Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah. Or the reverse! This year they fall on the same day. This email recycles some of the best 2024 Wednesday email stories. I’ve had a lot of fun this year chasing STEAM stories and ideas, many of them offbeat. Science, technology, engineering, art, and math capture most of what makes the world an interesting and often amazing place. The next Wednesday email also will be from my new 30 STEM Links website which will have more content over time. So it’s also the end of an era with this platform.
Hope you get and have gotten time for yourself and for family and/or friends this holiday season. And thank you for reading my emails this year.
From email 1.10.1 sent June 12th this year. The most amazing part of this story was reading the long forgotten Apollo 11 NASA transcript from a Saturday morning, July 19, 1969. Imagine you’re Neil Armstrong and you and Ed Aldrin are in the cramped lunar module on the moon chit chatting with Mission Control to pass the time. And you get to talking about moon rabbits and looking out for bunny girls. It led me to learning about anthropology, the geology of the moon, and history. It’s in the transcript link, search for the word ‘rabbit.’
Are there rabbits on the Moon?
Native American, Chinese, Japanese, Mayan, Egyptian, and other cultures say yes, a rabbit lives on the moon. In Japan, they believe the rabbit makes mochi, a mashed up sticky rice treat. Chinese and other Asian cultures celebrate a jade or moon rabbit in the Mid-Autumn festival, on the 15th day of the 8th month in a lunar calendar, a day when the moon is most round.
Many cultures noticed that, when looking at full moon, you can see the outline of a rabbit with its long ears. It looks like it is pounding on a pestle, a tool for grinding spices or food. Seeing a rabbit on the moon is like seeing faces or other objects in the clouds as they pass by. It’s an example of pareidolia, seeing something we’re familiar with in something that otherwise has no such significance.
What’s also interesting is that the shape of the rabbit on the moon, and its pestle, is made of dark lunar material. They’re called seas, maria in Latin, although obviously there’s no water on the moon. Instead, the dark material is made of lava from 4.2 and 1.2 billion years ago. The lava happened to spill then solidify into a shape we recognize as a rabbit. When Apollo 11 astronauts were on the moon, they also were asked by Mission Control to look out for “a lovely girl with a big rabbit,” to confirm the legends. Unfortunately, they didn’t find either.
Tales From Japan: The Rabbit on the Moon
https://www.bokksu.com/blogs/news/japanese-folktale-rabbit-on-the-moon
Moon Rabbit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit
Pareidolia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Moon Composition
https://science.nasa.gov/moon/composition/
Apollo 11 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transmission
https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/a11/a11transcript_tec.html
https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/ap11fj/16day5-landing-prep.html
The Moon Rabbit in Legend and Culture
https://owlcation.com/humanities/moon-rabbit
Have you ever really seen the moon?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZV89qH9IGrA
From email 1.7.1 sent May 22nd this year. I remember learning about the scientific method in 6th grade science class. But it’s showed up in my life every few years somehow. Often having nothing to do with science. Rather the scientific method is a great way to explore what’s going on my life in often chaotic moments. And it’s a link in a chain that goes all the way back to my childhood. The scientific method is a wonderful thing to share with kids, as a way to help explore their world and yours.
Scientific Method
Kids, especially little ones, experience the world in a mostly chaotic way – maybe learning about water and splashing by jumping in puddles. Sharing the scientific method with them is one way to help them organize and learn from their experiences of the world.
What exactly is the scientific method? I actually have to look it up. It’s been awhile since I haunted a fifth grade classroom.
- Gather information about something interesting that you wonder about
- Form a hypothesis or educated guess based on the information that you’ve gathered
- Test with an experiment to prove or disprove your hypothesis
- Write down results from your experiment(s)
- Analyze results to figure out what is true and not true based on your experiment(s)
- State conclusions that you know are true and not true
- Report results of your conclusions
Turns out the internet is full of worksheets and materials if you really want to dive into teaching kids the scientific method. But the method also works informally. You can simply ask your kid(s) what they think will happen if they stomp in a rain puddle. Or toss wet noodles against a painted wall versus a cement wall. There’s lots of fun ways to explore the world and help kids learn how to structure their life experiences in meaningful ways.
