The beautiful documentary “Cosmic Voyage“, is currently available for free on Hulu. It’s one of those things that sparks the imagination. UPDATE: At least it was on Hulu for a while. If I find it somewhere else I’ll post the link here.
Author: Lensyl Urbano
Waves and interference
There are lots of interesting interactive wave demonstrations on the web. The particularly interesting ones are the ones that show interference. Some of them make your eyes water. Others make your ears hurt. These simple animations show superposition (constructive and destructive interference) very nicely, but the language is a little advanced.
What I like about Dan Russell’s 2d animations is that they show the wave motion using particles. If you track a single particle with your eye you can see that while the wave moves from one side of the area to the other, the particles just move back and forth in the same general region.
I like this demo because you easily control the wave amplitude and lengths of two waves and it shows how they superimpose.
This animation of wave interference is nice because when you click on the 2d animation it shows the two waves’ effects at the point you’ve chosen as curves. You can choose points to show both constructive and destructive interference.
This elegant but somewhat complex video shows the two dimensional sine waves generated by a rotating wheel.
Gay marriage and civil rights
Gay marriage is one of those current issues that allows for a fascinating perspective on civil and human rights. Although in many parts of the US racial discrimination and prejudice are still alive and pertinent, the issue has been decided; arguing for racial discrimination has no place in government policy and in the vast majority of society. The right of gay people to marry, however, still splits the country.
Terry Gross’ NPR interview with reporter Margaret Talbot is an excellent introduction to the topic based around the court case being argued in California right now. It starts with a discussion of fact that one of the lawyers arguing for marriage rights is a conservative, while the other is a liberal. This fact allows for a discussion that is much broader than a simple left-right political argument.
The interview also goes in to the role of the supreme court and its interpretation of the constitution in assuring civil rights for minorities. Loving vs. Virginia, the case striking down bans on interracial marriage, is a precedence that is key to the arguments of supporters of gay marriage.
Gross and Talbot also talk about the “orginialist” position that many conservatives take, where the Supreme Court must interpret the Constitution based on what the people who wrote it believed rather than allowing for the changes that have occurred over the past two centuries.
It’s a fascinating interview, that delves into a number of topics relating to government, courts and human rights, and uses intelligent, challenging, but not impossible language. Our next immersion trip deals with civil rights, and I plan on playing this podcast on the drive to our camping site. I suspect the students may not be too happy about this, but if it puts them to sleep, at least they’ll be well rested when we get to our destination.
Rock band and the choice of poetry
Popular music lyrics have been used to introduce students to poetry (Brenda Guerra has a nice lesson plan on the subject). We recently had an overnight at the school and the students elected to play Rock Band. It was clearly indicated that the songs they played would have to have language acceptable to the Middle School. Among the song choices they made was Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer”.
I’d considered “Living on a Prayer” as one option for poetry reading but rejected it because I wasn’t sure that lines like, “she brings home her pay for love” would be quite appropriate. What I found most interesting was that even though they sung the song, they did not actually know the words. The game appears to only require them to make sounds of the right length and maybe pitch. So the singing sounded like, “Tommy used to blah blah blah blah.”
So now I think I’ll use the song, but I’m curious to see the response. Will the fact that it’s something they are aware of and play in a game make it more interesting to them? Or will it work the opposite way? We’ll find out.
This song also introduces issues of unions and the way the arts reflect society, both overtly and, in this case apparently, hidden in the music.
Seeing temperature, kinetic energy and color
We read that temperature is the average kinetic energy of a substance but you can (especially if you’re a visual learner) nicely internalize this from simple videos or animations. UCAR has a little animation with their definition of temperature. I however, adapted an interactive, 3d animation that I think does a nice job, and also introduces a couple of other interesting concepts too.
I’ve also used this model, at different times, to show:
- The relationship between temperature and color emitted by objects. The main way we know the temperature of stars is because blue stars are hotter than red stars. Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light, and things that are at higher temperatures emit shorter wavelengths.
