Thank you, Mr. Gates!

I read “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” all in one sitting yesterday, and was so thoroughly amused that I started poking around online to see if I couldn’t find one of his lectures. (Yes, you read that right. I went looking for vintage physics lectures. It was that good.) Lo and behold! Bill Gates came through.

Bill Gates bought the rights to Dr. Feynman’s Messenger Lecture series, The Character of Physical Law, and has made them available to the public at Project Tuva. I may well be the last person to know about this, but I’m enjoying the series (and the nifty supplemental material!) so much that I’m posting about it anyway. All you homeschooling moms teaching physics (cough, cough, Tressa, cough) should check it out if you haven’t already.

Thanks you, Mr. Gates. You’re a peach.

Thoughts on High School Math and Science

Oh, no.  It’s time to reevaluate.

This is what I’d like JellyMan to do for high school math and science:

9th Grade:  Saxon Advanced Math

10th Grade:  Saxon Calculus

11th Grade:  The Mechanical Universe; Olenick, Apostol, Goodstein (physics)

12th Grade:  Beyond the Mechanical Universe; Olenick, Apostol, Goodstein (physics)

But that plan makes me hyperventilate because it isn’t “normal.”  I’m fine with being unconventional in other subjects, but I don’t have enough math and science to feel comfortable deviating from the traditional path.  I mean, really.  Two years of math?  Two years of physics?  What am I thinking?  What about chemistry and biology?  What about the four years of math recommended for college admissions? I’m so far gone that even thinking about my own pathetic high school math and science progression:

9th Grade:  Geometry (C/D)
                   Earth Science (B/D) 

10th Grade:  One semester of Algebra 2 (D)
                    One semester of Chemistry (D)

11th Grade:  One semester of Biology (D)

12th Grade:  One semester of Algebra 1 (D) 

and knowing that I did in fact go on to college (earning A’s in math and A’s and B’s in science) doesn’t help me breathe any easier.  So JellyMan’s high school plan will probably look more like this:

9th Grade:  Saxon Advanced Math
                   Geology/Astronomy 

10th Grade:  Saxon Calculus
                     Chemical Principles 2nd ed.; Dickerson, Gray, Haight (chemistry)  

11th Grade:  The Mechanical Universe (physics)

Summer:  Biology 101 at local college

12th Grade:  Beyond the Mechanical Universe (physics)

At least, we’ll call that the plan until he turns 14 and decides he’s too smart for school.  It happens.  Ask me how I know.  

A Whirlwind of Activity in Atlanta, Georgia

I never told you about the rest of our visit to Atlanta!  We went to the King Center to pay our respects to Martin Luther King, Jr.:

And we went to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History:

Hey, look!  It's the South.

And we went to the High Museum of Art.  I didn't take any pictures there because I think people who take pictures in art museums are obnoxious and I only do it if we have a gallery to ourselves.  It was a blistering Saturday afternoon which meant we were standing cheek to jowl with sweaty strangers (who were plenty obnoxious, by the way) so my camera stayed in my bag.  Luckily just about everything you see in an art museum can also be seen online, so I can show you my favorite thing, which was the Baptistere de Saint Louis.  

It was amazing, and I'm so glad the Louvre decided to share it with us for a little while.  You know what else was amazing?  It had its own oxygen-free display case.  The Goobs were impressed.

After the art museum we went back to the hotel to swim, and then we headed over to Stone Mountain to watch the laser show.  We would have skipped it but my mom's friend's grandpa helped with the blasting of the rock face (or something) and we couldn't leave Atlanta without clapping for my mom's friend's grandpa. We clapped, but we left when the monster truck started chasing the devil across the mountain.

We so don't belong down here.

Georgia Aquarium; Atlanta, GA

The Georgia Aquarium is right next door to the World of Coca-Cola so of course we had to stop by.  They bill themselves as the world's largest aquarium, and their prices reflect that!  You only live once, though, right?  As we entered we had our bags inspected by smiling employees, and then another smiling employee took our picture.  Of course we bought one, because you only live once.  Plus I'm never pictured on my own blog, and that isn't right.

