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Lunch on the island at @costapalmbeach never disappoints. Falafel Bites + Hummus + Grilled Naan 🏝🇬🇷… #lunch #healthy #greek #palmbeach #supportlocal #photography #foodblogger #food #favorite #foodgasm #foodstagram #foodblog #foodpics #instafood #instagood #tasty #hungry #nomnom #photooftheday #foodphotography #foodstyling #picoftheday #instadaily #awesome #yummy #delicious #igdaily (at Palm Beach, Florida)

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june 24, 2017 - advice for younger students

#ssn june challenge: week 2, day 6

in my 19 years of existence, i’ve learned quite a few things while in school. i still have two more years to go (and possibly more, if i decide to go to graduate school), but please don’t make the same mistakes as i did. without further ado, here are my tips for you!

academic advice:

keep up your grades, and continue being involved in your school and your community. it’s important to be well-rounded!

even if you feel like you’re good at remembering things, it’s good to write down everything that you need to do every day (and it’s also very satisfying to cross off each task as you go, hehe).

speaking of writing things down, it’s also good to write down everything that’s due in the quarter/semester. grab that syllabus and write down all the due dates into your planner/calendar/bujo! this also allows you to plan ahead so that you can keep track of what’s due in the next few days and what’s to come in the future weeks and months.

don’t be afraid to ask your teachers/professors for help! they want you to succeed!

don’t procrastinate on writing papers! work on a little every day, even if you only end up writing half a page for one day. progress is progress, and you’ll save yourself from stressing out the day before the paper is due.

when you take notes, make sure that they’re actually meaningful and that they make sense to you. don’t take notes just for the sake of taking notes or just because you’re required to do so.

when you’re studying, no matter what study method you’re using, the key thing to remember is that although many tests and exams are about retrieval and jogging your memory, you need to be able to actually understand what you’ve studied and learned. once you understand something, everything else becomes a lot easier. take matters into your own hands and make the most of it.

SCHOLARSHIPS! APPLY FOR THEM! WINNING FREE MONEY IS GREAT! THEY’LL HELP YOU A LOT WHEN IT COMES TO PAYING FOR YOUR COLLEGE TUITION LATER ON! ^_^

here are some more tips if you’re an incoming high school senior!

here are some more tips if you plan on majoring in music in college/university!

general life advice:

friendly competition is nice every now and then, but please don’t go as far as always comparing yourself to other students.

it’s okay to eat lunch by yourself sometimes.

time management is key, and knowing your priorities is important. 

remember to take breaks! you may think that you’re able to plow through 4 hours of studying, but honestly, you’re likely to lose focus partway through. let yourself rest for a few minutes before getting back to work. of course, you can reward yourself once you’re all done! :)

for college/university: don’t feel pressured to join a fraternity or a sorority to make friends and have fun. greek life isn’t for everyone. there are plenty of other ways to network!

don’t be afraid to sit in the front of the class, especially if you’re short like me, lol.

don’t stress/bum yourself out over things. the small stuff matters, but don’t sweat the small stuff too much. whatever happens, happens. life goes on.

as many people have said several times in the past, YOUR GRADES AND YOUR GPA DON’T DEFINE YOU.

coffee doesn’t always have to be the instant solution to staying awake and focused. chew some gum. eat a snack. get up from your desk and walk around for a bit, then sit back down and continue working. drink some cold water. there are a bunch of ways to keep your energy going!

eat all your meals. take your meds. drink plenty of water. get enough sleep. clean yourself. you and your personal health (this includes your mental health, too!) come first. please take care of yourself. <3

that’s about it! i hope these tips help you, and if they don’t…well, at least i can say that i tried. feel free to message me any time if you’d like more tips/advice, and i’d be happy to help. hope you’re all having a wonderful day/night! good luck, and keep on keepin’ on!

until next time, katrina

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Sushi Burgers

Food mashups are right up there with music mashups as our favorite kinds of mashups. In the past, we’ve brought you things like the egg waffle cone. Now, meet your new best friend, the sushi burger. The concept behind it is a pretty simple one: You take rice as the bun and put sushi quality fish or other ingredients where the burger meat goes. But the execution is finger-kissing good. Sushi burgers are all over Instagram. Look at them. (Source)

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Brooke Hill | a graduate Art student who uses her talent to create awareness for human traffcking!