- Absolute zero (0 Kelvin) – where (almost) all motion stops and the objects stop emitting light.
- Pressure in a gas – you really get a feel for the force exerted by the particles on the side of the box (although it might be even more interesting once I figure out how to add sound).
It is an interactive model, but it’s pretty simple because the only control is a slider that lets you set the temperature.
Finally, in the age of 3d movies, like Avatar, the models can be easily shown in 3d if you have the glasses (redcyan).
The model is easy to install and run on Windows, but you have to install the programming language VPython separately on a Mac (but that isn’t very hard). I have this, and a bunch of other models, at http://earthsciweb.org/GeoMod/.
Best science fiction? (without John Wyndham and The Chrysalids?)
I discovered science fiction in my early teens but it was always hard to find the great stories in the midst of a lot of drivel. This list of 100 good science fiction and fantasy books seems to be a good start. Most of the books on the list are worthy, but it completely misses John Wyndham (The Chrysalids among others) and Brian Stableford (e.g. War Games). There are also a few that bored me to tears (Bradley’s Avalon) and some that I did not think were very well written (Crichton’s Sphere).
I like science fiction because it tends to deal with some of the big issues that adolescents are facing. Who am I, what’s the future going to be like, what does it mean to be human, what’s my place in society, and of course, wouldn’t it be nice it everyone just disappeared and I had the world all to myself? You also get to tie it in to the Natural World and Social World curriculum.
The Chrysalids is a great example. A post-apocalyptic novel, it looks at, among other things, institutional discrimination, the conflict between science and religion, and evolutionary theory (with it’s darker side eugenics). Wyndham addresses these issues with interesting characters and wonderful, intelligent storytelling (with a heroic journey). I’ve used this book as part of the life sciences curriculum for the tie-in to evolution, and to the history of the Cold War. But I also bring it up when we discuss human rights and discrimination.
Voyager
The Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, are still going and making new discoveries. They are after all the man-made objects that are furthest away from the center of the solar system, beyond the orbit of Pluto, and are now approaching interstellar space.
Where does the solar system end and interstellar space begin? Well, the Sun gives off light, but it also emits a plasma of charged particles (protons and electrons typically) that’s called the solar wind. These charged particles are launched from the Sun pretty fast, but as they get to the edge of the solar system they start to slow down, because the solar system is moving through a magnetic cloud, and, as we all know, charged particles are affected by magnetic fields.
The solar wind, assisted by the Sun’s magnetic field, pushes against the interstellar magnetic cloud, creating a bubble, called the heliosphere (helio=sun, sphere=sphere) that is pretty much the edge of the solar system.
Both Voyager spacecraft are approaching the heliosphere, and we’ve recently discovered that as the solar system moves through the interstellar magnetic cloud, the heliosphere is pushing against the cloud and the cloud is pushing back quite a bit. As a result, the heliosphere is shaped like the bow wave of water around a speeding boat.
It is difficult not to personify these two lonely spacecraft as the get further and further away from home, with no way to get back, but sending signals that tell of their discoveries and ensure their immortality.
Haiti
The plight of Haiti is on the front pages with the latest disaster. Starting with the first and only, I believe, successful slave rebellion, the nation was founded with such promise. Sadly, however, most of Haiti’s history since then has been tragic. A series of disfunctional, corrupt governments were not helped by almost continuous intervention by the European and American powers. The result, the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. David Rudder, a Caribbean song writer and singer, captures the sadness of this history and the current abdication of responsibility of its neighbors in the song Haiti.
… this was the first Republic in the New World. The first free Republic and led by a slave. You can’t get more intense than that and look where it’s at now. … it’s also saying to people in the Caribbean that we were brought here on the same ship, but the English speaking Caribbean does not know what is going on in the Spanish speaking Caribbean and vice versa or the French speaking Caribbean. We are looking outwards to different places and at the end of the day all we have is ourselves. The wider societies don’t really have time with us again.