The Homely Scientist

If you’re teaching science at home and need excellent curriculum resources, you need to know about The Teaching Company. So far I have ordered three courses from them:

• Dark Matter, Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe
• Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality
• Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy

Every single one of these has been excellent and I plan to order many more. They have courses on history, philosophy and a few math courses as well.

For those parents who have a particularly difficult time with teaching science at home, and especially if your kid is precocious in the subject, you won’t regret ordering ANY of the science and math courses.

This company seems to go to great lengths to offer subjects taught by the best teachers at universities from all over the country. I have become addicted to them.

The way I’ve been using the courses at home is we watch one lecture and I pause it whenever I want to make a comment or if there is a question. We then use the discussion questions at the end of each section in the study guide to go further into a topic.

Sometimes I’ll make up some problem sets or little questions of my own for them to write about. At the end of the week, I have them write up a short summary of what they considered the most important concepts.

I can’t recommend these courses enough to anyone, not just homeschoolers, but they are a wonderful resource that should be utilized by them in particular.

Another great resource is SciToys.com.

This website has a lot of pre-made kits that can be purchased to build things like film cannons, Gauss Rifles, simple heat engines and loads of other cool projects.

I often recommend starting at this website whenever a student is considering ideas for a science fair project.

I’ll be blogging in more detail about this site as time goes on as I just placed a huge order with them and I wanna play with my new toys.

Oh, and the kids too… Yeah, they wanna play too, I guess.

Technorati Tags: homeschooling, homeschooling science, teaching company

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 I know this might seem hokey, but wait read on:

We’ve all dreamed of having a mini-greenhouse that we could plug into our computer, but until today it was just that — dreams. But dream no longer. Geeks.com is selling a USB-powered Mini Greenhouse that includes a computer interface which helps you monitor growth rate and that includes a calendar, wallpaper and bookmark settings to aid you in monitoring the growth of your greenhouse. Source: USB: Grow Plants with the USB-Powered Mini-Greenhouse - Gizmodo

What about using this as a great science experiment with your kids?  I’m sure the software is fun and teaches you about plant growth.  Clearly the USB is going to be powering the grow light and giving some feedback (moisture maybe).

Face it, simple plant growth projects are fun and easy.  They can teach kids a lot about science too.

Now I’m going have to hunt one of these down…

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I was reading through my b5 feeds and found Tony’s post about the reason for his son’s less than stellar (pun intended) grade this year in science:

BUT, he couldn’t organize his science notebook.

“I’m sorry, he can’t organize what?’, I asked.

“His science notebook. He failed the notebook checks. They were worth 100 points each, almost 80 percent of his grade.”, the science teacher calmly explained with a huge smirk on her face.

“What does that have to do with science?”, I asked, but by then I knew what was going on and that I wasn’t about to get anywhere. I left the teacher conference furious.

I’m all too familiar with this kind of teacher. She was a stickler for organization. All materials had to be inserted in the notebooks EXACTLY and each item had to have the name in a certain place, with the information outlined EXACTLY as specified.

Now, I understand the need to teach kids organizational skills, I really do. But to make it 80% of a grade?

What this teacher really wanted was the students to do all of the work for her. She didn’t want to have to search through reams of paper to try and figure out what the student knew. She just wanted to open the notebook and start checking off the existence of items, each containing the proper words so she could get through the grading as fast as possible.

She wasn’t the slightest bit interested in whether or not the kids learned anything, only that the notebooks were in proper order.  From: Why I’m Homeschooling My Kid in Science Next Year [Astronomy Buff]

I would have flunked that teacher’s class.  Big time.  Now, there is a side of the science notebook that is important, keeping good and accurate notes of experiments and such.  It was drilled into us that sometimes credit for an invention or discovery depended on the dates in one’s notebook.  That aside I don’t see the need for an OCD science notebook.  I did learn how important it was to keep good notes, but I was never OCD about it even when my career depended on it all.  I took good notes, accurate notes.  Mostly legible notes.

