And now I have visual proof…  (that’s me in pink)

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Many teachers know the value of finding those surprising science experiments and demonstrations that hook kids’ attention.  One popular one is to have kids predict whether soda cans will sink or float, which turns out to be a nice hook for ideas of density.  Kids generally figure that if one thing of a kind sinks or floats, so will all the others.  So when the regular soda sinks, most will predict that all the other ones will sink too.  Much to their surprise, the diet soda generally floats.  Why?  Regular sodas are loaded with sugar, and that increases the density of the soda.  Diet sodas have aspartame, and a lot less of it per volume (take a look at the side of the can).  Steve Spangler’s site has a nice description of this activity.

I want to say more about the soda can activity (and why it is, in a way, a bit of a lie!) but first a few asides:

- This is, of course, also a great lesson in why sugared sodas are so bad for you.  That’s a lot of sugar.  Another astounding experiment I saw in this regards was to have kids weigh a piece of sugared gum, like Bazooka.  Then chew it, while the teacher talks about density and weight and stuff.  Then weigh the gum again.  It is surprisingly lighter.  Where’d all the weight go?  Look and see how many grams of sugar are in the gum.  That’s now in your belly.

- Kids have a lot of trouble with density.  They often think that “light” things float and “heavy” things sink.  Take a piece of soap and show that it sinks.  Break it in half and ask them to predict whether it will sink or float.  Many will predict that it will float, and will be visibly astounded when it still sinks.

- Another great density experiment is to take a piece of aluminum foil.  When it’s flat, it sinks.  When it’s crumpled up, it holds air, and floats.  More info here.

- Lastly, I’m forever enamored with the work of Dan Schwartz, who has kids invent the solution (for example, the formula for density) before telling it to them.  He calls these invention activities “Preparation for Future Learning” and there’s a lot of evidence to show that they’re effective.  For example, for density, he shows kids a bunch of cars with clowns in them and asks them to come up with a “crowded clown index.”  The index has to differentiate between, for example, the small cars with many clowns and the small cars with few clowns, as well as a large car with few clowns and a small car with few clowns.  Even if they don’t come up with the standard formula for density, students are ready to hear the expert solution, and also understand why density is a useful construct.  This goes along with the idea of giving a need for a vocabulary word before introducing the word itself.

OK, so now for why the soda can trick is (sort of) a lie.  It doesn’t always work.  It’s important to test the cans before you do this as a classroom activity (unless you want to turn it into an investigation of ‘why didn’t we see what we expected?’).  There is some variability in how sodas are canned, both within and across brands.  Is the advertised volume actually in the can?  (The only way to know is to open the can, though you can also weigh the can, as long as the same mass of aluminum is used).   Sometimes there might be extra air in the can, turning what should be a “sinker” into a “floater.”     Also, sometimes a bubble can get trapped under the can (so tip it sideways).   The temperature of the water also changes its density, so conceivably the temperature of the water could change the outcome of the experiment, though I’d be surprised if this was a large effect.

So, it’s a bit of a “lie” because you never know, perhaps you chose a floater and a sinker that float and sink because of different amounts of trapped air in the can, rather than because of density.  One could imagine turning it into an inquiry experiment, where students try to confirm the teacher’s hypothesis that the floating and sinking is due to density differences — a simple weight and volume determination of the soda in the can could do the trick, and would be a great experiment for students to suggest.  After all, don’t believe it just because teacher said so!

Image from Ngchikit under CC Share Alike (more info here).

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Our PhET interactive simulation project was just featured on Voice of America. It’s a nice short piece that gives information about PhET and why it’s helpful for student learning. Kudos to my boss Kathy Perkins who was succinct and clear — not always an easy task.

Below is the text from the VOA site

And here is the audio MP3

Website features interactive science experiments

You won’t need a one-gig internet connection to check out our Website of the Week.

This time it’s an educational site where principles of physics are illustrated with interactive animated experiments that you can perform on your own computer.

PERKINS: “The PhET website is a collection of 85 simulations for teaching and learning science. So our main goal is to help students better understand the science of the world around them, but instead of telling students how something works, our simulations let them discover important science concepts for themselves and really learn and engage through scientist-like exploration.”

Kathy Perkins is co-director of the Physics Education Technology, or PhET Interactive Simulations website, at phet.colorado.edu.

Despite the name, the site also includes animated simulations in biology, chemistry, and other disciplines, as well as physics. You can build your own solar system, model the hydrogen atom, or explore the properties of a gas as you change its temperature and other variables.

