In support of science: this fuels my teaching.

A satellite for all seasons : TIROS

 There was a time when weather was studied without satellites, then in April 1960 that changed. It matters that we know this. 

When we choose to elect politicians that do not want to fund science we go backwards in time. Would we want to be less able to know where a Hurricane will make landfall in 2034 than we do today because our weather satellites have aged out and we did not fund new technology using what science has taught us?

There is beauty and awe in understanding science that fills me deeply, and thus I am saddened when it is treated with disdain. Science needs to be judged but not dismissed. Maybe I am more sensitive. The more we care; the more we take offense. To be able to view a tree and respect its beauty poetically, theologically, artiscally, and philosophically is important, but so it is to understand a tree and be amazed by the beauty of how it functions to survive. In fact, the tree is better likely to be treated with care if we view it in as many ways as possible. I dig trees.

The trees that have survived centuries could tell us how scientific breakthroughs do not happen in a vacuum.  Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Curie, Einstein did not just turn science about, but led to changes in world views. If we do not embrace science, we just may be lost in the intellectual view of our time.

So I have a job to do. My students deserve to leave my room with the basic vocab, facts, and concepts of science; while also knowing that it isn't science if it cannot be proven true and also if it cannot be proven false. They deserve to hear fascinating stories about scientists and their process, while also learning how to read graphs and data. And they need to do some science while their at it.

They need to be literate enough to face a news feed filled with articles about GMO's, Climate Change, Energy Policy... and understand the article to make their own informed opinion.

There is not enough time.

But science matters. 

Which of the Polybus humours are you?

being sanguineous?

My students had the option of doing this or that today in the computer lab.  Those that chose this were met with some questions about the history of biology.  The discussion that emerged as they met the four humours and the personalities associated with them was at times more than I expected.  It also drew some students from the crowd who had chosen to do "that."  The students seemed ready to analyze each other as much as they were open to tackle their own humours.

The humours are part of a long history of humans attempt to classify personalities and this site concludes with matching Myers-Briggs to the humours.  I am ISTP, so the website suggests blood is my humour (better than one of those biles) and I am Sanguineous.  A word that baffled my students, but seems true of some time spent in the glass studio

Science Mondays--- C is for Chiral Molecules, from Pasteur to Sacks

photo by Euclid vanderKroew

Chiral comes from the Greek word for hand, χειρ (cheir). Thus humans and chemicals can be left-handed and right-handed.

1848: Louis Pasteur is playing with polarized lights and crystals. Why do some that seem to be identical rotate the light in different directions? Chiral molecules have been discovered. They are as identical as I am to my reflection in a mirror.

1954: Vladimir Prelog begins to delve into the chirality of organic molecules including antibiotics. But Scientists struggle in creating a specific molecule in the chirality they desire. Just because they are mirror images does not mean they do the same thing in our body.

1968: William Knowles finds a catalyst. The problem of creating the biologically active chirality has been solved. His catalyst helps to bind the atoms to the right sides (which could be right or left) of a molecule. The production L-DOPA comes into being.

1969: Dr. Oliver Sacks does his Awakenings.

photo by Wa-J

Chiral comes from the Greek word for hand, χειρ (cheir). Thus humans and chemicals can be left-handed and right-handed.

Science Mondays--- wartime measures double the universe

Photo by Dana Graves

Cosmic Times jumps from 1929 to 1955, because this happened.

So today I told the story of how blackouts in 1943 LA allowed a view of outer space that indicated there were two types of Cepheid Variables and thus the universe doubled in size.

I spoke of how when the story started Henrietta Leavitt, who was noticing what had to be noticed, was looking at Type 1's.

Shapely would venture into clusters of stars where Type 2's hung out. He would use a bit of parallax data using a nearby Type 1 to start measuring distant stars.

Hubble and Humason (the mule team driver and later telescope master) would venture into galaxies other than our own and see Type 1's and use Shapely's distance formulas.

Then Blaade took advantage of those blackouts, and saw there were two types, he realized Hubble and Humason had used a bad "Yardstick" and now our nearest galaxy neighbor was 1.6 billion light years away. The whole universe had doubled in size.

Read the Science Times Edition

and more fashion of 1955:

choosing colors, trends now, trends then... Crafting on Thursday

a six pointed star flower in greens and violets is all about being inspired by seeing the combo at recent quilt shows a great place to go to see what is happening, though I guess I could sit and watch folk by too.










But my wordless Wednesday post of five of Mosaic Woman's pendants featured one that came from learning some history.


Green, White, Violet... Give Women the Vote... colors of the suffrage movement... a quick Google search found claims the colors stood for these three words and claims that it is a myth, but no matter, those three colors were the colors used to represent the movement in England and were used in jewelry at the time for that reason. And so this pendant came to be in 2010...


at Our SHOP