Final Event of the Year

My compliments to the commenters on their quick assessment of the question posted yesterday. October 21, at about 11:35 pm, is the last sunset this year.

Sunrise will happen for the last time this year on October 22 at about 12:35 am. Once it rises, it will stay up until the austral fall, sometime in March.

Something else is connected with those two dates, but this time it is personal. Those dates, the 21st and 22nd, are the dates that I will be attending Snow Craft Training, affectionately known around MacTown as "Happy Camper". This two-day event teaches the priniciples of survival on the ice. My fellow campers and I will attend classroom lectures, get hands-on training on equipment, and techniques for survival on the ice. Then our instructors will drop us off on a glacier. We will put into action the skills we learned earlier. We spend the night on the ice and are picked up the next day. I understand it will be the coldest night of my life. This link is to Mary Lynn's website where she has a brief video showing her experience at Happy Camper last week. She gave me much valuable advice for getting through the experience. Thanks, Mary Lynn.

I'm doing a small scientific study aided by a member of the Air National Guard. We are checking the accuracy and correlation of the three electronic thermometers in the hospital. To do this, we borrowed a constant temperature circulating water bath from the Crary Science Lab. Each thermometer will be tested 10 times at each of four temperatures. I'll post the results in a couple of weeks.