Another simulation allows you to design and modify a simple electrical circuit.

PERKINS: “So when you open up, you can drag out wires and batteries and bulbs. And as you connect them, as soon as you complete a circuit, you’ll see the light bulb light up and the electrons shown in the wires circulate around the circuit.”

The simulations look like entertainment, but Perkins says the design of each has been tested for its educational value and can be used in the classroom, or you can just run the sims yourself and learn by doing online at phet.colorado.edu, or get the link from our site, VOAnews.com.

MUSIC: Michel Petrucciani – “Laws Of Physics”

You’re listening to Our World, the weekly science and technology magazine from VOA News. I’m Art Chimes in Washington.

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The Exploratorium museum houses many wonderful science and perception exhibits, one of which is the anti-gravity mirror — a simple perception exhibit consisting of a big mirror with a platform hidden on the back side.  The explainers (the high school kids employed by the Exploratorium to do a lot of the demos and help visitors in the museum) just posted a really great video of a lot of the fun tricks you can do at the anti-gravity mirror.  Very fun!

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In the midst of winter’s snowfalls, it’s time to consider what you (and your students) might be doing this summer.  Here is a list of all the different summer program  opportunities for science teachers and students I’ve run across recently.
Firstly, NSTA publishes a list of professional development opportunities here. Their list includes:

• The STORM Project (June 20-25; Deadline Feb 26th for priority). Learn about air quality and meterology at the University of Northern Iowa; for middle school and high school science teachers. Expenses paid. Information here.
• Connecting Humans and Nature through Conservation Experiences. Penn State course in environmental science and conservation biology through a practicum in Costa Rica and Panama. Application by Feb 28th. Information here.
• A field course in measuring and monitoring biodiversity at El Eden Ecological preserve. August 7-14; Deadline March 15. Study tropical biodiversity near Cancun. Email Daniel_Bisaccio@Brown.edu
• Sheila Schwartz Family International Leading Science Teachers Seminar. Learn cutting edge science in Israel. July 7-15, Application deadline March 31. Information here.
• Botanical Society of America’s Summer Institute. June 21-29; Deadline April 9. Learn to develop student-centered plant investigations. Information here.
• PlantIT Teacher Institute. HS science teachers exploring investigative cases in biology. July 12-23 at Texas A&M. Deadline April 9. Information here.
• Deep Ecology and Sustainable Living Short Course. July 25-August 7 in Costa Rica, Deadline April 23. Information here.
• Physics of Atomic Nuclei. Free residential summer program at Michigan State. Learn about research at the superconducting cyclotron and conduct experiments. August 1-6 (teachers), Aug 8-13 (students). Information here.

Exploratorium Teacher Institute (June 21-July 16; Deadline April 1)

This is where I cut my eyeteeth in hands-on inquiry learning and I can’t recommend it enough.  These institutes are the best 4 weeks you’ll ever have, and you’ll become part of a vibrant and intelligent set of science and math teachers.  If you want to know more about what you might be getting into, listen to the podcasts that I made about the institute on the bottom of the page.    Information here.

Galileo Learning (Varies)

Galileo Learning is a Bay Area company looking for educators to run its summer camps:  Galileo Summer Quest (for entering 5th through 8th graders);
The Tech Summer Camps (for entering 4th through 8th graders).  More information here.

Yellowstone (Varies)

Write off your vacation by taking a class in the Yellowstone Association summer field seminars.   Information here

Astronomy Camp (Varies; March-October)

A teacher says, ” I did the teacher version of this astronomy camp a number of years ago and it remains the best PD I’ve ever done (Exploratorium notwithstanding, of course) with lots of time on very large telescopes. One of the highlights from my experience was “discovering” Pluto. [But]… the website (which has drastically improved) still doesn’t do a good job on conveying the experience.  And Don (the guy who runs the thing) is fantastic.”  Camps run March through October.  Information here.

Univ of California – COSMOS (July 11-Aug 7th, San Diego; ?? Irvine; Deadline March 1 & 15)

Deadlines for San Diego and Irvine are in March.  Each Fellow works with a team of university faculty to implement the academic portion of COSMOS. Teacher Fellows serve as the pedagogical bridge between high school student learning and university faculty teaching. They directly participate in all classroom and laboratory work as well as field trips, typically a Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. commitment.   Check here

Cornell Institute for Physics Teachers (July 5-17 and 25-30)

Get graduate credit in physics in this intensive summer institute, which was recommended by a teacher.  The CIPT graduate courses contain lectures, lab tours, and innovative, inquiry-based laboratory experiments. Lectures and lab tours are designed to update high school physics teachers on recent advances in diverse topic areas.   Information here.

