I received my Christmas present early from my wife last week. She got me the new Olympus Pen EPL5 DSLR micro four thirds camera with a 14-42 kit lens. It’s the camera I wanted since last year. I almost bought the EPL3 last year but decided to wait for the newer camera. Olympus skipped the EPL4 and went directly to the EPL5 model.
EPL5 Video at ISO 25600
It’s been a week now since I’ve had my new camera, and that’s given me time to play around and see what it can do. I played with the video today to see what the video would look like with very high ISO. The maximum ISO is 25,600 on this camera and I wanted to see what it looked like on a dark night. The only light available was from the lights on the houses for the Christmas displays as I walked around town.
The EPL5 is much smaller than my other camera, the Olympus E620. I took some pictures in the Philippines with this camera. This is both good and bad. The good is that it’s much lighter to carry around. The difficult part is that the buttons are smaller, which makes it difficult to operate in cold damp weather. So tonight was a test to see how well it would operate in the cold damp weather. I must say, I’m very impressed with with the EPL5′s performance. I’m just amazed that the video is of high quality just like the pictures.
A First Impression of the EPL5
As you can see from the video, even at very high ISO, it is still pretty good. I expected much more graininess in the video than what I saw. This is just the first impression and I plan to take more video to test the limits of the camera. For me, one of the best things about the EPL5 is that it is so small – about the size of a point and shoot, but with a bigger lens in front. I was able to take this camera on my nightly walk around town and just keep it in my pocket.
So far, I am still getting used to the controls. It’s difficult to see the buttons in the dark but I can remember where most of them are. One problem I had was trying to display the super control panel. By default, it’s not turned on. You must go into the menus and activate it. I found some good information at the Olympus EPL5 site here.
We bought the camera at Dan’s Camera in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It’s a great store with very knowledgeable people working there. Now with all this great video I’m about to take, I guess I’ll need another external hard drive to store it. And I also got my eye on the new45mm f1.8 prime lens,. If you want a great, lightweight, interchangeable lens DSLR camera, consider the Olympus Pen EPL5 camera.
I finished my solar panel project this week. I’ve been working on it on and off for the past two years and it’s finally done. The only thing I need to complete is to put the clear acrylic panel on top to protect the cells.
Here are my previous posts on building the solar panel. Part 1 gives information on the parts I bought to build the 18 volt, 60 watt PV solar panel. Part 2 describes my frustration of learning to solder the cells and the time needed to do this well. Part 3 describes my attempt to solder the tab wire to the negative part of the cell and how I’m going to wire the cells to produce the correct voltage. This last post will summarize the task of completing the solar panel before school starts and what my future plans are with solar power panels.
It took me a couple of days to complete all the soldering. I got better at it as I went along and only broke a few cells. Luckily I bought enough and I still have about ten left. The hardest part was dealing with corrosion that built up on the tip of the soldering pen and getting an even flow of solder to flow onto the three positive connections on the back of the cell. I had to scrap a few cells because of poor solder connections.
This week I gave a demonstration of the egg in the bottle to my classes. This is a favorite demo and I always enjoy doing it. This is a good demo when learning about pressure. To start, burn a piece of paper and put it into the bottle and quickly put the hard boiled egg on top. As the fire goes out, the pressure inside goes down and the higher pressure on the outside pushes the egg in.
Here is a link to my last science lab- the hexaflexagon, which we did last week and you can see the video to learn how to construct and add content to the hexaflexagon.
I have seen this egg demo using a small water balloon and it works the same. To get the egg out, you can try to blow into the bottle which has never worked for me. I usually use an Alka Seltzer and water to pop the egg out. I have also used putting the bottle under hot water to warm the air inside the bottle to expand and push egg back out.
Extensions and discussion
It’s difficult for students to visualize a change in pressure until they see this demonstration. Some of the students have experience going under the water and experiencing increased pressure in their ears, and that helps to understand the concept. For the egg here, it’s the pressure difference that pushes the egg in.
Also, be careful to explain that the lack of oxygen alone doesn’t “suck” the egg in. After I question the students, I explain how the egg goes in and then have them explain to their lab partner. At the end of the class, I have them write their explanation on paper about the egg demo and hand it in so I can check for any misunderstanding.
Making and encoding the video
Here is my latest video on the egg in the bottle video. Again, I used iMovie and since the demo is short, I used a movie trailer. This worked out well as the audio has music and the audio from the classroom was very chaotic. I encoded the flv video as the highest level, which gave me a file size of about 39 meg.
