Starch peanuts

So i ordered from Amazon.com a few days ago and yesterday i had the pleasure of opening a a new product as if it was Christmas morning. Just like anything else sent through the mail, UPS or Fed-Ex there is always the packing materials involved. Granted many different types of packing material have trended towards a greener material, but the issue was they were still some sort of plastic involved. Well today i has half a box of peanuts left over. After accidentally getting one wet i realized it started to dissolve right before my eyes. So i added a pile into my kitchen sink and started to spray hot water all over them and the following video is the result. After a little more research i find out that peanuts are based on corn starch.... which is 100% american grown corn and most of the machines that make it use just air not carbon dioxide or some other gas. The units are sold to individual packing facilities around the US. So where ever you american made produce is packed, they can make them right there on site! This is something that makes me very happy ... american grown, american made, american ingenuity!!

HD VIDEO - DISSOLVING THE PEANUTS

Storage containers

For those of you who like starbucks or even not.... here is a very inventive way to reuse storage containers. When goods are shipped from china the large containers stay here because we dont ship enough back. It cost china more to ship them back then it does to make a new one. There are people who even build houses from these type of containers and now Starbucks built an entire store from them. The beauty of this store... if they decide to move it, they just break up the containers, load them on trucks and move to a new location and put it back together again.

http://www.starbucks.com/blog/sustainable-store-design-in-action/1158?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=storedesign

This link has more closeups of the store

http://www.starbucksmelody.com/2011/12/19/the-shipping-container-starbucks/

Test 1

After your test today, I will grade your scantrons and add to Bolt hopefully before the end of the week. Attendance will be updated and you will have a pretty good idea where you fall grade wise. As I will mention in class... you will have both a scantron version and a hard-copy version of this test. If for some reason you don't agree with your grade you can meet with me during my office hours or send me an e-mail and we can arrange a time to meet. Once I have the exam grades up you have 10 days to come to me about any adjustments or changes to your grades. After the 10 days your grade is final! You will not get your exams back! Good luck

Jan 2012 4th warmest for entire US

A recent article from NOAA explaining and showing how warm January actually was across the entire US

http://www.noaa.gov/features/02_monitoring/jan_stats.html

NOAA 2011 weather

Here is a really good link that talks about the season of 2011 and all the effects on climate. go through the images and you will see some very poignant images of the earth.

http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/image/2012/fierce-2010-2011-winter-dwarfs-this-seasons-snowfall