Recent Articles

Did you know that Fleet's Summer Science Camps are a great way to keep your children and grandchildren involved in science education all year long?  Just ask Mike Pineda, a Fleet member, who has been registering his eight year old twin boys in education programs for the past two years.

The Lyrid meteor shower will dazzle the skies this weekend. This meteor shower—one of the oldest meteor showers known to man—occurs every April when the Earth crosses the orbital path of the Comet Thatcher. Tiny bits of ice and dust from this comet hit the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a streak of light across the sky—a meteor!

The Lyrids are known for uncommon surges that can sometimes bring the rate up to 100 per hour. Those rare outbursts are not easy to predict, but they’re one of the reasons the tantalizing Lyrids are worth checking out.

Did you know that only one out of 10,000 clovers has four leaves? This might make your St. Patrick’s Day hunt a bit harder than you think. Let us help you find your “lucky” four-leafed clover … with science!

First, you need to find the perfect place. You can find approximately 200 clovers in a plot of clover-growing grass or field that spreads about one-square foot. This means that a space of about 12-square feet should contain a four-leaf clover.

By Jackie Valentine

Just a few weeks ago, the Fleet hosted our second Paper Airplane Day in the theater lobby. Participants mixed aerodynamics with origami techniques to construct a properly balanced plane. The planes had to be the right size and shape to generate enough lift to fly. No cuts or tape were allowed. Drawing on the templates of the current paper airplane distance world record holder, we explored sophisticated “nose locking” folds that helped keep the nose end components of the plane together during flight.