Hosenfeld Happenings

A few weeks ago, my mom recommended a movie that she predicted I’d “have to blog about.” Well, she was right.

You HAVE to watch “The Cove.” It’s a documentary describing the treatment of dolphins in a small town in Japan. In this town, dolphins are forced into a cove where dolphin trainers from around the world select those dolphins that they want to purchase for their shows. Those dolphins that aren’t selected are taken to a secret cove and slaughtered. The individuals in the documentary make it their mission to find out exactly what happens in this cove. The truth is chilling. Not only how the dolphins are killed, but what happens to their meat is absolutely unbelievable.

“The Cove” is available at Redbox. Rent it. It’s short, but incredibly compelling. If the trailer below doesn’t work, click here:

I put a heat resistant silicone spatula to the test, and it failed! Although perhaps the test was a little unfair.

Yesterday afternoon I put a tea kettle on the stove for some mint tea, and left the room. After a minute or two, I detected a slight food smell, but figured that i was just smelling some leftover food on the burner. Probably five minutes later I noticed the smell getting stronger, and then realized how weird it was that I hadn’t heard the tea kettle whistle, and hurried out of the room. As soon as I entered the hallway, I saw thick black smoke pouring out of the kitchen. As I rushed in, I was greeted by flames from two fires about 8 inches high coming from the top of the stove.

This was all happening because I had turned the wrong knob on the stove, and heated up the front burner instead of the back burner. On the front burner was a frying pan with a silicone spatula inside. As the pan heated up, the spatula began to melt. The handle broke off and landed on the exposed part of the burner, and caught on fire. Meanwhile, the part of the spatula inside the pan heated above 500 degrees (apparently the temperature to which silicone is heat resistant) and also caught on fire. I grabbed the pan, threw it outside, and then put out the second fire from the spatula on the burner. I then spent the next hour airing out the house (not so comfortable when it’s 30 degrees out) and cleaning up the black ash covering every possible surface.

Let’s hope I learned my lessson!!

(that spatula was yellow in a previous life.)

Inspired yet again by a story heard on NPR, we studied snowflake formation for science Sunday. It all began with this video:

After learning about snowflake formation we discussed the differneces between snow and ice. Then we went on a snowflake safari of our own. Unfortunately, it hasn’t snow in forever, and the snow in the backyard was pretty boring. Still, I got out my official snow magnifying glass and snowcard, and we looked at the snow crystals on the ground. Like we’d imagined, not too excited.  However, I promised my scientists that the next time it snowed, they could come over and we’d look at some real snowflakes.  With the way things are lining up, it looks like that could be as early as Monday! Hooray!!

Here’s a cool website about snowflakes that you can explore. There is even an experiment where you make your own snowflakes!

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/

Jared, Caitlin, James, Kevin, and I headed to Silverton and Ouray, colorado for a quick weekend getaway. It is a trip Jared and I have taken every year but last since we met. It started out as a huge group going ice climbing, but after we discovered Silverton, it sort of morphed into a skiing/ice climbing trip.

We headed out New Years Eve. My parents were really exciting about us going ice climbing after hearing Casey’s story of climbing that same day. (read it here. It’s INSANE!!!!)

We skied on Friday at Silverton, a resort in southwestern Colorado. It is seriously the coolest resort ever. There is only one rickety lift, that takes you 2000 vertical feet; from about 10000 to 12,000 feet. From the top of the lift, there’s a 1,000 vertical foot hike to the most amazing run ever. With so much hiking, you don’t get as many runs in. But, the runs you do get are amazing!!

Here is the lung-burning hike:

Caitlin, Kevin, and me at the top of the hike:

Jared on the way up:

The snow was good, but not especially deep. In fact, we may have had to forge a river or two:

it was really steep.

the best run there. worth the insane hike!

this bus picks you up at the end of each run and takes you back to the base

After a day at Silverton, we headed to Ouray for ice climbing. It was James and Kevin’s first time, and they did great!

Jared

Why the dark picture? Because this is me belaying Caitlin up on our last climb of the day. It was crazy! I was dark by the time she got to the hardest part of the climb, and the ice had gotten cold enough that it was really brittle, and would just break off every time she tried to get her tool in. It was a little scary. I didn’t know how she’d get up! Luckily, she’s amazing, and climbed in the pitch black!

