of the museum was, I got "Lunch!"...typical.

After the museum we headed over to a local geocache at Elizabeth Park in Hartford.  What a beautiful place.  I had stopped by there one morning back in the winter before ARC class and had made a mental note to come back in the summer.  I was psyched that we had the chance and could do a bit of geocaching in the process.  Apparently the park is the former property of a well to do industrialist and statesman Charles Pond who left the park to the City of Hartford.  It was named after his wife Elizabeth (history of Elizabeth Park).

The centerpiece of a park is a huge rose garden with roses climbing trellises and arbors all around.  On this day it was incredible – you could smell the roses from about 50 yards away.  It was one of those things that every once in awhile makes you wish you lived in (or close to) a city – cities so often have such wonderful public places that you just don’t get in suburbia.  There is something to be said for TND! But I digress…

We scored the geocache, wonderful cache too with a nice story about how it was the spot where the cacher(?) proposed to his wife, etc.  A few pics…

The Crew running into the rose garden. Little Buddy trying to keep up. Beautiful place!

A rose. I forgot to write down what kind!

Running underneath the arbors towards the house in the middle of the garden!

Takin' a break in the middle. Chance to catch breath and for Little Buddy to do his patented "suck thumb and curl hair" move.

Found the cache! Wonderful story inside. Cool hiding spot in a sea of rhododendrons. Avoided all "Muggles" on the way...

 A Bit About Jacob’s Ladder…

It wasn’t until writing this post I ever knew the electrical arc b/w two rod device you always see in campy sci-fi pics was called a “Jacob’s Ladder”.  Now this isn’t to be confused with the Biblical Jacob’s Ladder from the book of Genesis where Jacob sees a vision of angels going up and down stairs to heaven and foretelling the expansion of the Jewish tribe.  Nor should it be confused with the most excellent Huey Lewis song.  Nor should it be confused with another rather disturbing definition I found online that we won’t talk about in a family friendly blog (jeez the internet is weird sometimes).

Cool time lapse photo of a Jacob's Ladder from Wikipedia

This Jacob’s Ladder is created by the electrical current run through two rods that are close together at the base and slowly diverge as the rise.  Essentially, the two rods hold a voltage difference that exceeds the “breakdown voltage” of the air between them (for air around 30kV/cm).  The atoms in the air between the rods ionize (the voltage difference provides enough energy for electrons to “break free” and move between the molecules in air to create ions), their electrical resistance drops accordingly and they for a moment become an electrical conductor…a wire made out of air if you will.  This creates heat, which causes the air to rise and the arc travels up between the two rods until the separation is too great to maintain this ionization.

It is the same way in which lightening works, just instead of the voltage differential occurring between the ground and a storm cloud, it is between the two rods.

It is worth noting too that Jacob’s Ladder indoors can actually pose some health risks, as the ionization of the air creates free radicals which can be damaging to the mucous membranes of folks nearby.  Little Buddy’s was safely in a glass case.

A Bit About Green Screens…

So in the museum The Crew got to play weatherman in a “studio” provided by NBC 30.  They got to stand in front of a green screen and watch themselves give a weather report on the monitors.  They thought it was great fun.  As I said The Actress loved being on TV…The Analyst though was more curious about how it all worked though.  I tried to give a “I’m a dad – I know everything” kind of answer, but I really didn’t know.  So I looked it up…

The “green screen”, or by the technical term Chromakey is accomplished by the process of filming a subject in front of a specific color (green or blue – usually chosen because they are far from the dominant colors for skin tone and the camera is very sensitive to them) and then replacing that specific color with the image or video you want.  In digital television, it is as simple as at each pixel point, if the color on the screen matches the specific color designated, that point is replaced with the appropriate point for the image you want to display instead.  Very cool!

A few fun facts learned along the way…

• Red is the dominant color in skin tone.  I wonder if someone who is sick or “green with envy” disappears in front of a green screen – haha!
• When the subject material is green dominant (e.g. plants, etc.), they use a blue screen instead of green.
• The most important factor is the spectrum (ROYGBIV) b/w the subject and the key color.  Clothes for weather folks are carefully chosen accordingly.
• You can find all kinds of fun stuff about Chroma Key here.

‘Til Later,

Backyard Biologist

Our First Geocache!

The Actress and The Analyst with their first Geocache!

We have talked about going Geocaching for a long time and up until now I think the kids were probably a bit too young for it (the patience, the hike at times, etc.) but on a recent trip out to the summer place we finally went in earnest and had success on our first trip out!  It was very fun and is literally like real life treasure hunts for kids.  They are still a bit too young to truly understand what the GPS coordinates mean and how to operate the GPS receiver (BTW, I just used a free app downloaded onto the Blackberry – “Northstar” I think?) but they still got very into it and were so excited once we found our cache.  We found it in Montauk at the “Teddy Bear’s State Park” (hint, hint).  Nicely hidden, fun swag and good log.  Very nicely maintained for our first find.  I think we took a plastic figure and left a penny (all we had – sorry! – better planning next time).

For those of you not familiar with Geocaching, essentially it is where people have placed small treasure “caches” at specific GPS coordinates all around the world.  After looking up the coordinates on the website (we use Geocaching.com), you use your GPS receiver to go to those coordinates and look for the cache.  Once find, you customarily sign the log and if you want take a token item and leave a token item in the cache.  Again for kids it is a lot like treasure hunting and you can play up the secrete society aspect (non geocachers are called “Muggles” as a nod to Harry Potter, etc.).

We had a great time and I think the kids are hooked.  We even decided on a club name for us (GeoJedis – a nod to The Analyst’s obsession with all things Star Wars).

GPS

Chance to sneak in some science.  After our first geocache find I wanted to learn a little about GPS to explain it to the team.  I found a good tutorial on How Stuff Works (How GPS Receivers Work).  In a nut shell, your GPS device uses the time lag between a semi-random code sent out from the device and from 1 of 24 GPS satellites circling the earth to determine the distance from that satellite to your receiver.  By doing the same thing with 3 other satellites it can determine your exact position using a process of trilateralation.  Here is a good image of how trilateralation works (simple 2D version):

A good textual explanation is given at the How Stuff Works site and has a decent Flash gallery on how it translates to a 3D version in real life.  After correcting for errors using a regional GPS receiver of known location, the devices can get pretty accurate (maybe ~ 20′) to where exactly you are.