Month: December 2009

Experiments in cooking: Testing for pectin

Ribes rubrum. From Wikipedia.

Cooking is chemistry writ large. You start by learning how to measure volumes, mass and ratios, but end up talking about polymers and stoichiometry. It can get very complicated, but it’s easy enough that anyone can do it, going into different depths.

I’m planning on jam making this fall and in testing a recipe I became curious about if I could do it without adding store-bought pectin. Red currants should have enough pectin but the question of extracting it came up.

I was curious to see if I actually get more pectin from the liquid squeezed last through the handkerchief (with much wringing) than I get from the pulp and juice of the red currants I initially squeezed through a coarse strainer. So, I tested the two batches of liquid for pectin. A simple application of science in cooking.

Date: 12/29/09.

Hypothesis: The juice (the filtrate) squeezed out of the currants through the strainer will have less pectin than the juice strained out of the seed and skin leftover of the straining (the retentate) because I think I remember reading somewhere (always dangerous) that pectin can be found in or just beneath the surface of the skin of fruits.

Procedure: Using the test from the University of Minnesota extension service: Add 1 teaspoon of juice to 1 tablespoon of rubbing alcohol and observe how well it coagulates after 2 minutes. This test is performed in two small shot glasses.

Observations: It is difficult to quantify how firm are the gels that forms at the bottom of the shot glasses. Although I could construct a simple device to test gels resistance for force, I opt to assess the gels by swirling the glasses and observing how they move. Eyeballing the results, it seems that the first extraction of pulp and juice has more pectin. An independent observer agrees with this observation.

Conclusion: My initial hypothesis is wrong. Based on this experiment I now hypothesize that the pulp of the currants has more pectin. Five minutes of internet searching seems to confirm this new hypothesis, and suggests that my initial belief that pectin can be found under the skin of fruits comes from the fact that this is true for citrus fruits.

Where does morality come from?

“Do to others as you would have them do to you”. The golden rule (in some form or the other) is almost universal. And because it is found throughout different cultures and belief systems suggests that much of what we view as morality and ethics are innate to the human mind. But what are we born with, and what do we learn from culture? Is the golden rule necessary for successful social groups, so that cultures with the golden rule are more successful that ones that don’t have it? These two questions are fundamental to how we educate, particularly in a method such as Montessori’s that has such a strong moral dimension.

Maria Montessori herself came from a strong catholic background, but the success of her approach in so many different cultures does argue that, at least for the younger kids, the innate aspects of morality and needs of the child are most important. By the time students get to the Middle School, however, the influence of the local culture has become much more important.

Morality and culture affect students’ motivations and behavior, yet much of what is considered acceptable in many cultures conflict with the core Montessori principles of respect for oneself and for others. Much of popular American culture for example, is driven by television where moral messages can be decidedly mixed. How often is it appropriate to use violence (or even torture)? Television shows give decidedly different answers from Montessori. But there are many other, more subtle differences. As Montessori educators we will be faced with the question of what to do when Montessori philosophy differs from the beliefs of the student, their family and the larger culture.

My thoughts are that the “cosmic education” that is a part of the Montessori method should be based on the “universal” aspects of morality that can be shown to make for successful individuals and societies. Some interesting work by Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia looks at how certain systems of morality have contributed to the success of societies. As Nicholas Wade summarizes:

… natural selection and the survival of the fittest may seem to reward only the most selfish values. But for animals that live in groups, selfishness must be strictly curbed or there will be no advantage to social living. Could the behaviors evolved by social animals to make societies work be the foundation from which human morality evolved?

Haidt suggests there are “five innate and universally available psychological systems” of ethics, and different cultures add stories, virtues and ways of policing these ethics. The Moral Foundations Theory website has a good summary of the five systems, harm/care, fairness, loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity.  In a beautiful example of adding transparency and technology to scientific research, he even has a page for challenges to the theory. Each of the moral foundations these deserves separate consideration of how they evolved, how they benefit society, and how they mesh with Montessori philosophy.

Nicholas Wade has a good article on the subject and on Haidt’s work in the New York Times.

Why collaboration is important

Montessori middle schools depend a lot on collaborative work and discussions. Individual parts of group work allow students to specialize in areas, hopefully, where they are interested and willing to learn the most. Then when they share their work with the group the whole group gets the information, and the person presenting it gets feedback from different perspectives. Collaborative work is excellent preparation for creative work in the future.

Some recent research by Kevin Dunbar, a neuroscience at the University of Toronto, gives some strong support to the usefulness of collaborative work. He found that group discussions, with people from different backgrounds can be much more effective at solving problems than discussions among specialists. Different backgrounds mean that each person is forced to take a step back from their expertise and think and describe the problem in a way someone else with a different perspective can understand. This allows both the expert and the person they are describing the problem to, to see the problem from different perspectives.

The universe … for scale

The American Natural History Museum has a YouTube channel with some interesting science-related videos. The one above, “shows the known universe as mapped through astronomical observations.”

Every satellite, moon, planet, star and galaxy is represented to scale and in its correct, measured location according to the best scientific research to-date.

