Building an Ancient Greek Ship - Trireme

The bireme (2 rows of oars) was used during the Trojan Wars, but the trireme would become the ultimate warship in Greece's victory against the Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 B.C.

Here's more about the history and archeology of the trireme. Click here if you want to find paper templates and rules to re-enact the Battle of Salamis, and here for a very short trireme Youtube video that shows a working trireme at sea.

Triremes usually 170 rowers arrange in 3 rows. They were very narrow and built for close in battles, rather than long open ocean campaigns. For a great review of the importance of the Trireme at Salamis, read here. The Persians attacked the Greeks, but by the time the battle was over, 200+ Persian boats were lost compared to 40 of the Greeks.

How Triremes Were Made
Kids' Examples: Building Triremes with Popsicle Sticks

Snowflake Templates, Snow Crystals

It's that time of year again! Here are some of our favorite sites for enjoying the beauty of snowflakes, reading about the science and mathematics of their formation, and making your own to put up on the window or Christmas tree.

Snowflake Templates at Yarn Owl
More Snowflake Patterns

For more Snowflake Study consider Koch Snowflake (Fractal) and the beautiful Snow Crystals site.

Do you know where the saying about no two snowflakes are alike came from? The research of a self-educated Vermont farmer who became fascinated by the beauty of snow crystals.

"Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind."

We have both the Caldecott medal winner Snowflake Bentley and the book which contains many of his original photographs Snow Crystals.



If you freeze a piece of black velvet, it keeps individual snowflakes long enough so that you can see their individual details more clearly.

Our Autumn Leaf Lab

This year we seemed to have just enough good weather conditions to have beautiful fall colors for Washington state (warm days, cool but not freezing nights).

Working our way through the Periodic Table, we came to magnesium, which is to chlorophyll as iron is to hemoglobin.

These are easy experiments, and if you have autumn leaves, it's a perfect time to do them. Pluck a variety of leaves, cut or tear them into cups. Add alcohol (isopropyl, ethanol, or even alcohol-containing hand wash will do in a pinch) and mash them up with a spoon. Cover with foil and let stand for 1 hour. Then cut strips of coffee filters into the solution and watch for colors that migrate up the filters.


We generated hypotheses before starting the experiments. Hypothesis #1: In plants that drop their colored leaves, the change in color is due to a loss of pigment, rather than an increase in pigment (for instance, yellow leaves have lost their green, not gained yellow). Hypothesis #2: Plants with colored leaves that do not drop have an increase in a new pigment rather than pure loss.

I'm not completely sure you can see the results, but it was interesting. For the red and purple bushes, we could see an extra band of blue that wasn't present in the green or yellow leaves. Chlorophyll a is blue-green and chlorophyll b is yellow-green. It seemed as if the red and purple leaves had chlorophyll a.

We also made other observations as through the course of the experiment. We found the yellow leaves were the easiest to dissolve with alcohol (due to early breakdown of their cell walls?) and thought about the various designs of the leaves. The big maples seemed particularly well designed to catch sunlight (large surface area), but perhaps the addition of blue chlorophyll conferred some energy advantage on the smaller red leaved bushes? Also the bushes had more leaves and were much smaller than the big maples.

When we looked back at our hypotheses, it looked like the behavior of the green and yellow leaves supported Hypothesis #1. Although it doesn't show clearly in the picture, we extracted much more chlorophyll from the green leaves than the yellow. Hypothesis #2 was less clear because we used two red / purple-leaved bushes, one that dropped its leaves, and one that didn't. Both seemed to have both yellow-green and blue-green chlorophyll, and we couldn't determine quantity. Not surprising, more sampling would be necessary to determine something like this!

Early Science and the Study of Chlorophyll and Photosynthesis
Science of Fall Color pdf

Rough Science

My son has a 2 week break from his Great Books & Latin courses so we've been catching up on science labs. I'm beginning to think that like the need to teach practical theology within the context of our post-modern world, there is also a need to teach science recognizing that we live in a post-modern world.

One common mistake of today's post-modern man or woman is realizing we often know less than we really think we know. For the post-modern science student, the ignorance may be even greater because they lack enough world experience to see how much occurs without a carefully designed lesson plan. When we memorize a list or table of facts, do we really know it? So what is it that we do know, and what is it that we don't?