For the first Sunday in a very long time, I didn’t have to go to work. It was weird.But great, because I was able to do all the things I love to do on Sunday; go to church, do Science Sunday, and eat a yummy dinner.

For Science Sunday, we learned about sound.

To begin, we discussed how sound moves through the air in waves; short, skinny waves make high sounds, and long, fat waves make lower sounds. We learned how everything makes sound by vibrating. We make sound when our vocal chords vibrate. To visualize this, we watched this You Tube video of vibrating vocal chords. Cool, and kinda gross at the same time:

We then learned how instruments make sound by plucking the strings of Jared’s guitar. We experimented by making the strings longer and shorter by putting our fingers different places on the string, and found that shorter strings make higher sounds than longer strings.

We talked about the speed of sound, and learned that planes can move faster than the speed of sound.

From there, we somehow moved onto the speed of light. We talked about how the light from the stars that we see is actually light that was emitted millions of years ago, and if a star went out, we probably wouldn’t know it in our lifetime. Chandler then wondered that if the sun is a star,  if it went out, how long it would take to realize it on earth. We found the distance from the earth to the sun (1.496 x 10¹¹ m) and the speed of light (2.99 x 10⁸ m/s). By dividing the speed of light by the distance from the earth to the sun, we calculated that if the sun went dark, it would take 8 minutes for those of us on earth to realize it.

It was a great discussion, and really fun watch how excited the kids were to understand things they’d always known in a whole new way.

this happened:

and i’ve been battling it ever since.

The really depressing thing though, is that it happened while snowboarding at Snowbird, on a run that looks like it won’t be open for a LONG time, with the amount of snow we don’t have! This past storm was GREAT, with around 30″ at the Bird. But honestly, we need at least 3 more of those this week!!

Last week we visited one of my very favorite places on earth:
Trestles.
Ahhhhh.
See:

(this is from our trip in August. I wish it had been this sunny!)

Amazing waves, beautiful beach, small crowds. Definitely NOT your typical California wave!

The Trestles area is so amazing. It’s a 3000 acre wild wetland area.  The trail down is about 1.5 miles, and by the time you get to the beach, it feels like you’re hundreds of miles away from the city.

We stayed away from there for a long time, because we’d heard horror stories about how territorial the surfers there are. I had a snowboarding friend who said he’d been beaten up after surfing there.  That’s not what I’ve found though. Everybody I’ve met there has been so friendly! We love the place so much, and can’t stay away for long. So, we headed down for a quick little visit. Jared picked me up at work after I’d been working all night long.

Here I am recovering on the beach after my string of midnight shifts:

Our first two days of surfing were amazing.  Unfortunately a huge storm hit on Monday, so the waves were pretty crappy Monday and Tuesday. We still made an attempt to get out, but the conditions were pretty crazy.

We stayed the weekend with Jared’s grandparents who live in Dana Point, and celebrated both of their birthdays.  We really enjoyed the time we spent talking. They have some pretty crazy stories.

Can’t wait to go back!

I hear the GREATEST story on NPR driving to work last week. European scientists wanted to figure out how desert ants find thier way around. Typically ants use scent trails to navigate, but that doesn’t work in the desert, since the sand surface is always moving. So, scientists hypothesized that ants count how many steps they take one direction, and then reverse that to get back home. They came up with a simple, but revealing experiment to test this. I won’t ruin the outcome of the experiment, because it’s so fascinating. We watched the cartoon video (which you HAVE to watch), and then discussed their experiment. It was a fun, easy, and very informative lesson.

So, here’s the ant video:

(if the video doesn’t work, the link to the page it’s on is below)



and here’s a link to the npr story. I recommend listening to the audio story as well. (you can do that by clicking the speaker picture at the top.) They’re both great:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120587095

and totally unrelated, another story done by the same guy, about the note b flat. Click the “bflat” link below to hear it. This may be a future science sunday……

bflat
and to read the bflat story, go here:
b flat story

Over the weekend Jared and I headed down to Goosberry Mesa, near St. George,  to do some mountain biking. I’ve heard rumors of how amazing Gooseberry is for a long time, so we decided to check it out. I did the forecast Wednesday, and it looked a little questionable for the weekend. However, St. George looked like it would escape most of the rain, so we figured we’d be safe.

