kids and science
jstemwedel | February 8, 2008
Groundhog's Day
It's February again and what do you know -- the groundhog has made its appearance in school work!
It doesn't matter that the sprogs have discussed it before, the curriculum requires an annual reexamination of Punxsutawney Phil's predictive prowess.
Thankfully, there seems to be at least a little critical thinking involved, to wit:
Younger offspring was asked, Do you think animals can really tell what the weather will be? Tell why they can or cannot.
Younger offspring wrote the following in response:
I think so, because animals can feel stuff also.
I don't think so, because…
jstemwedel | February 1, 2008Elder offspring: Do you know why eggs are egg-shaped?
Younger offspring: Because they're eggs?
Dr. Free-Ride: Indeed, it would probably be surprising if eggs, of all things, weren't egg-shaped.
Elder offspring: (sighing) What I meant was, do you know why eggs have the particular oval shape that they do, narrower at the top and wider at the bottom?
Younger offspring: Hmm. I think it has to do with the shape of the chicks. Chicks are wider at the bottom than at the top, and they need to fit in eggs to be laid by the chickens, so that's why eggs need to be that shape.
Dr. Free-Ride: That's a…
jstemwedel | January 25, 2008A bath-time conversation:
Younger offspring: The water is pretty warm.
Dr. Free-Ride: Is it too hot? I could add some more cold water.
Younger offspring: No, it's good. I'm just going to ooze in, like a snail oozing into its shell.
Dr. Free-Ride: Because easing in would be too conventional.
Five minutes later, the younger Free-Ride offspring had still not quite achieved submersion in the bath.
Dr. Free-Ride: You know, if you're going to finish getting bathed tonight -- in time for bedtime stories -- you're going to have to move it along. Either "ooze" all the way in now, or let me add some…
jstemwedel | January 18, 2008Walking to school on a cold morning:
Elder offspring: I'm going to steal your warmth!
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh really?
Elder offspring sticks hands in Dr. Free-Ride's coat pockets, where Dr. Free-Ride's hands are.
Elder offspring: Brrr! Your hands are really cold!
Dr. Free-Ride: Yes, they are. Mwah ha ha!
Elder offspring: I'm still going to steal your warmth!
Dr. Free-Ride: My dear, given that in this universe heat flows from hotter objects to cooler ones, I'm pretty sure it is I who will steal your heat.
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Toweling off after a recent swimming lesson and noting that the indoor air…
jstemwedel | January 11, 2008Last Friday, the Free-Ride family was visiting friends in Santa Barbara. It was a very rainy day, so we decided that a trip to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History made more sense than a hike or a trip to the beach.
Within minutes of our arrival, there was an announcement that a planetarium show was just about to start, and that there was still room for more visitors to see it. We took advantage of the opportunity.
It was a really good decision.
For one thing, unlike planetariums at "major" natural history museums, the Gladwin Planetarium in Santa Barbara does live programs where an…
jstemwedel | January 4, 2008Younger offspring: In the summer, we went to Yosemite and stayed in a cabin. We had to be really careful about bears. We couldn't leave any food outside at all -- not even a food wrapper in the car, because sometimes bears get into cars if they think they smell food.
Elder offspring: We also had to be careful about bears when we stayed at the cabin near Shasta for [San Diego friends'] wedding. Remember all the bear art with the reminders not to leave food lying around?
Younger offspring: But we didn't see any bears either place.
Dr. Free-Ride: I think in the cabin near Shasta, the constant…
jstemwedel | December 31, 2007The One Laptop Per Child program's Give One Get One promotion (which I blogged about back in November) has been extended through the end of December 31 (today!!).
If you're in the U.S. or Canada, for $399 ($200 of which is tax deductible) you can donate a spiffy new and super-cool XO laptop to a child in a developing country and get one for yourself.
Santa (who apparently reads this blog) availed himself of the offer and brought an XO laptop to the sprogs. It's set up with Linux (a plus for many people), although some bits are a little buggy (but free upgrades are expected to be available…
jstemwedel | December 28, 2007With only a few days left in 2007 (and having temporarily fled my children for a cat-free location, so as to give my immune system a chance to recover from cat allergens), this Friday I offer the sprog blogging year in review:
January:
Sunrise, sunset (Jan. 5), in which the sprogs think about the reason for time-zones.
A child's garden of empiricism (Jan. 12), in which the winter cold turns the Free-Ride family to thoughts of experiments we might do in the garden.
What's for dinner (Jan. 19), an appreciation of alliums and of the various plant parts we eat.
Just Gimme Some Truth (Jan. 26),…
jstemwedel | December 25, 2007The tradition in the Free-Ride family (passed down from my family) is that, on Christmas morning, no one gets to start opening presents until everyone is awake and ready to start opening presents. It doesn't matter how early the kids are awake. Until the last sleepy parent is ready, you just have to wait.
Santa does leave filled stockings on the foot of each bed, so there's something to keep you occupied, but that only keeps you satisfied for so long.
The fact that we are visiting the grandparents-who-lurk-but-seldom-comment introduces an interesting complication to the power struggle…
jstemwedel | December 23, 2007As I mentioned earlier, the sprogs and I decided to try our hands at building an entry for the contest to build a gingerbread house using sustainable building design practices. We read up on principles of sustainable design and stocked up on unsulfured molasses and powdered sugar.
Here's what we did and what we learned.
Every engineering project involves working within constraints. For starters, there are the contest rules:
Everything must be edible.
However half-baked (har har), there must be at least FOUR identifiable sustainable building design elements.
