ArtsLover

This illustration shows the relative scale of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and a Tyrannosaurus rex. Roman is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long — about the length of a T. rex — and over 14 feet (4.4 meters) wide when fully deployed. Roman also weighs around 18,000 pounds, or 8,000 kilograms (dry mass), which is the approximate mass of a T. rex as well.

Did you know NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is both roughly as long and as massive as a Tyrannosaurus rex? This observatory, which will move to the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida very soon, is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long and weighs around 18,000 pounds (8,000 kilograms), not including the fuel. Let’s explore some of the components that bring Roman to T. rex proportions.

I have worked on a single piece of music for band for fourteen years. It totals about three minutes in length. I am not familiar enough with percussion instruments to really know how to write their part, but I’ve done the absolute best I can. I’ve asked for help from a few fellow musicians I trust.

My band test played it. It still needs some editing, but I’m happy with how it’s turned out.

I pointed it out to her and together we regarded the infant screaming.

After she left my coworker came up and informed me there was a bird on her car. I went out to look and lo, the fledgling had scrambled up onto her windshield and was pecking forlornly at its reflection.

It stayed perched there in the hot sun, trying to move higher up the car with no success but too scared to fly down. She was agitated that it was on her car since she didn’t know if it would leave on its own.

“It’s a baby,” I told her, “It’s still learning how to fly.”

“That’s a baby?! It’s so big!”

“Yeah, it’s just a little guy.”

I went out to investigate. The parents began screaming and swooping. I placated them with crackers which they accepted without relenting their screaming. My coworker said she could now see that the creature on her car was indeed a baby with the sleek black parents swooshing angrily around in the air.

We regarded the baby together. After a while I started noticing it was showing signs of fatigue and distress. Mouth gaping but not begging for food, wings drooping. I went back out to check on it.

I was debating moving the baby; the day kept getting hotter and it didn’t have the energy or skill to relocate itself. My coworker also wanted the bird to stop pooping on her car. So eventually I announced, “I’m gonna move the bird.”

“Your gonna grab it? Aren’t you scared?”

I looked at her in bafflement. I grew up around every imaginable kind of fowl. The only bird I’d be scared of would be some of the big flightless ones. Even geese/swans are manageable if you just grab their necks before they really get flapping. The parents were not gonna go for my eyes like magpies and in general crows tend to recognize when you’re trying to help. “It’s just a little baby guy. It’s fine.”

I approached the baby amidst its parents shrieking crow obscenities down upon me. I scooped it gently like the burger.

I cannot begin to convey how soft that baby crow felt. It was the downiest most pleasant tactile thing that I’ve maybe ever held and the experience was only slightly marred by the goober trying ineffectually to bite me. It was stymied by the fact that it ain’t my first rodeo.

I brought it ten feet away to a nice shady tree. I held the baby gently so it could get its feet under it on the branch. It seemed a bit confused at this point but eventually gripped the branch and I stepped back and threw peanuts in self defense while the angry parents swooped showily around at me.

It stayed there pretty much the rest of the day. Its parents both checked in to make sure I hadn’t murdered it then flew back to where we could see a nest. So best theory is that this dingus was the first to start fledging and couldn’t actually return to the nest after launching.

I told my wife afterward and they went, “You. You touched the bird?!” My coworkers husband was also flabbergasted that I’d been brave enough to grab it. My coworker said she was just gonna shove it off her car with a broom.

As if they didn’t know who they married. As if I am not someone who would confidently help a stray cat or wrangle a chicken.

You haven’t seen that meme?

Hair hâshed

Food fâten

Water wrǐnked

Elements, like us, can’t resist a good trend. Unlike us, they physically cannot resist a trend. This is one of those things that you can just memorize, but I personally think it’s easier to understand the underlying reason.

Electronegativity

… how do I explain this without too much physical chemistry? Probably by ignoring it. For electronegativity, I’ll give the definition and the rule. If you want a better explanation, let me know and I can do my best to explain it, it may have to involve some physical chemistry. Electronegativity is the tendency of an atom to pull electrons towards itself. This is relevant in chemical bonds, but also it can be helpful for remembering atomic radius later on. Remember than fluorine (my favorite element!) is the single most electronegative element. As an element gets further from fluorine on the periodic table, it gets less electronegative. Scoot hydrogen a little bit, but it’s pretty much solid to remember it that way. The transition metals also get kinda weird, don’t worry about them for right now.

Shielding

Imagine a bonfire with concentric circles of people standing around it. If the nucleus is the fire and the electrons are the people, this is a good metaphor for shielding. The stronger the nucleus (more protons), the larger and hotter the fire is. The farther out the valence electrons are from the fire, the more rows of people are between the valence electrons and the fire. If you’re far out, you’ll feel colder, but the same distance out with a stronger fire, you’ll feel warmer. So. The ‘warmer’ an electron ‘feels’, the more tightly it’s being pulled towards the nucleus. As you move from left to right, the valence electrons are the same number of shells out from the nucleus, but the nucleus keeps getting more protons. Someone standing next to you around the fire doesn’t diminish the heat you feel, just how more electrons in the same shell don’t really shield one another. The whole shielding effect comes from protons attracting electrons, and electrons repelling other electrons. It’s also related to the distance and attraction curve. Just like magnets, the farther opposite charges get, the weaker the attraction is. Weak attraction between the nucleus and electrons keeps them farther apart, and the farther distance weakens the attraction. Weird. Let’s head out before the chemistry gets too far into physical chemistry.

Radius (Size)

Next, "die" does mean "day," though nominative singular is "dies," i.e. "dies irae." It could be conjugated "die" if it was in ablative or locative case, but "die ad die" would mean something more like "day to day." "Ad" is in a "to" direction and "ab" is from, i.e. "ab urbis," and ablative case is used to indicate the movement of a thing. In short, "by" is not really a way to translate "ad"; we might want "per" here? (Through, by means of, etc.)

Gazpacho. It's served like that.

Every single dad packed into the car:

Your husband and all his coworkers:

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”