Category: Adkins Jan

Earthquakes on the Mississippi?

9/26/2022

Jan Adkins

The Explainer General

Gigantic earthquakes rocked the Midwestern United States between December 16, 1811, and February 7, 1812. A fault in our continent’s stone base runs beneath the Mississippi River near what is now New Madrid, Missouri. Unequal pressures built up on both sides of this fault and the sides slipped to ease the pressure. Whammo—the first of 3 earthquakes from these slips was felt as far away as New York City, Washington, DC, and Charleston, South Carolina.

There were no scientific instruments to measure the New Madrid Quakes in 1812 so geologists have sifted through widespread accounts from old journals and newspapers for data. Putting the accounts together on a map, we know the quakes were felt over an area of 1,930,000 square miles. They earthquakes began with a pair of terrific shocks at 2:15 and 7:15 local time on the morning of December 16, 1811, both measuring 7.2 - 8.1 on the Richter scale. They were followed by a 7.0 - 7.8 quake on January 23, 1812, and a 7.4 - 8.0 event on February 7, 1912.

The quakes were violent, earth-shifting events. There have been even more powerful earthquakes in Alaska and Hawaii, both vulnerable to deep geological pressures, But the New Madrid quakes are the largest to ever occur in the original forty-eight states. Yet little damage or loss of life was reported. The region was then part of Louisiana Territory, sparsely inhabited with small villages and only a few multi-story masonry buildings. We can’t know how many log cabins or small home chimneys were thrown down, or how many Native Americans were affected.

Coincidentally, the first steam paddle-wheeler on the Mississippi, the New Orleans, invented by Robert Fulton, was making its first trip south during the quakes. Land heaves caused massive waves to travel up and down the river. When the little southbound New Orleans met one of these waves it seemed that the great Mississippi was running backward. Some land rose, riverbanks crumbled, some land subsided and formed new lakes. The river’s course was so changed that maps were useless, and the steamboat did a remarkable job of “feeling its way” through the new channels to dock at New Orleans on January 10, 1812.

We’ve come to expect earthquake and volcanic activity around the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” and other hot-spots of geologic shift, but the New Madrid Quake was the product of an unexpected fault in earth’s crust we now call the New Madrid Seismic Zone. And, yes, there is the possibility of similar earthquakes from this zone in the future. The Earth that seems so solid is secretly restless.

The New Madrid fault and its surrounding area is still considered at high risk for major earthquakes today.

The center of the New Madrid earthquake is cited in this Kentucky tourism sign.

"The New Orleans" maiden voyage was perilous as the earthquakes had altered Mississippi River landmarks such as islands and channels, thus confusing the pilots' visual navigation. At some small river towns along the way, villagers begged to be taken aboard to escape the earthquake's desolation but the vessel could not accommodate them.

This 19th-century woodcut is captioned The Great Earthquake at New Madrid.

Jan Adkins is not only a writer, but also a wonderful illustrator. His personal website is under construction at the moment, but if you would like to find out more about him and see a list of his very well known books, click here.
Adkins is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Adkins, Jan. "Earthquakes on the Mississippi?" Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 25 Sept. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/earthquakes-on-the-mississippi.

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Proof Positive: Ballyhoo Confirms the Safety of the Brooklyn Bridge

5/31/2022

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Jan Adkins
The Explainer General

On May 24, 1883, The Brooklyn Bridge was opened to the public. It took 14 years, $15 million and many lives to link Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Before work was begun, its designer, John A. Roebling, was making final surveys of the site. A docking ferryboat nudged a piling near him, driving a dirty nail into his foot. He died of tetanus 24 days later. His son, Washington Roebling took over the engineering project.

To sink the bridge tower foundations down to bedrock, workers excavated river silt inside two open-bottomed 3000 ton iron bases, caissons. High-pressure air pumps kept river water out. As the caissons were dug deeper beneath the river surface, air pressure grew higher; work became more dangerous. When they were digging near seventy feet deep, a few workers walked through the caisson air-lock at the surface, across the street to the tavern, and dropped down dead. The cause: nitrogen embolism—gas dissolved in blood under high pressure expanding rapidly at normal pressure. Scuba divers call it “the bends.” Washington Roebling, himself, was crippled this way but monitored the project through a telescope from his bed upriver. His brilliant wife, Emily Warren Roebling, managed construction on-site. Twenty to 30 bridge workers were killed in construction from nitrogen embolism, being struck by falling material, and by falls from the towers.

