Today, I learned that:

As you probably have heard, one of the most important events during the year in Brazil is to commemorate carnival. For a complete description of what carnival is, I recommend that you consult reference #1 below.

The most important day during carnival is always on the final Tuesday, and this year it occurs very late, March 5. Normally it is in February, but from time to time it can be in March. I thought that March 5 would be the latest possible date for carnival Tuesday, but in order to be sure, I consulted an authority in the matter, a well known German-Swedish meteorologist named André Franke. If you live in Sweden, then you have probably seen and heard him on the weather forecasts. Here is what he told me:

Carnival Tuesday occurs 47 days before Easter Sunday and thus varies in the same way as Easter. This year Easter Sunday is April 21 and as consequence, Carnival Tuesday is on March 5. Next time this will happen is in year 2030.

However, the latest date that Easter Sunday can occur is on April 25, which will happen in year 2038. Carnival Tuesday will then be on March 9, 2038. Recently, in year 2011, it almost happened, Easter Sunday was on April 24 and Carnival Tuesday on March 8. All this is due to when the March Equinox occurs. Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the March Equinox.

The Equinox, which is a point in time, can occur on different dates on different places of the Earth, due to the time zones, but Easter Sunday is on the same date all over the globe, and as a consequence also the Carnival Tuesday.

André also has his blog, see reference #2 below, where he details various astronomical facts occurring over the year. If that sounds interesting to you, then I definitely recommend that you look it up, it is well worth it!

The periodic table 150 years

Anyone who remembers their Chemistry lessons will surely also remember the periodic table. This table is an elegant composition of the different elements present in our universe. It was proposed by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev and first presented to the world on March 6, 1869.

Thanks to his way of organising the elements in a systematic manner, many new elements which only appeared as blanks in his original table were soon discovered and his forecasts about their properties were surprisingly exact. See also reference #3 below.

That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Carnival

2: Astroinfo.se

3: Dmitri Mendeleev

*: What did you learn in school today ?