The Dyson Sphere

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output. I was going to put those first two introductory sentences in my own words, but Wikipedia did such a fine and succinct job that I thought I could do no better.

After the completion of my last creation while I was killing labels, I was at a loss for what to make next. My older boy told me I should make a Dyson sphere. I responded, "everyone makes a sphere while they're killing labels." He counters with, "A hollow sphere???" Hmmm... once again, I was presented with a challenge. Could it be done??? Well, why not??? It started out looking like a chip bowl, then it started looking like a big 'ole dinosaur egg. (this didn't happen all in one day, so I was punching a hole in the edge and hanging it from the hook in my locker. That is what caused the distortion visible in the second picture.)



It came out WAY huger than I'd intended, but yes, that is a hollow shell of labels!!! It has that odd taper to the one end, but it's still pretty cool.



Looks a little bit like a giant pear, huh??? Second shot my boy is pantomiming that he's eating it.

In other somewhat related news, here's a picture of my son's MP3 player. He went on a weekend with one of his friends, and their dog got a hold of it for just a few seconds, ate the part where the headphones plug in off of it!!! I believe that you can still plug it in and access the files, so it can be used as a storage device. Terrible picture, I used my old camera for the shot. If I'd been using my new one, I'd have been sorely disappointed by the results.



Today we made a return trip to Leo Carrillo beach. It was cloudy down there, where it was nice and sunny at our house on both ends of our trip. Didn't get started as early as I'd wanted to, but did get there sooner and left home sooner, so the drive wasn't quite as bad as last time. Once again, I kinda wished I'd brought my camera with me. Saw porpoises by the dozens, and cool pelicans and even ducks. My younger boy chased a duck into the water, and it went submarine on him. He thought that was cheating. We dug a tunnel through a little cliff of sand, probably around four feet of digging through sand. The coolest thing, though, was we found the lid to a baby grand piano. Used it as a skim board, it was incredibly effective!!!