Rosa Parks Play

Naomi's PreSchool class did a play about Rosa Parks today.  Here is Naomi describing the play.



And here is how the play turned out.

Half the Sky is both a brutal awakening and an unmistakable call to action. -Melinda Gates

Our friend Amber Vandermeulen, a third grade teacher in the Kent school system, said that she and her husband had just read Half the Sky to one another on their last road-trip and she thought I might like it.  Knowing nothing about it, I cracked it open.  ...everything was forever changed.

Half the Sky is a collection of stories about heros, written by Pulitzer prize winning NY Times columnists and authors,  Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.  The two are married and often write that treasured breed of articles....the kind that are full of facts that once heard, leave you seeing things that were invisible before. 

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. -Helen Keller

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. - Helen Keller

Both a brutal awakening and an unmistakable call to action, this book should be read by all. - Melinda Gates

"Bringing science to Science Fiction"

Larry Dalton

In 2000, Larry Dalton came over to the tower apartment to share his idea of creating a Research Center for "Materials Science and Devices" that would bring together material scientists from across the country to solve the hardest and most exciting modern problems.  The National Science Foundation was launching a new program called "Science and Technology Centers."(STC)  They aimed to make America more competitive by funding research institutions to work together for common goals.  Larry jumped at the opportunity.  He and Alvin Kwiram applied and in 2002 the NSF STC was funded and I went on the advisory board.  It was called CMDITR which stood for the unwieldy, Center for Materials and Devices for Information Technology Research.   

Jeanne Small

Nine years have passed, the lead directors, Larry Dalton, Phil Reed and Jeanne Small and I sat down together over coffee and the first thing Larry said was, "I think we brought some Science to Science Fiction, don't you?   ...What's next?"  We reviewed the accomplishments to date:

• 229 patents filed and 32 awarded.
• 42 of those patents have been licensed to companies bringing in a total of $26.8 million from 43 companies.   
• 7 start-ups, 2 of which have been acquired.   
• $31 million has been received from private industry investors and 2 newly funded research centers have spun out.
• Educational outreach events have continually grown, recently there was one with 3000 attendees.
• Industrial partners have matched and are now exceeding the annual investment of $4M from the National Science Foundation.  
• CMDITR’s ethics training modules have been adopted by over 91 user groups at dozens of institutions across the US.  The photonics wiki receives as many as 3000 visitors a month.
• 19 educational videos on the what-why-and-how of researching have received 1600 views.
• Highly organized and charismatic leadership and administration of this complex center. 

Phil Reed

There are other items I am in awe of,  such as the massive number of students now deeply committed to expanding the body of scientific knowledge, or the sophistication, growth and cohesion of each research department involved, but perhaps most of all, I can see how the center’s formidable accomplishments in diversity delivered across the board to their success as innovators. 

Although the "external" board, which is what we have evolved into, has negligible impact on CDMITR, it sure has been a thrill to be front and center watching the action!

The girl effect

A half century of kids playing with Circuitry

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A toy, similar to "Snap Circuits" was covered in the September 1967 issue of Electronics Illustrated.  Then and now what you get is a box of domino like magnetic pieces that allow kids to snap together such cool items as a radio, a light activated multi-vibrator, a voice activated switch, a solar panel, a burglar alarm and many more.  The toymaker today is Elenco Electronics but originally it turns out it was Raytheon, the inventor of radar and the fifth largest military contractor in the world.  Revenues of 25,000 billion, employing 75,000 today.  An article by Emer Carlson about the 1960's product is below.  This toy is equally fascinating today. (Thanks for the link Hal!) 

Instant is the word of the jet age. Time grows more valuable every day. Once we spent six days in leisure travel from New York to California by train. Now we can't wait for a supersonic jet to get us there before we leave. And so it is with electronics. There's a mountain of information to learn in what always turns out to be too little time.