Right away I could tell that the aquarium would be worth the price of admission - they have whale sharks!  Two of 'em!  That is just amazing.  The Goobs were all calm and collected - they just sat there in a viewing window with their little fish guides and identified this fish and that fish,

while I bounced around from window to window hollering, "Look!  Here they come!"  and "Oh, my GOODNESS, it's coming this way!" and "Look, guys!  It's a freakin' WHALE SHARK!"  My poor little Goobers.  They can't take me anywhere.

Look at them!  They're cool as cucumbers, just hanging out in the window as if there aren't two WHALE SHARKS swimming around in that tank.  

Well, you know what?  I didn't need them.  I just kept on bouncing from window to window and muttering, "Whale shark!" to myself at regular intervals.  This gave me great satisfaction because a) it completely embarrassed my family and b) it ensured unobstructed views because nobody wanted to let their children stand too close to me.  Ha!  Hahahahaha!

Eventually The Goobs stepped in and led me gently but firmly away from the whale sharks.  I might have screamed and kicked a little, but I was soon distracted by the interactive touch screen and the lecture on beluga whales.

But as soon as The Goobs turned their backs, I ran right back to the whale sharks. 

I just can't be trusted.

********************************************************************

I want to take this opportunity to tell everyone how wonderful it is to have children the age of my Goobers.  They can go to the bathroom by themselves, they can sit still and listen to a lecture, they don't run away while your back is turned, they don't throw their toys at little old ladies . . . I  had no idea how much time I spent trying to shield an unsuspecting public from the horrors that are my Goobs until I didn't have to do it anymore.  And now they're shielding the public from the horror that is me.

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"Mom, let the little girl look at the whale sharks.  Mom.  Get off the glass, Mom.  MOM!  Come on!  Let the little girl see!  Look, there's a sea dragon.  Isn't it pretty?  Oooh, look at all the sea dragons!"

"And jellies, Mom!  Look at the jellies!  Aren't they pretty?  Look, jellies like JellyMan!  Mom?  Wow, Mom, jellyfish!  Can you say jellyfish?  Mom!  Get back here and look at the pretty jellies!"

They'll be such good parents someday.  But for now, they're still having a good time crawling through tunnels and playing in the touch tank.

 Hey, look!  A freakin' whale shark!

Homeschool Frog Dissection

Ha!  You thought I was going to skip the dissection this week, didn't you?  You really should have known better than that.  Now for the usual disclaimer:  This is just for fun, not for a science credit, cutting up dead things is our idea of a good time, get off my back, blah, blah, blah.

"Them sy-reens did this to Pete! They loved him up and turned him into a horny toad!"

I had a few issues with my frog.  First I found the remains of its last meal in its mouth.

Then I discovered it was a girl frog.

Damn!  I got the girl frog in high school, too.  I have absolutely no luck when it comes to frogs.  The Goobs both had boy frogs, so they had time to do their entire dissection while I was still scraping the eggs out of my frog's carcass.

See how nice and clean that looks?  Anemone is holding up the liver so she can locate the gall bladder.  All those yellow strings are fat stores. 

This was by far the easiest dissection we've done; everything was so nice and big compared to all the mini-critters we've been cutting up.  It was also the messiest dissection.  It's a good thing I never aspired to be a surgeon - I can't even remove frog eggs neatly.  I might have flicked a few into Anemone's hair.  Ssshhh!  Don't tell her.

Here Anemone is doing some unauthorized procedure on the severed head of her frog.

It just gets worse from here. 

But I'll spare you the gory details.

Homeschool Perch Dissection

None of us particularly wanted to dissect a perch this weekend.  It's a fish.  Whoop-dee-doo.  We're from Alaska, where fish guts are perhaps even more common than dirt.  We suited up and did it anyway because The Goobers really want to get to that fetal pig.

I'm going to quit taking pictures of JellyMan.  He's reached "that age."  You know, the age at which you'd rather frickin' DIE than let your mother take a picture of you.

Well, would you look at that.  Fish guts.

Wow.

Is that *gasp* an air bladder?  

Wow. 

As I explained the workings of the excretory system, JellyMan amused himself by attempting to extract the entire digestive system through the anus.

Yep, he's definitely reached "that age." 