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8 Earth years are roughly equal to 13 Venus years, meaning the two planets approximately trace out this pattern with amazing symmetry as they orbit the Sun.

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Winners and Honorable Mentions of the 2017 National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year

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Kinetic Artist: full time band director has taken his hobby of tinkering with tin to create 3D art 

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Don’t let society put you in a box. 

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vegannomadchick: We found a little Asian market near our flat…

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Photo

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Top 10 Most Uncomfortable Physics Facts

While physics can show us amazing things about our universe, it doesn’t always agree with how we think things should work. Sometimes, physics can be very counter-intuitive, and often unsettling. So, here’s my list of physics facts that can be a bit unnerving.

10: Weight doesn’t matter

If it wasn’t for air resistance, everything would fall at exactly the same speed. If you let go of a hammer and a feather from the same height at the same time on the Moon, they would hit the ground simultaneously. 

9: Gyroscopic precession

It doesn’t matter how much you know about physics; gyroscopes are weird. The way they seem to defy gravity makes you rethink everything you know about physics, despite being fairly simple toys. Still, it’s all just Newton’s laws of motion.

8: Neutrinos and dark matter

We like to think that we can interact with most of the world around us, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Neutrinos and dark matter are passing through your body right now, as if you weren’t even there. The fact that 65 billion neutrinos pass through each square centimeter of your body every second is weird enough, who knows what we’ll learn about dark matter.

7: Photons are particles

Light travels like a wave, but can only interact like a particle. It can interfere and have a frequency, but it can only take and give energy in discrete quantities. It behaves like nothing else in our macroscopic world, and can be very difficult to imagine.

6: Electrons are waves

We’ve established how photons act like waves and particles, but surely massive particles act normally. Nope! Even electrons have wave-like properties. In fact, everything acts like a wave! Except these waves come in discrete quantities, which we’ll call particles. This won’t get confusing.

5: E=mc^2

Einstein’s most famous contribution to physics states that matter is simply another form of energy, which has very profound consequences. A wound-up Jack-in-a-box would weigh ever so slightly more than a released Jack-in-a-box, due to the potential energy stored within.

4: Time is relative

The core of special relativity states that time passes differently for different observers. If you took a trip to Alpha Centauri at 99% the speed of light, everyone on Earth would see the trip take 4.4 years, while you would only experience 7.5 months. Time travel is real!

3: The (not so empty) vacuum

Something can be created from nothing, as long as it goes right back to being nothing quickly. In seemingly empty space, particles pop in and out of existence all the time as a result of the uncertainty principle. Not to mention, space is inflating at an accelerated rate due to “dark energy”. To the vacuum, the law of conservation of energy is more of a suggestion.

2: c is the fastest speed

Another important point in special relativity is that nothing could ever go faster than light. This doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, but the math doesn’t lie. To even get something with mass to travel at the speed of light would require infinite energy. Even if you somehow get around this, there are just too many mathematical problems with superluminal travel. Like it or not, the universe has a speed limit.

1: The cat is dead and alive

How could it not be this? The nature of quantum mechanics allows for objects to take on two seemingly contradictory states in a ‘superposition’. An electron can be in two places at once, or in a more extreme example, a cat can be both dead and alive. Of course, this weird property goes away once someone makes an observation. It’s as if there are tiny physics trolls messing with nature whenever we’re not looking.

Of course, there’s plenty more unsettling physics facts, like the space-bending nature of general relativity, or the “spooky action at a distance” that is quantum entanglement, but these are my top 10. I’d like to hear any unsettling physics facts you think I’ve missed, though!

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Beautiful purple and blue boulder opal and opalized wood. (Source)

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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN VENEZUELA? // long post, but worth the read.

So, it’s official. The Constituent was approved. In the past 18 years, aka since Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela, the government has altered election results to their benefit so it really isn’t strange to us that they would do it this time. However, we didn’t think they would be so shameless as to alter them this much. According to Tibisay Lucena (President of the Electoral Power) there was a total of 8.089.320 votes in favor of this Constituent, and these numbers simply don’t add. This past 16th of July a referendum was held where voters would have to answer to 3 questions about whether or not they agreed to move forward with the Constituent; the results? 6.492.381 votes made in Venezuela and 693.789 votes outside the country, meaning a total of 7.186.170 against the Constituent. While these two results add a total of 15.275.490 votes that fit under the 19.805.002 of venezuelans summoned to vote, here’s why yesterday’s number makes no sense:

 8.191.132 votes in favor of Hugo Chávez (Presidential elections of 2012). - While these numbers were most certainly altered, it’s no lie that at the time Chávez had a huge group of supporters, called Chavistas.