Modeling Workshops (Varies)

Modeling Workshops are peer-led. Modeling Instruction is one of two K-12 science programs designated by the U.S. Department of Education as EXEMPLARY.  Modeling Workshops in high school physics, chemistry, and/or physical science will be held in summer 2010 in Arizona, Alabama, Miami FL, Iowa, New Orleans LA, Maine, Michigan, Minneapolis MN, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pittsburgh PA, northern Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Dallas TX, and Wisconsin.  Modeling Workshops will be held also in Georgia, Chicago IL, Kansas, South Dakota, and Washington, pending funding.  Modeling Workshops in 11th grade biology will be held in Pittsburgh PA and Tennessee, for teachers in Physics First/Capstone Biology sequences.  Stipends and/or free tuition at most sites, usually for in-state teachers.  Information here.

For Students

NASA programs in Mountain View, CA.  Information here.

Caltech Young Engineering and Science Scholars (YESS).  Information here.

JPL (the Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)  SpaceSHIP (Summer High School Internship Program) here.

Girls on Ice 2010 Expedition.  FREE, wilderness science education program for high school girls. Each year a
team of 9 teenage girls and 3 instructors spend 11 days exploring and learning about mountain glaciers and alpine landscapes through scientific field studies with professional glaciologists and mountaineers.  July 26 to August 5, 2010 on Mount Baker, Washington State.
Information here. (applications are due March 1, 201)

Summer Science Program (SSP).  A teacher says, “My younger sister did it and is now in a PhD program in Physics at Berkeley.  She loved it and met many other like-minded students there.”  Information here.

Astronomy Camp. A teacher says, ” I did the teacher version of this astronomy camp a number of years ago and it remains the best PD I’ve ever done (Exploratorium notwithstanding, of course) with lots of time on very large telescopes. One of the highlights from my experience was “discovering” Pluto. [But]… the website (which has drastically improved) still doesn’t do a good job on conveying the experience.  And Don (the guy who runs the thing) is fantastic.”  Camps run March through October.  Information here.

Image by freeparking

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In my copious spare time (!), I do some freelance writing assignments.  I recently got a fun assignment from my acquaintance and colleague David Ehrenstein at Physical Review Focus.  (I met David many years ago at a National Association of Science Writers conference… before a talk started, I heard someone ask “Could you explain Dark Matter to me?  I sidled up closer to hear how someone could do that in 1 minute or less.  That someone was David.  Great explainer and writer.)

Physical Review Focus explains the articles in Physical Review for a broad physicists audience.  They’re not easy to write — you have to understand a technical paper in an entirely new field at a deep level, and then write about it in a way that explains the details at a sufficient level to make a physicist happy, but with a broad enough story arc so that a non-specialist can understand it.  It’s  a tough balance.

This latest one was about how things break.  As you can imagine, it’s tough to get a real microscopic snapshot of a crack shooting through a material as it breaks.  But that’s what we need to do in order to get a deep understanding of fracture, so we can understand why materials fail.  Everything cracks (yes, even your jet airplane), but what we want to do is to understand why those cracks grow – that’s what we want to avoid to keep the stuff we build from falling apart.

So, take a look at my full article — Cracking the story of fracture. Any questions?  Let me know.

Image by Christopher Thomas:  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glass_fracture.jpg

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Project Tomorrow (which does really good work) is creating a new survey of teachers, to get the lay of the land in teacher prep.  This one is the first one, I believe, in which they’re including aspiring teachers.  Here is the blurb — if you’re seeking your credentials, consider contributing your voice to the survey!  Due February 19th.

Wanted: Aspiring Teachers to join the National Dialogue about Teacher Education!

Project Tomorrow is seeking Aspiring Teachers who are currently pursuing a degree or credential to participate in its nationally recognized Speak Up project.  The Speak Up for Aspiring Teacher survey is the newest in Project Tomorrow’s suite of Speak Up surveys and provides aspiring teachers with the opportunity to contribute to the national dialogue about teacher preparation.  This online survey asks participants questions about how they use technology in and out of the classroom for personal and academic reasons, how they are learning to use technology to facilitate learning or for professional tasks, and their aspirations for your future classrooms.

