(I Am Not A Paid Advertiser, I Swear)

It's the last day of school. You stumble home, stagger up the stairs, fling yourself onto your bed, and vow to stay there forever. You proceed to marvel at all the stress and toil repressed in your system and realize you're on the brink of eruption. You stare at the ceiling and remark, "I need a vacation".

You soon break your oath to stay eternally spread-eagle'd on your bed to go demand a reward for all your hard work in the semester. Your family brings up the idea of going on a guided tour to somewhere nice. Now, what does a tour involve? Yeah yeah, visits to some famous landmarks, a taste of some signature cuisine, and of course, being inevitably shepherded to a bunch of local shopping centres your annoying tour guide has most obviously been colluding with. In short, not worth it!

But what if you can take your aforementioned urge for eruption to a volcanic site? What if, instead of going to Hawaii just for the beaches and suntanning, you abolish these cliches and take an aerial tour of its fabled archipelago of active volcanoes in a helicopter? Now that's something. 


Source: Peek

As claimed in the title of my post, I'm not paid to advertise for Safari Helicopters Co., but boy, does the world deserve to be informed of this cool stuff. My fellow sufferers, take home a decent mark in Earth and Space Science at the end of the semester, so as to have your hair ruffled and your volcano sightseeing flight sponsored by your delighted parents.

Safari Helicopter's touring flights depart from Hilo; during departure, you can feast your eyes upon the thousand-foot volcanoes Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. However, the real adventure lies ahead- your helicopter will take you to Big Island's most active volcanoes, where you will most likely see for yourself flowing lava!


Source: Safari Helicopters

If you have concerns about safety, fear not. Being in one of Safari Helicopters' ASTAR 350B2-7's means experiencing a "balance of power, technology and comfort"! Their cabins are all air-conditioned, soundproof, and equipped with noise-cancelling headsets. You should visit safarihelicopters.com to see for yourself!

With the prospect of experiencing such luxury and excitement sweeping us off our feet, there is but one more question left to ask. 

How much is this darn thing going to cost?????


Works Cited:

"Exploring Hawaii's Lava." Safari RSS. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.
"Volcano and Valley Landing | Helicopter Tours from Kona in Big Island | Peek." Peek. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.

Childhood Learnings

'What are the two most abundant elements on Earth?'
"Oxygen and nitrogen?"
"Yes for oxygen, no for nitrogen. You have one more guess."
One more guess before what? Failing a course? Having to re-write eleven mighty pages of homework? Every fear I had ever felt in my life flashed before my eyes. Rack your brain, Gracie.
"OH. Silicon."
"Correct."

Yeah, I exaggerated. No fears whatsoever were flashing before my eyes, because I made a simple mistake in thinking about the atmosphere. Although, had the flashing occurred, I know exactly what I would've remembered.

When I was a kid, I would get my toddler hands on any book around me. As a result, I was often terrified by the things I saw in non-fiction picture books. I vividly remember not being able to sleep after seeing an illustration of the fabled ball lightning. Right now, I want nothing more than to snuggle up beside the small bundle trembling in bed and tell her that in eleven years, she would be alive. Yes, procrastinating and lacking common sense, but very much breathing and not incinerated by a ball of light. I also wish that I can explain to her what ball lightning is, but I can't.

I had completely forgotten about this childhood learning until the huge storm some weeks ago. Ball lightning stayed out of my mind until then, and is now back to do its 'haunting'.

For centuries, ball lightning has been told to suddenly descend from the sky, burning buildings and often causing fatal injuries. However, because of its rarity and erratic nature, it has never been caught on camera until January this year! While researchers were mapping radiation during a thunderstorm in Qinghai, China, they miraculously recorded one by accident: (the white dot in the left corner)

Source-Mail Online



Here is a 1886 depiction of ball lightning wreaking havoc: (source-Wikipedia)


It is hypothesized that the silica in Earth's crust is vaporized when struck by lightning. (Yes, I finally concluded my non-scientific ramble.) Due to reasons still unknown to man, it is possible that the oxygen is, during that instance, temporarily separated from the silicon dioxide. When the silicon cools, oxidation takes place and it is proposed that the "ball of light" phenomena is in fact caused by energy emitted from the silicon bonding back with oxygen. Well, who knows? There have been a few more theories, like the Charged Solid Core Model and the Microwave Cavity Hypothesis, but my bet is on the only one I can make sense of-the one I described.

Although I am nowhere close to understanding anything about this phenomenon, it is nonetheless rather satisfying to experience an 'uh-huh, learned that'-moment when reading about the Vaporized Silicon Hypothesis because, heck, silicon and oxygen, I know from my beloved earth and space class that the crust is loaded with that stuff. It's a start.