Dance, Snowball, Dance!

Wow -- two posts in two days! If you didn't read about our very old oak tree, check out yesterday's post.

Anyway, I heard this story on Talk of the Nation Science Friday and had to look at the video. Apparently, Snowball was a youtube sensation, but I missed it (of course). Some scientists didn't, though, and decided to find out if Snowball was really dancing by changing the tempo of the music.


You can see the video results and read the rest of the TOTN Science Friday story here.

Old Oak

We've always wondered how old the big White Oak tree behind our house could be. Today I measured the circumference and, based on this chart, the oak is about 275 years old! That means that it was probably started from an acorn dropped or buried by a squirrel in the 1730s. Here's a picture of it (to give you an idea of its size, the swing attached to it is a 2-person swing -- about 3 feet wide).