To help grease the skids of learning basic electronics and get your hands into practical working circuits, there's a new kit of domino-like plastic electronic boxes. Now, this isn't just an electronic game. It's the way to instant learning.

Big drag when studying electronics is putting circuits together. It's time-consuming to cut and twist component leads, connect them, solder them, support them and keep them from shorting. You have enough to do just learning how a circuit operates. And then think of the mess when you take everything apart for another experiment. Solder drippings, burned finger, broken leads, sloppy layouts, heat-damaged semiconductors - all of this makes you wish you'd never started.

But now it can be as much fun to put electronic circuits together and to learn fundamentals as it is to put words together when you play Scrabble. The Egger-Lectron Model 8400 learning aid is imported from Germany and will be distributed by the Macalaster Scientific Co. (a subsidiary of Raytheon), 186 Third Ave., Waltham, Mass., 02154. In this country they will be called electronic dominoes.

Just about anyone can put together an operating circuit as easily as they could play real dominoes. Each of the plastic boxes contains one or more electronic components or an interconnecting part. The kit supplied to us by Raytheon contains a carefully-selected collection of components, all neatly done up in plastic boxes bearing a schematic symbol of the contents, a manual of experiments and two work boards. Even a 9-year-old child can match the marked dominoes with those on the schematics to build and demonstrate a light meter, electronic thermometer, tone generator or radio - to mention a few of the 90 experiments in the manual that accompanies the complete set. For the high school student, there are more advanced projects such as a three-transistor reflex-AM radio, metering circuits, transistor-testers and simple computer flip-flops.

The three-transistor reflex-AM radio and several smaller circuits were put together in about an hour the first evening we worked with the set. And that included time for experimenting - which is at least half the fun of building the circuits. Of course, if you want to snap the boxes together really fast, give the circuit a quick test, then pull it apart and snap together another circuit. You could do eight or ten circuits in an hour.

The set we show here contains 108 plastic boxes. Sixty-five contain such components as resistors, capacitors, transistors (with and without a bias resistor), a meter, a relay, a thermistor, potentiometers, rheostats, RF transformer, speaker, push-button switches, diodes, variable capacitor, photocell and battery packs. Eight are blanks in which there are small contacts that accept the leads of resistors, capacitors, inductors or transistors for supplying values not included in the set. Jacked boxes will accept special inputs or test leads, for example. Other boxes contain connectors to join boxes to boxes or to ground a component to the work board.

How Does It All Work? In vaudeville they used to say it was all done with mirrors. In Dominoes it's all done with magnets. Instead of using clips, binding posts, or springs to hold parts together, each box is equipped with small magnets at the pointswhere it is ot contact another box or the board. The sides and the bottom of each box are made of clear plastic so you can see what's inside. The top of each box - carrying the schematic symbol - is opaque white.

Some of the circuits can, incidentally, be a little touchy. Squeeze a little here, apply some pressure there and suddenly the circuit works like a charm - a light blinks, the meter needle moves or the speaker sounds. The longer we used the set, however, the less we seemed to have contact problems.

The work surface of each of the 13 x 15-1/2 inch work boards is covered with a plated ferrous metal sheet forming the ground or common connection for all the circuits, just like a radio chassis. Since two battery boxes and two work boards were included in the set, it is possible to put together two circuits at the same time - provided you don't have too many components in each circuits. The concept has great potential as a teaching tool. In only a few seconds it is possible to set up a practical circuit that would only be schematic symbols in a textbook. The work boards can be propped up on their built-in stands or hung on the wall so that a whole classroom can see the demonstration. Componenets in any circuit can be changed instantly to show their effect on circuit performance. Special experiments in the manual demonstrate the characteristics of components - resisitance, inductance and capacitance; how tuned circuits affect radio reception; effects of base current on emitter-collector current flow and other electronic principles.

Okay, let's open the manual and see what we can learn. Believe it or not, the first experiment is a multivibrator flasher made with 21 boxes. Now this is hardly the sort of experiment and the 19 that follow is simply to give you a taste of some of the interesting things to come.

