It's Friday, and I *know* you didn't see a Science Friday video coming because, well, I haven't posted one in ages.
Science FridayCourtesy Science Friday
But it's Memorial Day weekend (officially, as it's after 5pm on the Friday before), and Memorial Day weekend opens the tomato season, so here goes...
"Tim Stark, tomato farmer and proprietor of Eckerton Hill Farm in Lobachsville, PA, describes his battle with late blight during the summer of 2009."
"With the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade less than a week away, it's crunch time for the 'balloonatics' at Macy's Parade Studio. The balloons themselves, which are designed and fabricated in a warehouse in New Jersey, are getting their final checkup before the show. John Piper and Jim Artle take us around the studio and spill the secrets of inflation, explain how to calculate whether your balloon will float, and explain why the balloons look better after a little time in the sun."
It's Friday. You know the drill.
"Using the Swedish Solar Telescope, a ground-based observatory, Goran Scharmer and colleagues probe the penumbra--that's the stringy structure around the perimeter of the dark part of the sunspot. The images give scientists new insight into how that structure forms."Learn more.
"In 1968, the New Jersey Senate decreed the town of Franklin a geological wonder: "The Fluorescent Mineral Capital of the World." Over 350 different minerals have been found in the area, ninety of which glow brilliantly under ultraviolet light. There are two mineral museums devoted to fluorescing rocks, the region's unusual geology and its zinc mining history."
"Lichens grow practically everywhere, but they have been neglected by scientists for years, says James Lendemer, a lichenologist with New York Botanical Garden. Lendemer took Science Friday on a trip to the Tannersville Cranberry Bog in Pennsylvania to track down these misunderstood creatures."
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