Making Automata

This summer, the Exploratorium hosted an exhibit called Cabaret Mechanical Theater, a collection of automata. Automata are mechanical toys. A hand crank or motor turns gears, moves levers, and makes cams turn on shafts, causing figures to move and tell whimsical stories. Here I am working on my little rabbit automaton. When you turn the crank, it causes the lower piece of black foam (called a cam, if I remember correctly) to turn. The upper piece of foam rides on the cam. Depending on the shape of the cam, the rabbit could move in different ways - up and down, in circles, etc. Mine hops up and down while turning.  

During the last week of my program, one of the automaton artists visited for a week to build a piece that will live permanently in the Exploratorium. My instructor, Lori, is a Cabaret Mechanical Theater groupie, so she brought us to the workshop to see the work-in-progress. That morning, a bunch of paper limbs lay scattered on the table in the workshop. By afternoon, I peered in through a workshop window to see the limbs assembled and the angel slowly floating up and down and tilting its head back. My friend and I were waved into the workshop to take a closer look (they saw our noses pressed against the glass). While we were in there, the artist began attaching wings to the angel's back. Incredible! 

Yeah, well, maybe....

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.


What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Found this one on What in Tarnation?! It's the first good quiz I've seen in months (quiz snob is a category they missed). We can still be friends if you read romance novels, but prepare to be teased mercilessly...

The List

• Clean up computer of viruses (and spy programs?)
  
• Back up everything
  
• Defragment
  
• Move pictures & files off laptop onto desktop
  
• Organize SF pictures
  
• Upload my cousin's wedding pictures to SnapFish
  
• Buy smaller desk and larger bookshelf
  
• Clean closet
  
• Go to Pearl Paint for arts & crafts supplies to continue making projects inspired by Teacher Institute and also to get back into jewelry making
  
• Experiment with Digital Video
  
• Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty
  
• Fringe Festival
  
• Lincoln Center Out of Doors
  
• Movies in parks/piers
  
• Summerstage
  
• Find guitar teacher
  
• Find a yoga studio that I like, on my commute from work, with classes at my level at good times for my teaching schedule, for not too much money
  
• Bowery Poetry Club, etc.
  
• Rollerblade
  
• Appalachian Trail
  
• Hall of Science
  
• Liberty Science Center
  
• Explore neighborhoods I haven't been to very often, like Astoria
  
• Shakespeare in the Park and Shakespeare in the Parking Lot
  
• Buy running shoes
  
• Run
  
• Plan Blackout Party (bring candles, board games, and whatever's in your fridge)
  
• Read read read - Middlesex, the new Brian Greene, A Home at the End of the World (before the movie comes out), Island of the Day Before
  
• RNC?
  
• Coney Island?
  
• PLAN PLAN PLAN PLAN PLAN
  
• Contact new teachers + other science teachers I know are working in NYC to see if they want to get together to talk about planning for next year...
  
• Reflect on past year to prepare for meeting of returning staff
  

Yes, this is how I relax.

The view from Twin Peaks. 

New York, New York

A week without email was probably good for my soul. A month in San Francisco was definitely good for my soul. I spent the week with some of the friends who are most important to me in the whole world, and exploring a few more places in the Bay Area -- a hike through Muir Woods, a visit to see the pop art exhibit and more at SFMOMA, a walk to Ocean Beach (unfortunately all the interesting stuff at the Cliff House is under construction). I love San Francisco, and I feel drawn there, to my people. And where else is it so easy to recycle (dude, you don't even have to sort), to be vegetarian, to vote for Kucinich, register Green, and still be the most conservative person you know? Ocean, redwoods, hills, fog, taquerias, Rainbow Grocery (worker-owned co-op), dollar avocados, that bridge. But it's good to be back in this big humid reeking old city again, to walk past people fanning themselves to a salsa beat on their stoops, big girls teaching their little sisters double-dutch on the sidewalk, women walking home from work in pastel skirts and flip-flops, traffic and tall buildings and clouds that aren't fog. Writing is also good for my soul; I suppose I could just keep a journal on - gasp! - paper, but I've never been much for that, so it's nice to have internet access at home again.

My roommate's gone to Africa; her blog will most likely be more interesting than mine in the next few weeks. (She's also bought her own domain name - I'm falling behind!).

I have a new friend who likes puzzles a lot. So, from A. to me to you, the latest (post your thoughts but NOT the solution in the comments - it's more fun to get it by yourself, so don't spoil it for anyone else, please!).

