Chemistry Videos from the Journal of Chemical Education

The Journal of Chemical Education has 16 very short and interesting (e.g., toxic substances, solutions, ferrofluids, explosions!) chemical experiments caught on video. View them here.

Here's mercury behaving like a beating heart. Wild.

And a feather causing a big kaboom!

Be careful what you touch in the lab!

An Annotated Bibliography of Good Summer Reading Books

Today, I attended a lecture highlighting the best fiction and non-fiction books out there for middle school readers. I'm not going to type up the full bibliography (email me if you want the complete list), but I will write a brief annotated bibliography of a few books that got my attention. The bibliography is grouped by my interests -- first up is origami, then pop up books, and finally other fine children's books. Young or old, I encourage you to go out to the library and check out any that grab your attention!

Origami
- Kasahara, Kunihiko. Extreme Origami. (2003). New York: Sterling.
The origami art found in this book is certainly not for the novice folder! Kasahara is an origami master; along with engineers like Robert Lang, Kasahara's been expanding the reach and production of origami through new and innovative designs. This book has instructions for a number of novel and stunningly beautiful origami pieces.


Pop Up Book Manuals

-Carter, David A. and James Diaz. The Elements of Pop Up. (1999). New York: Little Simon.
My bookmaking teacher calls this the 'bible' of pop up books. It gives you a set of step-by-step instructions for making 50 different pop ups, starting with the most basic and ending with some rather complex designs. I will definitely invest the $25 needed to own this manual.

- Diehn, Gwen. Making Books that Fly, Fold, Wrap, Hide, Pop Up, Twist, & Turn. (1998). Asheville, NC: Lark Books.
One of my friends made me a photo album as a birthday gift, and I've been showing it off to all my friends since. Using this book as a guide, you can impress your own friends by making your own photo albums and much, much more.

- Pop-Up Books.
This binder is for teachers -- it provides lesson plans and materials for teaching a course in making pop up books.


Other Children's Books

- Sabuda, Robert & Matthew Reinhart. Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs. (2005). Boston: Candlewick Press.
There are three books in series: Dinosaurs (2005), Sharks (2006), and Mega Beasts (2007). They are all pop up books constructed by the master Robert Sabuda. Each page is jam packed with cool pop ups and interesting info about prehistoric animals.

- Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Carbret. (2007). New York: Scholastic Press.
This is one of the thickest children's books I have ever seen, but almost half of it is composed of beautiful illustrations. The story begins with 40 pages of illustrations; just when you start to wonder what's going on, the text begins. Throughout the rest of the book, Selznick weaves his drawings with his words to tell the story of Hugo Carbret.


- Wiesner, David. Flotsam. (2006). New York: Clarion Books.
A beautiful children's book. Wiesner has won 3 Caldecott Awards for his books, and this one may be his finest. The story is about a young boy who discovers a camera on the beach, develops the film, and discovers a hidden secret. Check out the book to find out what he discovers!


- Young, Dwight. Dear Mr. President: Letters to the Oval Office from the Files of National Archives. (2005). Washington: National Geographic Society.
Read actual letters sent to the president throughout history. The letter sent by Elvis Presley requesting to be a Secret Federal Agent is a hoot!

Confratute

Greetings from UCONN! Mr. Connolly, Ms. Lewis, Ms. Stupart, and I are attending a week-long summer institute at the University of Connecticut called Confratute (conference + fraternity + institute). The conference's goal is to offer enrichment activities to teachers, so teachers can make class more fun and interesting for students. I'm taking two classes this week: one on bookmaking and the other on modular origami.

In my bookmaking class today, I learned about a v interesting book called Spoiled: The Refrigerators of New Orleans by Tom Varisco. Varisco photographed the spoiled refrigerators during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. These Katrina Refrigerators became a mode of self-expression during the aftermath of Katrina's destruction -- residents used spray cans and garbage to create graffiti with humorous, satirical, and/or political messages.


As you can see, creativity comes in a multitude of unexpected forms...For example, at lunch today, Mr. Connolly inverted a coffee cup lid to use as a ketchup container. I've also seen him use the gulf of space between a 4-cup cupholder. Creative, but honestly, also a bit depressing. The man, clearly, likes his ketchup.