Experiment No. 21 is about as simple as you could want. It consists of a bulb, battery and switch in series. This is basic. In the next two experiments you put resistors in series with battery and lamp to note the effect of adding resistance in the circuit. The lamp, of course, gets dimmer. From there the experiments go on through multivibrators, audio, photocell applications, relays, etc., ending with a burglar alarm.

Everybody who has seem the dominoes has found it hard to keep his hands off them. Their arrival in our New York office threatened to play havoc with production schedules, in fact, until some killjoy remembered that they had been designed for kids. So we sheepishly carted them off to a household that included a bright 14-year-old. He was delighted.

Frist project on the agenda was, of course, the AM radio circuit - even though that's toward the back of the book. It worked and he was hooked. He and his father (who was also hooked by this time) were having a grand time trying circuit after circuit when the eight-year-old kid sister showed up and wanted to play, too. Now this is not quite cricket, according to Raytheon, because the dominoes are geared to high-school instruction. Nothing daunted, she abandoned her numbered painting and pitched in.

It's a good thing that battery packs and work boards supplied in pairs in the set they were using. Otherwise we would have been responsible for introducing dissention into a happy home. As it was, both kids ended up pushing Dad aside and going their, merry, electronic ways. Numbered painting? Who needs it?

Next of the priviledged junior set to get his grubby little hands on the dominoes was a five-year-old. Now we were really on unspoiled ground since this boy had never even heard of a circuit. We tried experiment No. 21. The chocolate-smeared finger gleefully pushed the button of the push-to-close switch while the bulb flashed on and off. Fine - audience participation! But what was he getting out of it, we wondered. Next he wanted to see the meter work so we set up the battery-tester circuit with the same push-to-close switch. More delight.

The experience of a five-year-old can't be expected to add up to a hill of beans, electronically speaking. But it does demonstrate the appeal of the dominoes. It's hard to imagine any other means by which you could get across these basic concepts so quickly and so vividly. The fact that kids can put the parts in place themselves and see immediate results from their efforts beats fussing with Fahnestock clips and interconnecting wires all hollow - to say nothing of messing with soldering irons.

All this is fine in the school. Homebodies may have reservations about the cost, however. A basic starter kit, the Mini Lectron, having pretty limited capabilities, is expected to sell for $19.50. While the way will be eased to biffer and better things by the availability of individual blister-packed add-on units, cost of a full set like the one we had will probably be $128. Two intermediate sets are also planned.

Still, considering the way the Lectron can put across ideas (even to our five-year-old, who corrected a mistake of his father's after only ten minutes with the darn thing), it's got to be one of the grandest educational toys, ever.  -Elmer Carlson

Simone's take on Dolphins

Simone gave a presentation in her classroom today about Dolphins.  She used questions to start the talk and to lead the way through it.  Her peers listened avidly and raised their hands to ask questions or add a note from their own experiences.  Here is her talk:

Last summer when my family and I went boogie boarding in California, a pod of dolphins came by and started leaping around us. Then, over the holidays we went to a dolphin park in Cabo, Mexico. Ever since then, I have wanted to learn more about Dolphins. Today I am going to share what I have discovered with you.

1. What are “Curtains of Death?” 

2. How are Dolphins like bats? (Or…What is echo-location?) 

3. What are nursing grannies?

4. How do Dolphins Sleep? 

Here are the answers to those questions ….and a few others.

1.) Dolphins are Mammals just like us. They are not fish. Mammals are warm-blooded, breathe air, get milk from their mothers', are born alive and have body hair. (Yes dolphins have just a few hairs by their blowholes.)

2.) How are Dolphins like bats? (Both use Echolocation or sonar to see in the dark. )

Dolphins have individual sounds just like we have names. They make clicks, whistles, squeaks and moans. When they are searching for food in dark or murky water, they make those sounds and then they listen for the echoes that bounce back. In this way, they can find fish hiding under the sand or in a murky stretch of water.   

