science

STEAM Carnival /  by brent

I'm thrilled to report that we've launched a high-tech carnival to inspire kids about science, technology, engineering, art, and math! It's called the STEAM Carnival and we're launching it using Kickstarter to raise initial funds and generate awareness. You can see our campaign here.

Please support our Kickstarter today and tell all your friends!

Thank you!

Update: The response has been tremendous and the press responded well too! The wonderful folks at GOOD were kind enough to publish an article here. We've also been covered in: VentureBeat, USA Today, All Things D, Time, NBC's Nightly Business Review (around minute 11:30), Techcrunch, Mashable, SingularityHub, SparkFun, Mtv, Read Write Web, SFGate, myFOXla, Huffington Post, The Next Web, IEEE Spectrum, LA Weekly, TechZulu, LA Business Journal, SoCal Tech, Geekmom, InsideHook, CNET, I Programmer, RISD News, Patch and The Real Stan Lee!

We were fortunate enough to present the carnival on stage at the 11th All Things D conference! You can see the video of our presentation here and the KatieCam post-show interview here

We just got back from Jason Calacanis' Launch Edu conference and I'm thrilled to report we won the Best Presentation award, the Audience Choice Award and (pending due diligence) Launch wants to invest! Woohoo! More details are here. EdSurge covered the event here.

Here's our intro video:

Words about groups /  by brent

For some reason, etymologists and scientists have felt the need to address groups of organisms using different words. Some, are more commonly known, like a "gaggle of geese" or "herd of elephants" . Here are some lesser known examples: aarmory of aardvarks army of ants barrel of monkeys battery of barracuda bed of clams bloat of hippos cast of crab cete of badgers cloud of bats coalition of cheetah coffle of asses company of parrots congregation of alligators flight of butterfly intrusion of cockroach leash of deer lodge of beavers maul of bears murder of crows orchestra of crickets pack (wild) / litter (young) of dogs parliament of magpie peep of chickens pod of dolphins pounce of cats prickle of porcupines rout of coyote scourge of mosquito shoal of bass stripe of zebra swarm of bees thunder of bison train of camel troop of baboons

SI Prefixes /  by brent

With things only getting much bigger and much smaller, boning up on the terms for various magnitudes seems appropriate. Following is set of the International System of Units prefixes. This way when Apple comes out with it's next smallest gadget, you'll be right there with them.

Factor Name Symbol
1024 yotta Y
1021 zetta Z
1018 exa E
1015 peta P
1012 tera T
109 giga G
106 mega M
103 kilo k
102 hecto h
101 deka da
10-1 deci d
10-2 centi c
10-3 milli m
10-6 micro µ
10-9 nano n
10-12 pico p
10-15 femto f
10-18 atto a
10-21 zepto z
10-24 yocto y

yocto