Sound waves and yarn spinners

Well, I got more fun today out of Grandmother's Waterford crystal than I have in years. Decades ago, unsure how to entertain her eccentric grandson-in-law, Grandmother would hand him a shot of Scotch whiskey on ice in one of her Waterford glasses. This social nicety taken care of, she could go ahead and have a pleasant chat with her beloved granddaughter and everyone would have a lovely time.

When she died, she left me the Waterford set, which I dutifully packed in bubble wrap and transported to Texas. I even bought a big ol' china cabinet to display it in. This week (in response to Science Question of course) I brought in a glass to show the ringing effect of crystal hitting its resonant frequency (Never heard it? Here's a nice example on youtube ). Everybody had a lovely time.

Also in the discussion - - how to sing into a guitar and hear the guitar string ring back at you (this worked well), and how to induce a standing wave in a piece of string tied across the classroom (this worked . . . um . . . let's just say that the kids were pretty nice about saying it worked).

Remember to tell 'em to keep those questions coming, folks.

In the K class I read out loud the recent news bulletin from Science magazine about a new way to pick up latent fingerprints on plain metal (criminals beware! wiping the gun doesn't work anymore), and then somehow found myself getting all messy showing an example of my own fingerprints. So if your child has been rubbing ink on her finger and making prints at home - - well - - yeah, it's my fault. I'd like to come back to fingerprints next session and give everybody a try (there's a nice tie-in with using the microscope). I also think fingerprints (and, for that matter, all biometrics) are a serious matter of privacy, so any fingerprints taken in class will remain either (a) completely anonymous, or (b) in the exclusive possession of their owners. I don't think the subtleties of information security are particularly easy to explain to five-year-olds. (Then again, the only rule that has held up under inspection so far has been "they understand more than you expect - - no matter where you set your expectations").

Over in K class a student brought in a surprisingly large and furry dead bee (bring on the microscope). I have ordered a Field Guide to Insects and will bring it in to class: perhaps we'll be able to identify the bee.

The K class also produced a fine crop of questions. Once again, How Heavy Is The Sun - - (back to the library for that one!) .

Also we had a good go-round starting from a question about snake venom. Here's a funny thing, and this happens often. I tell them something about, oh, say, a time when I met a rattlesnake on a hike, and it turns out that most of them have also met rattlesnakes on hikes! One after another, with perfectly straight faces, they'll all tell me about their snake encounters. This must be a way that brains learn: you put yourself in the story and you say it back like it was your fact all along. It gets even better when somebody in the class is a real yarn-spinner (which there is always one), and you get a complicated story about how the snake did bite him, only it got his boot and not him, but it pulled his boot off, and they had to have a fight to get the boot from the snake, and on and on . . .

No class next week - - I'm out of town.

A project begins

In the Elementary classroom, I started a project to graph day length and solar energy output (in my new home solar photovoltaic unit) for the duration of the school year. I introduced the big posterboard which will ultimately have about 35 weeks' data on it. Now it has just one dot and a lot of empty space. Nobody seemed to know what I was starting here, which is just fine with me. I'll let it become clear slooowwwly as the data points are filled in. I figure each week I'll have a different volunteer to actually put the dot on the graph - - that should be fun.

Also, it turns out that the math problem "how many minutes of daylight did we have today, if the sun rose at 7:14a and set at 7:32p" is a pretty tough one for elementary school. I'll decompose it to its component parts and let it settle in over a week or two.

Or, heck, I could make a Worksheet out of it.

Somebody asked about sweat last week, so I brought in a book with a really neat diagram of a sweat duct and pore. This is a recurring theme. You ask a question: next week a library book shows up. Parents: if you haven't been to the library lately, go check out the science section of the Juvenile book shelves. The quality of science writing and publishing has skyrocketed since you were a kid. Remember those dry, condescending, poorly illustrated science books they used to have? Those are gone, gone, gone! Today's kid science books are terrific. The photos are spectacular, the facts are well presented, there is good depth.

It was from this week's Kid Science library book that I learned how to get skin cells onto a microscope slide, using a magic marker and a piece of scotch tape. The brown color is from the magic marker and makes it easier to find and focus on the skin cells. This slide was prepared during class and everybody saw this image (the microscope is wired to a large TV monitor).

There was a good discussion about Hurricane Ike; I brought in satellite photos showing the storm Bigger Than Texas.

I did not bring in a ringing crystal wineglass, which definitely was a faux pas, since we had talked about them the week before ("how can a singer smash glass?"). Naturally your children let me know in a firm but friendly way that I had omitted something. Firm but friendly translates to, good grief! I'd better not forget again!

In the K class we also talked about Hurricane Ike. The library books for K were about the moon, because of last week's question about moon rocks. Also I brought in a demonstration of how craters form.

Here is the moon's surface, also known as a lunch cooler filled with dry grout.

Close-up view:

And here is the moon's surface, cratered after being pelted by meteors, otherwise known as driveway pebbles dropped by seventeen small hands.