One hundred people have been selected as prize winners. Each will get the same amount of money, from $1000 to $100,000. This is how the prize will be distributed. The 100 people are lined up so that each person can see everyone in front of her, but not herself or anyone behind her. So, person number 100 can see #99-1, and person 1 can't see anyone. They will be given time to plan a strategy, then lined up in this way and either a red hat or a blue hat put on each person's head. Then, starting with person 100 and working forwards, each person will say either "red" or "blue." The prize will be $1000 times the number of people who say the color of their own hat. The idea is to maximize the number of people who get their hat color right since each person gets the same amount of money in the end. Also, the organizers of the contest can listen in to the strategizing session and will try to minimize the amount of money they have to pay out, so definitely take into account worst-case scenarios when thinking about this problem.

Back in a week

Iron Science Teacher was awesome. Program is over... I miss the class already. Won't have email access most of this week, so I probably won't post again until I get back to NYC on Friday. Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed and taking catnaps with Valentine and Miles.

You've probably heard this one before...

but my class spent yesterday afternoon grappling with "The Monty Hall Problem." I had seen it before but still had to prove it to myself all over again... both empirically, by setting up a version of it and playing it with friends, and logically.

There are three doors. Behind one door is a million dollars, behind another a goat, behind the third a horrible death. You don't know which door is which, and, like most people, you'd prefer the million dollars to death or a goat.

You choose a door.

Then Monty Hall (game show host) opens one of the other two doors and reveals the goat.

He gives you the option of staying with your original choice of doors, or switching to the final remaining door.

Which is a better strategy, staying or switching? And why?

Can you gather data in support of your strategy?

Is there a way to alter the game to make the two strategies equally good?

What was your thought process in solving this problem? Did you talk to friends about it? Was that helpful? What ideas about probability affected your thinking? Were they helpful?

By the way - this can be a very, VERY frustrating problem. There are logical-sounding arguments for both strategies (and for neither).

Iron Science Teacher

If you live in the Bay Area...

and you want to visit the Exploratorium this summer...

I highly recommend this Friday a little before noon.

From 12-1, a friend and I - and many of my classmates at the Teacher Institute - will be competing for the title

Iron Science Teacher!

Two teachers from my class, Becky and Kirk, won last week's competition. You can watch them in action at the Iron Science Teacher website. There are also archives of past shows.

If you're not from the Bay Area, or have a day job, I suppose you can catch us later in our webcast. So much for anonymity, LOL!

Science/Art

One of the most wonderful things about the Exploratorium Teacher Institute is that they encourage us to see the beauty and aesthetics of science.

During the first week, my class worked with an artist-in-residence (how many other science museums have artists-in-residence?) to make short films. We worked in pairs, chose a "conceptual lens" that was a math or science concept, then planned and filmed a 5 minute video showing the world through that lens. My partner and I chose "convergence" and then explored the museum to find exhibits and other images showing things coming together. Our video was not fabulous; the museum is fairly dark inside and many of our images were dark or murky. Other groups made really beautiful films in only an hour, about circles, large/small, symmetry, etc. Filming sand flowing out of a pendulum onto a moving belt, metal balls undulating in the pendulum snake, streams of water trickling down a ramp, diverging and converging, marbles spinning into the center of a funnel... the films reminded me that the exhibits here convey science ideas, but also a lot of beauty. We showed our films and then discussed what conceptual lens might have been used in making each film. This was an activity I could imagine doing with students either in art class or perhaps at the beginning or end of the year in a math or science class.

Some exhibits are purposefully artistic in nature. Right now the museum has a visiting collection of automata, which are simple toys that work through gears, levers, cams, etc. After looking at the automata in the exhibit, we built our own - I will post a photograph of mine when I get back to NYC. The Exploratorium also has a grant to create exhibits around "listening," and have invited experimental instrument makers to lead workshops and help develop exhibits.

Today, just for the Teacher Institute, the Learning Studio here put together a film festival of short films and excerpts from longer ones. Many of the films could be used with students and are quite educational about science concepts, but what struck me was how funny and beautiful the films were. We started with a film called Zea, which showed an ordinary activity from start to finish, very close up. The fascinating part was trying to figure out what was happening - and then the moment at the end when it became obvious. At different moments during the film, I believed I was looking at the surface of another planet, a frog or fish egg cell, an eyeball, an egg cooking, and many other things... I have been inspired to experiment with my school's digital video camera and see if I can make short films like this one on my own. It is certainly a new way of seeing for me.

