Soiree Croque Monsieur

"Soiree Croque Monsieur"

sounds so much nicer than

"Ya'll want some grilled cheese?"

Graphing the Last 200 Years

Now, this is the way to learn and think about things!  My father-in-law sent me this link and I shared it with my brother who then found the original web app:  http://www.gapminder.org/world/  
where you can slice and dice the data yourself anyway you want.  Every time I watch it, I notice something new!

Flukes, Flounder, and Handedness

You'd rather "flounder" around (right eye fish) than simply be a "fluke"  (left-eye fish), correct?  Or, should I say "right?"

You'd rather be adroit and dextrous (french and italian for right) than gauche and sinister (french and italian for left), wouldn't you?

In many cultures, you only shake hands with your right hand (the left being reserved for "dirty" jobs (see bullet point #4 here)).

How about that poor minority group, the lefties:  forever being thwarted by the placement of handles and utensils? 

I'd rather be your "right hand man" than "out in left field"!

It turns out that life on Earth is left-handed!  So maybe all this bias against leftness is just our attempt to make up for the gross imbalance at the molecular level.  No one knows for sure the reason life chose left-handed DNA over right-handed, but then again - no one knows why the universe chose matter over antimatter.  No only is life not fair and balanced, but the universe itself is not.  I should forgive these cultural biases, all left already!

Sueing and Sewing

We are reading out way through the Little House books at the Riddy household and today I had a little trouble with this line "...we setted by the fire and did some sewing and crocheting."

Now I know what crocheting is, but I said crotcheting instead.  Irene looks up with a "Are you kidding?" look and I (realizing my mistake) respond "What, you think they can't sit around and complain while sewing away their afternoon in the middle of the prarie?" 

According to Chongers:

"Mark, get sick - GO!"

Loveys and Ether

I have always been a little creeped out by the attachment my kids have to their loveys.  Sebastien has taken to sometimes wearing it over his face and he inhales it deeply as if partaking of some illicit drug. 

It turns out, he is self-medicating!  The infant sense of smell is very strong and they draw comfort from the familiar scents trapped in the loveys.  Isabelle. at five, is just imitating her younger brother though for this picture.   I think she now keeps her lovey around more as a psychological crutch (as opposed to an olfactory one).

The thing is, I keep remembering those pictures of ether-users in the 1800's who drew comfort from inhaling ether from a soaked towel placed on their face (or used it to pass out for surgery).

Now, am I right to be creeped out or what?

Moyers, Zinn, and the Plutocracy

This chart shows something that has been bothering me for years:

How can one person be worth 800 other workers at the same company?  Just doesn't seem possible.  Another way of looking at it is to imagine what minimum wage would be if it had tracked CEO pay:

Which brings me to a really great lecture given at BU recently (thanks for bringing it to my attention, CES).  Bill Moyers is delivering the first annual Howard Zinn memorial lecture.  The speech starts 7 minutes in:

http://www.bu.edu/buniverse/view/?v=20ZaW9PO

Princesses vs. Fairies

I was talking to my students today about the Halloween plans: "Well, Sebastien is going to be Lightning McQueen and Isabelle is going to be Tinkerbell"  Then one kid says "Who's Chongers going to be?" I give him the Look and say "Chongers IS Sebastien!"

I mean, c'mon - it's one thing not to understand me when I talk about physics, but you have to go and not get my kids' nicknames straight?

I then launch into an unprompted speech on how fairies are better than princesses.  "Fairies have skills and jobs.   The Princesses just sit around in pretty dresses waiting to marry rich Princes.  Which role model do you want for your little girl?"

Feeling pretty smug, I then notice a girl in the front row slump down and mutter under her breath, "Thanks, you just ruined my life..."

My First Prezi

When I'm teaching, I sometimes wish I could show the students how the information is organized and interconnected in my mind.  Obviously, this would not be a good thing even if it were possible - but I have the desire nonetheless.