The national findings will be released during a Congressional Briefing in May 2010 and used to inform national, state, and local policymakers about key issues related to teacher preparation and training.  Your voice matters!  The survey responses are 100% anonymous, so let us know what’s important to you and your future teaching career.

It’s easy to share your ideas – all you have to do is take the survey on our website!

For additional information, please contact June Pai at june@tomorrow.org or 949/609-4660 Ext. 12 or visit Project Tomorrow’s website.

Remember, the survey closes on February 19th, 2010!

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I’ve always been marginally interested in the intersection between science and religion — I think in part because I do have a strong spiritual connection to the world, but through my awe in the workings of the natural world.  I’ve been told by a Christian that I worship the “created” (i.e., the natural world and all its wonders) rather than the Creator (i.e., God).  Yet, I have a deep and abiding respect for other people and their beliefs, especially after my time in a small village in Africa.  I’m not religious, but I am spiritual, and interested in where there are intersections between how I see the world, and how so many others do.    So when I was recently sent  The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate (by Adam Frank, an astronomer and writer) to take a look and write about it on the blog, I was curious about it.  It took me a long time to get around to it, but here’s my take on it.

Overall, the book had some really interesting ideas.  The basic premise was that science and religion needn’t be at odds, as they are now (and indeed, the two were not always at “war”) because they are both serving the same basic human desire.  That desire is the urge to understand the world around us and to touch the “divine” or “sacred” — the part of the world that is outside our mundane experience .

The constant fire is the aspiration to know what is essential, what is real, what is true.  It emerges from the elemental experience of the world as sacred.  Mythic narratives are one expression of that aspiration.  Scientific narratives are another.

So, since both science and religion/myth come from the same wellspring origin, they’re not necessarily in conflict.  Regardless of whether you buy his argument (and I bet many religious people have a strong reaction to the equating of religious stories with “myth”), he does have some great history of scientific accounts throughout.  My main beef with the book was that I felt that I got the main point in the first chapter and didn’t get too much out of the rest of the book — it didn’t need to be so long.  But, hey, if you’re grooving on it, I guess you’d be glad that he went into the detail and different examples that he did.

I got particularly interested about halfway through, when he began to describe how both science and religion contain their own narrative structure.  As a science writer and educator, I’ve been drawn to the idea of narrative and story.  The best communication of science, in any venue, is a weaving of a story.  Presentation of data at a conference, an article written for the public, or a lecture in a university — if there is not a narrative arc, your audience is likely to get lost. “There is no meaning in the data by themselves,” he writes.  They’re just numbers, and we seek meaning by looking for patterns in the numbers.

The world gives us data.  We look for patterns.  Then we find a reason for the pattern, and that reason becomes a story.

For example, he describes the currently understood account of how the universe came to be, from the Big Bang to present day.  We create a narrative based on the data and the patterns it presents.  And he describes creation stories from various cultures.  These are two perspectives on the question of “how did we come to be here?”

Myths are stories because that is how human beings create meaning.  Stories are how we structure our response to experiences of the world’s sacred character.

Both creation myths and stories, and scientific accounts of the origin of the universe, bring us outside our mundane experience of the world and closer to the sense of awe of how the world is. Scientific data, for example, takes us that much closer to the sacred by providing us with different sacred experiences, “from satellite images of the earth at night to PET scans of the human brain.”  So, science is a gateway to a deep and moving experience of the world.  I liked this thread very much.

I’m not sure yet what I think of Joseph Campbell, but Adam Frank describes his work about the universality of myths.  For example, there are numerous stories of a great flood that wipes out mankind, due to humanity’s folly.  I’m sure Frank isn’t the first to point this out, but the current climate change concern has this same narrative thread — we will be done in by our own actions.  I’m not trying to cast any doubt on climate change (i.e., it’s not a myth), but recognizing this similarity between the ideas of climate change and flood myths is very interesting to me.  We do have a collective sense of guilt (or, at least people in my demographic do) and of impending doom.  Global warming has become a moral issue — a now important part of that story.

Another aspect that I enjoyed about the book was an idea, towards the end, about how mathematics and myth are both expressions of how our brain works.  Our brain seeks patterns, and thus invented both mathematics and myth.   In this way, he says, “there is no separate truth ‘out there’, no realm of archetypes and Platonic forms.”  So, both myth and mathematics are the brain’s response to the physical world.