It was the longest suspension bridge in the world, with a river-span of 1595.5 feet. Anyone could cross: 1¢ for a pedestrian, 5¢ for a horse and rider, 10¢ for a horse and wagon, 5¢ for cows, 2¢ for sheep or hogs.

Only six days after its opening, the bridge was crowded with walkers when a rumor started that the bridge was collapsing! Strollers stampeded, killing 12, injuring 35 in the panic. Was the great bridge safe?

Months later, May 17, 1884, the great huckster and self-promoter P. T. Barnum set out to prove the solidity of the bridge “in the interest of the dear public.” Across the broad bridge paraded 21 elephants with Barnum’s famous African elephant Jumbo in the rear. They were followed by seven Bactrian camels (two-hump) and ten dromedaries (one-hump). Since elephant and camel fares had never been specified, no tolls were paid. The New York Times reported “…it seemed as if Noah’s Ark were emptying itself over on Long Island.”

If any doubts remained, Barnum’s ballyhoo proof put them to rest.

Bird's-eye view of the grand display of fireworks on the Brooklyn Bridge's opening night. Brooklyn Museum

Jumbo was not forgotten. The cover of a 2004 The New Yorker magazine offers a whimsical picture of a herd of elephants crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.

A Matthew Brady photograph of Phineas Taylor Barnum taken around 1860.

Jumbo, billed as the "Towering Monarch of His Mighty Race," was the pride of P.T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth.

The elephants and a lot of fearless pedestrians prepare to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on May 17, 1884.

Workers cut away part of the steel fencing allowing panic-stricken citizens to escape from the bridge's promenade to the trolley tracks that went down the center of the bridge.

The story of how Jumbo was brought from Africa to the United States is a fascinating one -- Google it. In the meantime, you might want to have a look at Jan Adkin's fascinating description of how people often have to use brains rather than brawn to move heavy items.

Jan Adkins is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Adkins, Jan. "Proof Positive: Ballyhoo Confirms the Safety of the Brooklyn
     Bridge." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 7 June 2018,
     www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
     Proof-Positive-Ballyhoo-Confirms-the-Safety-of-the-Brooklyn-Bridge.

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Flat Paper Flight

5/26/2022

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Jan Adkins
The Explainer General

Since he was a boy, John Collins has been fascinated by paper airplanes. Who isn’t? Most of us have folded the familiar dart-shaped classroom airplane. Good fun. And it’s science.

Big and small aircraft depend on the same four principles: weight (of the craft), drag (wind resistance over the craft), lift (upward force from air passing over the craft’s flight surfaces), and thrust (what pushes the craft). A 747 Jumbo Jet and a paper airplane depend on the same forces.

     Collins wanted to fold this aeroscience into paper. But how to build (fold) complex principles into something so small?

     He found the ancient Japanese art of origami and used its sculptural tricks. He created paper aircraft that do astonishing things. One comes back in a horizontal circle, like a boomerang. Another flies up, turns over and comes back vertically. One actually flaps its wings as it glides slowly. To John, they’re all working science experiments: every flight leads to some knowledge and to new ideas for tweaking the aircraft so it flies better.

     John Collins became “The Paper Airplane Guy.”  He believes that scientific research happens everywhere, every day. He says, “It doesn’t take computers, lab coats, microscopes and the like. It takes a hunger to know. Science is just the structured way we find stuff out. The science you can do with a simple sheet of paper is no less important than what can be done with an electron microscope.”

     On February 26, 2012, John and Joe Ayoob stood in a big, windless aircraft hangar with John’s best-so-far flyer, Suzanne. (He named it after his wife.) Joe was a professional football quarterback who learned to throw Suzanne hard but steady, not like a football but like a delicate piece of origami. Joe threw Suzanne up, up, and it dived down to fly – really fly – 226 feet and 10 inches, the Guinness World Record for distance thrown.