Okay science teachers, student should be leaving your class richer in knowledge than when they arrived.  If a student really knows their stuff, but their noteboook isn’t up to your standards, maybe talking to the student and parents would be a good idea.

I know that I will supplement my kids’ science, history, whatever education myself if needed.  Good luck Tony.

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SciTalks is a new site that has videos of lectures on a ton of science topics.

“Science and scientists are going to be more fun and accessible because of SciTalks. Students will be able to hear the voices and passion of the actual discoverers of the subject they’re studying in class. Teachers can assign selections to their students… no matter how limited your school’s resources, if you have access to the internet, you can now get a great science education. It’s like crack for science geeks.” says founder Lee Vodra. Source: SciTalks.com launches video site for science lectures | 901am

You know when you’re just sitting at home, nothing good on TV and think, hey you know I could really go for a good talk on particle physics.  Okay maybe not so much.  This is a great idea.  You might be wondering how many have I watched already…none.  Huh?  Well they use RealPlayer (who the hell uses RealPlayer anymore!?!) and QuickTime.  My Quicktime alternative doesn’t seen to have a Firefox plugin so I’ll be doing some installing I guess because there are some ones on archaeology I really want to see.  No, really, I do.

Maybe more videos will be posted, might not be an alternative to the real thing, but nice to expand your horizons.

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Google Earth is one of those fantastic tools that just keeps getting better.  While, yes, it does take up a bit of drive space, it also gives you the ability to learn a lot about our world.  Take storms for example…

The Hurricane season has officially begun. And the second named storm - Tropical Depression Barry - is currently providing much needed wetness to a dry southeastern US. One of Google Earth’s most powerful features is the ability to pull in real-time information from other sites and overlay the information for visualization. Weather data is one of my favorite applications of this ability. Imagine pulling in the latest satellite photos, radar animations, hurricane tracking, live web cams on the ground, sea surface temperature analysis, etc. Well, you can do all that with the set of tools I’ve bundled together into this: the weather and storm tracking tools collection  Source: Google Earth Blog: Weather and Storm Tracking Tools for Google Earth

I’ve just re-installed Google Earth on my machine and plan on putting it on the kids’ computer as well.

Hat tip Beyond the Beyond

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 Okay a bit cheeky, but these concepts from some engineering students for wind turbines over the highway could generate enough juice to power traffic signals and other important things for highway safety.

They might look far out, but for windy highways say in the mountain passes, they could probably be easier to deal with than the typical windmill style.

From Crunch Gear: Highway Wind Turbines

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Well the can car was a huge success.  In the end it went like stink and my daughter could probably start a business making them for people.  The device wasn’t without some problems, though.  When it left my house it was working great, but sometime later the rubber band broke.  Oops.  It took a lot of work and panicked phone calls to me to get it running again.

There are two key parts to a successful can car.  First is using a bead or nut on the winding end.  That pencil or chop stick can’t be touching the whole lid, in fact I think the less touching the better.

Next is the liquid soap.  I think this is the real magic ingredient.  That little bit of greasing the wheel seems to be directly proportional to the speed and distance of the car.

So there you have it.

Gonna be a little hectic around here over the next little bit … I’m moving so I’m trying to juggle all that stuff and blog.

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My daughter A told me last week, while I was at the conference, that she had a homework assignment to do this weekend and wanted us to do it together.  No matter what it was, I was going to say yes.  Single dads don’t get that option often.  Regardless, then she said it was to build a simple machine.  W00t!  Science fun!

When I picked the kids up on Friday morning I found out the details.  She had to design and build a device that used two simple machines and would go at least 2 meters (6.5 feet).  Bonus points were given for coming back and/or carrying something.  Oh and once she let go or gave the device its initially energy, she couldn’t touch it.

No sweat.  I knew what to build in seconds.  The Can Car.  This is a super easy project and would be great for rainy day races.  Before I get into the Can Car, and the fun I had with the project (because it didn’t work the first time), let’s talk simple machines.