3.) Calves, Nursing grannies and Pods.

















Baby dolphins are called calves and 50% of them die in their first year of life.   In the beginning the dolphin mother has to push the calf up to the surface with her nose every time it needs a breath. Often two or three dolphins from the “pod” help protect and care for a newborn.

Later when the dolphin is older but perhaps not quite strong enough to swim to depths of 2000 feet where a delicious squid might be, they stay on the surface with the “nursing grannies” and if they get hungry waiting for the others to return with squid food, they nurse from the older moms. This is one of the many ways that a pod of dolphins works together.

Pods can be as big as thousands but usually have about 300 members.

4.) How do Dolphins sleep without drowning?

Dolphins do not breathe like us. They have to remember to take a breath once or twice a minute. Our bodies do that on their own. Because of this Dolphins can’t go to sleep, so what they do is rest one half of their brain at a time.

5.) What are “Curtains of Death?”

 


Tunafish and dolphins often swim together in the ocean. The Dolphins swim closer to the surface and the tuna swim below them. Fisherman know that when they see a dolphin leaping about in the ocean, tuna-fish are likely to be below.

When the fisherman dropped their nets they would trap dolphins too and they would die by the hundreds of thousands and thus the nets were named “Curtains of Death.”

(Pull out the can opener from your holster)

My mom said that when she was younger there was an ad on TV where a bunch of kids dressed up like cowboys said, “how do you kill a dolphin?” and then they pulled out can openers from their holsters.  The ad got people to stop eating tuna and forced the fisherman to figure out another way to fish!

Today most fisherman use a net that they can drop down so that it closes only over the tuna and lets the dolphins swim out. Today most people are careful to eat cans of tuna that say “Dolphin Safe” on them.

The last thing I want to share is that Dolphins are fun to play with. There skin feels a little like the leaves of this tulip flower or like the thick rubber of this oven glove.


When I rode on the dolphin it felt secure and easy. I held onto the flippers.   (Pass around the rubber glove that feels a bit like Dolphin skin.)

The dolphin went about 5 miles per hour but if a dolphin was being chased it can go as fast as 55 miles per hour.

This was fun to share!  Thank you for listening!

Birthday

What a great birthday!  Thank you!  Breakfast in bed, the 1st grade book club and then friends over for a party.

Debbie and Peyman, Monica and David, Margit and Ben, Andrea and Dana, joined David, Naomi, Simone and me for salad, a variation on the cumin rich Judge's stew and scrumptious dark chocolate cake.   (Oh and a lovely flan from Margit.)  

A delicious take on the Judge's Stew...perhaps I'll call this version the Probationers' Stew.

 The fennel, raspberries, goat cheese, soft garden greens and balsamic dressing made this a great salad.

Debbie baked the darkest richest chocolate cake.  I saw her 10am post on Facebook about it cooking in her oven, I dreamt I was smelling it for the rest of the day.  Finally the moment came and it was even better than my imagination.  

Selling pigs off a bike

Hong Kong trip 2000

These roasted pigs are barely tied on.  There is no hopping curbs or steep hill short cuts for this cyclist.  The bike itself becomes the vendor stand at the market.   If the pig doesn't sell outright (usually they do) then the vendor cuts off pieces for hungry folks. The grisly ears are popular.

STUFF

Annie Leonard blogs about what went on inside Martin Luther King as he weighed the case at 5AM as to whether or not he would get involved, does he take on the Rosa Parks bus boycott?  


She asks every reader to think about whether or not we are going to get involved in making the world a better place and then she makes the case for getting involved.  Her mission is the story of stuff and if you haven't seem her project, you are in for a treat.  She is funny, keen and full of solutions to the most deadly issues our consumerism has created.



I love my laptop! ...till it runs out of room.



My eyelids have just a wee bit of liner on them. Just a wee bit.


Want to barter with me?

