For an engaging way at looking at real-life science, check out the NOVA site on the chemistry behind fireworks by clicking here.
Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Chemistry and Fireworks
October 29th, 2009Science Limericks
September 10th, 2009To set up your hypothesis
Make an informative guess
For what you will try
To be like Bill Nye
And live a life of success.
Limericks have a specific structure for rhyme scheme and rhythm.
The rhyme scheme is
A – hypothesis
A – guess
B – try
B – Nye
A – success
So in the sample above, notice that hypothesis and guess rhyme, try and Nye rhyme, and then I bring the rhyme back to success, rhyming with hypothesis and guess. Limericks need to stick to the AABBA rhyme scheme to be a traditional limerick.
For the rhythm part, to keep it simple let’s just say that lines 1,2, and 5 are the longer rhythms and 3 and 4 are the quicker rhythms.
Tradition has it that limericks started out in Limerick, Ireland (sounds believable enough) and that the poems have their roots in a certain type of song.
Here’s a brain-teaser limerick from Kay DeVicci and aps.org:
The sum of 3 numbers is 4;
The product is (-2) more;
The sum of their squares,
If anyone cares,
Is just 14 less than a score.
Switch Zoo
September 8th, 2009
Have you seen Switch Zoo? It’s a great place for a quick writing assignment. Think about focusing on Ideas and Content from the Six Traits. You can have the students create encyclopedia entries for their created animals. It would also be a useful prompt for a diamonte poem, with one creature being the top of the poem and the other creature being the bottom.
The site has some fun games to teach science, as well. I can see students having to provide a rationale for why their animal would reside in a specific biome.
And who doesn’t like learning how to make balloon animals?
Perseids
August 11th, 2009If you want to see some meteors, tonight the Perseids will be streaking through our sky around midnight.
Perseids being connected to the Perseus constellation…Lightning Thief, anyone?
Interview with Mike Collins, Apollo 11 Astronaut
July 22nd, 2009Mike Collins was the guy orbiting the moon while the other two operated the landing module. There’s an interesting interview that was posted at NASA.gov to avoid lots of people sticking microphones in his face for the anniversary. Here’s a quote from him about his role:
This venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two. I don’t mean to deny a feeling of solitude. It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact with the Earth abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon, I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.
We Choose the Moon
July 17th, 2009It’s what Apollo 11 might have looked like if we had all of the tech to do status updates to give instant updates.
As of my writing Apollo 11 is at Stage 6, half-way between Earth and the moon. If everything stays according to plan, we should see a landing around, oh, I don’t know, July 20-ish.
At the site it not only has the countdown and the visualization, but it’s also streaming all of the dialogue between Capcom (Mission Control, not Street Fighter) and the astronauts. (Click on those links to follow them on Twitter. I set it up for text updates – so that I feel like I’m someone so important the astronauts feel the need to text me.)
In the bottom right of the site is what puts it all into context. Scrolling are fun facts about 1969, like how gas was 35 cents a gallon or how Slaughterhouse 5 was on the New York Times bestsellers list.
You definitely have to check out the video and photo galleries. After 40 years there is still media that I haven’t seen before. It’s all sponsored by the JFK presidential library. I think it’s really cool and for that I give you JFK’s moonshot speech:
