Florida Discoveries 28: Pensacola MESS Hall

22. July 2012 · 5 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I could have sworn I had heard about the Pensacola MESS Hall from the Pensacola With Kids blog, but I can’t find the reference article.  Oh well.

Trust me when I say that I had first heard about it through Pensacola With Kids, but I can’t find the original review now.  But what I did find was this story in the Pensacola Digest that came out not long after the facility opened in June.

This facility currently is only scheduled to be open through the 3rd week of August (August 18th according to their Facebook page).

So what is the MESS Hall?  Well, for starters, MESS = Math, Engineering, Science and Stuff.  It’s a science center unlike anything I had ever seen.  And trust me, I have been to many many science museums and explorer-type centers in my days.

The MESS Hall is in downtown Pensacola just a block off Palafox Street near the center square.  After spending time here, the family can adjourn to a nice dinner nearby.

The MESS Hall has attempted to capture the feeling of a traditional mess hall, which is a military term for where servicemembers eat on the base or on their ships.  The kids will walk in (after paying the $5 per person admission), and are greeted with a open space with tables and assorted areas for free play with wind tunnels, marble run parts and pendulums.  The walls are covered in posters featuring optical illusions.

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Our Math-Magician!

05. May 2012 · Comments Off on Our Math-Magician! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

We couldn't be more proud!

This past week Jacob’s school had a competition for a program they’ve been doing all year: Powerhouse Math.

Strangely enough, I couldn’t find much about the program when I Googled it.  Just a blog post by someone else in my neighborhood whose son earned a medal last year. But based on what I had learned earlier this year, it’s a program that teachers may choose to perform…or not perform…with their students.  Jacob’s class opted into the program.  Based on some of the examples Jacob described to me, it seems to work with kids’ logic skills more than the traditional math curriculum.

I had signed up to be a parent volunteer for this program, but my time requirements conflicted with other obligations I had on base, so I sadly had to say “Sorry, I can’t assist.”

Jacob brought home a medal and a trophy yesterday!  He was on a team that took first place for all of the 3rd grade classes (that opted into the program) and he also took the individual first place prize!

Jacob wore the medal on the school bus home. I’m tickled that he did this with such pride, since in my day I’d have probably been given a wedgie or had a sign stuck to my back if I wore a big medal that read “Mathematics”.

A close up of the medal. Jacob wanted to point out to everyone that the calculator is showing Pi.

A Geeky Experiment: Converting Mowing the Huge Lawn into Mileage and Calories

09. September 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , ,

This is about 1/2 of the backyard in view here.  You can also see our backyard on our weather webcam here.  For some reason the homeowner removed every…single…tree…and…shrub from his lawn.  On Google maps you could see an area of pine trees in the middle of the backyard, but no longer.  More for me to mow.

I’d been wanting to do this for months, and it wasn’t till just before Labor Day that I finally did it!

I measured the distance covered mowing our big backyard.  I also measured the time and the calories expended doing it.  Remember, I’m a numbers girl!

It wasn’t hard — I guess anyone could do it with a pedometer, right?  But of course I had to get all techie!

We have an enormous lawn, and because we won’t be living here that long, we chose not to invest in a riding mower, and just tough out using our 11-year-old 21″ wide push-mower.  When we first moved here in the cooler season, this wasn’t so bad.  I didn’t have to mow at all for the first 3 months, and then it wasn’t often.

Note: Many of you know that I’m the one who mows the lawn in the family.  I don’t mind at all.  Until we moved into this particular house, doing this chore wasn’t a big deal.  In fact, if I mow on weekends, it’s a nice break from the kids!  Dave has horrible grass allergies, and I’d rather take on this chore than deal with his nose-blowing after he does it.

But by Memorial Day, in order to mulch the grass I was cutting (I can’t stand bagging/dumping grass), I had to mow no more than weekly, preferably every 5 days to minimize clumps of dead grass among the mulching.  It got really old really fast.  I need about 2 hours to do the entire lawn, but not while the sprinklers are running, or first thing in the morning when the lawn is covered with dew.  So I’d usually wait until as late in the evening as possible, and mow mow mow until I couldn’t walk in a straight line anymore because it was so hot.  And I’d still be soaked in sweat.

Between the sweating, sore arms and all the walking I was doing, I figured I’d regard this as a real workout.

There’s an app for that!

I attached my Nike+ sensor to my old running shoes that I wear to mow the lawn, fired up the Nike+ app on my iPhone and I got going with the lawn.  Here are the results:

Ignore the fact this is being called a “run”.  Obviously it isn’t, as seen by the 22:23/mile pace.  This is the front yard only.  It’s about 1/2 the size of the back.  The thin line is a micro-measurement of my pace, and it makes me wonder if there’s a slope to our yard.  I was mowing in rows parallel to the front of the house.  The deep plunges in the pace graphs are water breaks.
The backyard.  Almost double the distance and a slightly faster pace, which I can attribute to much much longer rows.

So I now know that cutting my yard takes about 1:15 hours (with no breaks, but I take 15-20 minutes worth of breaks), is 3.48 miles, and expends 420 calories (which for me is the same as a 3.5 mile run).

Want more geeky information regarding mowing the lawn?  Here’s some for you:

Earlier this year (in the middle of their summer lawn-mowing season I assume), two Australian mathematicians calculated the ideal pattern to mow your lawn with minimal mileage.

This past spring, Wired.com posted this How-to Wiki with ideas on how to make the dreaded lawn-mowing chore more tolerable.  From getting rid of grass in favor of flowers, trees and shrubs…to robotic lawn mowers (i.e. Roombas for your yard!).