The official agency that regulates the French language has decided that COVID will be a feminine noun in French, even though most French speakers have been making it masculine.
COVID stands for coronavirus disease. In French that translates into "maladie provoquée par le corona virus" -- which in English means, "the disease caused by the coronavirus.""Maladie" is a feminine word so it uses the feminine article 'la': hence "la maladie." Therefore, it should be "la Covid-19," according to the agency.
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Wednesday, May 27th, 4:33pm A SpaceX Falcon 9 will launch a Crewed Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. This will be the first time this capsule has flown with astronauts. It will also be the first time since 2011 that astronauts have launched from the United States. Very exciting!!! Spaceflightnow.com is a great source of up to the minute information. There is a section that has a launch schedule, so you can check out upcoming launches. It lists every launch in the world, so check for Florida launches! The main page will have updated information on the current launch. For SpaceX launches, you can check out SpaceX's website. They'll have a live stream of the launch. If the sky is clear, you can see the launches from anywhere in Florida. Look to the East (where the sun rises!) SpaceX is set to launch astronauts from Florida for the first time in 9 years!!! Since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, astronauts have had to launch with the Russians to get to the International Space Station. But SpaceX is now ready to send astronauts in their capsule! Two NASA astronauts will launch in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. They will dock with the Space Station the following day. Those two astronauts will join the three people already on the Space Station for a few months. I am so exited. I. Can't. Even. Launch is scheduled for Wednesday, May 27th at 4:32pm. You can see it from Lakeland! Look towards the east (where the sun rises in the morning). Check out SpaceX's website for a live stream the day of the launch. The pictures show the NASA 'worm' logo painted on the side of SpaceX's rocket, the astronauts (Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley) standing next to their Dragon capsule, the Dragon capsule undergoing its final checkout before being sent to Florida, and the astronauts training in the simulator. SpaceX is currently designing a huge rocket. The first stage (bottom part) is called the Falcon Super Heavy. It will land back on the barge in the ocean, like the Falcon 9 rockets do now. Those rockets have three landing legs. The Super Heavy is so big that it will have six landing legs! On top part of the rocket is called Starship. Together this will be the largest rocket ever built - it will be twenty feet taller than the Saturn V moon rocket that took Apollo 11 to the moon. Starship passed a huge test the other night when they tested fueling it. The last couple of times they did the test, it...uh, exploded. This time though, it passed the test. SpaceX hopes to test fire the engines next. Maybe as soon as this weekend! This rocket will be able to go to the moon and to Mars!
Were there germs on the moon? Nobody knew for sure. Most scientists assumed there weren’t. But best to be safe than sorry. There was an extremely small risk of moon germs. But that small risk posed a very serious consequence - a novel pathogen, not native to earth, and a population with absolutely no immunity.
Doctors suggested the only thing that might work - quarantine. The crew of Apollo 11 spent three weeks in quarantine before their launch. In case the astronauts came down with anything during the mission, even the sniffles, doctors would have to somehow prove it didn’t come from the moon. To avoid that, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were tucked away in quarantine. They had limited contact with a handful of authorized people. The night before launch, President Nixon wanted to eat dinner with the crew. Dr. Charles Berry, who had been astronauts’ doctor from the very beginning of the space program, had to tell Nixon no. Dr. Berry was pretty sure he was going to be fired. He wrote Nixon a hand-written letter of apology and managed to keep his job. The crew was to be quarantined for another 21 days after leaving the moon. As soon as Armstrong and Alrdin stepped back into Eagle and closed the hatch, the clock started ticking. After splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, a Navy diver, essentially wearing a haz-mat diving suit, opened the hatch a smidge, threw three biological isolation suits inside and slammed the hatch closed. This was, by far, the weakest point in the quarantine process. Moon dust got everywhere, so some certainly was released into the air when the hatch was open. The BIGs (biological isolation suit....leave it to NASA to have an acronym for literally everything) were kind of