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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.
This Is Your Brain on Summer
Good article on the potential effects of summer vacation on academic achievement. The best part of the article is the idea that done correctly, school during the summer can be a fun and engaging experience!
The Backyard Biologist! 