Le Blog du Frog

by ryan

Today in training we learned a little about magnets. Apparently they were found by a little boy named Magnus in a country called Magnesia (hmm?). We used regular magnets to tell north and south (which was the direction that all of our magnets pointed) (except Rose’s). Then Paul showed us something that was pretty freaky. Apparently everything has a magnetic attraction or repulsion. Paul D. used a super-magnet to move around a grape hanging from the ceiling. He told us to check out a video of a super-duper-high powered-eletro-magnet that can levitate a frog. This force is called diamagnetism and can be found in basically all matter, if I understand correctly. The human version should be coming to Las Vegas sometime in the near future. Sounds like fun!

Kid Nation

by tribekat

I am so embarrassed to admit that I just watched the first three episodes of Kid Nation and I really enjoyed it. It is just as exploitative as I thought it would be, but it is also surprisingly endearing and even a little inspiring. Anyone else watch this show?

Aside from being entertaining, the show reminded me that every kid is already an expert in their own way, and that diversity is absolutely necessary to build a functioning community. It also reminded me that I can learn a lot from hanging around kids. I wonder what the kids on the floor will teach me tomorrow…

The Geyser Problem

by Aiona

Question

There are three art pieces in the museum just outside the office that are designed to mimic the behavior of a geyser. The geysers each have a different period; one goes off every 6 minutes, another goes off every 7, and a third goes off every 8. The question is, when will all three geysers go off at the same time.

Four Part Answer

Part I: Watch the 6 minute geyser and write down the time it goes off. Now count how many minutes until the 8 and 7 minute geysers go off. Call these two time intervals a and b respectively.

Part II: Calculate how many minutes before the 6 and 8 minute geysers will coincide using the equation x=3(8-a). (note: if a is odd the geysers will never synchronize.)

Part III: Calculate how many minutes before the 6 and 7 minute geysers will coincide using the equation y=6(7-b).

Part IV: Calculate how many minutes after the next 6 by 8 minute synchronism, a 6 by 8 synchronism will coincide with a 7 by 8 synchronism. Call this m, and use the following table to look it up.

y-x    m
-36    48
-30    96
-24    144
-18    24
-12    72
-6      120
0       0
6       48
12     96
18     144
24     24
30     72
36     120

All three geysers will synchronize at (the original time you wrote down)+x+m.

Explanation

This problem turned out to be much more complicated than I originally anticipated. I spent all day with a scratch sheet working on it. Basically, in parts II-IV of the solution there are two rhythms happening at the same time and you want to know when they will come together. For example, in part II, the 6 and 8 minute geysers will synchronize every 24 minutes. I drew out the entire 24 minute cycle on a piece of paper, and for each 6 minute geyser within it I wrote down both the time interval from the 6 minute geyser to the 8 minute geyser (a) and the time from the 6 minute geyser to the synchronization point (x). Then I looked for a relationship between a and x in order to generate the equation in part II. That equation is basically just a map that tells you where you are in the pattern. The chart in part IV serves the same function. It’s all a little tricky unless you write it out, but next week I plan on visiting the geysers with a watch to verify that this works. Please add corrections, simplifications, or better explanations if you have any. I got sucked into a geeky math whirlpool and struggled to make this at all understandable when I came out. As a side note, similar rhythmic patterns are used by drummers, in African polyrhythms and in Jazz.

What’s in a Name? – Part Deux

by ryan

So with the decision being made to change the title of the blog, we need to get all the suggestions out in the open in an arena where we can debate the merits of each possible choice. As a side note this topic can get us thinking about what we actually do in the museum. Are we explainers, provocateurs, educators, or some made up word that is a combination of those things? Those outside the explainer program, please feel free to suggest titles as well. We’ll probably vote in the next week or so, so get thinking about possibilities.

Blog-a-torium?

Anne and the Worms?

Exploratorium Underground?

The Cow-Eye Report?

What’s in a Name?

by ryan

Some of you may have noticed the change of title of our little blog. I feel that the story behind the name change (albeit told from a single perspective) can shed some light on some issues that arise when attempting to create a blog of personal voice in an institution. Although the Exploratorium provides us with great support and continued opportunities to share the best parts of our day as the floor staff of the museum, it probably was inevitable that conflicts might arise. For a little more info about the perspectives that outside observers bring to our blogging experiment and the way blogs are treated in general, check out Nina Simon’s article about us on Museum 2.0.