Sympathetic Hippo

Panda Teamwork

Looks like the last video I posted was taken down for copyright reasons, so here's a similar one. Not as cool as a prison break, but you get the idea.

Tape Figures

Think you need a lot to do a lot? Think again. All of the following sculptures were made from ordinary scotch tape and an artist's imagination. (Unfortunately, I don't have any info about the artist.)







Thanks Thuy for the email!

A Summer Vacation Spiel

So it's summer vacation -- time to take a break from learning, right? WRONG! Learning happens all the time, not just in my classroom (stop laughing -- admit it, you learned something in there). Turn off the television, computer, video game, and cell phone, get off your behind, and learn by DOING!

My summer is going to be awesome because it's going to be jam packed with learning. I'm going to an educators' workshop in Connecticut next week so I can beef up my teaching chops. Then I'm off to Southeast Asia -- Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand -- so I can absorb the culture and food :) on the other side of the world. Then I'm flying back into California so I can help take care of my grandmother while my aunt recovers from shoulder surgery, and hopefully learn more about my late mother and her extended family. Finally, I hope to take a road trip up from LA to Vancouver with some friends, so I can soak in some sun, a few National Parks, and good people. Sounds like a great summer, right? The funny thing is, I'm most looking forward to the 20+ hour airplane ride to and from Asia. Just so I can buckle down and read some books I've been dying to get to all year.

Not going to CTY this summer? Don't have the $$$$ required to travel 'round the globe? Doesn't matter. Learning can take place in any setting -- you just have to have the proper mindset. Now's the time to pick up activities that interest YOU. Set some (achievable) goals for yourself, find out how to accomplish them, and get started! I expect a full report the next time we meet.

So have fun this summer, relax, learn a little, and be safe!

Manhattanhenge

Manhattanites take it for granted that their avenues run north-south and their streets run east-west. But truly observant inhabitants know that Manhattan's street grid is rotated 29 degrees away from the north-south axis.

Why should you care? Well, as Geoff Manaugh writes in his delectable BLDGBLOG, this angle carries "interesting astronomical side effects" -- namely, "Manhattanhedge," as coined by Neil deGrasse Tyson. For two days every year (May 28 and July 12/13), the setting sun lines up perfectly with the east-west streets of Manhattan's main street grid. The result, needless to say, is spectacular:




Unfortunately, I'll be out of town next week. Otherwise, I'd be simultaneously watching the sunset and sweeping a lady off her feet in Union Square Park like the couple above :)

The Evolution Store

One of my favorite stores in the city is The Evolution Store found in the unlikeliest of neighborhoods, uppity-buppity SoHo. Even though you don't need to be a science geek to enjoy visiting this store, it sure helps. The first time I visited, I felt like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory: so many things to see, so many things to play with, so little time! I walked away with one of my prized possessions, a Venus fly trap (which, sadly, died from owner neglect).

Like many shoppers, I was amazed by the gamut of biological artifacts found there -- when NY Magazine visited the story, they found that it was "packed to the rafters (which are hung with snakes, anatomical charts, and prehistoric shark jaws) with softball-size ostrich eggs, Venus flytraps, and the skulls of skunks, minks, and muskrats." As one online reviewer stated, "Their stock is enough to make you want to start a collection of dead things in vials." Yup, totally sweet.

And reviewer Megan C. perhaps put it best when she said,

Going to Evolution is sort of like spying on your cool older brother while he makes out with his super-pretty girlfriend, except that in this case your older brother is time and his girlfriend is nature.
You can get disgustingly cheap fossils at Evolution. I'm not sure what the monetary value of a genuine fossil of some snail-thing from 30 million years ago ought to be, but I feel certain that it should be more than six dollars. Plus, this is the only place I know of where I can buy a complete set of models of the skulls of all the "found links" between a monkey and myself.

Intrigued? The Evolution Store is located at 120 Spring St. near Mercer St. Take the 6, E, or C to Spring St. It is open 7 days a week, from 11 am to 7 pm.

My City

If you came to my city,
You wouldn't hear
A robin chirping
As she nests in the trees.
You would hear
The wild, tangled coos
Of furious pigeons fighting
Over a hard piece of bread.