     John wanted paper airplanes to welcome young people into science. He started a National Paper Airplane Contest called the Kickstarter Project with a big prize for anyone who throws Suzanne farther than Joe. Or you could throw your own better, more aeronautically elegant paper airplane. It was a simple, scientific task. Every paper airplane and every flight would be a new experiment, just as important as the Wright Brothers’ Kittyhawk flight. Science isn’t just geeks and labs; we’re all part of it. The project didn’t get support and ended. John would like to direct people to  www.TheNationalPaperAirplaneContest.com. Air and Science museums across the country will be hosting events. The museums get three Fly for Fun Days; STEM education days that teach basic flight concepts and skills for the national contest.

Some of John's amazing folded planes

If you would like to build your own championship plane Suzanne, begin here with the step of step instructions.

John Collins with one of his planes whizzing past him.

STEP2-Diagonal fold

STEP 3-Unfolded

STEP 5 – Unfolded

STEP 4- Diagonal the other way.

STEP 6 - Fold side to the diagonal

STEP 7 - Fold other side to the diagonal

STEP 8 - Fold across center of diagonal

STEP 9 - Fold the crease

STEP 11 - Fold in half

STEP 13 - One wing done

STEP 10 - Fold the other crease

STEP 12 - Top edge and inner touch for wings

STEP 14 - Both wings done

Step 15 - Done! Note accuracy and dihedral ( good word to research!)

Jan Adkins is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, WiFi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Adkins, Jan. "Flat Paper Flight." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 9 Apr.
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/flat-paper-flight.

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Doodlebugs: Evil Robots in the Skies

5/18/2022

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Jan Adkins
The Explainer General

For us “Doodlebug” is a name for a “roly-poly” or “pill bug.” During World War II, however, it meant a flying bomb. Putting a silly name on such a wicked object was characteristic of Britain’s plucky humor during a devastating war.

Adolph Hitler gave it an official name: Vergeltungwaffe 1 or the V1, “first vengeance weapon.” It was also called the buzz bomb, because it was powered by a pulse jet with metal shutters that opened and closed over its intake fifty times a second to direct the force of its jet-fuel combustion to the rear. This noisy but simple jet engine made a loud, stuttering buzz. You could hear a buzz bomb 10 miles away, and you hoped to keep hearing that buzz as it passed overhead. Attached to the nose of the buzz bomb’s body was a propeller that measured the miles it had traveled. Once the mile counter reached a preset distance, the engine stopped. That was the worst sound: sudden silence. It meant that the doodlebug was plunging to earth near you carrying almost a ton of high explosive.

A doodle bug was only about 26 feet long. The body and engine were metal, the stubby wings were mostly plywood. They were cheap to build; they didn’t put a German pilot at risk. In war terms, they were a bargain.

Doodlebugs were also fast, about 400 miles an hour. Most airplanes couldn’t catch them. Even when the fastest fighters closed in on a buzz bomb, bringing it down wasn’t easy. Machine gun slugs bounced off the sleek metal body. Fighters with cannons were effective but the ton of explosive in the doodlebug could destroy the fighter if it got too close.

Intrepid fighter pilots found another way. They flew right beside the flying bomb and slipped the tip of their wing under the doodlebug’s wing. Airflow over the fighter’s wing flipped the V-1 over in a roll from which its autopilot couldn’t recover. Hundreds of doodlebugs crashed into fields far short of London.

With Britain’s improved anti-aircraft shells and enormous lines of anti-aircraft cannon, most of the doodlebugs launched from the European coast were shot down but they still kept coming. Before Allied forces stopped the bombs in late 1944, more than 8,000 had hurtled toward England, damaging more than 1,125,000 buildings in London, and killing almost 23,000 Britons.

