kids and science
jstemwedel | November 21, 2008This summer, I had the pleasure of having coffee in Palo Alto with Eva. She had been to the Exploratorium the day before, where, in the gift shop, she picked up a couple cool science books for the sprogs. "Of course, you'll have to blog them!" she said.
Of course!
Today, we look at one of those books.
Louis Pasteur and Pasteurization
Written by Jennifer Fandel
Illustrated by Keith Wilson, Rodney Ramos, and Charles Barnett III
This book isn't a biography of Louis Pasteur. Instead, it's a discussion of what he discovered and (more importantly, from the point of view of the Free-Ride…
jstemwedel | November 14, 2008I'm still trying to get out from under the monstrous head cold given to me by the younger Free-Ride offsrping just in time for last week's trip to Pittsburgh. The sprogs have actually given me wide berth this week, as if they expect me to mutate the germs and give them back.
How well they know me.
In the meantime, there's been some idle chatter about dogs. For instance, in recounting the adventures of the young Border Collie that lives next door (whose human says, "For a member of a really smart breed, she's pretty dumb"), the sprogs have puzzled over whether canine intelligence (or lack…
jstemwedel | November 7, 2008A conversation last Thursday, amid rain and wind, as we watched the elder Free-Ride offspring's soccer game:
Dr. Free-Ride: How are you doing?
Younger offspring: Brrr!
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, why don't you zip up both your warm layer and your raincoat?
Younger offspring: OK. Why does zipping them up keep you warmer?
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, what do you think?
Younger offspring: I don't know. There's a little space between my shirt and my warm layer, and between my warm layer and my raincoat.
Dr. Free-Ride: What do you think is in that space?
Younger offspring: Air?
Dr. Free-Ride: That's right.…
jstemwedel | October 31, 2008This is the last day of Blogger Challenge 2008.
You have mere hours left to give to our challenges and get in on Seed's prize drawing (which includes that spiffy iPod Touch).
Don't forget that individual ScienceBloggers are offering a variety of incentives of their own to help persuade you to kick in a bit of money to fund public school classroom projects. And lest it escape your notice, Jessica Palmer is offering an original painting to one of her donors. (She's an actual artist, so this is a big deal.)
Our totals so far this year have ... reflected the current economic uncertainty. We…
jstemwedel | October 31, 2008Elder offspring: I read about a house where the 17th stair on the staircase creaks because a man who was shot died on that stair.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh, really?
Younger offspring: Why did it creak?
Elder offspring: Because the house is haunted.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hmm.
Younger offspring: By the man who was shot?
Elder offspring: Uh huh.
Dr. Free-Ride: Couldn't there be some other explanation for the stair creaking?
Elder offspring: It creaks even when no one is walking on the staircase.
Dr. Free-Ride: I'm pretty sure that parts of houses can creak due to causes other than people walking on them.…
jstemwedel | October 28, 2008Reader Patrick made a generous donation to my challenge, and wrote:
I want to thank you for the posts on Ethics. It is a subject that I feel is mostly neglected during a scientist's formal education. We end up learning by example (not always good), but it should be a required course for everyone with an advanced degree.
Patrick requested a haiku on ethics ... but so far, I've been having trouble putting something meaningful into 17 syllables. So, I am hopeful that a villanelle about ethics will suffice.
Would it be honest? Would it be fair?
Size up the options in front of me.
O, to be…
jstemwedel | October 28, 2008Regular reader Duke (who this blogger knows as "Dad") made a generous contribution to my challenge and requested sprog art and a limerick on the subject of chemistry. (Like my mom, he indicated that this donation was to go to the "NO TATTOO" fundraising total.)
A lad from the Periodic Table
took offense at his wee bottle's label.
But both neutron emission
and spontaneous fission,
meant his isotopes just weren't stable.
The younger Free-Ride offspring's chemical illustration was inspired by the book reviewed here.
jstemwedel | October 27, 2008Regular commenter Super Sally (who this blogger knows as "Mom") made a generous contribution to my challenge and requested sprog art and a limerick on the subject of astronomy. (She also indicated that this donation was to go to the "NO TATTOO" fundraising total.)
If only I had a fancy overhead projector with which to show my gratitude ...
In dust and gas clouds dense and heated,
where hydrogen nuclei meet, it
won't take a contusion,
just nuclear fusion
to help a new star to get seeded.
And what is this stellar babe's destiny?
Depends on core temp' rature and density.
Red giant that burns…
jstemwedel | October 27, 2008Ewan made a generous donation to one of the projects in my challenge and, as he did last year, he requested a poem illustrated by the sprogs on the subject of memory.
It turns out that drawing "memory" is pretty challenging! However, the sprogs worked out some ways to represent the concept of memory more concretely. So, we offer a poem, some illustration, and our thanks to Ewan:
"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance."
-- Hamlet, Act IV, scene v
I can't remember how to sit down
to write a proper poem,
though somehow I can remember the feel of the humid air,
the smell of summer in the…
jstemwedel | October 24, 2008By now you've probably seen the news that Seed has kicked in $15,000 to fund projects in our Blogger Challenge slates. We are, as always, thrilled at our Overlords' generosity.
This year, though, rather than applying the money at the end of the drive, we have a situation where each blog with an active challenge has been given control of a $715 giving credit at DonorsChoose. In other words, we get to decide how to use this windfall to help fund classroom projects ... and to get more readers involved in funding them.
