I think Catherine and I have had about two dozen conversations about the moon. She would claim it was five dozen.
They all go something like this:
Peter: Hey, look, the moon is really bright tonight, and it was really dark last week.
Catherine: Yes, that’s the way the moon is.
Peter: That’s amazing.
Catherine: Yes, it is.
Despite working every day on a project for which the moon is, perhaps more than for any other project save the moon landing, front and centre, I’m surprisingly amazed (read “dense”) when it comes to the moon.
For some reason, I managed to skip any sort of formal training in the ways of the moon. I vaguely remember some discussion of the tides in Grade 11 Geography. But none of my classrooms had those neato mobiles that cleverly illustrate the moon revolving around the earth revolving around the sun.
So I have decided that this is the year I will come to understand the moon.
First project towards this goal was the creation of the Moon Phase RSS Feed, which, because it gives me a daily whack on the side of the head about the moon, has proved invaluable (if you can’t RSS, you can look here for similar effect).
Next, I’m going to have to get all these nested revolvings understood.
Of course that leaves the wonder of the sun still hanging: Oliver and I sat on the big orange chair in the living room this morning and the sun was aligned so that it was shining right through the piano window at us. It was surprisingly warm. Yet it’s winter. Go figure.
When people talk about science literacy they often mention polls purporting to show that almost nobody knows or remembers anything about the solar system. "Polls show Harvard graduates can't explain why it's hotter in summer than in winter," etc.. I've heard "What causes the tides?" come up on quiz shows several times, which suggests that broadcasters don't expect a lot of people to know the answer. If you want a timely Canadian example, Margaret Atwood commits a moon blooper in Oryx and Crake: She talks about the unlit moon being up in the sky, whereas of course the moon is always lit when it is in opposition to the sun.
POSTED DEC 29, 2003 AT 12:52 AST BY OLIVER B"unlit moon being up in the NIGHT sky" I meant to write.
POSTED DEC 29, 2003 AT 14:30 AST BY OLIVER B
I think the same side of the moon faces the earth all the time, so the dark side of the moon is never seen from earth, is this true of the sun as well?
The dark side of the sun? Lunacy!
POSTED DEC 29, 2003 AT 16:45 AST BY Ken (ken@sunmail.ca)
No. The Earth moves around the sun and spins about its own axis 365 times in the process, so that everyone on Earth would get a peak of every point on the sun, even if the sun stood still. But in fact the sun
rotates 360 degrees on a 27 day cycle. So in effect we're taking a walk around it monthly.
POSTED DEC 29, 2003 AT 17:21 AST BY OLIVER B POSTED DEC 30, 2003 AT 11:14 AST BY Mita (msenroy@hotmail.com)
Intellectual types are next on the FBI warning list!
POSTED DEC 30, 2003 AT 20:04 AST BY Ken (ken@sunmail.ca)