From Wikipedia a simple machine is:

In physics, a simple machine is any device that only requires the application of a single force to work. Work is done when a force is applied and results in movement over a set distance. The work done is the product of the force and the distance. The amount of work required to achieve a set objective is constant, however the force required to do this can be reduced provided the lesser force is applied over a longer distance. Increase the distance and reduce the force. The ratio between the two is the mechanical advantage.

What are the simple machines?  Here’s the list:

• The inclined plane
• The wheel and axle
• The lever
• The pulley
• The wedge
• The screw

 When I took physics I think the screw was considered an inclined plane, no matter A was using the same list …

For the can car you see that the wheel and axle are there, but what is the second one?  That was something I was pondering too, and wanted to make sure I was on solid footing if challenged by a teacher (sorry a grade 4 teacher isn’t a science authority in my book, but I wanted to have a good argument in case A got dinged on the project).  If you look at the PBS site there is a pencil used to wind up the rubber band to provide power.  I’m calling it a lever.  To me it is the same as the crank on a bike or winch.  The lever lets you transfer energy.  Works for me.

Okay making it was fun.  Had some challenges like a poor supply of rubber bands (I wound up using an elastic from an old conference nametag holder–good thing I’m a packrat!) and a few other improvisations.  And the biggest challenge was the first couple versions didn’t work.

See our initial design was based on a spool racer.  Which uses all the same principles of physics, but the major difference is that a spool is the wheel, not a can.  Oh and at the lever end, it’s a washer not a bead.  These two things combined made for a very frustrating first try.

See I used an improvised washer and a very strong rubber band (broccoli bands rock).  The tension was too much.  The chop stick couldn’t turn.  Bad news.

A and I did what any good scientist would do, we went back and did more research.  Okay she researched and I experimented.  I had a vague memory of a different version of the can car that would come back to you, so I tried that one from memory (couldn’t find it online).  After a lot of tinkering we got it to work.  The success factors were two-fold.  First was using a metal nut between the lid and the chop stick.  Second was using liquid soap to grease the lid on the chop stick end.

And I tell you, that thing when wound up tight, flies across the floor.  And bonus, because it’s a can with covered ends, it can carry stuff!

Bonus points!

For A, this was a good experience in research, trial and error, and experimentation.  For me it was just fun to play with science and share that with my kids.

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I love flying toy planes.  Heck my 12th Grade physics science project was all about that.  This was the post I mentioned in my last last post:

Let’s face it: GeekDad projects are sometimes more fun for the older kids than for the younger ones. So when it comes to flying planes at the park, we’re always looking for something that everyone can do.

We’ve found that with the Hobbico line of free-fly electric planes. They’re amazing. Ranging from $12-$15, they’re beautifully-made with built-up foam bodies and electric motors, rechargeable batteries and chargers. They range from a toy-like 14″ wingspan to a small R/C plane size of 27″ wingspan.
Source: Geekdad - Wired News

I will be looking for these in town (Victoria).  Come on pick up a little plane that if it gets trashed isn’t a huge loss…sounds like a winner to me.

Interesting to note that the plane that did the best was the smallest and cheapest.  Less risk of smashing it on the ground I guess.

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 Steve Jurvetson is the Geek Dad over at Wired and he’s onto something here:

When an appliance dies, I remove the power cord, and I help guide the disassembly.  For consumer electronics, a small assortment of screwdrivers will do the trick, as well as a set of small Torx wrenches for Apple products and cell phones.  Remember to look under the stickers for hidden screws. Old laptops are especially fun, and don’t forget to check out all the LCD light distribution layers (but be careful with the small fluorescent bulb)
Source: Geekdad - Wired News Photo from Flickr

Haven’t you always wanted to do this?  I used to have a few hard drive platters on my desk.  They are really cool looking.  So how about showing the kids what makes a gadget tick before you send it to gizmo heaven?

Yes, do me careful.  There are lead-based solders in there as well as other heavy metals.  So hand washing after looking and touching is important.

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