Just the other day, a fellow science teacher (thanks, KW!) showed me how 'prezis' work and I thought to myself, hmmm... this could bring me one step closer.   Here's my first attempt at a representation of projectile motion that comes close to presenting how I picture the information in my head.  Well, it doesn't really come close but I am using it to test the software out.

Projectile Motion on Prezi

Degrees of Separation

Recently I got my one degree of separation with the governer down to zero.  (used to be one degree because Deval Patrick's former high school physics teacher is a professional acquaintance). 

This gets my degrees of separation with President down to one since he is a friend of the governor.
(Irene and I were attending a fundraiser at the MFA when the governor made a surprise visit).

As my sphere of influence grows, I will use my power to influence the future of public education to be:

"All Physics, All the Time, K-12"

(insert evil laughter here)

Pumpkin Pi

Notice the pumpkin Isabelle is touching - that one is Irene's (in honor of our late friend Stephen).  Just to Izzy's left is the one she drew and I carved. 

This was a Rideout household first (the entire carving experience), but I wanted to be sure that everyone was spooked by the "transcendental" nature of the event - irrational, scary stuff indeed.

 

Resonance: Respect the Natural Frequency!

I plan on making this video my entire lesson when we get to the unit on resonance and natural frequencies.  Please note my dismayed "not working" comment near the end!

Nonplussed by the Penultimate Redoubt

In science education we speak of the problem of prior misconceptions.  Those pesky ideas that everyone has wrong and are so hard to educate away.  Like that the Earth is closer to the Sun in the summer time.  Or that heavier object fall faster than lighter ones.  We find that students will learn the right answer for your test, but then go right back to their old bad habits afterwards.

Just recently I made a connection with my own bad habits regarding certain plain-old regular words.  For whatever reason, I learned some words incorrectly at first and now it takes work every time I use them to use them correctly!  For instance I might read this entry's title to mean "Not impressed by the better than best look-out"  when it really means "Baffled by the next-to-last stronghold".  Some part of my brain knows that the second phrase is correct, but I can't stop myself from reading it the first way initially.  I can not clear my prior misconception of those words - something about the way our brains lay down memories really does justice to the old "initial impressions matter most".
 
Unlike science misconceptions, I could just continue to misuse these words and hope that society changes their definition to suit me.  One the other hand, the axial tilt of the Earth and the planet's gravitational field are probably less likely to change to accommodate my students...

Speedy Rap

Hi Ho Hi Ho
I wear Speedo
Laps I'm swimmin'
Races I'm winnin'
Distance accumulatin'
Displacement annhilatin'
Hi Ho Hi Ho Hi Ho Hi Ho

You say spedahmeter
I say speed-o-meter
Tomato tomahtoh
Potato pahtahtoh
Let's call this whole rap off

Ridin' up on ya easy
Arrowin' like velocity
All the eyes are on me
Direction/Magntiude's Key
Speed's just a value
Without direction, can't find you

My slope's so steep' it's mighty fine
You so slow look like a flat line
Hi Ho Hi Ho, off to class we go
Rideout Raps, we need some mo
Hi Ho Hi Ho Hi Ho Hi Ho

Failure to Communicate

On our first teacher workday of the year, we had an icebreaker activity.  The staff wanted a chance to catch up across departmental lines and so they did the old draw-numbers-out-of-the-hat.  The idea being to get random groups together to talk about their summers before the school year inevitably separate us into departments again.

I drew 25, which I signalled to the room at large with my fingers as in the istock photo on the left.  Of course, my good friend Paul who also teaches physics, shares 3 classrooms with me and has a desk next to mine in the science office also drew 25 and came right over.  We scanned the room looking for some more group members and saw someone waving to us from across the room.  He flashed the same sign and insisted we join him.  So we worked our way across the room and said "you guys are 25 too?" and they looked at me like I was crazy and said "No, we're group seven".

R.I.P. S.E.G.

Stephen E. Graham 1969-2010

Stephen has been a friend of mine for 26 years now.  We met in band where we had both found refuge from the stress of P.E. class (marching band got you out of PE in those days).  I tell people now-a-days that I was the next to worst trumpet player and Steve, well - let's say he kept me company down there at the end of the line.

