JagSwag hosts young dancers

By: Janese Watson

Every year, Seckman High School’s dance team, JagSwag, holds a pom clinic. This clinic is open to kindergartens up to eighth graders. It is made for dancers not only to improve their dance moves, but have fun while doing it. The girls meet new people and have amazing bonding experiences. There are games played for the girls to interact with one another and get out of their comfort zone. First grader Taylor Davis said, “I've met so many new friends!” For only thirty five dollars the dancers will learn a dance for three days and perform it on the Rickman Auditorium stage for all their friends and family to see. The package includes a T-shirt and an amazing experience.

This year’s dance clinic is themed: “Pop Stars.” Every song that is played is about being a pop star of some sort. The girls have dressed up in the past, but this year they wore what they would like so they can really focus on learning the material. The first day of camp they played some games and got right into to learning some dances. Every dancer is in their own age group to make things easier. If they feel they can do better they are able to move up a level. The girls learn as much as possible for the first two hours and JagSwag members make sure they look nice and clean for the next day.

The second day of clinic is all about technique. Without technique, everything looks sloppy, so the focus is on making sure the girls know what the proper technique is for each movement of the dance. Tenecia Clemmons mentions, “I love seeing the girls improve throughout the week, it’s my favorite thing to watch!”.The girls go across the floor doing certain moves and they improve each time around. After everyone has gone through technique with their levels they begin to dance again. Each dance is run several times to work on the dancers’ memory. After everything is complete the dancers make a big circle and go around saying a few things they liked about that day.

The third day of camp is all about focusing. This is the day parents can come watch and see what the girls have been working on for the past week. All the dancers get excited to finish off the camp strong. The girls stretch to warm up, then begin dancing once again. After the dances are perfectly clean and memory mistakes are finally gone, they are ready to perform for the big show. 

Friday’s showcase is not something that happened in the past. It is new to the camp clinic tradition. Before, the girls would perform on the third day and call it a camp. Now JagSwag has arranged them to be in the annual Seckman Spectacular. JagSwag performs all of their dances and invites schools from all around to make the show more interesting. It is a honor to have to pop star girls dance with JagSwag this year. Everyone is excited and can't wait to see what will happen next! 

Moving at the speed of light

By: Bella Dalba

It is a basic principle of science that the speed of light slows as it travels through a buffer (water or glass, for example), as this distorts the wavelengths. Until January 23, however, it has generally been thought impossible for particles of light, known as photons, to be slowed as they travel through free space, unimpeded by interactions with any materials. In a new paper published in Science Express, researchers from the University of Glasgow and Heriot-Watt University describe how they have managed to slow photons in free space by applying a mask to an optical beam, giving photons a spatial structure that can reduce their speed.

“Most people think of light as one continuous beam, but there are millions of photons moving around at an incomprehensible speed. The fact that they can isolate these particles shows you just how far technology has come,” explains Aimee Gaylord, a biology teacher at Seckman High School.

The team compares a beam of light (which contains a multiplicity of photons) to a team of cyclists, in which each person takes a turn leading the group. Although the group travels along the road as a unit, the speed of individual cyclists can vary as they swap position, making it difficult to measure velocity.

The experiment was configured like a time trial race, with two photons released simultaneously across identical distances towards a defined finish line. The researchers found that one photon reached the finish line as predicted, but the structured photon, which had been reshaped by the mask, arrived later, indicating that it traveled slower while still in free space. Over a distance of one meter, the team measured a decelerate of 20 wavelengths, which is crucially different to the slowing effect of passing light through a medium, where the light is only slowed during the time it is passing through the material. Passing the light through the mask limits the maximum speed the photon can achieve.

Daniel Giovannini, one of the lead authors of the paper, said: "The delay we've introduced to the structured beam is small, measured at several micrometers over a propagation distance of one meter, but it is significant. This finding shows unambiguously that the propagation of light can be slowed below the commonly accepted figure of 299,792,458 meters per second, even when travelling in air or vacuum.”

The effect is applicable to any wave theory, and could well be used to manipulate sound waves. These results provide a new way to think about the properties of light and explore the potential of future applications. “Think about it,” says Kelly Steinbrueck, a Physical and Earth Science teacher at Seckman High School. “This experiment could be the catalyst for future space exploration. If we can begin to manipulate sound and light, soon we could control the particles of matter. This is the first step towards actualizing warp-speed.”

Are aliens trying to contact us?