"Human subtlety... will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple, or more direct than does nature." -Leonardo DaVinci

67 weeks a year!

Last week, I spent an afternoon with my region's Science Syllabus. This is a terrific document they put together outlining a scope and sequence of the important science topics for each grade level, along with suggestions for activities and loads and loads of resources that could be used for each topic. If it were mandated that we all had to follow the syllabus to the letter, it would be annoying, but as a guide, I really like it.

We get our students in sixth grade, but in 8th grade they take a state exam that covers grades 5-8. Now, I'm not exam-obsessed, but I think the test is mostly reasonable and I want my students to do well on it. I really wish we had a fifth grade, because as it is now, some students enter our school having had a lot of science in fifth grade, some having had little or none. Life science, which I will be teaching next year to my eighth graders, is split between two grades in the science syllabus - the animal kingdom and some parts of ecology are supposed to be taught in fifth grade. These are some pretty important topics, yet I can't count on the kids having learned them since they come from such widely varying fifth grades.

So, I made a list of all the Life Science topics included in both grades, along with the number of weeks allocated by the syllabus for each topic.

The grand total? 67 weeks!

I spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about ways to combine topics so that the kids will get most of the big ideas without moving too quickly over everything. For example, I am planning a project for the animal kingdom where pairs of students research reptiles, amphibians, etc. and teach their classmates about those groups. I will model the type of work I expect using birds and mammals, two groups which I want to be sure they all know pretty well.

Similarly, a lot of ecology ideas can be woven together with studying the kingdoms of life.

For the record, I do NOT think it's essential to cover everything. Yet, there are lots of interesting and important topics in Life Science, and choosing what to focus on in depth, what to touch on briefly, and what to leave out altogether is tough.

*****

On another note, it seems that our teaching staff next year might be ten teachers rather than the twelve we believed we could hire. This is brand new information, I don't know for sure or any details, and I am really trying not to freak out. But it seems like every time we finally think we've got our staffing issues sorted out, someone changes everything on us. I don't know whether my administration is being naive in how they interpret budget information, or whether the region is screwing us, or both. Ultimately, blaming is not that useful, but I have to admit my first thought is "Why do we ALWAYS have the wrong information?!?" And given how much this raises MY blood pressure, I can only imagine how my colleagues must feel who just - just - finished doing all the programming for next year.

The Weight of Water

Try this at home. First think about it, predict what will happen and why, then test it.

You'll need a regular bathroom scale, a bowl or cup, and water.

Imagine a cup of water on a scale. Now imagine that you put the tip of your finger into the water so that it is immersed up to the first knuckle but does not touch the bottom of the cup. What happens to the reading on the scale? Does the weight increase? Decrease? Remain the same? If it changes, by how much?

Answers & observations in the comments section!

The Good Body

My life is not all astronomy.

Last night, I went to see The Good Body with a friend. The Good Body is Eve Ensler's new one-woman show, which just opened at A.C.T. here in San Francisco. Eve Ensler is best known for The Vagina Monologues, a funny, provocative (duh!), and at times very moving compilation of monologues that she wrote after interviewing hundreds of women about their vaginas. No, it's not pornographic. Yes, I am a feminist, in case you hadn't figured that out already.

It was terrific to see Ensler perform her own work, and I'm very glad I went to see her new play, but unfortunately it doesn't cover much new territory. It's about the relationship between women and their bodies - especially Ensler and her stomach, which she believes is fat. She explores women's body obsessions and how they connect to pop culture and our relationships with our mothers, fathers, and lovers. She's at her best when she embodies other women and tells their stories; in one of my favorite monologues, she becomes Carmen, who exorcises her "spread" as she exorcises her mother's criticism of her body. Another really disturbing monologue is about a (supposedly real) clinic in Hollywood where women go to get their vaginas tightened. Ewww! Ensler's own stomach-obsession gets a bit tiresome as the play goes on. While hilarious, some of the characters she depicts are "types" rather than individuals. Finally, Ensler leaves North America and heads East, where, like John Lennon and so many others, she finds enlightenment. While it's often true that visiting another culture with different values or a place where people cannot take material comfort for granted can often lead to introspection and changes in attitude, this is such a cliched plot development!