I found in him a kindred spirit.  We were quite different but we shared those common teenage feelings of not quite belonging coupled with a great desire for change.  He single-handed created the Math Team, and in his last two years of high school, he taught me all the tricks of being a "Mathelite". 

Looking back, I don't think I ever quite put it together that I dropped out of band my senior year in part because he had left and gone to college.  Who was going to make snarky remarks with me and mock everyone else, if not Steve?  Who else would look at me as we both dropped out and simply pretended to play during the difficult passages? 

I have been lucky enough to continue crossing paths with Steve through the years: in Huntsville, in New York, in Georgia, and, for the last 8 years, in Boston.  Along the way he has taught me what it means to be a good friend.  Being a good friend takes work; it takes effort to maintain a connection through the years, over distance, through life's changes and challenges.  How he understood this so long ago I will never know, but I do know that I am thankful he did. 

Stephen, always one step ahead of me, now has gone on and taken the final step and shown me something remarkable once again.  His legacy is all around us: his friends, his family  - all those he touched with his kindness, his wit, his understanding... he leaves us all the richer and the wiser.

I take comfort in knowing that these final months have been his happiest, his most peaceful, and that he knew he was surrounded by friends and family near and far who loved him and counted themselves lucky to be loved by him.

Rest in peace, Stephen Emerson Graham, and thank you for being such a good friend.

A mug Steve gave me for my 40th birthday. 
The faint writing you see on the left is a copy of a funny note (long forgotten by me)
I gave him for his 17th birthday
"Rules for how to stay cool"

One Token Each

As we say in the Riddy house: "Tank U Chuck E Cheesits"

Do the Living outnumber the Dead?

In a word, no.
However, it is an interesting thing to think about.  For so long, the population of homo sapiens sapiens was extremely low, then the scientific revolution came along, allowing modern medicine & agriculture to develop and BOOM!  the population explosion we are in happens.  Check out this graph from http://www.sustainablescale.org:

Even if you were to extend the time axis backwards to around 200,000 BC when we think our subspecies evolved from the simpler, archaic homo sapiens, the populations were so low that there would not be much area under the curve.  However, the popular number for all homo sapiens sapiens dead is around 60 billion (that's for around 7500 generations between you and the first "modern" man).  That's less than 10 dead for each one of us alive today.  Kind of creepy the way we are swarming the surface of this planet, eh?

Yes - life can be this good!

Chongers sees the next wave coming

Moonths

Time for Earth to orbit the Sun: 365.25 days

Time for Moon to orbit Earth: 27.3 days

365.2/27.3 = 13.38

And therein lies the problem. There is no neat way to make lunar –based time (“moonths”) mesh with solar-based time (“years”).

I have blogged about various aspects of time ( days of the week, lunar vs. solar calendars, origin of 60 seconds and 60 minutes as units of time), but Irene brought my attention to another arbitrary unit: that of 12 months. Since the Romans decided to go with a solar calendar, I always wondered why they didn’t go with a nice, round ten months. Well, they did:

1.Martius (March)

Mars - god of War

2. Aprilis (April)

Aphrodite- goddess of love & beauty

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Maius (May)

Maia - goddess of spring

4.  Junius (June)

Juno - goddess of marriage

 

5.  Quintilis (July)

Fifth Month, renamed by Julius Caesar

6.  Sextilis (August)

Sixth Month - renamed by Augustus Caesar

  

7. September  - the seventh month

8.  October - the eighth month

9.  November  - the ninth month

10.  December - the tenth month

A nameless winter stretch of days followed to round out the solar year until Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome circa 700 BC, added the two winter months at the end of the year:

Januarius "January" (Janus is the Roman god of gates and doorways, depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions) and

Februarius "February" (Februa is the Roman festival of purification).

