Emma
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Lunar Phases and Motion
The lunar phases…who really understands ’em? We see them all the time. When we look up at the moon in the sky, we’re bound to notice that it looks just a little bit different from the last time we saw…
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Milankovitch and Climate
The Yugoslavian meteorologist Milutin Milankovitch is known for coming up with the idea of orbital forcing, also known as Milankovitch cycles. Orbital forcing is a fancy term for certain changes in Earth’s orbit, which are precession, obliquity, and eccentricity. I’ve written…
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Sunrise in Flagstaff
It’s 5:00 am and I’m up ungodly early to photograph the sunrise for a school assignment. So I figured I’d blog about it. Because, why not? 4:50: Okay, I’m up. Why do I have to be up so freaking early…
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Orbit and Climate
You have probably all heard of ice ages. And no, I don’t mean the Ice Age movies… Although, Ice Age is actually a pretty good example of what happens during a real-life ice age. I haven’t seen enough of the movies to…
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The Reason for the Seasons
As a born Californian, I never saw seasons this dramatically until I went to college in Flagstaff, Arizona. I remember, in my first year here, when I was taking a walk around campus with a few friends. We passed over…
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Stars: Naming and Brightness
Meet Pegasus, and the constellations surrounding it. As I said in my last post, constellations are just regions of space. Yes, they are named after mythical beasts and ancient queens, but for scientific purposes, all that matters are the regions…
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Pseudoscience: Astronomy vs. Astrology
I’m going to venture a guess that you’ve heard of astrology. As an astronomy enthusiast, I run into people who confuse astronomy with astrology all the time. They’re particularly prevalent at work (I don’t work among fellow astronomy geeks at…
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Elements and Compounds
Recognize this? This is the periodic table, and it’s pretty much the most important table in all of chemistry. All the little boxes on this “table” are elements, the simplest form of matter. You literally can’t break these down further. What’s…
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Types of Mixtures
The easiest way to explain mixtures in chemistry is to talk about food. Think about mixtures in terms of cooking, and there isn’t much I need to tell you. A salad, like the one pictured above, is a mixture. So…
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What Matters?
The simplest approach to chemistry is to start basic. Not basic as in acids and bases, ha-ha…sorry, bad chemistry joke. I mean basic as in, what the heck even is chemistry? I admit that I’m better versed in astronomy than…
