Libraries, valleys and places to return to

Good morning. This is Positive Times for Wednesday, November eleventh, twenty twenty-six. Today we open a library, look at valleys from space, and follow two projects changing everyday places. Then we return to breakfast, where even the last cereal pieces can suggest a question about physics.

Montespaccato welcomes back the Cornelia library

We begin in Montespaccato, in Rome. The Cornelia library reopened on November tenth after renovation funded through Italy’s recovery plan. The city identifies it as the fourth library returned to the public in a programme covering twenty-one sites. Twenty-one is the programme total, not the number of completed building projects. The library’s seven hundred and thirty-five square metres include two study and reference rooms, an events room, and spaces for children, young people and exhibitions. Three reading groups also have a dedicated room. The good news is concrete: a neighbourhood has shared spaces back. Our editorial comment: opening a book does not require accepting any more cookies.

• Roma Capitale · A Montespaccato riapre la Biblioteca Cornelia

Valley fog draws a landscape from space

From the city, let us imagine rising above the Appalachians. On November tenth, NASA published images acquired two days earlier. In the morning, branching white streaks followed valleys and the Cumberland River. NASA says those low clouds appear to be fog. They were no longer visible in the afternoon images. During long autumn nights, the ground loses heat and cools nearby air. Water vapour can condense into tiny droplets. Colder air tends to collect in valleys, where rivers add moisture. This explains the phenomenon; it does not directly measure every valley. The shape of the land becomes easier to read through something that, close up, often hides the landscape from us.

• NASA Earth Observatory · Autumn Mornings Bring Valley Fog
• NOAA NESDIS · What’s the Difference Between Fog and Clouds?

Two Volyn schools repaired for everyday learning

In Ukraine, the United Nations Development Programme announced completed repairs at two schools in Volyn on November tenth. They are Lyceum Number Eighteen in Lutsk and Gymnasium Number One in Novovolynsk. The work took place between March and August, supported by Spanish development cooperation. It did not all finish on the announcement day. Improvements include windows, heating, the sports hall and space for inclusive activities. In Novovolynsk, work also covered the roof, changing rooms and toilets, including an accessible toilet. The schools have one thousand two hundred and nineteen and five hundred and sixty-four students respectively. Improving these buildings helps everyday school life. It does not erase the difficulties of war, but makes important places for learning more usable.

• UNDP Ukraine · UNDP helps repair two schools in Lutsk and Novovolynsk with support from Spanish government

Waste removal gets under way in Wigan

In Wigan, in the United Kingdom, waste removal has begun at the illegal Bolton House Road site. The government announced this on November tenth. About eighteen thousand tonnes of household and commercial waste have accumulated there. The plan calls for up to twenty-five lorry loads a day, with completion in spring twenty twenty-seven. These are targets, not quantities already taken away. The positive development is the start of work, while a large amount of material still needs handling. In a very big tidy-up, starting and finishing are different verbs. Following the distance between those two verbs is an important part of our work as readers.

• Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs / GOV.UK · Major clean-up begins at notorious illegal waste site in Wigan

Why do the last cereal pieces gather?

Our small discovery is waiting in the bowl. Why do the last cereal pieces seem to gather? They are neither friends nor magnets. Floating objects can deform a liquid surface and influence one another through that deformation. Gravity, buoyancy and surface tension matter. But not everything that floats attracts everything else: different conditions can produce repulsion. In twenty nineteen, Brown University researchers described measurements using small disks and a controlled magnetic force. Magnetism was a tool in the experiment, not a property of cereal. At your next breakfast, after you stop stirring, watch two pieces and the distance between them. That is our editorial invitation: look more closely, without immediately turning every movement into an explanation.

• Dominic Vella and L. Mahadevan · AAPT / University of Oxford · The “Cheerios effect”, American Journal of Physics 73, 817–825
• Brown University · Researchers directly measure Cheerios effect forces

That is all for today. On the website you can find the November eleventh edition, its sources and the full readings, also in Italian. Thank you for listening to Positive Times. We will return with more verified news and another question to carry into your day.