The nameless stretch of days needed to keep the seasons lined up was kept at the end of the year (after February). This “filler” period was not used every year and was sometimes called Intercalaris "intercalendar" or Mercedinus (“payment for work” was the time when property lessees paid rents due to their landlords). This is the reason leap days come at the end of February even in modern times.

After the introduction of January, Romans began to transition the beginning of the year to Jan 1, but the process took 100's of years to become standard and official.

In modern times we still have to work hard to keep our lunar cycles and solar cycles lined up.  We have our complicated leap year rules and our leap seconds

They let me teach this stuff?

During a very successful pilgrimage to Storyland, I noticed the rear hatch of the minivan (AKA the "Swaggerwagon") would not stay up.  Upon our return, I decided to change out the supporting struts myself. 


Of course the friction force between the hatch and the supporting plank is dependent on a strong normal force at that point of contact, duh! 

Of course the glass in the hatch window is thin and will break as the plank slips and hits it!

A little shaking of the car while replacing a strut and you get this:

In the end, my insurance covered the window replacement.  Next time, I'll draw a force diagram first!

Well, Put Me in the Zoo!

A bedtime favorite at the Riddy house is Robert Lopshire's "Put me in the zoo".
We own the one below subtitled "A book of Colors".  In a store today, Sebastien spotted the book on the left.
Oh my!  All these years, we have been missing parts of the story and the colors were so different.  Apparently, the "Bright and Early Board Books" are abridged and scaled down in more ways than just size! .
Foolish me, I had always assumed it was the full book, just in a different format.
Buyers of books for little ones, beware!

Invisible Gorillas

There is a new book out, brought to you by the same people (Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons) that brought us the famous "count the number of times the ball gets passed" experiment (see video below). 

I haven't read the book, but just from this review from Scientific American, I know these guys are on the money: (all italics lifted from the SA review)
We think we see things as they really are, but “our vivid visual experience belies a striking mental blindness,” [the authors] write.


They cover the illusion of memory, how often our memories are born from our own embellished stories; the illusion of knowledge, we think we know much more than we actually do; the illusion of cause, we quickly assume correlation means causation.


Perhaps the worst illusion of all, the failing that leads to others, is the illusion of confidence. We profoundly overestimate our ability to see things as they are. As the physicist Richard Feynman famously said: The first principle is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.


If that one was too easy for you, try this one:

Bohr vs. Hegel

I made a timeline for my class of the "light is wave / light is a particle" battle, started by Huygens and Newton; ended by Bohr over 200 years later:

Bohr is often quoted on this subject:

“There exist two sorts of truth:

trivialities, where opposites are obviously absurd, and

profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth.”

This strikes me a slightly more profound and deep version of old Hegelian Dialectic:

 

Sometimes there is no satisfactory synthesis - the thesis and antithesis stay opposites while both remaining true.  The interesting thing to me is the apparent contradiction is only in our own minds, not out there in nature...

A picture is not a graph

We were talking about refraction in class the other day.  I drew a straight line down the middle of the board to separate our two mediums (imagine water on the left and air on the right).  Then I drew a horizontal line to represent the normal to the surface (our reference line for measuring angles).  Finally I drew an incoming ray and its refracted ray.

Shortly after, a student referred to this picture as "a graph."  I was actually confused, trying to think of a real graph I may have shown them.  When  I realized what she was talking about, I said "a picture is not a graph - this is a picture."  She responded by saying it had a y-axis and an x-axis and it looked just like a Cartesian coordinate system.   I am now recalling an incident last year when a math teacher came and told me that I was teaching the kids the wrong thing.  Apparently my students told her that I had insisted the range was the horizontal axis (making the domain the vertical one by default I suppose).  I explained that, in projectile motion, we call the maximum horizontal distance a projectile attains its "range".   Only now do I realize the students were once again confusing a picture for a graph:

My Brother, Biblical Hero

The Bro is published; he has a book out on programming the iphone and ipad with 3D graphics:

     I have been showing  the book off to family and friends.  One person remarked, "Hey - how come he didn't just write a whole bunch of apps for people to download and make money that way?" 