Critical analysis of the Phantom Menace

When thinking about literature and stories, the Heroic Journey is often a useful lens for observation. The unassuming hero receives “the call”, gains allies, meets challenges and wins in the end (although the cost may be high). This basic template is strewn throughout literature; my personal, favorite is Bilbo Baggins’ journey in Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”.

Another great example of the Heroic Journey is Luke Skywalker’s in the first movie of the original Star Wars trilogy. And it is the deviation from the template that makes the Star Wars prequels, starting with The Phantom Menace, so hard to watch. At least, that is what one critic, who produced a brilliant, 70 minute video critically comparing the two movies, believes. He elegantly makes his arguments using video clips from the two movies.

WARNING: THERE IS SOME OBSCENE LANGUAGE AND INAPPROPRIATE REFERENCES, enough so that, as it is, this video is probably most likely inappropriate to show to students. With that in mind, the link is here. An edited version would be ideal. Without the obscenity, the arguments in the video are a useful discussion of the movies, of story arcs, and of deconstructing art. It is quite entertaining too.

For those leery of the language, the author points out:

  • There is no heroic journey for any character who we can identify with. In science fiction in particular, there needs to be one “normal” character that guides us through this new universe. Even Anakin, who starts off as a slave and in the end destroys the enemy ship is just a passive observer. Because he does not understand what is going on and just goes with the flow he is unaware if the danger so we don’t feel the tension either. According to the author, “In this opening segment I discuss the major flaw of The Phantom Menace which is the characters and the lack of connection with the audience.”
  • The entire movie is driven by the plot devices that move the characters from one scene to another. The characters are either passive or have to make some illogical decisions to follow the storyline. The characters, and their personalities do not drive the movie. “Part two now focuses on the second biggest problem with the Phantom Menace, the story. The mystery plot lacking direction and emotional involvement was really the other big problem. No tension, no drama, no stakes. Characters aimlessly follow along the events.”
  • The problem with the special effects was that they did not primarily serve the story. According to George Lucas in the 70’s, “A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.” The light saber duels were the best examples. In the Phantom Menace they were carefully choreographed works of art. Pretty to look at, but with no deeper meaning and very little emotion. Compare that to Luke’s anger and his realization that he is turning into his father at the end of Return of the Jedi. “… light saber duels have less to do with the fight itself but moreso with the internalization of the characters.”
  • Did George Lucas have too much control over the movie? In the original movies he had to deal with independent actors and a lot of technical challenges. In this movie, were the others too intimidated to challenge questionable ideas, so that Lucas had everything his way? Is adversity necessary for art?

Nuclear Winter and MAD


Almost every time I discuss protons, neutrons and the nucleus of an atom, or at least so my students complain, I end up talking about nuclear fission and fusion and nuclear weapons. If the discussion goes on long enough I tend to bring up the cold war and how the fear of mutually assured destruction (MAD) reduced the chance of a hot war. I don’t often get into how the explosions from a nuclear exchange could put so much dust into the upper atmosphere that it blocks the sunlight and create a nuclear winter that would affect life all around the world. A nuclear winter that would have an effect similar to the winter created by the asteroid impact that lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The danger of nuclear weapons have not, unfortunately, gone away. There is a facinating article in Scientific American on how even a “small” nuclear war could have global consequences. They have a great quote from Mikhail S. Gorbachev about how,

“Models made by Russian and American scientists showed that a nuclear war would result in a nuclear winter that would be extremely destructive to all life on earth; the knowledge of that was a great stimulus to us, to people of honor and morality, to act.”

The major finding of the research in the article is that even a small nuclear war, such as between India and Pakistan, could lead to a significant global nuclear winter.

I like to take every chance I get to tie natural and social world concepts together. It’s one of the things I enjoy most about teaching in an interdisciplinary Montessori classroom. There is a beautiful and scary story here about how the science of the infinitesimally small has had a fundamental effect on the major geopolitical conflict of the latter half of the 20th century, and continues to affect us today.

Cognitive science and math for pre-schoolers

There is an interesting article in the New York Times on cognitive neuroscience is showing that pre-schoolers are capable of learning mathematical concepts. How novel. The third paragraph:

For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready.

This timescale coincides with Angeline Lillard’s observations in Montessori: The Science behind the Genius (Lillard, 2005) about how constructivist approaches to teaching, like Montessori’s, were devalued and derogated because the more factory-like approaches were seen as more efficient during a time when the marvels of the industrial revolution were continuously impressing. This general theory, of course, may or may not be related to the theory of teaching specific concepts like math. It is disappointing that the references to such a broad statement are not provided in the article.

Twittering a Montessori Middle School

I ran into the twitter page for the Montessori Middle School of Louisville today. It is regularly updated (as of May 2010) and the tweets give a fascinating glimpse of what a rural Montessori school near Knoxville, Tennessee, is up to. They have everything from programming computer games with Flash to working the gardens and composting.

The school’s website is at: http://www.discoveret.org/mms/ and they also have a blog at http://montessorimiddle.blogspot.com/