One nice discovery on my search for links to complement our Fizz, Bubble, and Flash experiments, was the Rough Science science reality show. If you are a Netflix subscriber, you can stream these episodes any time for free. A team of scientists (chemist, physicist, biologist) is dropped in a deserted area with few materials and a challenge to design, make, or find something in the surrounding terrain. How many of us can do this? Maybe we need to think more about our science and get out of the printed page. The first episode we watched challenged scientists to find gold in a gold mining area, purify it and quantitate it using only materials they could find in deserted saw mill.

The experiments we tinkered with this week included Electrolysis of Water using a 9 volt battery, water, and copper wires. The Rough Science team washing using electroysis to make silver iodide so that they could make a camera.



To top off our electrolysis learning we also watched this homemade Exploding Hydrogen video. It was pretty good! Even the outtakes!
Some Rough Science Challenges
Make Your Own Compass, Sea Water Batteries, Silver Iodide via Electrolysis for Camera

Pursuit of Why: Scientific Reasoning and Botany

It's not an easy thinking teaching scientific reasoning to children because the facts and details of science can easily overwhelm any planned lesson. Facts and details are an important part of science learning, but they shouldn't be the only thing. We think scientific reasoning is best taught as a habit, and to do that, we need to give children the opportunity to observe, speculate, and criticize their speculations.

Here's something to try with your kids. Have them watch the sunflower experiment at the Plants in Motion page. These side-by-side experiments show an somewhat unexpected effect of sun on growing seedlings:



Questions:
1. What are the two growth conditions for the sunflowers? For a "good" experimental design, what variables should be kept constant (for instance, same soil, same seeds, etc.), and what one variable(sun) the experimental condition?
2. What do you see?
3. Why do you think this happens?
4. Bonus question: How could you test your hypothesis?

If you try this with your children, share some of your discussions with us! We probably do more science at home with our children than other families (we both did some stints in laboratories before), but I was surprised at how much they initially struggled with generating hypotheses. It is hard to do, so it's a good thing to practice!

We were surprised at how many interesting discussion points could come from this little web lab experiment... dark-reared plants are taller with smaller leaves, Greek root, photo (light), synthesis ("syn" = together, "tithermi"=place), energy needed or plant will die, dark-reared plant put energy and resources into vertical growth (plants without sun may be buried deeper and need to grow vertically to reach light), or photosynthesis and the making of leaves might have an energy cost, sacrificing vertical growth to the formation of broader leaves to collect more sun, the idea of the sun like a "switch" - could turn off growth factors affecting the vertical growth of a plant, or turn on factors that start the program for a leaf...

Technorati tags: science, education, parenting, homeschooling, reasoning, classical education

It's Spring!

Finally some sunshine and everything is in bloom. Time to head outside and dig in the dirt! The Plants in Motion site has videos of time lapse photography showing blossoming flowers, twining Morning Glories spinning around looking for supports to grow on (check link under Nastic Movements), and other interesting biology videos (under Photomorphogenesis, check out the side-by-side videos of Sunflowers germinating in the dark vs. light). For lots of ideas and science about gardening with the kids, check out Kidsgardening.com.

Today's Spring Poem is from Emily Dickinson:

Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.

Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle is often called the father of botany. Like all learned men of his day, he reflected and spoke widely on a wide range of topics (e.g. math, astronomy, rhetoric, politicis, religion, logic), and also worked to classify plants, tree, shrubs, and flowers.

Time Lapse Wikimedia
Journaling the Seasons at Eclectic Homeschooling / Spring Poems
Nature Journal Examples
Getting Started with a Nature Journal - Charlotte Mason

Technorati Tags: classical education, nature, time lapse, spring, plants, Charlotte Mason, homeschooling

Why Not Both? Science and Technology in a Classical Education

"This question, whether we should be taught the classics or the sc iences, seems to me, I confess, very like a dispute whether painters should cultivate drawing or colouring, or to use a more homely illustration, wehther a tailor should make coats or trousers. I can only reply by the question, why not both? Can anything deserve the name of a good education which does not include literature and sciene too? If there were no more to be said than that scientific education teach us to think, and literary education to express our thoughts, do we not require both?" - John Stuart Mill

In ancient times, the ideal education was lifelong and a mixture of philosophy, science, mathematics, rhetoric, and the arts. The wise men of antiquity sought to understand truth, human nature, and the natural world. In the modern times, though, classical education came under fire from modernizers who demanded more contemporary learning and application, with an expanded role for learning science, technology, and modern languages.