The US National Institute of Health website also has fun links to science information and projects for kids.
Scientific Method
https://kids.niehs.nih.gov/topics/how-science-works/scientific-method
Introducing the Scientific Method to Preschoolers
https://good2knownetwork.org/2019-10-24-introducing-the-scientific-method-to-preschoolers/
Learn How to Use the Scientific Method for Kids
https://earlylearningideas.com/scientific-method-for-kids/
— Burt Rutan
Also from the 1.7.1 email sent May 22nd this year. This ticked a number of my boxes: an adventure with unknown outcomes, math, history, getting outdoors, and finding things hidden in plain sight. Geocaching has a similar dynamic but without the math. Labyrinths turn out to be everywhere. But you have to seek them out. Maybe they’ll interest you too as a way to explore the world.
Labyrinths and Mazes
I’m always intrigued by hidden things that turn out to be in plain sight. There’s a train platform scene in one of the Harry Potter movies, for example, where the kids walk into a pole to reach the train platform for Hogwarts. While in the real world walking into train station poles is not recommended, or useful, apparently it does work in a movie.
There are thousands of labyrinths around the world, and a website to help you find them. Usually they’re tucked into or behind churches. But I’ve never seen one. Or walked through one. I did a corn field maze years ago when my kids were little. But quickly gave up because it was too difficult. And stifling hot: not much breeze gets through acres of tall thick corn stalks.
The difference between a labyrinth and a maze is that a labyrinth has only one entry point and one exit. A maze can have multiple start and endpoints. A labyrinth can be meditative, leading us around and around to a single point. A maze often is a problem to solve. Anxiety is involved. While both are journeys, a maze is a puzzle while a labyrinth is an opportunity to reflect while walking in a defined path guaranteed to end at a single point with no fuss.
Anyway, an article about NYC labyrinths got me wondering if math is involved (yes: topology), what is a labyrinth, are they mazes, and other questions. Turns out there also are math mazes you can work through on paper by solving math problems. And there’s a neat video showing how to draw a maze on paper, by a Ms Cooper who has a YouTube channel full of fun projects. If you’re interested, here’s links that might get you outdoors with or without kids. Could be a fun adventure.
Labyrinth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth
Worldwide Labyrinth Locator
https://labyrinthlocator.com/locate-a-labyrinth
Build a Backyard Labyrinth
https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Backyard-Labyrinth/
Hidden Symmetries of Labyrinths from Antiquity and the Middle Ages
http://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/feature-column/fc-2015-10
How to Draw a Maze
https://www.youtube.com/embed/mGhvr63-YxQ
https://www.youtube.com/@MsCoopersArtClass
The Labyrinth Society
https://labyrinthsociety.org/about-labyrinths
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlZ0FybLM_mqhoHlT1Nqow
Mazes and Labyrinths
http://showmeyourmath.ca/outreach/mazes-and-labyrinths/
Lure of the Labyrinth
https://education.mit.edu/project/lure-of-the-labyrinth/
https://education.mit.edu/labyrinth/index.html
https://www.commonsense.org/education/reviews/lure-of-the-labyrinth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbBjW0wtNz8
Multi-Operation Math Maze
https://www.worksheetworks.com/puzzles/math-maze.html
The Mathematics of Mazes
https://people.math.harvard.edu/~knill/teaching/mathe320_2022/handouts/00-worksheet.pdf
How to Escape a Maze, According to Maths
https://theconversation.com/how-to-escape-a-maze-according-to-maths-71582
From the 1.13.1 email sent July 3rd this year. My infamous knitting email that promoted knitting as a STEM activity. I happen to love puzzles in general and problem solving in particular. And math. This story has all three but with a twist: the puzzles data back over a thousand years. You can learn a little history with the puzzle.