A few weeks ago, a representative from the High School Explainer program voiced concerns that our blog might create confusion for those web searching for the different department. You see, at the Exploratorium there are two separate explainer programs, the (Field Trip or Morning) Explainers who work with kids on field trips among other audiences and have a more educational role in the museum (that’s us!) and the afternoon Explainers who are high school students and have a different set of priorities and goals in the museum. Although we volunteered to create a text box that cleared up the confusion, this was not good enough, as there was still the possibility of some web-surfer skimming through the opening page and failing to understand the difference. These ideas have a lot to do with the assumed level of sophistication of a web audience and the anxiety regarding Google searches turning up the wrong page (but that’s a different discussion). After a meeting with a few of the blog authors and representatives from the other department, we decided that the options were to either change the title of the blog or remove the link from the Exploratorium website.

A little background information before proceeding…

We started the blog in February of last year as a group project undertaken beyond our work day to share our experiences and passion for the museum with each other and possibly outside visitors. We titled the blog Exploratorium Explainers because we felt that underscored our role in the museum not only as those who work with kids on field trips, but also as educators to the wider public, roamers about the museum, and providers of a fresh perspective on the issues that are important to us as individuals and as a group. The blog was never meant to be a part of the official Exploratorium but as an separate entity where we could be free to be irreverent and provocative. After a few months, the Exploratorium noticed that a few different individuals and groups were writing blogs and decided to create a web page that listed all the blogs somewhat affiliated with the institution. While this was not part of our original plan, we welcomed the support of the museum and the recognition that it brought to our community. After a while it became easy to see the blog as the official site of our department and thus as a possible detriment to the other department that shares our title.

So as the blog remains a group endeavor with all the explainers serving as administrators, we took a vote at the Friday meeting to see if we would change the name or remove the blog from the official blog page. It was a very close vote on both issues (the group voted about 7-5 to change the name of the blog and leave it on the site). Everyone had their own individual reasons for voting the way that they did (we can share these in the comments if we want to). Regardless of the outcome, it was hard for me to come to terms with the way that something that we meant to provide a unique and free expression could become tangled in institutional politics in such a way that others could make demands concerning the direction of the blog. Yet, I suppose that is the tricky balance beam that those groups or individuals in companies and businesses walk when attempting to create a personal voice. Luckily we have never been approached from a content perspective and at the same time we must be careful that the way we represent the museum (though sometimes silly, sarcastic, or non-traditional) does not cross the line (where ever we determine the line to be). I know that for many of us, working at the Exploratorium as explainers is more than just a job, it is a identity, a community, and an opportunity to both teach and learn every day. As a part of that spirit, I hope our blog will continue to be a vital part of the explainer experience.

DNA in the Future

by ryan

As some previous posts prove, DNA comes up frequently in our discussions on-line but remains a challenge (at least for me) to present on the floor as one of our daily demonstrations. I think one of the harder parts of the DNA extraction is balancing the level of background information with the “meat” of the demonstration, the experimentation. When we have a cow’s eye or a flower there is an instant level of familiarity. Eyes and flowers are things we notice and observe on a daily basis.

But DNA might be only a few short steps away from becoming an important part of people’s everyday lives in a personal and intense way.

This article in the Saturday paper explained a new process that maps individuals genome, mapping the phenotype to observable and predictive phenomenon.

My Genome, Myself: Seeking Clues in DNA

For about a cool grand, people now can place their DNA into a database and check on all kinds of genetic markers including diseases, intelligence, and where their ancestors came from. Companies like the Google-financed 23andme has a site which teaches some introductory material about DNA to convince consumers that it’s worth the money to see one’s personal genome. I have no idea if this will catch on as a common technique but it does show the ways that companies market scientific technologies to the buying public. The opportunity is there for us to get excited about teaching about DNA as it assuredly will be a part of the lives of the children we work with.

