STEM West

DR. GLADYS WEST: AN WOMAN MATHEMATICIAN WHO MADE GPS POSSIBLE 🌹♥️♥️

The woman who made GPS possible has taken her final journey.

Dr. Gladys West died at 95. She was the mathematician who built the model of Earth that makes GPS work.

She was born on a Virginia farm in 1930, the daughter of sharecroppers. She picked to***co as a child and walked miles to a one-room school. She made herself valedictorian, earned a full scholarship, and stacked degrees in math until the Navy hired her in 1956.

At the Naval Proving Ground, she programmed computers the size of rooms using punch cards and flow charts. She calculated the shape of Earth, the real shape, lumpy and irregular, precise enough that satellites could use it to tell you exactly where you are at any moment. That work became GPS.

She retired after 42 years. Then she had a stroke at 70, recovered, and earned a PhD from Virginia Tech.

For most of her life, no one knew her name. Her work was classified. She didn't even tell her kids. Then a friend asked for a bio in 2017 and the story came out. Hidden figure, finally seen.

She never used GPS herself. Preferred paper maps. "If I can see the road and see where it turns," she said, "I am more sure."

She spent her whole life making sure the rest of us never had to wonder.

Rest in peace, Dr. West.

Jupiter just made the exact face you make at 3am after your fourth espresso.

Wide eyes. Mouth hanging open. Total "I've got 115 moons to look after and zero hours of sleep" energy.

Here's the wild part: the raw shot is real. JunoCam aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft captured it on May 19, 2017, from 12,075 miles (19,433 kilometers) up. Swirling storms became eyeballs, a long smear of cloud became a silent scream, and the biggest planet in the solar system ended up looking like every overworked parent on earth.

Honestly? Relatable.

Source: Image enhancement by Jason Major, based on images courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

"I've always been a big believer in transparency." — Howard F.

OXHEART COMMUNITY SCHOOLS — Physics teacher Mr. Feldman, who has kept the same overhead projector in his classroom since 1996 despite four district attempts to remove it, became the most powerful person in the district at 8:14 a.m. Friday when a network failure knocked out Wi-Fi in all 11 schools. By 9 a.m., his projector was the only working display device in the district, and Mr. Feldman had begun granting colleagues access in 15-minute blocks, which he scheduled on a transparency.

Superintendent Ms. Pryce, who signed a 2018 memo describing overhead projectors as "a relic," arrived in his classroom at 10:20 a.m. to request a slot. By noon, the district's last 40 transparencies were trading in the staff lounge at two lunch duties apiece.

Wi-Fi was restored at 2:47 p.m., the following Friday.

Does this work?

"Without the 'I can' statement, they simply couldn't." — Tamara E.

LANTERNWOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL — All 25 students in Mrs. Engstrom's third-grade class lost the ability to read at 10:14 a.m. Thursday when the day's posted learning objective, "I can identify the main idea of a nonfiction text," fell off the wall behind the reading table. The objective, which had been held in place by a single pea-sized ball of poster putty, was recovered face down beneath a beanbag chair at 10:29 a.m.

Assistant Principal Mr. Stroud, who was conducting a walkthrough at the time, said the incident "proves exactly why we check for posted objectives" and scored the lesson a 1 out of 4 for objective visibility. He did not assist in the search, citing the walkthrough's three-minute time limit.

Reading ability returned at 10:31 a.m. after the objective was reattached with packing tape. Students remained limited to determining main ideas for the rest of the morning after the snafu.