A sheet holding confetti and balloons

The girls went over to Trixie and Vivian's house for a Disco New Year's Party.  Sarah and Scott Miller have been doing this for a few years and the kids love it.  At 7pm there was a huge countdown and then balloons and confetti hung in a sheet from the ceiling rained down on the kids.  They loved it. 

 A disco ball and tunes from the 80's played for a couple hours.

 Let 2011 begin!

Simone's on the cover of Life Magazine in Shanghai

Peter Lundberg, the sculptor of massive concrete works, and Graceley, the curator for the Chinese Olympic sculpture collection, came to visit last week.  Gracely brought a copy of Life magazine from Shanghai (The Bund).  Would you believe that Simone was on the cover, happily enjoying the first bite of a biblically rosy apple in a sunny spot.  I did the interview a couple months ago and was aware that the story was to be published but I had not seen the actual magazine and it was large and glossy.   It showed off the powerful photography of Stuart Islett.  His images unfold like stories.  Here is the link to The Bund article.

They are so much fun!

Goofy as can be whether we are in the minivan...

Or the apartment.... 

At the park...

On writing on our sidewalk.  Playing is an art form, mastered by kids.

They crack themselves up...

...and, of course, I'm in stitches by then.

Such explores.  Such abandon!  Simone and Naomi relinquish themselves into what ever they are doing. This shot above is Naomi resting between moves.  Naomi started flipping herself around this bar over and over and over and over...till she got whatever it was she was trying to do and then many more times she flipped herself about clearly having a great time. It looked like she was intent on figuring out all the moves she could do with that bar in the middle of a packed playground.  

They sure are fun to travel with!

Heave Ho!

Ten favorite toys

Here are Simone and Naomi's favorite toys:


1.) CONSTRUCTION BOX that consists of a canvas bag of assorted wood pieces, four clamps, fancy paper, felt, wood glue and various do dads that can be made into doll house furniture.  The local lumber yard gave us bags to fill up with free scrap wood (you can also get that from enasco for $3.75) then I ordered bags of little wood turrets and other turnings and wood shapes. To date the girls have made a swing set, two minaret enhanced bookcases, a sculpture for the front yard of their doll house, a bunk bed, a garage, a water trough for the animals in their wood barn and a little tent for camping out.  If you have older kids, this Doll House Woodcraft Kit would be appropriate.  


I helped out with a hot glue gun at one point...but the rest of the time the girls have used wood glue. They love playing with their WOODEN DOLL HOUSE and WOOD BARN and often start-out doing that and then migrate over to the "construction box" to build something they decide they need for a particular scene in that day's doll drama.  


2.) Snap Circuits PRO. This is an amazing toy!  Stop the presses for this one!  We all love playing with this and every time we have playdates, Simone takes her friends over to it and explains how you can snap pieces together to make dynamically working electric circuits.  The instructions are easy and everything is color coded.  Even 3 year old Naomi could put together the first book of 100 projects. We made fans, an FM radio, lights that are voice or clap activated and various spacey noises and we've ad libbed to create a vibration detector and oscillated strobes and used battery or solar power for these and various switches.  There is a great deal to learn and with each project the workbook succinctly sums up the lessons learned. Various kits, all worthwhile ranging from $10.99 to $72.51.  We did the giant box and will clearly be working on the 750 projects till the saints come marching in.  We could have easily started with the Elenco Snap Circuits Jr. 100-in-1 that is $30 dollars and upgraded as we complete each series of projects. 



We learned about Snap Circuits Pro from Debbie Dubrow and Peyman Oreizy.  Their kids, Everest (5), Darya (3) and Alon (1) were gathered around the snap circuits board when we were over there for a playdate.  I can't thank them enough.  It is such a powerful way to learn how electrical circuits run the everyday devices we're familiar with as well as allow us to invent some of our own.  (Yes, I have as much fun playing with this as my kids do.)
  