Your design must include a…
jstemwedel | December 21, 2007Have you ever tried to have a conversation about one thing and found that, almost immediately, the conversation veered someplace else entirely? This is one of those.
I had heard the horrifying news that there are high school teachers -- in our pretty good school district -- who actually tell their students that it's OK to cut and paste stuff from the internet into their papers without quotation marks or citation, and that Wikipedia is a great source of authoritative information (which, again, one need not cite, seeing as how the internet is like our shared brain).
My response was to launch a…
jstemwedel | December 14, 2007
*For Hanukkah this year, the elder Free-Ride offspring got E. coli and the younger Free-Ride offspring got Rhinovirus -- not the actual microbes, but the Giant Microbes stuffed versions. These gifts actually exploited a convenient loophole in Casa Free-Ride's moratorium on new stuffed animals, seeing as how bacteria are not part of the Animal Kingdom, and viruses aren't even technically alive.
The eyes on these plush microbes did offend the sensibilities of the Free-Ride parental units, but we survived years of toy snails with eyes not properly located on eye-stalks. The real outrage was…
jstemwedel | December 11, 2007David Ng at The World's Fair asks what kind of scientist Santa Claus might be. I'm not sure I have the answer to that, but I at least have a hunch about what kind of scientist might make the most headway studying Santa. (Of course, if Santa followed Socrates' advice to "Know thyself," that would be the kind of scientist Santa should be.)
So, here are the facts as we know them:
Santa delivers gifts or toys to millions of locations in a fairly narrow window of time in the same night.
Despite his reputed girth, Santa manages to make it down the chimney.
Observing Santa at work is a Very Bad…
jstemwedel | December 7, 2007We've arrived at the portion of the school year in which it is dark when I walk the Free-Ride offspring home. This means that a good bit of our observation during the walk depends on our ears instead of our eyes.
Elder offspring: (in response to the high-pitched screech-y song of a bird-like shadow swooping above us) I wonder if that was a nighthawk.
Dr. Free-Ride: I don't know. I'm no kind of expert on bird songs. I'm not even sure how I'd tell a bird from a bat when it's this dark.
Younger offspring: A bat is a mammal.
Dr. Free-Ride: I know that a bat is a mammal. But, in the dark, I'm…
jstemwedel | December 4, 2007As I mentioned last year, the Free-Ride household celebrates both Hanukkah and Christmas. And reliable sources indicate that Hanukkah starts tonight.
That means I'm on the prowl for eight nights' worth of gifts that will engage the Free-Ride offspring's brains without breaking the bank. And, I suspect I'm not the only adult on such a mission today.
Thus, it seems to be a good time to add to the Brain-Friendly Giftables compiled last year. Here's a round-up of smaller items that feel like more than mere "brain-snacks":
"I got a rock!"
We've actually worked this strategy for two Hanukkahs…
jstemwedel | November 30, 2007A bonus sprog blog! Somehow, this has become cheating week, and this conversation feels like it fits in with our discussions of how do-gooders do bad and of how freshman engineering students think about cheating.
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Dr. Free-Ride: (arriving to pick up the sprogs from the afterschool program) Hey, gather up your stuff! It's time to go home.
Younger offspring: OK. I just need to get my homework back from [a first grade classmate].
Dr. Free-Ride: What is [the classmate] doing with your homework paper?
Younger offspring: Copying the answers.
Dr. Free-Ride: Wait a minute. Why would you…
jstemwedel | November 30, 2007Dr. Free-Ride: C'mon and get out of bed. We have to leave soon.
Younger offspring: My eyes are watery.
Dr. Free-Ride: Eyes will do that sometimes.
Younger offspring: Are my eyeballs always wet?
Dr. Free-Ride: Pretty much, yeah.
Younger offspring: Are my eyeballs always squishy?
Dr. Free-Ride: Uh, I guess they are, but I'd rather not check if it's all the same to you.
Younger offspring: But if I close my eye and press on my eyelid with my finger, my eyeball feels kind of squishy.
Dr. Free-Ride: Sure, but you wouldn't want to press so hard that you actually squished your eyeball.
Younger…
jstemwedel | November 23, 2007Freud would probably say that there are times when a hand-turkey is just a hand-turkey.
Freud, however, isn't writing this post.
Would this kind of plumage only work on a domesticated bird? (What kind of ecosystem would make such wild feathers an advantage for any bird but one widely recognized to be yucky tasting?)
Are turkeys capable of self-awareness? If so, how does this one feel about the fact that his feet look so much like the fork stuck in his fallen comrade?
Is a hand-turkey whose head is not on the hand's thumb a mutant strain? Or is the hand-turkey like Mickey Mouse, whose…
jstemwedel | November 16, 2007This post is dedicated to a donor to my Blogger Challenge who prefers to remain anonymous. The donor actually asked for artwork on the subject to which this discussion eventually turns; I hope the dialogue is an acceptable substitute.
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Even though certain elements of the U.S. early grade school curriculum seem thoroughly ossified, some of them still end up sparking fresh thinking. For instance, in anticipation of Thanksgiving the younger Free-Ride offspring's first grade class learned about how Squanto helped the pilgrims learn how to grow corn in the challenging terrain of…
jstemwedel | November 15, 2007I just found out about something cool for which the window of opportunity closes in eleven days:
Through November 26, the One Laptop Per Child project has a Give One Get One deal (in the U.S. and Canada) wherein you can donate a spiffy new and super-cool XO laptop to a child in a developing country and get one to give to a child in your life (although, presumably, your inner-child might persuade you to keep it for yourself if you aren't acquainted with any kids).
The XO laptop is an impressive feat of engineering, and distributing these beauties is part of a plan that really speaks to me:…