The Unwanteds

The Unwanteds
By Lisa McMann

Book 1 in series

    Alex Stowe and his twin brother Aaron Stowe await their fates on the day of the Purge, the annual selection of Wanteds, Necessaries, and Unwanteds in the authoritarian state of Quill. Alex knows he is going to be Unwanted and Aaron will be Wanted. He has shown creativity many times, which is banned in Quill. Aaron, on the other hand, has been a model citizen - most of the time. Many years ago, Alex got Aaron to try drawing in the mud. Their father caught them, but he mistook Aaron for Alex and Aaron went along with it to keep his record clean.
    Alex gets on the bus to the Death Farm while Aaron goes to the University. On the bus, Alex sees Samheed and Meghan, and meets a girl named Lani, who later turns out to be a governor's daughter. At the gates of the Death Farm, all the Unwanteds are dropped off. The Eliminators come out to take them to the Lake of Boiling Oil. But then, the strangest thing happens. A man named Mr. Today emerges from a shack, and the wasteland turns into a colorful, bountiful world beyond imagination. The Eliminators become girrinos, guardians of Artimé. Mr. Today is the head mage, for inside this hidden land, the Unwanteds thrive and learn magic, which only creative people can learn. Meghan even meets her Unwanted brother, Sean. Only Samheed isn't receptive to the new world. The children live in a huge, magical mansion with a giant stone cheetah named Simber (displayed on cover) and an ebony warrior named Florence.

Air and Space: They Said It Wasn't Possible to Escape the Space Shuttle. These Guys Showed It Was.

Air and Space: They Said It Wasn't Possible to Escape the Space Shuttle. These Guys Showed It Was.

By Mark Betancourt

    In the aftermath of the Challenger space shuttle accident, NASA scrambled to find an escape method should the space shuttle ever malfunction again. Although the general consensus was that such a method wouldn't have helped the Challenger astronauts and would be useful in only a handful of scenarios, something was better that nothing.

    But first, could the pilots actually get out of the escape hatch? A scaled simulation with a wind tunnel and dummies showed that it was. The next problem was to figure out how to get them beyond the reach of the wings, because they escape hatch would be on the side of the spacecraft. Many solutions were proposed, but some resulted in limbs being torn off, and scientists finally arrived at a curved pole design that would extend out of the hatch. Astronauts would climb along this, attached by a lanyard, until they let go at the end.

    The finally step was making a parachute backpack. Not only would this need parachutes, but it would need to auto deploy like an ejection seat in case someone was unconscious, have a raft and life vest along with emergency rations, and all fit into a one-size-fits-all backpack. Navy elite skydivers tested these systems, and NASA eventually settled on one with adjustable straps.

    The shuttle Discovery was the first to be equipped with these new features, and was sent off on the return-to-service flight. Although they were never used, it's always better to be safe than sorry.

TedEd: Why doesn’t anything stick to Teflon?

A TedEd by Ashwini Bharathula

Teflon was used for Apollo-era spacesuits, Manhattan Project pipes, and in non-stick pans in your kitchen. So what is this solid, and why is it so slippery? Teflon is the DuPont brand name for Polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE. In 1938, Roy Plunkett was trying to create a non-toxic refrigerant for DuPont, a chemical company, when he created PTFE instead. The substance he created was chemically inert, or didn't interact with other substances. It also had a low coefficient of friction, so other materials slid off of it easily. This means Teflon is useful for anything water resistant, chemically resistant, or slippery. Teflon is a polymer, which is made of long chains of repeating atoms. The center atoms are carbon, each with 2 fluorines attached. The fluorine atoms wind tightly around the carbon, creating a sort of armor. They react so strongly to each other that all the other chemical properties that make atoms stick together don't work. So how does PTFE, which doesn't stick to anything, end up on a pan? The pan is made so that there are rough surfaces on it, then coated with a top-secret glue formula. This is then coated with Teflon and ultra-heated so that it becomes a slick surface. Teflon is usually safe, but it starts to release bad fumes at temperatures over 500 degrees Fahrenheit, so you should be careful. There may also be risks in the manufacturing of the material. DuPont and its subsidiary face charges over exposing employees and the environment to a toxic substance called PFOA used in Teflon.