kids and science
jstemwedel | May 8, 2009Here's some more video footage of the Free-Ride silkworms, with color commentary from the Free-Ride offspring.
Let me note here that as "pets" acquired as the elementary science classroom winds down for summer, silkworms are pretty agreeable. As long as you have a stable source of mulberry leaves and keep feeding them, they seem pretty content. Another animal in our science classroom that is looking for a summer home is a Madagascar hissing cockroach. The handout from the science teacher says he eats romaine lettuce and cat food. Talk about a hard sell!
What's the adaptive advantage of…
jstemwedel | May 8, 2009This week, our first-ever video sprog blog. (Yeah, I know, I'm going to have to turn in my Luddite card now.) Because it's hard to do silkworms justice unless you can watch them squirm!
Recall that these silkworms (who you've already seen in pictures) hatched from eggs that came home last June and stayed in the refrigerator until spring (when mulberry trees are nice and leafy).
Dr. Free-Ride's better half warns that the silkworms are slightly out of focus in this video. I remind you that here at Friday Sprog Blogging, we make a point of protecting the identities of the very young. Yeah,…
jstemwedel | May 5, 2009You know and I know that science is cool, but for some reason kids can be suspicious of our declarations to this effect. (Maybe it has to do with our enthusiasm for vegetables that they don't like, not to mention naps.)
However, Susan the Scientist is on a mission to let kids know that science rocks! Here's a taste:
Using science experiments to solve problems that come up in everyday life is cool. Playing with fire is cooler. (I dig the music, too, but let's pretend I didn't say that, lest it convince the kids that the music is lacking that Jonas sais quoi.)
Of course, Susan the…
jstemwedel | May 3, 2009A few weeks ago, the Free-Ride family welcomed some new members.
About 14 new members (although it can be hard to get an accurate count when they're squirming around).
Right now their main interests are eating, growing, and climbing on their siblings to find more to eat. Their growth is pretty alarming in its rapidity (especially since we've just moved them to the largest wide-mouth jar we have).
We were waiting for their arrival for a good long while. Now that they're here, we're trying to enjoy the days before they grow up and have kids of their own.
jstemwedel | May 1, 2009
It being spring and all, the Free-Ride offspring sometimes get that wistful why-aren't-we-4H-kids? look in their eyes.
Not that there aren't critters aplenty in the back yard. The younger Free-Ride offspring sizes up the ladybugs and looks for a jar with holes in the lid that would be appropriate as a ladybug barn. (Then, I point out that the ladybugs are needed in the garden, right where they are, to keep the aphid population under control.) Most mornings, we have a delightful selection of colorful birds hopping around and eating (bugs, one assumes) right out our window. There are…
jstemwedel | April 29, 2009Dr. Isis has some rollicking good discussions going on at her pad about who might care about blogs, and what role they might play in scientific education, training, and interactions. (Part one, part two.)
On the second of these posts, a comment from Pascale lodged itself in my brain:
I think a lot of impressionable girls, especially in that middle-school age group, get the idea that they can't be good at science or math if they like clothes, makeup, and boys. Is it the science/math sterotype that is the problem, or is it that girls make other choices to pursue these alternate interests? "I…
jstemwedel | April 24, 2009As captured in SprogCast #7, the Free-Ride offspring consider Mike Dunford's Earth Day resolutions meme. We discover that a kid's sense of scale is kind of different from a grown-up's.
You can grab the mp3 here. The approximate transcript of the conversation follows.
Dr. Free-Ride: I think I told you guys that we were going to talk again on something Earth Day-related, even though Earth Day was back on Wednesday.
Elder offspring: Yeah ...
Younger offspring: But we already talked about Earth Day!
Dr. Free-Ride: Sure, but I said we were going to do more. First of all, do you guys know what…
jstemwedel | April 17, 2009This morning, over breakfast, the Free-Ride offspring and I discussed the environment. You can hear the conversation (that crunching is from English muffins). The transcript is below.
Dr. Free-Ride: So I was going to ask you guys this morning to talk a little bit about the environment, and I guess my first question is, what's the environment?
Elder offspring: It's the area around an organism.
Dr. Free-Ride: What do you think, younger offspring?
Younger offspring: I think that the environment is the resources that you can use.
Dr. Free-Ride: OK, so that could be something that's in the area…
jstemwedel | April 11, 2009Tomorrow being Easter, a day on which there is some expectation that there will eggs for which to hunt in the backyard (weather permitting), the Free-Ride offspring and I decorated some eggs. We had an old package of oil-based dyes to make "swirled" eggs (the basic idea being that you float drops of the dye on top of cold water, then lowers the egg into the patches of dye, creating a sort of Jackson Pollock swirly effect on the shell).
But for the next dozen eggs, we thought we'd try something a little different. So we gathered some plant materials we thought might have pigments that we…
jstemwedel | April 10, 2009This morning, I came upon the younger Free-Ride playing a game.
Younger offspring: I'm playing "launch the bear".
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh, really?
Younger offspring: Yeah. I put the bear on the edge of the piece of cardboard and hold my hands on the other end with the fingers on top, and then I flip it!
Dr. Free-Ride: And there goes the bear.
Younger offspring: Yeah! I flip to try to get the bear past this finish line I made on the floor.
Dr. Free-Ride: That's pretty cool. Have you tried using something longer to do the flipping?