This week we built hexaflexagons in class and added science content on each of the four sides. I thought since the water cycle has four main vocabulary terms, it would be creative to put one vocabulary word on each of the four sides. We also used this for the layers of the atmosphere. Hexaflexagons have four sides and can be constructed with only one piece of paper.
This activity builds enthusiasm for learning science and is a good hands-on activity– much like the great bag of science. See the video gallery for all the science videos here.
History of the hexaflexagon
I first learned about hexaflexagon from Martin Gardner when I was in college. In his book, Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions, Gardner shows a few different ways to construct a flexagon and hexaflexagon. Even though Gardner wrote about the hexaflexagons, others are given credit for their discovery. A graduate student named Authur Stone, while at Princeton University, created the first flexagon by playing around with some paper in math class.
This is a fun activity to do when you have four of something. I also did this with another science class with the layers of the atmosphere.
Here is the video on how to construct your own hexaflexagon. I made this video with iMovie and did a voiceover to give directions on how to construct the hexaflexagon. I exported with mpeg-4 as a Quicktime movie and encoded to flash using iSkysoft Video Converter.
How to fold the hexaflexagon
Start with a piece of paper with the length twice as long as the width. From there, follow my video instructions to complete your own hexaflexagon. Students can add content before or after it’s done. We have made both small and very large hexaflexagons in class over the last few years. Using colored markers is easier that colored pencils as the markers don’t press in on the paper. Remember, the better you make the creases, the easier the hexaflexagon will turn. Watch the video for directions.
Last week we did the great bag of science demo in class. In this video, I get in the bag and a vacuum is used to take out the air. The greater pressure on the outside squeezes the person inside. How much air pressure? Well it’s 14.7 psi. That doesn’t sound like much, but is sure feels strong.
I did this activity with all my students and it was a long day yet lots of fun.
If you have any extensions, comments, or ideas let me know in the comments.
Bryan McClelland, an entrepreneur in Manila, Philippines, is making bikes out of bamboo. Seems like a good idea as there is lots of bamboo available for a raw material. Some of the bike parts are made of metal. His claim is that bamboo has the same tensile strength as steel and a higher strength to weight ratio. He sells them for between 500 and 600 dollars. Check out the video below. So would you ride one of these bikes? I would.
Here is a cool website where Robin guesses the gift you are thinking of. Take a number between 10 and 99 and subtract the first and second digit. Then use this number to find the corresponding gift. Just think of the gift and Robin will guess what it is.
Click the image to go to the site and give it a try. I’ll give some hints on how this works in the comments. Try it a few times and see if you can find the number theory behind Robin.
I gave a demonstration of dry ice to my students last week. Here is a video showing what the graduated cylinder looked like at the end of the day. I put a few drops of red food coloring in the water and then put a few pieces of dry ice in the water.
I have this drinking bird on my desk and the kids can’t stop watching it. It keeps drinking the water all day long. As long as I keep adding water to the beaker, the bird will keep drinking. It’s not really drinking the water, just dipping its beak in the water. The water evaporates and cools the beak, thus the liquid moves up.
The temperature decrease causes some of the dichloromethane vapor in the head to condense.
The lower temperature and condensation together cause the pressure to drop in the head (ideal gas law).
The pressure differential between the head and base causes the liquid to be pushed up from the base.
As liquid flows into the head, the bird becomes top heavy and tips over during its oscillations.
When the bird tips over, the bottom end of the neck tube rises above the surface of the liquid.
A bubble of vapor rises up the tube through this gap, displacing liquid as it goes.
Liquid flows back to the bottom bulb (the toy is designed so that when it has tipped over the neck’s tilt allows this), and vapor pressure equalizes between the top and bottom bulbs
The weight of the liquid in the bottom bulb restores the bird to its vertical position
We’ve been here in Mindanao, Philippines for almost two months now, and tomorrow we are leaving to go back to Pennsylvania. Our bags are packed and we are ready to go. Our taxi will pick us up tomorrow morning at 5:30 am for the hour and a half drive to Davao International Airport. My mother in law and sister in law are flying up to Manila with us to help with the kids and to get a little more bonding time in. We’ll stay in Manila until Wednesday morning, when our flight for JFK.
We had a great time here with the usual ups and downs. The weather was hot and humid but there was an exceptional amount of rain with some flooding in our area, especially last month. I’ve had lots of time to read, think, and spend time with my family.
Our long flight leaves Wednesday morning and 20-something hours later, we arrive at JFK on Wednesday night. I’m usually good on long flight as long as the baby sleeps for a while. I walk the kids around the aisles to stretch our legs and to pass the time on the plane. I’m just hoping I can make the time change quickly when I’m back.