So I'm going to see if I can get some audience participation from you on…
jstemwedel | October 24, 2008A conversation from the sidelines at the elder Free-Ride offspring's soccer game:
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, what are you drawing?
Younger offspring: Stars.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hmmm.
Younger offspring: I know they don't look like the way they teach you how to draw stars, but real stars don't look that way.
Dr. Free-Ride: You have a point.
Younger offspring: Real stars don't have five points. They're little balls of hot mass.
Dr. Free-Ride: They are?
Younger offspring: Well, they look little in the sky. They're big when you get to them.
Dr. Free-Ride: Fair enough.
Younger offspring: The sun is a star,…
jstemwedel | October 23, 2008Given that today is Mole Day, it seemed only fair to follow up on our earlier experimentation with avocados. You may recall that, in discussing our efforts to dissolve avocados, we said:
One further experiment we've decided to try at some future point is to investigate whether we can make mayonnaise substituting mashed avocado for some or all of the oil.
That future point? Now a past point.
Before I report the results from our kitchen, let's talk a little about mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise is traditionally made up of oil, egg, and lemon juice (or something equivalent).
You know oil and…
jstemwedel | October 21, 2008On the East Coast, the sun is rising on day 21 of Blogger Challenge 2008. With only 10 days left in the drive, it seems like a good time to check how the ScienceBloggers with challenges are making out. Thus, I present the "Top Six" standings to date:
Amount raised:Uncertain Principles ($4,887)Green Gabbro ($1,689)DrugMonkey ($1,340)Good Math, Bad Math ($1,328)Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) ($1,257)Terra Sigillata ($998)
Donors:Uncertain Principles (78)Sciencewomen (21)Green Gabbro (15)DrugMonkey (14)Adventures in Ethics and Science (13)Laelaps (12)
Students…
jstemwedel | October 20, 2008Another generous donor (who prefers to remain anonymous) made a contribution to my challenge and requested some artwork from the sprogs.
The requested subject matter, cats, is one about which the Free-Ride offspring are pretty enthusiastic (perhaps because I'm allergic to cats and can't live with them). So, send in the cats:
From the younger Free-Ride offspring:
From the elder Free-Ride offspring:
Thank you for your generous contribution, donor!
If you'd like sprog art (or poetry, or other goodies) of your own, take a look at some of these worthy projects, make a contribution, and…
jstemwedel | October 18, 2008What would the Blogger Challenge be without hand-drawn bar-graphs?
You'll see that Chad is about 80% of the way to a "monkey dance". In less than $1300 in contributions to his challenge, he will be dancing for the amusement of his readers.
As for the big incentives I'm offering, my challenge has received a mere 10% of the $4000 goal that will result in my adorning my left ankular region with a philosophy of science tattoo. The overall ScienceBlogs donations (currently creeping up toward $16,000) put us a little closer (about 17% of the way) to the $90,000 threshold for my getting the Sb…
jstemwedel | October 17, 2008At long last, we review a book to which we have alluded in at least two previous posts.
The book: The Periodic Table: Elements with Style, written by Adrian Dingle, illustrated by Simon Basher. (Boston: Kingfisher, 2007)
The format:
The book introduces several representative elements from the periodic table. For each element, there's a listing of crucial information like the element's symbol, atomic number, atomic weight, color, standard state, density, melting point, boiling point, and data of discovery. But the real story is the first person introduction to each element's character,…
jstemwedel | October 15, 2008This is a project in Brian Switek's DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge, and if it doesn't find full funding by the end of today, it's not going to happen.
Throw Us a Bone!! was proposed by Ms. P., who teaches in a high poverty high school in a rural community in south Mississippi:
This year will be my first year to teach Anatomy and Physiology. I will be walking into the classroom with virtually no resources to help bring the words and pictures from the pages of the textbook to life for these students.
My students need hands on materials to help bring the unseen processes that go on in our…
jstemwedel | October 14, 2008We're nearly to the halfway mark (in terms of time) on Blogger Challenge 2008 and the mommy bloggers are still leaving us in their dust. We've told you about the school kids you could help by donating to our challenges, we've offered small incentives (and big incentives).
Today, the news comes from our benevolent overlords at Seed that they'd like to help us coax some donations from you by offering more prizes.
How to win great ScienceBlogs prizes:
First, make a donation (from $5 on up) to any of the challenges mounted by ScienceBlogs bloggers.
After donating, forward your email receipt to…
jstemwedel | October 10, 2008In a lot of ways, the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge is a community endeavor. It is all about what you, our community of readers, can accomplish together for public school students and teachers in need. Also, it's a great example of how citizens of the blogosphere think about community -- not just a group of people clustered geographically, but people we're connected to by common interests and values.
While you're working together to make things better for school kids in classrooms across the fifty United States, you can also work together toward what Chad calls a 'big incentive'. Chad…
jstemwedel | October 10, 2008Today is day 10 of Blogger Challenge 2008, in which generous ScienceBlogs readers help public school teachers come up with the funds to deliver the educational goods to their students. As I write this post, challenges mounted by ScienceBloggers have crossed the $10,000 mark.
Given that this money has come from 113 donors and that there are about a bajillion ScienceBlogs readers, I'm guessing there are some folks thinking about making a donation but hanging back from actually donating. My hope is that this post will give you that little push forward you might need.
You'll recall that I've…