October 2009

Animal rights and microwave hot spots

October 31, 2009

I blogged a while back about mapping out the hot spots in your microwave with fax paper, or marshmallows or chocolate chips.  (Your food is not heated at the “nodes”, or cool spots, which is why we have those rotating plates). Here is a decidedly un-yummy (but undeniably creative) take on that activity (as sent [...]

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Make a yummy fish mummy

October 30, 2009

Ok, it probably wouldn’t be very yummy, but here’s another hands-on activity you can use that’s rather Halloween-like.  Called “Make a ‘mummy’”, this Exploratorium activity is a great way to demonstrate how mummification works, by drying out the tissue in a fish using baking soda.  Egyptians used a specific type of salt to do this, [...]

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Science activities for Halloween!

October 27, 2009

With halloween fast approaching, it’s time to take advantage of a frivolous holiday to do some fun science stuff. No post about Halloween would be complete without a reference to the Grossology site. Scroll down for  “lab activities”:  This gets high marks from one teacher who says, “It has the simpliest of the slimey things, [...]

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Gleanings from the blogosphere

October 20, 2009

A few neat gleanings from my favorite blogs: Over at Schooner of Science — Smelling the Moon. A fictional pregnant woman swears she can smell moonbeams.  Do pregnant women really smell things more strongly? What’s really cool is that the women THINK they smell better now they are pregnant, but there’s not the evidence there [...]

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Teaching polar science – The Boy Who Found the Light

October 19, 2009

Our latest podcast in the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears webzine has been posted.  This is a bimonthly webzine for elementary educators, to integrate polar science into their teaching.   This month’s webzine is on arctic peoples, and the podcast features a story on how light disappears and reappears in the arctic each year, that you [...]

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Student activity with a simple centrifuge

October 18, 2009

Got a unit on circular motion? You may want to use an activity with a centrifuge, to show how it separates substances of different densities. Even if you’ve got a commercial centrifuge, how might you instead do a hands-on activity to show the same thing? Try mixing red colored sugar in cooking oil in a [...]

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Making stalagmites in your freezer

October 15, 2009

Have you ever had this unusual occurrence in your freezer?  This one observant science teacher says: We had a single stalagtite form from one cube in an ice cube tray.  It rose about an inch, no more than an eighth of an inch in diameter, and tapering to a sharp point. How did that form? [...]

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Science, art, and Bay Area culture

October 12, 2009

One of the things that I miss most about the Bay Area is the intensive culture of geekery and delightful playfulness that goes with the unabashed celebration of membership in the pocket protector set.  I invited Alan Rorie — an artist and a scientist at the Exploratorium (who happens to hold my old job) — [...]

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What happens to air in your lungs at altitude?

October 10, 2009

Here’s a provocative question about the atmosphere, from one of those most curious citizens of the world — 6th graders. “At sea level you take a breath and fill a sandwich bag with it easily.  On Mt Everest, not using bottled air, could you do the same thing? I guess the question is “How full [...]

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How am I impacted by technological art?

October 1, 2009

I’m not a big art fan. I mean, I have nothing against it.  I guess it’s like pot — fine for other people, but it just doesn’t move me.  Though art, at least, doesn’t (usually) make me keep looking back over my shoulder and laugh nervously. Anyway.  But I do have an aesthetic drug of [...]

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Adopt a Physicist needs more physicists!

October 1, 2009

While there are usually fewer spots than physicists interested in filling them, for once, Adopt a Physicist needs more physicists to step up to the plate! Registration is open through October 4th (this Sunday). Details are below. I’ve done this several years in a row and it’s pretty fun! Help high school students explore what [...]

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