What is life and what is human?

Life has four needs, six characteristics and sixteen patterns, but things only get really interesting with viruses that straddle the line between life and non-life. You can run into similar problems when you ask the question of what makes us human.

Both these questions come up in stories like Pinocchio, and any number of robot books, such as John Sladek’s Roderick. Probably because good books go a lot farther in describing characters rather than appearances, you often start with the question, are they sentient and then backtrack to the question of if they’re alive or not.

Interestingly, many of my students equate the question, are they sentient, with the query, are they human? (A fascinating result given the propensity of humanity to divide into groups based on looks.) Which gives rise to the interesting conundrum, can something/someone be “human” and still not alive? We’ve had some fascinating discussions around that question too.

A great place to encounter these issues is in Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, which also nicely ties-in with the science curriculum since you will probably find it useful to draw out the Frankenstein family tree to keep track of the story. In addition, the historical setting of the book relates to social world issues as the book describes life in the early 19th century, and you realize that the issue of our relationship with technology and science was coming up 200 years ago.

A lighter variant on Frankenstein is Terry Pratchett’s Feet of Clay. It’s a story about golums who are powered only by the words in their head. Unlike Asimov’s three rules of robotics the words are not literal instructions like the programmer’s code, they can be much more metaphorical, like a receipt. Yet, in the end, many of the same questions about life and humanity arise.

Earth Ecology and Terraforming Mars

I’ve been thinking about science fiction, like Mirable and The Chrysalids that tie into the Natural World (science) curriculum. While I’ve not read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars triology, Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars, they’ve won a number of awards and I’ve heard good things about them.

I’m looking for books that address global ecology, so stories about terraforming Mars would seem to fit. The Mars triology books are also supposed to be fairly rigorous and consistent about the science, something I look for in good science fiction. There are also some good articles discussing the science that can be used for supporting information, like this one by Margarita Miranova (2008) about the actual feasibility of terraforming Mars.

Feature identified by students from Evergreen Middle School. Image from NASA.

Given Mars’ proximity and the fact that space agencies have orbiting satellites and ground rovers makes the idea of colonizing Mars an intriguing one for the more adventurous adolescents. In fact, the recent news that 7th graders discovered a new feature on Mars’ surface might also inspire some interest. The 7th graders’ project was part of the Mars Student Imaging Program (MSIP), which might also be of interest. MSIP actually allows students to use the camera on board the Mars Odyssey satellite, by identifying locations for detailed images.

Tree of Life Project

Tree of Life web project.

The Tree of Life web project is a growing online collaborative project to:

to contain a page with pictures, text, and other information for every species and for each group of organisms, living or extinct.

Direwolf distribution in the U.S. from Faunmap.

It’s a great starting point for looking at the tree of life because each page has links to a wealth of online resources. One of the links on the Mammalia page, for example, is to Faunmap, an online database that produces maps of where different modern and extinct mammalian species can be found in the United States.

All the pages on the Tree of Life website are linked by the branches of the tree of life. The Class Mammalia links up to its parent Therapsida and down to the its Orders such as Monotremata (one of my favorites) and Eutheria, the placenta mammals.

The site is authored by professional scientists and science educators so has that credibility. Most of the images also allow free, non-commercial use. Thanks to Anna C. for the link.

Censorship!

I spent an hour yesterday censoring Larry Gronick’s, “Cartoon History of the Universe“. I always feel a little dirty after doing it, but the section on the origins of life, particularly the comparison of the relative advantages of asexual and sexual reproduction, does go a little too far with the puns (in my opinion at least).

I do, however, like the book a lot, especially the section on the origin of the universe and history of life on the Earth throughout the Cambrian. I tend to use the bit up till the appearance of humans about 200,000 years ago. Despite being written in 1990 the information is still very accurate. The art is excellent and a pleasure to observe.

Of course, censoring tends only to increase students’ interests in finding out what was blacked out. Fortunately, there’s nothing in the Cartoon History that’s too terrible even if they should decipher it.

Montessori Homeschool

I ran into the blog Somewhat in the Air by a parent who is doing Montessori style Homeschool for a couple boys (hat tip to Ms. De La Cruz). The kids are in elementary but approaching middle school age and they have some great links to resources that they use for projects that would also work well in the classroom or for individual projects.

The blog also contains some of the students’ work and the author’s reflections on Montessori philosophy. It’s a fascinating read and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it evolves as the kids grow older.

Class Insecta

Dragonfly in flight. Image by Luc Viatour.

Since we’re focusing on the life sciences this year I want to complete the nature trail. Part of this project is to catalog the biodiversity on the trail. I’d like to have students specialize on the different types of organisms we find. Undoubtedly, the Class Insecta will be well represented. The site, Entomology for Beginners is a great basic resource. It starts with very simple cartoons of insect parts but also has a great key to insect orders which walks you through the comparisons you need to make to identify the Orders in which a particular insect belongs.

The site also has a page on simulating the dynamics of insect populations using a simple model. This may be for the more advanced student however.

A more general guide to bugs (Phylum Arthropoda) can be found at Bug Guide. Their Clickable Guide to the left of the page is a great starting place.

Insect. Image by Luc Viatour.

Luc Viatour has a large gallery of macro images of members of the Phylum Arthropoda.

Timeline of life

Timeline of Life on Earth.

This year the theme is life. My central organizing structure is the timeline of life on Earth. I plan to link all of the discussions of taxonomy, phylogeny and genetics to this timeline over the course of the year.

The timeline above will be the first lesson. As with these things the trick is deciding how much detail to keep in and how much to keep out.

What I like is that it gives the general overview of when important things happen while leaving a lot of space for students to investigate. Most of what we’ll be seeing this year happened in the Cambrian and this timeline conveys that this is a very small part of the whole history of life. In fact, it’s only when we cover the biochemistry of genetics that we will be talking about the origins of life.

From the Exploring Earth's Origins website.

The website Exploring Life’s Origins has a great timeline. It also has some really neat sections, with very useful videos, on the formation of protocells and the origin of RNA on the early Earth that lead to life as we know it.

The Magnetic Field?

The one thing I left out that I’m still conflicted about is the Earth’s magnetic field. Recent research indicates it has been around since 3.2 billion years ago and its presence or absence may have had profound effects on life.

The Earth's magnetic field protects us from the solar wind. Image from NASA.

Having a magnetic field protects the Earth from the charged particles spewing out of the Sun, the solar wind. This makes life on land a lot easier since the solar wind’s particles are quite damaging to DNA. However, prior to the magnetic field forming all this damage to DNA may have also accelerated mutation and thus evolution.

Insects up close

Photo by Luc Viatour from the Réserve naturelle Marie-Mouchon.

A change of perspective can give the most amazing insights. I find macro photographs, particularly of insects, to offer a stunningly refreshing view of these nuisances. Luc Viatour, whose image is posted above, has some wonderful, copyright permissive, pictures.

Alternatively, Miroslaw Swietek has some amazing images of insects covered in droplets of dew (taken at around 3:00 am).

John Kimbler also has some spectacular photos as well as a nice article on how to do macro photography. The Wikipedia page on macro photography is also quite useful in that it goes into how to adapt your camera to take these photographs.

Photography, with it extensive use of refraction and reflection is a great avenue to talk about waves and their properties. Macro photography can be quite effective at striking the imagination and getting into taxonomy and entomology.