like a space suit for earth. It had its own breathing system and the fabric held particles inside. The astronauts, clad in their BIGs, were individually hoisted into a helicopter, which then flew them together to the USS Hornet. Once aboard the aircraft carrier, the astronauts were immediately led into the mobile quarantine facility. The MQF was a modified Airstream trailer designed to house the astronauts for a few days until they got back to Houston. The crew spent 2.5 days in the MQF while the Hornet sailed to Hawaii. Once there, the astronauts’ wives were able to see their husbands through the window of the MQF. They were all then packed onto a cargo plane and flown to Houston. The MQF pulled up to Building 37 at the Johnson Space Center and deposited the crew inside the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. Half of the lab was designed to quarantine the astronauts, the other half to quarantine the moon rocks. The astronaut side had the capacity of holding 100 people (if needed) and had a kitchen, lounge, library, and medical facilities. The crew spent two and a half weeks with about twenty other people inside. Neil Armstrong celebrated his 39th birthday while in quarantine. And, yes, he got a birthday cake! The astronauts said quarantine wasn’t too bad after having been cramped in their capsule and then the Airstream. On the day they were released from quarantine, the New York Times reported that the astronauts “are ready to start exploring Earth”. The next two crews to land on the moon (Apollo 12 and 14) followed the same quarantine procedure. Finding no evidence of lunar germs, the post flight part of the quarantine was dropped for Apollo 15 and on. To this day, crews are still quarantined for a period of time before their flight. Nobody wants to have the flu in space. These are some awesome photos that a Latin student took of the Supermoon. Thanks, Dane! This is a picture of the moon I took last night. It was called a supermoon because the moon was full at the same time it was the closest to Earth during its monthly orbit. During a supermoon, the moon appears to be very bright and slightly bigger. Did you know the moon has places names and that most of them are in Latin? Apollo 11 landed on the lunar surface at the Sea of Tranquility, which is officially known as Mare Tranquillitatis. Mare is the Latin word for sea. Lunar seas are flat areas of solidified lava which appear dark on the moon's surface. The word lunar comes from the Latin word for moon - luna.
In my photo, the Sea of Tranquility (where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon) is towards the top. If you look at the top of the moon, you will see three dark circles going on a diagonal towards the left (kind of like three buttons on a snowman). The middle dark circle is the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo 11 landed on the bottom of it. Virus is a Latin word which means slime, venom or poison. People starting using the word in English in the 1300s to describe venom produced by snakes and spiders. Later, doctors used virus to mean the substances produced by the body when it was sick (from coughing, or your nose running). Virus took on its modern meaning (a microscopic molecule that can infect living things) in the late 1800's.
Corona is the Latin word for crown or garland. When scientists look at a coronavirus in an electron microscope, the virus appears to have a crown. This is a sign outside of a grocery store in Germany. It says, literally, "No hoarding-buying". The noun hamsterkäufe is made up of the word hamstern (hoarding) and käufen (buy). The word hamstern comes from hamster because hamsters store food in their cheeks. German tends to make new words by shoving a bunch of old words together. That's one of the many reasons I love German.
Salvete omnes!
Keep an eye on the website. I will be updating it Monday afternoon once I get some information to pass along to you. I expect that we will use Google Classroom and try to keep doing what we did in class. I'll post the code for Google Classroom on the website on Monday. Email me if you have any questions. Did any of you see either of the rocket launches that happened since we've been out of school? The next one is supposed to be in a few weeks. I'll keep you posted. Things will be a little crazy as we start this whole online school thing, so please be patient, ask questions, and above all don't freak out! Please let me know if you have suggestions or if something just isn't working out. We'll get through it together and come out stronger on the other end. I miss you all. Maybe we can set up a class get together on Zoom or something. Be well. Stay safe. Keep your chin up. Make good choices. Venimus, Vidimus, Vicimus. We came. We saw. We conquered. (Do you think Caesar would mind that I changed the endings on his quote to make it we instead of I? Nobody tell him. Thanks.) Valete! ~Ms. Chapman. |
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