Ultimately, although the show was engaging, it felt like something I'd seen and heard before, which was disappointing.

As we left, my friend and I talked about our own comfort levels with our bodies. My initial reaction was that although I occasionally obsess over some aspect of my weight or appearance, I think I have it in perspective. My friend agreed with me... but then pointed out that we are both very thin women with lots of insecurities about this or that. Would we still have body image in perspective if we were fatter? Do we have other body image issues - that don't have to do with weight - in perspective?

Drawing The Analemma

What, you might ask, is an analemma?

Take a look at a globe. Somewhere in the Pacific you will probably find an omega (figure-eight) drawn near the Equator. The northern loop of the figure-eight is smaller than the southern loop. This is the analemma. It represents the height of the sun in the sky at different times of year. Why does it have this shape?

We figured this out by covering a table with chart paper. On the chart paper, our instructors had drawn a large circle representing the Earth's orbit, divided into eighths and labeled with dates corresponding to the equinoxes and solstices and dates in-between. We put a MagLight in the center, representing the sun. Then we took a globe and moved it around the circle, observing where the sun was in the sky if observed from the Equator.

I won't go into all the details here. A classroom of 17 science teachers thought about this all morning, and it made all 17 heads hurt. To summarize, the figure-eight shape comes from a combination of factors. First, the Earth is tilted about 23 degrees on its axis. If you hold your globe at an angle and move it around a lightbulb "sun", you'll see that during some parts of the year (summer), the Northern Hemisphere tilts towards the sun, while at other times (winter) it tilts away. This accounts for the sun appearing higher in the sky during the summer than the winter - the vertical part of the analemma.

In addition to the tilt, the Earth's orbit around the sun is slightly elliptical (NOT as much as most textbooks show in diagrams!). During the winter, the Earth is somewhat closer to the sun than during the summer, and is moving faster. This means that at certain times of year, the Earth rotates on its axis slightly farther in one day than it revolves around the sun, while at other times of year, it revolves slightly farther than it rotates. This accounts for the horizontal part of the analemma - sometimes the sun appears to the left of straight up, sometimes to the right.

When you combine these vectors, you get the figure-eight shape.

(Pops a couple of Advil).

Blog meets world!

Last night I met Nicole, a.k.a. http://posthipchick.blogspot.com * We had dinner, she introduced me to her favorite shop in the Mission, we bought cute summer pocketbooks, we had ice cream, we had a few funny moments of ESP, like when I asked for lemonade just as she was about to ask the same thing... in a restaurant with truly amazing mix-it-yourself lemonade. Fun, fun. Several times in the past I have met "in real life" people whom I knew only from the internet, and it has generally worked out - I've made one or two close friends and several acquaintances and have, as yet, managed to avoid the axe-murderers. For the most part, these were friends I've made through email lists; this was my first time meeting another blogger.

*I can't get the hyperlinks button to work right on this computer, so for the moment I'll just post URLs and you'll have to cut and paste.

Reflection

I received an email from my principal today. This is what next year's staff will look like: 4 teachers with experience at our school, 1 teacher with experience at other schools but new to our school, and 7 teachers new to teaching and new to our school, plus the principal and a "dean" - the administrative position below Assistant Principal. Our dean has been a member of our staff since the beginning; she's interested in becoming an administrator and has started a master's program towards that goal. So we will have our hands full mentoring new teachers and adjusting to the doubling of our staff.

As you may or may not have figured out from reading my blog over the past year, we had some serious internal conflicts as a staff. I try not to air our dirty laundry too much, yet still provide an honest picture of what it's like running a school. As my principal described it, "some ... school days were tainted with pessimism, cynicism, and mistrust." She wants us to get together to discuss these issues, what to do about them, and to clear the air before meeting with our new staff members.

Our task before we meet? To reflect on successes and disappointments of the past year; staff (mis)communications and how to prevent them and respond to them in the future; how we can work as our own organization and a part of the Region; issues and challenges for the upcoming year.