7.505.338 votes in favor of Nicolás Maduro (Presidential elections of 2013). - These elections were made because of the recent death of Chávez, who knew he didn’t have much time left so he decided to brainwash all of his supporters to think Maduro was the best option for president. May I add, Nicolás Maduro doesn’t have any kind of educational degree, he literally was a bus driver before becoming president. Totally unqualified man. All his votes were bought or made up.

5.599.025 votes in favor of the PSUV (Parliamentary elections of 2015) - PSUV stands for Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela and would roughly translate to “United Socialist Party of Venezuela“, I think. These elections were a big deal to the oposition (represented by the MUD aka “Democratic Unity Roundtable”), because we owned the National Assembly with 112 deputies (67%) and 7.707.422 votes (56,2% of the total votes)

I think I’ve made my point as to why yesterday’s result of 8.089.320 votes is nothing but blatant lies, except that’s not all! Turns out that, in these past days between the referendum (July 16) and yesterday (July 30), any person making a buy that required a fingerprint scan or using a “carnet de la patria” (an id recently made to “ease the access to social programs”) would count as a vote in favor of the Constituent. This government spends so much time looking for ways to stay in power because they know that the majority of the country is against them, and obviously they won’t acknowledge that they’re not as “loved” as they used to be, or else they wouldn’t ignore the protests that have been going on for the past 121 days with at least 128 confirmed deaths (17 of them happened only yesterday).

Now I’m going to explain why this Constituent being approved is literally confirming we’re living under a dictatorship.

Venezuela becomes a communal state.

Private enterprise will be eliminated.

All private sector employees become public employees.

The right to private education will be eliminated. From preschool to universitary sector, including adoctrinamiento político on all levels of education.

Means of social communication will be at the service of communist power.

University autonomy will be eliminated.

Municipalities will be eliminated.

The president of the republic is the only one able to choose governors and mayors, without taking into account the opinion of the people.

The presidential term will last between 20 and 30 years, with chance of indefinite reelection, applicable to the current president.

The movement of citizens inside of the country will be limited, meaning you’ll need an official permit to travel around Venezuela.

International departures will be limited, meaning you’ll need an official permit to get out of the country.

All powers, public and private, disappear.

The armed force disappears, becoming fighting bodies integrated into the government’s party.

All political parties will be eliminated.

The right to protest will be eliminated.

Opposing or thinking differently than the government will be a crime of betrayal to the motherland, meaning freedom of speech disappears.

Article 350 of the actual Constitution, that establishes you can disown the authority when the Constitution is violated, will be eliminated.

Authorities can break into your house without a warrant.

People’s houses can’t be sold or inherited, becoming propiety of the state.

Life guarantee will be restricted, the regime has now custody of people’s lives.

This is really serious, and I wish more people were talking about it because what I’m doing right now will be literally considered a crime as soon as the National Constituent Assembly enters in action. I know you guys may think that reblogging, retweeteting and regraming some posts is not gonna help us, but trust me, they will. The government is putting up an act of “everything’s fine, we’re the same 1st world country we were +20 years ago” and we’re not. We’re being killed, tortured, starved, lied to and so much more horrifying things are being done to and against us. Let the world know what’s really happening in Venezuela, and who’s the real villain in the story.

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The Cave Of The Three Bridges

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Five Eclipses in NASA History

On Monday, August 21, 2017, people in North America will have the chance to see an eclipse of the Sun. Anyone within the path of totality may see one of nature’s most awe-inspiring sights – a total solar eclipse. 

Along this path, the Moon will completely cover the Sun, revealing the Sun’s tenuous atmosphere, the corona. The path of totality will stretch from Salem, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina. Observers outside this path will still see a partial solar eclipse, where the Moon covers part of the Sun’s disk. Remember: you can never look at the Sun directly, and an eclipse is no exception – be sure to use a solar filter or indirect viewing method to watch partial phases of the eclipse.