     I responded "My brother could sell the fish, or he could teach people how to fish..."

Quantum Mechanics and False Dichotomies

We just finished up our unit on Quantum Mechanics in physics.  I was going on and on about Bohr's Principle of Complementarity (Is it a wave or a particle?).  I was getting all fired up and calling their attention to the fact that we are limited by our linguistic repetoire.  I called our feeling that we must choose between describing fundamental particles "waves" OR "particles" a false dichotomy (we think we are so smart with our fancy words but nature doesn't care - waves and particles are just anthropocentric words; nature does what nature does).  As I smugly stepped back to admire my sophisticated grasp of the problem, a couple of students spoke up.  "You're beating a dead horse, Mr. Rideout - we get it, move on."

Of course, they are correct, everyone know language is fallible - Bohr himself said it himself long ago (1920):

"We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections."

But, what I would like to leave my student with is this additional quote from Bohr:

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it"

This is the precise opposite of most of physics - usually once you understand some principle of physics you think, how could it be anything but this way?

Numeracy and Home Ownership

Recently, The Economist Magazine had a little blurb on a study regarding subprime mortgage borrowers who lost their houses.

It turns out that those who did better on a simple math test regarding percentages and interest rates were much more likely to hold onto their house during the downturn (even after normalizing for income & type of loan, etc). Take the test here.

What good is all that math you take in school? Well, it may allow you to be a home owner one day...

Art and Science of Illusions

In the last few years I have taken to doing a very short unit on human vision and illusions after finishing up basic optics in physics.  Mostly I focus on how much processing goes on in our brain when we "see".  I emphasize that what we think we "see" is really the result of a LOT of signal processing and assumptions built up from experience.

In the neuroscience community, it has become something of a fad to construct optical illusions that illustrate this point.  The embedded video below is getting a lot of press for winning an award recently and is a fantastic illustration of this fact of human vision.

Look at the angles of those ramps and that very high central pillar.  Those balls are rolling up hill!  We know gravity pulls things down, but our brains use these clues about the construction of the ramp to make us think the balls are rolling up hill.


Take a careful look at around the 30 second mark and the "trick" is revealed.  The "long" pillar is not vertical and the ramps are not angled the way you thought they were...

These types of illusion bring to mind M.C. Escher and, indeed, there is a whole school of thought about Art and Physics (see Shlain's book of the same title) which posits that Artists start seeing and playing with perception in a new way that just precedes what scientists are about to do in the scientific arena.  When society is ready for the next level of abstraction, artists lead the way and the more cautious, constructionist scientists follow.  If this is so, then perhaps we are about to have a breakthrough in theoretical physics based on our new understanding of the illusory nature of our own perception... 

 Additional note (Jan 2021): My man Derek Muller explores these ideas in great depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBap_Lp-0oc

Placebos, Diets, and the Power of Avoiding Negative Things

After a recent piece on the radio about another diet craze (Paleo Diet), a thought that has been bouncing around in my head for a while crystallized (at one point in the piece, a guy on the paleo diet said something like "I am allergic to eggs, so now that I am on this diet - I am much better off" and I remember thinking "well, couldn't he just avoid eggs without this diet?"):

All diet plans seem to work because they force you to pay attention to what you are putting in your body.  That can only be a good thing, right?  Then, it is just a matter of finding the diet plan that works for you in the sense that you to stay with it so that you pay attention for a long period of time!  That might explain why different diets work for different people  - even though the diets are antithetical to each other (think no carbs and all-carbs!).

Maybe this is what's up with the placebo effect in medicine.  As long as you think about getting better and think that you are - you are paying attention (in a positive way) to your body and that can only help things along...

I'm not really talking about the power of positive thinking here - I'm talking about the avoidance of eating random things or engaging in activities not conducive to healing.  I AM on a diet, I AM taking medicine that WILL make me feel better are thoughts that may not heal you on their own, but they certainly could help you make better decisions...