If you came to my city,
You wouldn't hear
The sound of silence
In the morning.
You would hear car horns,
People yelling, dogs barking,
And the occasional
Cat screech.

Yep, my city
Is noisy, loud, and unfair,
But it's my home
And what I grew up with.

Though it maybe be tough,
Mean and hard
It will always be
My city.

Reina Samuels
Washington, D.C.
from Paint Me Like I Am

Why I Write Poetry

by Kevin Powell

I have not always been a fan of poetry. Nah. In fact, I hated it and thought poetry an activity for the overly sensitive--and suckers. Suckers in the sense that I, a Black boy from the ghetto, would--could--never let my guard down long enough for you, the observer,to see me--naked--as I am. But the reality is that I had always, on the down low, dug poetry, be it the sensual sonnets of William Shakespeare, the dark meditations of Edgar Allan Poe, or the lonesome thoughts of Emily Dickinson.

However, it was not until I encountered the first very traumatic experience of my adult life, at age twenty-two, that poetry really began to mean something to me. You see, I was suspended from my university for an indiscretion I will not share here. Having been the first person in my immediate family to attend college, I was devastated and could not tell my moms what had happened. Between sudden bouts with insomnia and school-mandated trips to a therapist, I scrawled words which became stanzas which became my initial attempts at poetry. Although I had studied this literary form in both high school and college, I did not know if poems were supposed to be long or short, nor if what I was writing was actually good or not.

Back then I did not care, to be honest. I had wanted to be a writer since I was eleven and, outside of some short fiction I penned during my high school years, this post-college writing was the first time I felt free—and truly felt that I was, indeed, a writer. And how amazing it was, yo. To be able to say whatever I wanted, to push the door to my imagination and walk through, without fear, to those spaces I never knew existed.

And it was not enough for me to write poetry in isolation. I knew I had to share my words with other people and I soon found myself in hole-in-the-wall spots in north Jersey and New York City, reading to audiences of maybe ten people. I was mad happy about that too. I felt empowered, that my voice, my life, my world, mattered. That poetry was, no doubt, special, magical, a gift from some greater being and I was merely the vessel carrying the word.

It took me a few years but I eventually recovered from that college suspension. Now all these years later, after five books, numerous magazine and newspaper articles, and travels across America and outside of the States to places like England, France, and the Caribbean. I cannot help but think back to those very innocent days when I kept a tiny notepad in my back pocket and tried to capture everything I felt at any given moment, on the subway, at a grocery store, while walking down a street in Newark or Harlem, or Brooklyn.

Today I cannot picture what it would be like not being a poet. Yeah, I am sensitive, because one cannot be a poet without having some level of sensitivity. Without some connection to one’s soul, and the souls of other human beings. And, yeah, I am a sucker, for words. For sure, I love words and the poetry made from stringing just the right words together. In this coming together of pen and paper, of fingers and computer keys, of raw-dog emotions and instant testimonies that make poetry—to me—as necessary as the blood beating a path to our hearts.

The New York City-based Kevin Powell is a poet, journalist, essayist, activist, and public speaker. Kevin is the author of five books, including his editorship of the recent HarperCollins release Who Shot Ya? Three Decades of Hiphop Photography (images by Ernie Paniccioli), which is the first-ever pictorial history of hiphop. Kevin's essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, Essence, Newsweek, and Vibe, where he was a longtime staff writer. A highly sought-after political and pop cultural commentator, Kevin has shared his views on VH1, BET, CNN, and a host of other media outlets. And Kevin first reached the national spotlight as a cast member on the original season of MTV's The Real World, the most successful reality-based program in television history.

My Soul

Sometimes
When I feel like I'm going to fall apart
I hold my ribs, all the way around,
Both sides.
My ribs hold me together,
Like glue.
Theykeep my breath close to my heartbeat.
They keep my soul from escaping and
Leaving me, grounded.
I hold brightness and shadows in
The hollow where my ribs meet.
I hold them there in the memories
Of slow, sorrowful music and
Porch steps.
I hold my ribs, until I feel solid.
Until my legs are tree trunks and
My fingers are fruit.

Ember Ward
San Francisco
from Paint Me Like I Am