Resource Area for Teachers

On Tuesday, we took a field trip to RAFT: Resource Area for Teachers (http://www.raft.net). RAFT is a warehouse full of supplies donated by companies. Teachers come from all over the Bay Area and purchase bags of supplies for their classrooms. They have different sections - the $10 per shopping bag area, the $5 per shopping bag area, and the $1 per shopping bag area. Other stuff is priced per item, but it's all very, very cheap. You can get computer parts and software, office supplies, furniture, scrap cloth and foam and other materials, old cd boxes, medical supplies like pipets, you name it. They also purchase some fancier stuff wholesale and resell it, like greater-than-six sided dice, UV beads, superstrong magnets, etc. Their creative staff finds educational uses for the materials that they get, and publishes idea sheets to show teachers what they can use the stuff for in their classrooms. And they offer workshops for teachers, workspace and tools to put stuff together, and even prepared kits. I bought a spectroscope kit with enough materials for a whole class - for $1.50! I also bought a lot of other junk, mailed it to my school, and although shipping cost a lot, I think it was worth it.

NYC has a similar type of organization called Materials for the Arts (http://www.mfta.org/home.php) but they primarily serve artists and art teachers. RAFT is nice because they serve all educators and have a science focus in addition to arts and other subjects.

I got this idea: maybe I should start something like RAFT for NYC science teachers. I envision a resource library, kits for sale or even to borrow, workshops, and, of course, a large space full of donated stuff which teachers could purchase. It would be a big project, but it's something I'm going to consider doing in the next five years or so.

Something to Try

This surprised the heck out of me! Please describe your experiences with this in the comments. It sounds a bit complicated but you can do the whole thing in 15 minutes.

Find a full-length mirror, a friend, some tape, and some string. You can do without the string if necessary. Don't try this in a slanted room - the wall and floor should be as perpendicular as possible. The mirror need not touch the floor, however.

Stand back from the mirror a distance equal to your height. Imagine a rectangle surrounding your body so that you just fit - the top of the rectangle touches the top of your head, the sides of the rectangle touch the sides of your body at your widest part (shoulders, for most people), the bottom of the rectangle touches the bottom of your feet.

Your image in the mirror as you see it could also be surrounded by a rectangle as described above. Will the rectangle around your mirror image be larger than, smaller than, or the same size as the rectangle around your real-life body? Make a prediction.

Now, have your friend use segments of tape and/or string to mark off the rectangle around your image in the mirror so that your image just fits within the rectangle. Compare it's size to the size of the imaginary rectangle around your body. (You can use pieces of string to compare, or measuring tape, or just eyeball it).

How does the rectangle in the mirror compare to the rectangle around your real-life body? Was your hypothesis correct?

Predict what would happen to the size of your image in the mirror if you moved closer to the mirror or farther away from it. Would your image fit in a larger or smaller or same-sized rectangle? Try it!

Can you explain what happens using geometry?

Those of you with compact mirrors in your purses can play around with those as well. This is a good option for people who wear a lot of make up but have no friends. ;-) Does it make a difference how far you hold the compact from your face?

This Land is Your Land

by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From California
To the New York Island,
From the redwood forest,
To the Gulf stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking,
That ribbon of highway,
I saw above me
That endless skyway,
I saw below me
That golden valley.
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled
And I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

The sun comes shining
As I was strolling
The wheat fields waving
And the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

As I was walkin'
I saw a sign there
And that sign said no trespassin'
But on the other side
It didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city
In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office
I see my people
And some are grumblin'
And some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking
That freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me

Exploration!

I'm going to keep this short, because I tried blogging from this computer yesterday and it refused to send my post. *sigh* I am having a fantastic time, with one notable exception: internet access. The laptop I brought with me is riddled with viruses and has been cured of all but the one that prevents me from connecting to the internet. And I am finding it really hard to blog from the computers here in the Exploratorium library, partly because it is such a public space, partly because I can't upload pictures, partly because the connection isn't fabulous for blogging, as I discovered yesterday.

Today I watched my very first episode of Iron Science Teacher - a show filmed live at the Exploratorium and webcast from their website. The instructors from the Teacher Institute competed to design brief science demonstrations involving a "secret ingredient" - carbohydrates, in this case. Steve set up a maze to see whether rats prefer carbs to protein, Don performed ballistics experiments using donut-holes, Kathy modeled the digestive system, Paul performed peep science, and Eric demonstrated what happens when you eat carbohydrates while parachuting through the atmosphere of Venus.

I have been very busy building stuff - a microbalance, an automaton, a model of a finger's bones and tendons, a cd air puck, a squeeze box, and more. I have pictures of many of these things and if I ever get more consistently on-line will post those plus links to plans for these items whenever possible.

More to come, hopefully!