Gummy Bears

Step By Step Guide to De-heading and Re-heading Your Gummy Bears:

Step One:
Make sure you have all your gummy bears together.

Step Two:
Get your gummy bears ready. Set two upon the surface you will later be preparing them on. If you feel ambitious, you can line the rest up to get ready.

Step Three:
Proceed to cutting/ biting the heads off of your gummy bears. Make sure they are different colors. If and when biting off the head of the gummy bear, you find yourself eating the head, you should probably use a knife instead.

Step Four:
Wet the underneath of your gummy bear with a little water. You may lick it, or wet it with a wet piece of paper towel.
Step Five:

Your gummy bear head should be sticky, which means you can now place it on the

head of the other gummy bear. Once you have done this, you have now successfully de-headed and re-headed your gummy bears.

Space Mueseum in Alamogordo

The Space Museum in Alamogordo

The space museum, was very inspiring to me. Not only did I learn a lot, but it made me realize that I can do so much more with my life. Imagine these people that design the rocket ships, that fly the rockets, and the people that go into space with them. How often is it that you find someone who does something like that. You ask someone what they do for a living and they reply, "I'm a rocket scientist." And you'd be amazed.

While visiting the museum, it made me realize that, that is what I want to do when I grown up: I want to became either an Aero Space Engineer, a Rocket Scientist, or something space related. Like a bio-chemist that see's whether life on a certain planet can contain life. I know I still have time to change my mind because I am only fourteen, but I really have my heart set on this, and I can't see myself doing anything else. I'v always wanted to have a career in space. I remember when I was taking a vet/ vet technician class. My instructor asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, of coarse everyone answered something a long the lines of a vet. But when she got to me I said, I want to be a rocket scientist, she then asked me why I was taking her class, and I replied that I want to on a ranch at the same time, and I may as well know how to take care of the animals.

My experience at the space museum as I said was inspiring, but I also said that I learned things. What I left out is how much fun I had, and how much I didn't want to leave. As we arrived, the first thing we did was take pictures in front of all the rockets and spaceships. The little kids and my dad stood in front of the big engines and pretend they were being blasted, (they thought it was hysterical, but my mom and I just thought they were big dorks). We went inside, and started from the top floor down. The top floor was my favorite floor, because that's where all the interactive things were. A man who worked there came and told us about the testing site. He then gave us some things to do, for example he gave us a gyroscope. He showed us how well they balanced and then proceeded to do a few tricks, like balance it on the tip of a pen. He used this example to tell us about how they worked, and the use of gyroscopes in the real world.

He said that they use them in space craft to keep them balanced, or the space craft will not be able to fly on track and it will loose its balance and crash. A gyroscope exhibits a number of behaviors including precession. Gyroscopes can be used to construct gyrocompasses, which work along side with or replace magnetic compasses (in ships, aircraft and spacecraft, vehicles in general), to help in maintaining stability (Hubble Space Telescope, bicycles, motorcycles, and ships) or be used as part of an inertial guidance system. Gyroscopic effects are used in tops, boomerangs, yo-yos, and Power-balls.

We continued through the museum, and on the next level down there was a simulator, you had to try and fly a space shuttle back to earth. We got to see different astronaut food and utensils such as pepsi that came in an aerosol can, and dehydrated chicken. We got to hear how loud a space craft was when it took off, and we got to engineer our own rockets and devices from building pieces that were similar to k'nex, only they were specially made for building spacecraft. I made myself a rover with a telescope attached and the boys made themselves rather imaginative rockets. We had to leave soon, so we hit the gift shop. The boys got gyroscopes, and I got a soda rocket. My mom wants me to set it off, and then experiment with it. Seeing if I can change the results. Ensuing that, we went outside and took dozens more pictures before leaving. My favorite picture is the one of the boys standing next to a rocket, with their arms above their heads, as if they were a rocket themselves.

White Sands

White Sands

We set off at about four a.m. that morning so that we could get there early. On the way we stopped outside the trinity site to watch the sun rise over the mountains; it was gorgeous. We also stopped at Carrizozo for a bathroom break. The little coffee shop we stopped at was like something out of the movies. It was so colorful and unique yet so small town at the same time. After stopping at the crazy coffee shop we left off again, the last stop before reaching White Sands was at the Heart of The Desert Pistachios store in Alamogordo.

We finally reached White Sands around 11 a.m. that morning. It was between seventy and seventy five degrees out, which doesn't seem that hot, until you take into account the fact that the sun reflects of the pure white sand, making it feel twenty degrees hotter. As well as the fact that you are climbing up big sand dunes, which even when it's cool outside makes you sweat.

We played for a few hours and then went back out to get some food for our picnic- lunch. We ate at one of the benches that are covered from the sun, but really look like they belong to the Martians on Mars. We then proceeded to find the biggest sand dune we could possibly find, which turned out to be twice as big as the one we usually play on. It took forever to climb up, since it was so hot outside, and carrying the sleds up the hill just made it worse. I figured out a way to make it easier; by braiding long pieces of of stalk from one of the plants out there, I made handles for everyone's sleds. So that they could drag them up the hill instead of carry them.

The last three times we have been there, I had been trying to master surfing down the hill on the sled. I was unsuccessful previous times, but this time I actually did it. The first time i did it, I actually screamed with joy. I made a way to brake, to go faster and a way to turn. It only works on the round sleds that we bought at the visiter center. But I don't see why making just a few modifications to other sleds wouldn't work.

Later that evening our close family friends arrived. we had planned on spending the whole weekend together. the first day at White Sands, the second at Carlsbad Caverns, and the third at Roswell. They got their later because their niece had arrived in Albuquerque where we all live, for the balloon fiesta. They were talked into taking her on a balloon ride, and then taking her out to lunch, so naturally they arrived later than we did. As soon as they arrived we went on a nature tour of White Sands. I would have enjoyed it more but I really didn't like the tour guide. After the tour, it was twilight, so we watched the sun go down over the mountains and then went back to the dunes we were previously playing on. I tried to teach them how to surf down the hill, but they both politely refused. We played for a few more hours in the dark, until the park closed. On the last time we went down, we could hear the coyotes howling. My dad and I thought it was pretty neat but my sister was scared, and my mom who grew up in the middle of no where Texas, didn't seem to care at all. (It just goes to show that we are city folk.) After leaving White Sands, we all reconvened at the hotel for dinner. After dinner we swam in the hotel swimming pool, and the next morning we left to go to Carlsbad Caverns.

I love going to White Sands. It's worth the long drive and the excruciating heat, just so we can sled down the hill to our heart's desire. The scenery is gorgeous, and as my brother once said, the dunes are so unrealistic they had to be from a cartoon. Obviously I knew they weren't from a cartoon, but I was still curious as to how they came to be. So the last time my family went, I learned where they really came from. My mother explained to us, (which later she proved by taking us on a nature tour), how the sand dunes were really made.

There was a fissure that was filled with lava like a volcano, but unlike a volcano the lava spilled out, instead of erupting. When the the lava spilled out, gasses came up and onto the earth and settled on the limestone that was above the fissure. Among the gasses was hydrochloride and sulfuric acid, which when it settled, dissolved the limestone and turned it into the gypsum crystal. As the weather wore the gypsum down, it turned into grains of sand that was carried away, and was turned into the white sand dunes. Every wet season the two lakes fill up and draw the gypsum that was covered out of the earth, again the wind will carry it up and add more sand to the dunes. (When the gasses settled, it settled wit the lava creating the mesas that we see today.)