Science and gender, it is an issue that comes up quite often. Complaints are often made that we don’t do enough to get girls interested in science, and that once they become scientists (or engineers) they face a host of issues their male compatriots do not have to deal with. The latter is beyond the [...]
For the past two nights, Venus, The Moon and Jupiter have been appearing very close together in the night sky, appearing around sunset and making quite a spectacle of themselves. This evening (February 27th, 2012), they will continue with their triple-conjuction. Afterwards the natural drift of three objects with very different orbits will end this [...]
Night Vision optics are a lot of fun. Getting to see into a unlit yard or in a dark room can be a great experience and in some cases a lifesaver. But Night vision optics are tricky things – they often employ very sensitive optical plates and chargers that are needed for the night vision [...]
We’ve got a new line of products here at Spectrum – and its a product for the dinner table! We’ve added several products from the Painless Learning placemats. These are 17-1/2″ x 12″ heavily laminated placemats with detailed color fronts that give information on a wide variety of science & math subjects, the backs of [...]
Its President’s Day, but it is perhaps more important to note that today is the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbital flight on the Freedom 7! John Glenn was not the first person in space, but he was the first American in space, and while the USSR was racking up a lot of ‘firsts’ in [...]
Iron Pyrite, or Iron Sulfide is a fairly common mineral that is more commonly known as Fool’s Gold due to its golden luster. Its crystalline structure is a dead give-away that it is not actually gold, although in many cases it can be more attractive than gold. Typically, Iron Pyrite is found in chunks made [...]
Our Hemocytometer is probably one of the most popular ‘industrial’ products that we carry. It is well built, decently priced, and very effective for what it does. A hemocytometer is designed to be used with a microscope to count blood cells. The critical part of any Hemocytometer is a thick slide with a rectangular indentation [...]
Matryoshka are probably better known in the USA as Russian nesting dolls – a simple concept where a large doll holds a slightly smaller doll, which in turn holds a slight smaller doll inside it, and so on until the smallest dolls. The original Matryoshka were painted up in family themes. But the concept could [...]
An Orrery is a mechanical simulation model of the motion of the planets in our solar system. An Orrery demonstrates how the planets move in orbit around the sun in relative motion to the other planets. So in a properly designed Orrery if the Earth model goes around the sun 30 times then Saturn will [...]