This is a German propaganda photograph showing the "V1" being rolled to its launch site . In their caption, the Nazis bragged, "this first German reprisal weapon is an excellent creation of our air defense." Wikimedia Commons

Cutaway drawing of a V-1 showing fuel cells, warhead and other equipment. U.S. Air Force

On 13 June 1944, the first V-1 struck London next to the railway bridge on Grove Road, Mile End, which now carries this plaque. Eight civilians were killed in the blast. Wikimedia Commons

Jan Adkins is excited by things tiny and by enormous concepts. He’s published about forty-five books but they seem to be only excuses to find new stories and learn new facts. He’s been called “The Explainer General” because most of his work unsnarls complicated knots of confusion and re-builds them as simple paths to understanding. He explains bright bits of the world in pictures and words, often to young people. He’s written about sandcastles, bridges, pirates, knights, cowboys, maps, sailing, knots, coal, oil and gold. He’s got a long list of things he still wants to figure out and explain. Adkins (this is what his grandsons call him) believes real history and real science are ten or twelve times cooler than fairy tales and magic.
Adkins is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Adkins, Jan. "Doodlebugs: Evil Robots in the Skies." Nonfiction Minute, iNK
Think Tank, 10 May 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
Doodlebugs-Evil-Robots-in-the-Skies.

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The Not-So Twins: Space Travel Discouraged

5/6/2022

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Jan Adkins
The Explainer General

Albert Einstein’s work wasn’t done in a laboratory but in his marvelous mind, and he thought big. His thoughts about enormous speeds and giant masses changed the way we think of science and nature.

Einstein established a new approach to science: Relativity, in which the mass and speed of objects are stable only in relation to their surroundings. One inescapable part of relativity is that space and time are parts of the same fabric. Very big masses and very fast speeds can warp that fabric.

One surprise discovery: there is a limit to how fast anything may travel. Anything approaching the speed of light requires more and more energy to push it only a little closer, until it can’t be pushed more. Unless we solve this problem, c (the symbol for the speed of light) is as fast as we’re going to get. But if you travel close to c, unusual things happen.

Two twins, Bill and Will, plan to make a fast trip to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, on their twentieth birthday. The distance is about four light years away from Earth (light year = distance light travels in a vacuum in one year, about 5,865,696,000,000 miles). Will is stuck in a traffic jam and misses the blast off. Bill goes alone. He travels very close to the speed of light, .9999999 c, whips around Alpha Centauri and returns at the same speed. When he lands he asks for his brother Will.

Bill has been traveling for a bit over eight years; he’s 28 years old. But at this speed, his spaceship time has played out sloooooowly in relation to earth time. To Will on Earth, Bill’s trip took 49 years. Will is now 69 years old.

If the spaceship had traveled a little bit faster, say .99999999 c, Bill would still have aged 8 years. But when he returned to Earth, Will and everyone else he knew would be dead, since 155 years would have passed.

Recently, with fantastically accurate clocks, we’ve proved Einstein’s theories: astronauts traveling at thousands of miles an hour on space stations age a few seconds slower for every year of Earth-time.

Can we ever travel to distant stars? Not unless we find a way around Einstein’s shifting nature of space and time. Easy for Star Trek. So far, it’s impossible for us.

Jan Adkins is excited by things tiny and by enormous concepts. He’s published about forty-five books but they seem to be only excuses to find new stories and learn new facts. He’s been called “The Explainer General” because most of his work unsnarls complicated knots of confusion and re-builds them as simple paths to understanding. He explains bright bits of the world in pictures and words, often to young people. He’s written about sandcastles, bridges, pirates, knights, cowboys, maps, sailing, knots, coal, oil and gold. He’s got a long list of things he still wants to figure out and explain. Adkins (this is what his grandsons call him) believes real history and real science are ten or twelve times cooler than fairy tales and magic.

Adkins is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Adkins, Jan. "The Not-So Twins: Space Travel Discouraged." Nonfiction Minute,
iNK Think Tank, 16 Mar. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/
the-nonfiction-minute/The-Not-So-Twins-Space-Travel-Discouraged.

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Earthquakes on the Mississippi?

Proof Positive: Ballyhoo Confirms the Safety of the Brooklyn Bridge

Flat Paper Flight

Jan Adkins is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, WiFi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

Doodlebugs: Evil Robots in the Skies

The Not-So Twins: Space Travel Discouraged

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