By: Josh Leach


Are alien’s trying to contact us?  Three burst of extremely powerful radio signals could be their communication technique.  This phenomenon has sparked the debate all over again.
The UFO craze has existed for several decades.  However, the question of whether other planets may contain life, even intelligent life, has been asked for over a thousand years.  In an article by Michael Schirber, a journalist on space.com, he said, “Galileo, Kepler and others considered the inhabitability of the planets, while being careful not to upset Church authority.”  Even the Greek philosophers debated the presence of extraterrestrials.  Josh Kurosz, a senior at Seckman High School was asked if he believed in extraterrestrial life.  He responded, “Of course there’s life on other planets.  The question is whether we’ll ever be able to prove it.”  Logan Smith, another senior, says, “Aliens aren’t some little green men visiting earth.  They’re probably just microorganisms off on a distant planet somewhere.”  Most scientists agree life on other planets is a strong possibility, but their distance from Earth would make travel and communication impossible.
The energy bursts were actually discovered a while ago but were being careful analyzed before being official reported.  Fox News declares, “Astronomers in Australia have picked up an “alien” radio signal from space for the first time as it occurred. The signal, or radio “burst”, was discovered on May 15, 2014, though it’s just being reported by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.  Emerging from an unknown source, these bursts are bright flashes of radio waves that emit as much energy in a few milliseconds as the sun does in 24 hours.”
Were the radio waves sent from aliens?  Well, according to Emily Petroff, a doctoral student from Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology, “We're confident that they're coming from natural sources, that is to say it's probably not aliens, but we haven't solved the case completely. The two most promising theories at the moment are that these bursts could be produced either by a star producing a highly energetic flare, or from a neutron star collapsing to make a black hole. Both of these things would be from sources in far-away galaxies just reaching us from billions of light years away.”  Since these radio waves have traveled such a long way, they must have been released billions of years ago.  If intelligent life did send these signals, they are likely long dead.
Unfortunately, mankind will most likely never know for sure if life exists on other planets.  Occasionally, a radio signal is picked up and sparks the public’s imagination, but no real evidence has ever been discovered.  All we can do is look up at the stars and contemplate an unsolvable mystery: Are we alone?

Winter weather in the Middle East

By: Dori Jenkins

Millions of people have fled the Middle Eastern country of Syria to escape the civil war that’s been raging there for the past four years. Many now live in refugee camps in nearby nations, such as Jordan and Lebanon. Although safely away from the fighting, the refugees recently faced another threat: extreme winter weather. This brings more problems to the families who are stuck away from their homes and are already forced to live in tents.

Earlier this month, powerful storms swept across the Middle East, bringing high winds, frigid temperatures, and heavy rain and snow. The weather has made life even more difficult for people like the nearly 85,000 Syrians living in Jordan’s Za’atari refugee camp.

The storms caused many of the tents families use as makeshift homes to collapse and knocked out electricity to parts of Za’atari. The rain and melted snow also flooded streets around the camp. A Seckman High School sophomore, Ashlee Taylor, says, “I cannot believe how harsh the weather is and how it is affecting to people in the surrounding areas. The people should be in more safe tents during this awful time.”

“Being in a camp is already not a comfortable situation,” says Nasreddine Touaibia of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “If you add to it this extreme weather, the situation now is pretty bad.”

With nowhere else to go, refugees living in Za’atari were forced to relocate to emergency shelters or move in with friends and relatives. They will remain there until UNHCR teams can make repairs around the camp and provide replacement tents. “Times like this are when we need to help out one another because no children or families deserve be stuck out in the freezing cold weather,” says a Seckman High School Sophomore, Caleb Potter. 

How to build a (CD) hovercraft

By: Sadie Raddatz

Here’s a fun experiment to do at home is making a hovercraft with and old CD. It’s simple, cheap, and fun for children. Plus, who doesn't like watching things hover?

Materials needed:

An old CD or DVD disc
A 9” balloon
A pop-top cap from a water or sports bottle
A hot glue gun

A push pin or small nail

1. If you are using the cap from a water bottle, cover the center hole of the CD with a piece of tape and poke about six holes in the tape with a push-pin or small nail. By doing this you will slow down the flow of air, allowing the hovercraft to hover longer.

2. Use the hot glue gun to glue the cap to the center of the CD or DVD disc.

3. Create a good seal to keep air from escaping. You don't want a lot, if any, air to escape. Blow up the balloon all the way and pinch the neck of it. (Don’t tie it.)

4. Make sure the pop-top is closed and fit the neck of the balloon over the pop-up portion of the cap (this is usually easier with two people).

5. When you're ready to commence hovering, simply put the craft on a smooth surface and pop the top open.

The airflow created by the balloon causes a pillow of moving air between the disc and the surface, lifting the CD or DVD and reducing the friction, which allows the disc to hover freely. A larger scale hovercraft would be capable of traveling over land, snow and water.