Total solar eclipses are a rare chance to study the Sun and Earth in unique ways. During the total eclipse, scientists can observe the faintest regions of the Sun, as well as study the Sun’s effects on Earth’s upper atmosphere. We’ve been using eclipses to learn more about our solar system for more than 50 years. Let’s take a look back at five notable eclipses of the past five decades.

May 30, 1965

A total eclipse crossed the Pacific Ocean on May 30, 1965, starting near the northern tip of New Zealand and ending in Peru. Totality – when the Moon blocks all of the Sun’s face – lasted for 5 minutes and 15 seconds at peak, making this the 3rd-longest solar eclipse totality in the 20th century. Mexico and parts of the Southwestern United States saw a partial solar eclipse, meaning the Moon only blocked part of the Sun. We sent scientists to the path of totality, stationing researchers on South Pacific islands to study the response of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere to the eclipse. 

Additionally, our high-flying jets, scientific balloons, and sounding rockets – suborbital research rockets that fly and collect data for only a few minutes – recorded data in different parts of the atmosphere. A Convair 990 research jet chased the Moon’s shadow as it crossed Earth’s surface, extending totality up to more than nine minutes, and giving scientists aboard more time to collect data. A NASA-funded team of researchers will use the same tactic with two jets to extend totality to more than 7 minutes on Aug. 21, 2017, up from the 2 minutes and 40 seconds observable on the ground. 

March 7, 1970

The total solar eclipse of March 7, 1970, was visible in North America and the northwestern part of South America, with totality stretching to 3 minutes and 28 seconds at maximum. This was the first time a total eclipse in the United States passed over a permanent rocket launch facility – NASA’s Wallops Station (now Wallops Flight Facility) on the coast of Virginia. This eclipse offered scientists from NASA, four universities and seven other research organizations a unique way to conduct meteorology, ionospheric and solar physics experiments using 32 sounding rockets. 

Also during this eclipse, the Space Electric Propulsion Test, or SERT, mission temporarily shut down because of the lack of sunlight. The experimental spacecraft was unable to restart for two days.

July 10, 1972

Two years later, North America saw another total solar eclipse. This time, totality lasted 2 minutes and 36 seconds at the longest. A pair of scientists from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, traveled to the Canadian tundra to study the eclipse – specifically, a phenomenon called shadow bands. These are among the most ephemeral phenomena that observers see during the few minutes before and after a total solar eclipse. They appear as a multitude of faint rapidly moving bands that can be seen against a white background, such as a large piece of paper on the ground. 

While the details of what causes the bands are not completely understood, the simplest explanation is that they arise from atmospheric turbulence. When light rays pass through eddies in the atmosphere, they are refracted, creating shadow bands.

February 26, 1979

The last total solar eclipse of the 20th century in the contiguous United States was in early 1979. Totality lasted for a maximum of 2 minutes 49 seconds, and the total eclipse was visible on a narrow path stretching from the Pacific Northwest to Greenland. Agencies from Canada and the United States – including NASA – joined forces to build a sounding rocket program to study the atmosphere and ionosphere during the eclipse by observing particles on the edge of space as the Sun’s radiation was suddenly blocked.

July 31, 1981

The USSR got a great view of the Moon passing in front of the Sun in the summer of 1981, with totality lasting just over 2 minutes at maximum. Our scientists partnered with Hawaiian and British researchers to study the Sun’s atmosphere – specifically, a relatively thin region called the chromosphere, which is sandwiched between the Sun’s visible surface and the corona – using an infrared telescope aboard the Kuiper Airborne Observatory. The chromosphere appears as the red rim of the solar disk during a total solar eclipse, whereas the corona has no discernible color to the naked eye.

Watch an Eclipse: August 21, 2017 

On August 21, a total solar eclipse will cross the continental United States from coast to coast for the first time in 99 years, and you can watch.

If skies are clear, people in North America will be able to see a partial or total solar eclipse. Find out what the eclipse will look like in your area, then make sure you have a safe method to watch – like solar viewing glasses or a pinhole projector – and head outside. 

You can also tune into nasa.gov/eclipselive throughout the day on Aug. 21 to see the eclipse like you’ve never seen it before – including a NASA TV show, views from our spacecraft, aircraft, and more than 50 high-altitude balloons.

Get all your eclipse information at https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/, and follow along with @NASASun on Twitter and NASA Sun Science on Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

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