Drawing Board

by Aiona

Last week I snuck up to drawing board a few minutes after closing with one of my closest friends, Daniel, who is also one of the biggest physics geeks I know. In the void and lonely mezzanine we boldly experimented with the one thing we were explicitly told never to do… we moved the weight.  It was the dawn of a new fascination with this simple exhibit, and its complex mathematical properties. The following is a brief geek out session about the physics of drawing board: When we first learned how to facilitate this exhibit, Sarah told us about how the board has three degrees of freedom, movement along the x-axis, movement along the y-axis, and torque. When the board is moving along both the x and y axes it creates a circle, while torque will create figure eights and more complex patterns.  As friction slows the swinging of this giant rectangular pendulum, the shapes become smaller and smaller until they shrink to a point and all that is left is a crazy psychedelic image.  This type of pattern is called a harmonogram, and here’s a really nifty applet where you can play with them: http://www.comsewogueyouthclub.net/encyclo/640×4801.html. The drawing board at the Exploratorium is basically a giant real life harmonogram maker, except that it’s been specifically tuned to have certain properties. According to the museum website, the weight on the board and the length of the chains are specifically designed so that the period of the torque is twice the period of the pendulum motion. You can destroy this by sitting (very very still) on the drawing board while it’s moving. The result is a more complex harmonogram that can do more loops than just a figure eight. Moving the weight off center will cause the pattern to morph more rapidly than normal. I have no idea why that is, but please please post a response if you do. I hypothesize that the torque is not entirely independent of the pendulum motion and that motion of one sort either decays faster than the others, or can be translated into it.  I also noticed that if I start the drawing board moving along only one axis it will start out as a line, morph into a circle, and end up moving in a line along the other axis. Why does it do that? Please, please, physics geeks of the museum, answer all my questions about drawing board!

Make like a Tree and Leave

by ryan

So here are some pictures of leaves that I took while I was in Atlanta.

Pretty nice huh?

I was wondering if anyone knew why the leaves change colors there but not here?

I seem to be getting a lot of contradictory evidence online.

Maybe it’s something that no-one really knows for sure.

Thanks!

Optical illusion music video

by tribekat

I like this video because of it’s high nerd-cool factor, which is inversely proportional to it’s skank-ho factor. This is also a video posting test.

Lots of these are similar to ones we have around the museum.  Maybe the band, called Whitest Boy Alive, would be interested in visiting?

What’s wrong with that eye?

by ryan

I was dissecting a cow’s eye-ball today and there were two lovely elderly women who were very curious about various eye problems. I feel like those are questions that I get very often and don’t really have good answers. So I went to the Exploratorium’s most valuable resource: the people milling about the coffee machine and microwave in the lounge.

Charlie C. gave me some great info and I wanted to share some of the most common disorders I get asked about and post them as a reference so we can be better eye-ball-cutter-upper-people.

Glaucoma has to do with having too much pressure in the eye. One of the reason it may happen is if the aqueous and vitreous humors don’t get replenished adequately. Interestingly enough, the pressure hurts the optic nerve, causing the neurons to stop functioning. The happens very gradually and from the outside in, so that sometimes people don’t notice how their field of vision is getting smaller and smaller.

Check out the difference in these two photos to get an idea of the changes.

Cataracts on the other hand form in either the cornea or the lens. They are opaque spots of denatured protein that cause cloudy dots in the visual field. Huh? Charlie said that one can thin of protein denaturing as similar to how the protein of an egg white turns white or cloudy when cooked. But cataracts happen for various reasons including age, genetics, and exposure to radiation. Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world.

Detached Retina happens when that gooey pinkish grey blob (as I like to call the retina) becomes separated. It can happen for various reasons including trauma to the eye. Wikipedia says it peels like a bubble in wallpaper. Yummy! Many times it requires surgery, but apparently some minor cases can be cured by simply lying down and looking up.

Davie Bowie’s Eyes When Bowie was age fifteen, his friend, wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Bowie was forced to stay out of school for eight months so that doctors could conduct operations in attempts to repair his potentially-blinded eye. Doctors could not fully repair the damage, leaving his pupil permanently dilated. As a result of the injury, Bowie has faulty depth perception. Bowie has stated that although he can see with his injured eye, his color vision was mostly lost and a brownish tone is constantly present. The color of the irises is still the same blue, but since the pupil of the injured eye is wide open, the color of that eye is commonly mistaken to be different (Wikipedia).