Here's one of those moments of delight: We talked about the moon being waterless. One student was clearly puzzling over several elements at once: hurricane clouds are wet, hurricane clouds are high above us, the moon is dry, the moon is high above us. You can tell he figured it out and found the way to make all the facts fit together properly, because he raised his hand to ask, "So. . . the moon must be higher than the clouds, right?".

Perfect.

Questions; Fire and Ice

Well you just don't know how these classes are going to turn out. I walked into K with a planned demo (one of the annual favorites . . . wait for it . . . it'll come up), and nosed around the Question Box first, and found it empty.

That's not right.

Gotta have Question Box.

I figured maybe a practice round would be a way to reinforce the message about "go ahead and use the question box". So I asked if we could have one, just one, person do a live-action demo of

• have a question
  
• write it on a card (or get help writing it on a card)
  
• pop it in the box
  

And yes, I realize that while some of your kindergarteners are writing a weekly op-ed for the New York Times, many are at something more like a write-one-letter-and-then-draw-a-picture stage. If they prefer, they can ask for help writing their question. Early in the academic year, I typically see question-box questions in several formats, such as

1. A couple of cryptic forms and squiggles
   
2. A bunch of letters wandering about
   
3. A bunch of letters that, on careful examination, bear some relation to words. These are great fun as one can, with a certain amount of practice, actually read them.
   
4. Extremely clear writing with a suspicious resemblance to the teacher's handwriting.
   

(One of the cool things about this game is watching how the question cards advance into stage 3 as the year progresses; and stage 4 cards become extinct)

Having caught half a glimpse of the live-action demo, everybody wanted to do it. Ten minutes later the Question Box was properly stuffed.

Now there have been some back-and-forths around what to do with a wealth of question cards.
One idea is to take the top question, and give it as much time as it needs, fill in the needed background, let the conversation run wild, and only go to the second question when things simmer down a bit. The advantage is that you get really good learning and lots of fun besides. The disadvantage is that if science class lasts under nine hours you don't get to everybody's question, and some question-writers feel left out.
Another idea is to just read everyone's question out loud. Uncle Robby claims that just by hearing his own question the child has engaged intellectually and may already be satisfied. I am a little skeptical of this, though. "All right, I engaged intellectually and twenty-seven professors of child psychology say that I have met my developmental level. Now answer the darn question!"
A modified-Uncle-Robby approach I tried last year was to read them all, then choose a few to discuss. The grapevine tells me that the preterite knew dang well they were being left out.
So now I'm considering - - read all of 'em, give every one at least a short answer, but a serious, factual, targeted answer (even if it leaves a heap of mysteries dripping from every syllable like algae on a Swamp Beast) - - and then choose one or two for exegesis. We'll see how this works. In any case, that's supposed to be part of The Art of Montessori Teaching:
Right words, fewest words.
This week, anyway, we ran out of time before getting through them all. And my prepared demo stayed in its box.

Over in Elementary - - my goodness, this is getting long: are you still reading? . . . because of last week's question about getting frozen and brought back to life, I brought in some examples of what happens when you freeze water, and how it stretches, distorts, or shatters its container. These were pretty well-received. I wanted also to show that most substances (unlike water at zero degrees C) expand with warming, not cooling. Have you tried building a demonstration of this? It's not easy! After bungling around the garage half the night before, I ended up with a variation on the tightrope demo. It worked pretty well at home, but you had to be rather forgiving and optimistic to say it really worked at school. Fortunately, anything with fire is fairly satisfying to a classroom audience.
Followup questions about pond eutrophication and solar energy proved that yes, they certainly are listening. New question-box offerings asked about sweat and death (that sounds almost like a book title).

Questions, microscopes, new school year

blog 2008-08-29

Greetings to all, and welcome to a new year of Science Specialist Blog. This is where I keep you informed about what has happened during Science Time.

For those of you new to the game (like, say, the entire Kindergarten), the centerpiece of Science Time is the Question Box. Any student who thinks of a science question – any question – at any time – is invited to write it down on a card and stuff it in the box. This includes questions that have baffled your parents at home, as well as questions that you think of during school time.
On Fridays we open the box and your very own Science Specialist tries to reel out a compelling answer. This usually requires something between a single word and three weeks' topic development.

K class:
To get warmed up this week, I introduced the stereomicroscope. Here's my favorite link on stereomicroscopes: Making the microscope loom large in a child's life.

So we looked at some seeds such as these Queen Anne's lace seeds (the ones that stick to your socks)


A few kids got practice using the focus knob. The idea is that ability-to-focus should spread like a mind virus in the classroom and everybody should be using the microscope all week to look at bugs, twigs, sand, fingernails, dust, and so forth.


Elementary:
The plan was to talk about the pond near my house, which is being overwhelmed by duckweed:


and then consider going on to research about "what on earth can we, or should we, do about this? With consideration to these before/after photos






There was, however, a lively interest in whether you can have yourself frozen and then wake up 200 years in the future - - there's a good demonstration waiting to happen here - - stay tuned. (By the way, I usually prepare demonstrations rather than experiments for the class. If I already know what's going to happen, it's not an experiment).


Every science class is better if there is something to smell, too; so I brought in this houseplant which had conveniently blossmed and has a powerful aroma.