Younger offspring: Like this blue box lid? Let's see ... FLIP!…
jstemwedel | April 3, 2009Since we're trying to get out of town for the weekend, Casa Free-Ride is a hive of activity. (As we seem to be passing another cold back and forth, it's also a hive of mucus. Ew.) But we have time to update you on recurrent topics of conversation this week around the Free-Ride kitchen table.
This week, it's been all about math.
The younger Free-Ride offspring has been finding the math in the second grade classroom a little ... boring. They're doing multi-digit addition and subtraction, and while "carrying is OK, borrowing is boring!" I wonder whether this is an issue that could be…
jstemwedel | March 27, 2009Well, the school science fair looms (as school science fairs are wont to do). While the actual event isn't until May, we have reached the point at which the science teacher is vetting the proposed projects.
Presumably the vetting is to ensure that the kids are directing their efforts toward a project that is actually do-able in the available time, and that it's focused on a question that is "scientific" rather than a matter of opinion.
A friend on the elder Free-Ride offspring's soccer team had a project idea rejected because it fell in the realm of opinion. I asked, "What was the project…
jstemwedel | March 20, 2009It's a proud day for any parent when offspring start getting interested in formal proofs. So I felt a little thrill when the elder Free-Ride offspring sat down with Dr. Free-Ride's better half to consider whether it was possible for there to be a largest prime number:
:
Not just a proof, people. A proof by reductio!
It makes a mother a little emotional.
Lest I get totally verklempt, let us note the levity my child has inserted into the proof.
In the line of the proof that notes the contradiction (that n, which is prime and also greater than p presents a problem for the claim that p is the…
jstemwedel | March 20, 2009This Friday marks the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Accordingly, in SprogCast #5, the elder Free-Ride offspring marks the change of season by describing a local release of trout-fry.
You can download the sound file and pretend that the bathtub sounds are the gentle tides of the lake. The discussion is transcribed below.
Dr. Free-Ride: So, can you tell me what you did on Saturday?
Elder offspring: Well, I went to the lake and I released fry.
Dr. Free-Ride: Fry?
Elder offspring: Yeah, Rainbow Trout-fry.
Dr. Free-Ride: I see. How old is a Rainbow Trout-fry? Like, how do I…
jstemwedel | March 13, 2009This week, in SprogCast #4, the younger Free-Ride offspring sings and then suggests that the song bears on the planetary subject of the very first Friday Sprog Blogging entry, which also involved singing.
You can download the sound file for the a cappella performance and the discussion that follows. The transcript is included below.
The song is the Jonathan Coulton composition, I'm Your Moon. The younger Free-Ride offspring sang the first verse and the chorus.
They invented a reason
That's why it stings
They don't think you matter
Because you don't have pretty rings
I keep telling you I…
jstemwedel | March 6, 2009The younger Free-Ride offspring would like to report on a recent field trip to the Math/Science Nucleus.
Younger offspring: What's a nucleus anyway?
Dr. Free-Ride: It's what's at the center of things. The cells in your body have nuclei, and so do the atoms that those cells are made of.
Younger offspring: The atoms of different elements?
Dr. Free-Ride: Yep.
Most of the field trip involved a scavenger hunt that took the kids through the different parts of the Children's Natural History Museum. Having some experience with scavanger hunts of this sort (since we did one at the visitor center at…
jstemwedel | February 27, 2009This week, we finally get to the elder Free-Ride offspring's part of last-week's bath-night conversation about energy. Here's the audio of the discussion, complete with splashing bathwater and odd squawks from my computer.
For those who prefer words on the screen, the transcript is below.
Dr. Free-Ride: What do you know about energy?
Elder offspring: What do you mean, energy?
Dr. Free-Ride: I don't know, I guess if I was going to ask you, what kind of energy sources are you aware of ...
Elder offspring: Oh, there's nuclear power, there's solar power, there's wind power, there's water…
jstemwedel | February 22, 2009We're back at the Monterey Bay Aquarium today. Shortly after our arrival, the kids are up to their elbow in touch-tank water. Then, the younger Free-Ride offspring gets critical.
"The decorator crabs here aren't very decorated."
"It's true," says the volunteer working the touch-tank. "These decorator crabs can't smell any predators in their environment, so they figure they don't need to try to hard."
After a few moments with a deeply furrowed brow, the younger offspring asks, "How can I smell like a decorator crab predator and get the crabs to decorate themselves better?"
The volunteer…
jstemwedel | February 20, 2009This week, the bath-night conversation turned to energy. If you prefer to listen to the sprogs, what with the splishing of the bathwater and their American accents, you can download the audio file. (Actually, owing to the length of the conversation, this week it's just me and the younger Free-Ride offspring. Next week will feature my conversation with the elder Free-Ride offspring, with the younger chiming in at the end as younger siblings are wont to do.)
The transcript of our conversation is presented below.
Dr. Free-Ride: I wanted to talk today about energy.
Younger offspring: Energy?…
jstemwedel | February 13, 2009A conversation that bubbled up at the dinner table last night, some time after the Free-Ride offspring were informed that the cassoulet they were eating had, as one of its ingredients, white wine.
Younger offspring: Why do they call booze "spirits"?
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: I think that goes back to the early days of distillation. Do you know what distillation is?
Elder offspring: Ummm...
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: OK, to distill something, you have a container of the thing it is you're distilling. You apply heat to that container, and it's attached to a tube that's usually surrounded…