Today, the rifts have never been greater between faculties in the humanities and science and technology. With more information, has come more specialization, but that's why a truly broad grounding in science, technology, and classical humanities has never been more important. Today's scientists often have scant training in philosophy, history, or formal logic. As a result, they may not see their work or discoveries within a framework of human history; they may extrapolate too far from their scientific data, and not be able to fully consider the assumptions of their theories or recognize how some conclusions may be faulty. The fate of science and tech-weak classicists is even worse. They often can't begin to carry on a conversation in scientific or technical realms, let alone help consider conflicts and controversies, and help decide policy.

We recognize that a comprehensive grounding in the classics of classical education, and state-of-the-art science and technology, may beyond the grasp of all students, but for those who are able and interested, it is a worthy goal. A classical humanities education provides irreplaceable lessons in human thinking, leadership, and historical context that no other experience can provide. But a state-of-the-art science / tech education can also be indispensable in its provision of a comprehensive knowledge base and framework for understanding the specifics of our world as well as the possibilities for future innovation.

There are tremendous forces of change afoot with the globalization of information and knowledge workers through the Internet. Specialists in narrow fields will always be available, but broadly and rigorously-educated individuals, not.

For more reading about our ideas about education in the 21st Century, check out our Powerpoint (pdf file) here: Millennial Minds, and look at our Eide Neurolearning Blog posts on Trans-disciplinary learning and Education for a Flat World.

John Stuart Mill's Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews

Technorati tags: classical education, science, Flat World, education, 21st Century, gifted

Spring Equinox Tomorrow - March 20, 2007

Tomorrow is the Vernal Equinox, or "Equal Night" - or what many note as the first day of Spring. The days will start to get longer after this, and the nights shorter. Because the sun will pass directly over the equator, days and nights will be of equal length all over the world during equinoxes. The official date of Easter is designated as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

Spring Equinox
Introduction to Astronomy - Vernal Equinox

History of Science

Here are two excellent resources for History of Science-
The first is an online course History of Science to the 17th Century from the University of Oklahoma. It is a 15 week course with Internet links to background reading and primary sources (Ancient Babylonia, Ancient Greece), and quizzes (but no answers).

The second resource is: Engines of Our Ingenuity- with short articles that relate important discoveries in Science and Technology The best organized pages covere the Renaissance: Subtopics include, Invention of Printing, Natural Philosophy (Science and Math), Medicine and Anatomy, Architecture, Other Technology, Art, Music, and Theature, Renaissance Culture, and "Discovering The New World." The stories themselves are a little short, but they can be good starting points for further studies

The figure below is from the Engines story on Albrecht Durer. He studied in Italy and recast the artistic lessons learned there in the language of Euclidean geometry.


Technorati tags: classical education, history of science

Surprise Snow - Aristotle, Mathematics, and Weather Prediction

I was going to blog on something else, but we had a surprise hail and snowstorm (?? in Seattle??- see some branches outside our window -->) so a change in plan!

There was no warning at all about this storm. How can we have such sophisticated technology, but miss something as big as this (our area is a confluence zone so we may get 4 to 6 inches)? Even Aristotle brooded about his failure to understand the patterns of weather: "But we must go on to collect the facts bearing on the origin of it, both those which raise no difficulties and those which seem paradoxical. Hail is ice, and water freezes in winter; yet hailstorms occur chiefly in spring and autumn and less often in the late summer, but rarely in winter and then only when the cold is less intense..."

Supposedly the Seattle area is particularly difficult to predict for snow and fog (Snow, Who Knows), so there are plenty of future research opportunities for budding weather or atmospheric scientists. On a different note, see how a mathematician used crocheting to realize a weather pattern based on Lorenz equations here.

Aristotle's Metereologica
Weather Forecasting Through the Ages
Mathematicians and the Weather
The Numbers Guy - Grading Weather Forecasts
Hailstone Pictures
Weather Map Lesson Plan at Discovery.com
Eide NL Blog: Snow Crystals and Snowflake Links

Technorati tags: homeschooling, snow, hail, weather, lesson plans, classical education, science, math