For those who want a nice summary of the main ideas of the book, he gives a handy list for those of us who got lost in his meanderings:

1. Warfare is not the only way to tell the story of science and religion
2. The emphasis on results in science and religion is misguided and sterile
3. Religious experience is more important than religious doctrine in thinking about connections with science
4. Science, in its practice and fruits, manifests hierophanies (sacred character)
5. Science functions as myth in providing hierophanies through sacred narratives of the cosmos and our place within it
6. Science’s roots in myth reveal its living connections with spiritual endeavor
7. Transcendent realities may or may not exist but are not necessary for science to be recognized as a means to apprehend the sacred
8. The braiding of science and spiritual endeavor by means of their common roots in myth can support a global ethos for the application of science as we pass through the bottleneck of the next century.

So, overall, I liked many of these ideas but wasn’t transported by the book.  Maybe it’s one of the cases of “If you like this sort of thing, it’s the sort of thing you’ll like.”

These publishers were smart.  They sent it to several other bloggers (like Science after Sunclipse and Fine Structure) and the book has its own blog too.  Great way to advertise a book.  So if you want to see what others are saying about it, just Google.

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Here’s a wonderful tidbit from a book that every physics teacher should have — The Flying Circus of Physics.  My old mentor PD gave it to me with the inscription, “until I write my book of physics stories, this is the best collection of science stories in print.”  As much as I love Paul, I think even he’d have a big task to outdo the wide array of stories and strange facts in this book (though I’d love to see him try!).  Need something to spice up a lecture on sound?  How about an explanation of why we hear our upstairs neighbors more than they hear us?  Or need a story to make the idea of pressure come alive?  How about the girl who got her tongue stuck in a bottle and needed glass cutters to help her get free?

So here’s the story of how electricity helps flowers grow.  We generally think of pollination as being a sort of accidental process — the bee gets himself all covered in yellow snow at one flower, and then loses some of it at the next flower.  No, it turns out that bees get positively charged (they lose some electrons) as they fly through the air.  When the positive bee approaches the neutral flower, that induces a charge in the pollen, which jumps onto the bee.

This is the same phenomenon as when you rub a balloon on your sweater.  The balloon becomes positively charged and when you bring it to the wall, it induces a charge in the wall.  Thus, it sticks to the wall.  There’s a nice simulation of this effect here.

Anyway, the pollen sticks to the hairs on the bee.  If it stuck to the bee itself, it would lose its charge.  The hair acts as an insulator, keeping the pollen grain just far enough away to keep it charged, and thus attracted to the bee.

Now, when the bee goes to the next flower, it induces a negative charge in the stigma of that flower.  The pollen grains are more strongly affected by that concentrated negative charge (the stigma, after all, has more charge than the bee, it’s connected to the ground so has an infinite source of electrons to draw from), and the pollen grain is polarized in the opposite way and jumps to the flower.

Wow.  I wonder if pollination doesn’t work as well in moist climates, then?  Is that why Colorado wildflowers are so stunning in their concentrations?

Bee Picture from TTaylor

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I don’t usually post job listings on the blog, but I *love* the local NSDL office and would be so happy to see someone excellent in this job opening.  See below — it’s a really great opportunity for someone qualified.

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) (http://nsdl.org), based at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, CO is seeking candidates for an Outreach and Professional Development Specialist.  The full position announcement and application procedures can be found on the UCAR website at:

http://bit.ly/cKNwYq

This position is responsible for leading efforts that inform and engage NSDL’s stakeholder and user communities. Assists the Director of Education and Strategic Partnerships in developing and implementing strategies to build significant use of the library and ensure that the NSDL is educationally beneficial across all science, technology, engineering and mathematics education communities. Leverages the use of online tools and social media as new outreach and engagement mechanisms for NSDL. Measures and analyzes an array of metrics to interpret progress toward goals for NSDL’s usage and impact. Sets direction for, designs and delivers professional development programming for NSDL’s educational users that also helps to inform audience needs, practices and incentives for engagement. This position includes responsibilities for representing NSDL in a variety of public and professional venues.

Minimum requirements include:
* Bachelor’s degree in education or a science/mathematics field; and
* at least three years of experience in K-16 and/or public education in formal or informal settings; and
* at least three years of experience in teacher/faculty professional development design, delivery, and evaluation.

This is a full-time replacement position. Initial consideration will be given to applications received prior to Friday, February 12, 2010. Thereafter, applications will be reviewed on an as-needed basis.

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.