Getting to Know Your Own Backyard, Monday, Period 2

[uncertain_dume]

Today's planet was named Uranus. And if you thought Kanan hadn't been snickering about that until Hera was ready to smack him, you didn't know either of them.

"But really, who names a planet that," Kanan could be heard while the students were ushered into the Ghost for the day. "Who?"

"It's named after another god," Hera said, her eyeroll audible in her voice.

"Who names a god that??"

( In which we travel to Uranus. )

Advanced Takeout, Monday, June 12, 2017

[imafuturist]

"Today we're going to make a dish that's a lot harder than it seems like it should be," Steve began. "Microwave popcorn."

"Have you ever smelled burnt popcorn?" Tony asked, making such a face. "It's awful. Stinks up the room for hours. So, it's clearly a fine art."

Yes, the fine art of microwave cooking.

One that these two, despite being very smart, hadn't figured out. "The first thing to know is that the popcorn button on the microwave is not to be trusted," Steve said.

Tony nodded in full agreement. "It's a trick to ruin your entire evening. You have to stand there and wait for the moment the popping slow down and hope you times it right."

Or get distracted by something and come back to charred popcorn. Guess which happened a lot.

"You also have to make sure it wasn't just slowing down for a second and then speeding back up," Steve said. "Because then you just get a half-bag of popcorn and a lot of unpopped kernels."

Which was sad.

"And please remember this is for specifically microwave popcorn. The stovetop stuff isn't meant for this." Tony learned that after blowing up a microwave in college with Jiffy Pop. In his defense... he'd been sleep deprived.

Steve winced. "We've gone through a few microwaves," he admitted wryly.

"Today it's your turn," Tony said, clapping his hands together and smiling cheerfully. "If you succeed, you get popcorn."

"If you don't, you get drenched by the fire suppression systems," Steve said.

Sciencing Things All Sciencily, Monday

[whatisclocks]

"Today we're gonna talk about the science of music," Philomena proclaimed. If she felt any shame about her performance last week, it was not evident in anything she was saying or doing. She looked straight ahead, meeting a random student's eyes periodically.

"They didn't used to have music in ye olde days, which was sad. Parties must have been very boring up until Mozart invented music in the 1700s. And even his music wasn't really party music, it was old people music, and music stayed that way for a very long time. Beethoven tried to invent punk rock, which is the sort of music you make when you can't hear for shit."

She shrugged. "Then the music bit went sort of quiet for a bit," she said. "Not a whole lot of anything happened. Not until the Beetles," you could hear the pronounciation of that 'e', there, "and then music sort of exploded. People tried to stop music before it got out of control by killin' one of 'em, but it was no use, the music genie was out of the bottle."

She mimed a bottle.

"It took science people to come up with music, I think," she continued, "'Cos it's made out of sound waves, which in Mozart's day, they would stuff in a bottle in an attempt to fuel the tiny sailboats." ... Sure, Philomena. "I think sciencing's best done if you can like, reproduce what science men before you have scienced. So today I've brought these instruments--" She waved at a wide and moddable variety of instruments. "And some bottles. You should all go out and try and capture sound waves. Make sure they're exciting sound waves, like Katy Perry sound waves. If you get any Mozart ones or Nickelback ones, you can throw 'em out, maybe burn 'em."

A pause.

"That's it, get to it."