3.)The K'Nex Super Swing was a ton of fun to build and we love that K'Nex works well with legos so we were able to build out the seats of the motorized swing and add lego people and clowns and doll up the final creation to our hearts content.  As with all K'Nex sets, after you build the design, you can take it apart and create an infinite number of other motorized structures as the gears in this kit are especially versatile to play with. I do think this was a bit complicated which is why this is a parent and child project.  This kit was $20.99. 

4.) Ellyn Hennecke and Bob Nelsen came over for dinner a couple weeks ago and brought boxes and boxes of Playmobile kits.  We had never checked these toys out.  What a surprise. Simone and Naomi play with them for hours and hours.  We brought them with us on our holiday trip to Mexico and again they were rich foder for daily make-believe stories.  I love listening as the stories unfold.  Often Simone lays out the parameters, "Naomi you are this boy and he is little and needs a lot of help but he does know how to fish. You can also be this pirate."  "I'm going to be these five ladies over here with all this stuff."  We managed to put almost everything inside the take along box when we headed to Mexico and it was great.


Here is some of what Ellyn and Bob brought over!  It was truly amazing!  
Playmobil My Take Along Princess Fantasy Set
Playmobil Animal Vet Operating Room
Mighty World Marine Research Unit
Playmobil 4254 Royal Nursery
         

5.) Thrift shop wedding dresses with veil.  Yes exactly that..and a pair of sharp shears, threaded needles, as, of course, quite a few alterations were needed.  It looks sketchy at this point...but I can tell this will continue to get lots of use.  This is the latest addition to our overflowing DRESS-UP CHEST.


6.) Magna-Tiles are a bunch of colorful isosceles triangles, equilateral triangles, right triangles and squares of various sizes.  All of these go together to create two-dimenstional and three-dimensional structures.  These work for nearly any age as they are indestructible.  They come in opaque or transparent colors and work with another magnetic building toy called Magformers.   Magformers have a few more shapes, diamonds and hexagons, rectangles and are not solid so they can be the windows for the Magna-tele creations.  This toy is a bit heavy to take on a trip but we did bring them to the Hamptons last year and they were endlessly fun to design with. 
 


7.) Our mobile painting kit.  This small red round suitcase has been dragged all over.  It has everything the three of us need to set up shop in a park, at an outdoor table, or on the deck. Inside the suitcase is the following:

1. Water bottle.
2. Two plastic cups. 
3. 12 tubes of Goache paint. ($7.95) 
4. Two 5 dollar watercolor kits, one regular and one pearlescent.
5. A pad of watercolor paper ($5.99) and a pad of drawing paper ($4.00)
6. A set of 50 washable color markers. ($12.25)
7. Pencils and a pencil sharpener.
8. Oversize cardboard letters and cardboard people.

Though the mobile painting suitcase is light and small...On Naomi, hmm not so much.

8.) Rocket Balloon with Pump  We spend much of the summer beach side carting a Shade tent, a gardeners shovel, a water bucket and this rocket ballon toy.  Our rocket balloon ($9.99) is a piped piper. Kids magically appear when we take it out.  The pump attaches to the balloons and makes it possible for a small child to blow up their own, then you release them and they make a big noise and spiral high into the air.  Lots of running ensues as the kids try to figure out where they will fall.  We used it at the sculpture park not long ago and when we arrived there was not a child in sight, suddenly a dozen appeared to pursue the noisy balloons.


9.) A Game Cabinet.  Our cabinet is packed with box games..some tradition ones I collected from thrift shops: Life, Clue, Scrabble, Sightword Bingo, Mathable, Blokus, Apples to Apples Junior.  Others are   from Amazon: Guess Who ($24.79) Chocolate Fix ($13.71) and Banagrams ($12.95) and Guess Where($86.95).
  

10.) Our horse tire swing  ($79.99)  We've tied this swing up on a zip line across our living room and use it everday.  Sheets get thrown over the zip line to create a scrim for plays and when the horse arrives on the set...in it swings...