We’re heading to a chess tournament this weekend, scientists, and then our family is on our way to an extended trip in another country for my sabbatical journey! Do not worry, though, readers, I will be back, and in the meantime, co-party facilitators Ben, Dana, and others are still here and still running parties. I am planning some Party Elements events in Israel, though, so if you are in the Tel Aviv area, stay tuned for science events coming your way. In the meantime, thou

Another weekend coming up, scientists! Still January, still cold (albeit a little less frigid). What are you doing? How about some ice skating or snow tubing? Confessions: I have not yet taken my children ice skating, mostly because I am so bad at ice skating and the skates always seem to hurt my feet, plus, it’s always annoying to get the skates on and tie the laces tight and can’t we just stay home and be lazy?? NO. No we cannot. So this weekend, we are going to try ice ska

OK who is sticking to their New Year’s Resolutions still? Anyone? For real, the whole idea of resolutions is admirable, but it turns out that most people do not actually stick with their resolutions for more than a few weeks. One of my resolutions was to try to do Yoga every day for 30 days, so I am smack in the middle of my 30 day Yoga challenge. To put this in some context, I have never done anything that even remotely resembles Yoga prior to this, and in fact, whenever som

If you are like many New Englanders, and many people in other parts of the country, you could be just coming out of a cold spell. Today I want to talk about some of the science behind phenomena that you may be seeing because of the extreme cold: 1. Pipes Freezing and/or Bursting. You may have had the unfortunate experience of turning on your faucet in the kitchen, or shower, or laundry room one morning, and getting no water coming out in return. You know what that means, righ

WHY. IS. IT. STILL. SO. COLD. For real, New England readers, what is up with all of this cold? Well if you are like some famous people, you may be using the cold to decide that global warming is all a hoax (check out reports of that infamous tweet: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/29/climate-scientists-around-the-world-respond-to-trumps-global-warming-tweet.html and http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/12/29/trump-says-east-could-use-some-global-warming-this-weekend.html). Note, i

Happy 2018, writers! I hope everyone had a fun, enjoyable, and safe New Year’s celebration, doing whatever it is you most enjoy doing. For our family, it meant leaving the scientists-in-training with a babysitter for a very rare date night/ New Year’s Eve party, which turned out to have a Karaoke machine. I always tell people that I am tone deaf, and most of the time they tend to believe me without having to prove it to them, which means that my singing career has been pretty