We drove down Thursday night. It was raining on and off most of the way down. As we were passing Cedar City, the rain became really intense. Jared questioned my forecast, but I told him once we lost some elevation, the rain would lighten up. By the time we arrived in Hurricane, the rain had lightened up. But, as soon as we turned onto hwy 59 up to Gooseberry, a total downpour had begun. I assured Jared that it was temporary, and we wouldn’t have to worry about sleeping in the rain. I gave us a 30 percent chance of getting really wet.

So, we arrive at the top of the mesa. In a total downpour. At this point, I’ve decided to deny that it’s raining, and have refused to recognize all of that wet stuff turning the road into a river. But, enough about my amazing forecasting skills.

We had borrowed a tent from my parents, since we lost our own to a bear last July. I had never set it up before, but my dad had given me a good demo, and I figured we’d be fine. One problem. Well, actually two. First, the tent has to be staked down really well in order to stay standing. We quickly realize after our first attempt that the mesa has a solid layer of rock about 4 inches beneath the sand. So, we throw the soaking wet and muddy tent in the car, and search for another site. We find one further from the cliffs, where the rock layer is softer, and we can drive the stakes through. By this time it’s about 1 am, and we’re both exhausted. So, we get all the stakes in the ground, connect all the poles, and try to stand the tent up. Second problem: the tent won’t stay standing unless one of us is holding the pole up. We try over and over, but nothing will work. I offer to let Jared hold the pole up for me all night, but for some reason he’s not very interested. We give up, and sleep in the back of my car while all of our stuff gets soaking wet. Which is weird, because it definitely wasn’t raining. However, as we’re unloading all of our stuff to make room to sleep, (we had an unbelievable amount of crap) I notice my car lights dimming. I jump in the front and turn the key, but the engine won’t start. We killed the battery. And we’re in the middle of nowhere. And we haven’t seen a soul. Who else is stupid enough to camp out and go mountain biking in the “rain?” With nothing else to do, we go to bed.

We wake up the next morning, and the rain is coming down. Direct quote from Jared: “Nice 30 percent chance of rain.”

We ride our bikes around the muddy mesa in search of human beings, and finally find a few guys camped out. However, they don’t have jumper cables. So, we decide to try and push-start the car, and discover  that it is an impossible task in the rain. Jared hangs out on the main road hoping somebody would drive by, while I call a towing company, totally excited to spend my life’s savings to get the car jumped. Finally people start driving by, and eventually we find somebody who has jumper cables.  Seriously, it took 10 minutes of charging for our battery to start. It was D-E-A-D.

After making sure our battery was good, we spent the rest of the day biking. It was definitely some of the best mountain biking I’ve ever done. It’s a mixture of single track and slick rock, and parts of the ride follow the edge of the mesa that drops about 1000 feet. Directly north of Goosberry is Zion N.P, and there are incredible views of the park. There are miles and miles of trails, and you can combine them to do a million different rides. Wow. It more than made up for the fiasco of the previous night.

I must admit though, that we wussed out stayed in a hotel the next night. Jared’s parents were on their way down to Death Valley, so we stayed in Hurricane, and hiked Angel’s Landing the next day.

Definitely a fun, unforgettable weekend, with at least two morals:
1. Never trust a meteorologist (especially me)
2. Car batteries don’t last forever
3. The wise man’s house was definitely not a springbar tent; he never could’ve lived on a rock.

To make this post even longer, here are some pictures from the weekend:

all the stuff we had to move to sleep in the car:

push-starting a car in the mud is not easy:

miles and miles of slickrock: (that’s Zion in the background)

mountain biking:

more mountain biking:

view from the trail:

Zion at sunset:

hiking up Angels’ Landing:

1200 feet up:

Today we combined two awesome things for science sunday; chocolate, and science! We ate chocolate and learned about how enzymes in our saliva break down food. We had three bowls of chocolate chips: frozen, refrigerated, and room temperature. We guessed how long each would take to dissolve in three different ways: just sitting in our mouths, rubbing our tonuges against the chips, and then chewing them. Any excuse to eat chocolate!!

crappy cell phone pics:

(not sure what I’m looking at)