Matilda's Lab Newsletter #43
This week we have new music, a dead squirrel, 4 mountains that no one noticed, magnetic ants, virgin stingray birth, cat skills and baby albino racoons.
What we’ve been up to
There’s not been a huge amount to report on this week. We were away at a friend’s wedding over the weekend, without the children. So we couldn’t really do anything with them. Their grandparents did though. We came home to find Matilda knitting!
School is on it’s half term break this week. Normally this would mean that Matilda would be at home for the week; but now that Nathaneil is in school too, he’s too young and demanding to be home while we work, and we can’t really send him to holiday club and not Matilda, so they’re both going in.
Due the different opening time of holiday club, I don’t have time to walk them in before work so I have to drive them, which I hate doing. What made it worse was that, on Thursday morning, a squirrel dashed out into the road in front of me. There was nothing I could do. I hit the brakes but it was too late. Bump bump went the tires. “You killed it!” screamed Matilda. “I didn’t mean to.” I replied “I couldn’t see where it was”. Nathaniel then waded in: “You didn’t let it cross the road to get home.” Thanks, I felt bad enough already.
The spooky epilogue to this tale was that evening. Everyone one in a while my wife buys me a selection of craft ales. After a work out at the gym I decided to treat myself to one. I was amazed by the very first can that I saw staring at me from the shelf:
New Blog content
As ever, we have movement in the map of life:
The biggest release for me this week is the second Matilda’s Lab song: “π” or “Pi”. I’m super excited about this track because it’s the first record with actual useful content in it. Matilda can now recite Pi to 10 decimal places thanks to this song. Nathaneil’s even giving it a go! But the fact that we have the whole family contributing vocals makes this really special. The verses even help you to remember how to use Pi for various calculations involving circles and spheres. It’s gone down really well when I play it live, so hopefully you’ll enjoy the studio version.
From the Archive
There’s been a few sharks in recent weeks, but we didn’t have one last week. Normal service is resumed.
Science News
Fairly slow science new week:
It looks like varifocal contact lenses may soon be on the way.
Nothing highlights how little we know about what is under the ocean surface than people going out to sea to the discovery of 4 underwater mountains. All of which are over 5,000 feet.
For the first time, an insect (a type of ant) has been found to navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field.
This coming weekend (the 16-19th February) it is the global great backyard bird count. Is as good an excuse as any to keep an out for any feathered freinds visiting you home.
We can add rays to the list of species that can perform virgin births.
Kicking back
We’ve feature a lot of cats being silly. Let’s now appreciate how amazing they are.
We appear to be fully on team cat this week.
That’s it for this week.
Please feel free to get in contact with any questions, suggestions or comments either via Substack or at matildaslab@gmail.com.
Please share this with anyone who you think will appreciate it. And remember to share with me any cool sciencey stuff that you find to make sure that I can pack this newsletter with best new science content each week.
Until next time, remember that one person’s old news is another’s revelation; so explore. Sometimes it’s not about being the first up the hill. The view’s still going to be breath-taking, no matter how many people have seen it before you.