Pigeons on the Stairs Puzzle
This problem comes from one of the oldest collections of mathematical problems, Problems to Sharpen the Young. Some scholars say the author might have been Alcuin, who lived from about 732 to 804 AD. Alcuin lived near the city of York, in England, and became a teacher and then head of the Cathedral School at York which still exists, as St. Peter’s School, York.
Here is the math problem to solve:
A staircase has 100 steps. On the first step stands a pigeon; on the second, two pigeons; on the third, three; on the fourth, four; on the fifth, five; and so on, on every step up to the hundredth where there are 100 pigeons on the hundredth step. How many pigeons are there altogether?
If 100 steps is too hard, answer the problem for 20 stairs, or 10 stairs. And if pigeons gross you out, feel free to substitute kittens, hamsters, or whatever makes you happy! The article link has a detailed description of how to solve this puzzle.
Pigeons on the Stairs
https://kidscodecs.com/pigeons-on-the-stairs/
Alcuin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcuin
Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propositiones_ad_Acuendos_Juvenes
From the 1.25.1 email sent September 25th this year. I love finding and sharing resources about STEAM topics. This is one example from the UK. But there’s also Teaching London Computing which jumps off to CS4Fun, aka Computer Science 4 Fun. I found them early on publishing my kids computing magazine while attending a UK teacher conference in London on a Saturday morning.
Hello World Magazine
If you don’t know, Hello Magazine is a quarterly periodical published by the Raspberry Pi organization in the UK. They have a print and digital PDF version. All their content is STEM/STEAM teacher oriented. Subscriptions are free. They also encourage teachers to submit articles. Scroll down their one page website and you’ll see a couple big books they’ve published which also might interest teachers. Plus a podcast and blog. While published in the UK, the content has value anywhere computer science and technology are taught. Plus they make an effort to cover how STEM/STEAM are taught around the world in different cultures.
Hello World
https://www.raspberrypi.org/hello-world
Teaching London Computing
https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/
Computer Science for Fun
https://www.cs4fn.org/
From 1.30.1 email sent October 30th. It’s a wonderful contrarian question the leads to learning about how stars work. Plus history about measuring temperatures using the Kelvin scale. Questions often are a great jumping off point to learn about any topic, including STEAM.
Why Is Space So Cold?
There’s an uncounted number of stars in the universe. And every star is hot enough to burn anything to a crisp. Healthy stars are 53,000 to 107,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 29,000 to 59,000 degrees Celsius. That is hot.
Yet space is cold. Space actually is freezing: -464 degrees Fahrenheit, -270 degrees Celsius.
Have you ever wondered what makes space so cold when there are so many stars? The short answer is molecules. Earth has a lot of molecules. Sunlight hitting our atmosphere excites molecules. That generates heat. There’s not a lot of molecules in space. Thus, the real oddity isn’t the heat of stars. Or the cold of space. The real oddity is Earth. Its atmosphere balances the heat and cold. It makes life possible.
Most temperature measurements for stars and space are in Kelvin. I’ve included a link to a handy conversion table.
Why Is Space So Cold? It Has To Do With Kinetic Energy
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/why-is-space-so-cold-it-has-to-do-with-kinetic-energy
If The Sun Is Hot, How Is Outer Space Cold?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za-Zf1nB418
You’re Hot Then You’re Cold
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/youre-hot-then-youre-cold/
Space Physics: Heat, Temperature, and the Electromagnetic Spectrum
https://cosmicopia.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_sp_ht.html
What is the thermosphere?
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/thermosphere/en/
Kelvin to Fahrenheit Conversion Table
https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/temperature/kelvin-to-fahrenheit.html
Kelvin History
https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/kelvin-history
This Week
Our Sunday email this week will have fun often offbeat links from this past year. In case you missed stories about plants screaming, trees coughing, teen brains and social media, elephants using names, whales using tools, the sun possibly being conscious, Tater the cat, and more. Look for the email this Sunday.