Homeschool Starfish Dissection

This week we finally got to dissect something that we have a little bit of experience with. I dissected a star fish in high school (not that I was paying attention) and The Goobs have been peeling live starfish off docks and piers since a naturalist showed them how in 2005.

The naturalist told us everything she knew about starfish. She especially wanted us to know that starfish are not really starfish, but sea stars. She was so forceful about it that I decided forthwith to work the word "starfish" into the conversation as frequently as possible just to get on her nerves. I amused myself with this all afternoon, and I'm fairly certain the naturalist was happy when our appointment was over.

Can you see the brown, mucous-y stuff all over the starfish in the next picture? That is the starfish's soft body tissue squeezing up through the skin. It felt exactly how it looked. And do you see all the drips on the concrete? The starfish dripped water the entire time we were examining it, and by the time we put it back in the water all its insides were back where they were supposed to be. The mucous and the tube feet made quite an impression on The Goobs and it was quite possibly the most successful field trip we ever had.

Fast forward four years, and The Goobs still remember pretty much everything the naturalist told us about starfish.

"They're SEA STARS, Mom!"

Right. They remember nearly everything the naturalist told them, which means I didn't have to read the entire introduction to the dissection in our book, but I did anyway because I remember next to nothing about the starfish - "SEA STAR!" - lecture. Tough luck, Goobs.

The first step in the dissection was to cut off the end of a ray.

It's not as easy as it sounds.

Anemone's starfish was big and tough, and we ended up breaking two scalpel blades on it before the dissection was over. (I say "we" but I mean "me." Poor Anemone's hands weren't strong enough to handle her starfish - I was afraid she'd cut herself.)

If you've ever lain awake nights and wondered just what was inside a starfish, you can quit wondering right now because I'm about to show you.

See all that yellow stuff? (It was red in Anemone's starfish.) That is the digestive gland, and all the little pouches you see secrete the starfish's digestive fluid. It seems that none of our starfish were killed during mating season, but I believe those fleshy pink things along the side are the sex organs.

"Hey, mom, I can't find my gonads."

"Hahahahahahaha!"

"Mom! I mean my starfish's gonads!"

"It's a SEA STAR!" 

"Hahahahahahaha!"

This is what my starfish looked like after I had identified the pyloric ducts, stomach, stone canals and rectal pouches.  That's right.  Rectal pouches.

That's it and that's all, folks.  Tune in next week for the dissecton of a perch.  Wow!  I get all tingly just thinking about it!

Homeschool Clam Dissection

Let me just get the usual disclaimer out of the way:

****WARNING**** 

This dissection conforms to no known educational standard.

We're just a bunch of Squares killing time on a Saturday afternoon.

****THANK YOU****

Okay, I feel better.  None of us particularly felt like dissecting clams this weekend, but we were afraid we might miss something important so we suited up and got to work.  JellyMan ran into difficulties right away; his clam had clammed up and didn't want to open. 

Anemone's clam was much more obliging, and as JellyMan wrestled with his recalcitrant bivalve she poked at it repeatedly and said things like, "Ew, you really eat these things, Mom?"

Not anymore, Anemone.  Not anymore.

The ribbed flaps you see are the clam's gills.  There are two pairs of gills on either side of the clam.  When you cut them crosswise, you can see that the ribbing is made up of little tubes.  I wish we had a better microscope - maybe Santa will bring us one next Christmas.

We also readily identified the foot, the labial palps, the mouth, the incurrent siphon, the excurrent siphon, the two abductor muscles and even the digestive gland.  We had trouble with the rest of the internal organs, though.  We were disappointed in the bland brown-ness of the specimen; it is difficult for us to distinguish one brown tube from another, and I think we would have been much better off just buying a live clam at the grocery store.  JellyMan was getting frustrated at the blandness of the clam and the vagueness of the instructions, and said, "But, Mom, how are we supposed to DO this?" 

I answered, "How should I know?  I've never dissected a clam before, either."

"What?!?!?  You've never DONE this before?!!?"

"No, I haven't!  And even if I had, it would have been over 15 years ago and I wouldn't have been paying attention anyway!"

"What do you mean you wouldn't have been paying attention?!?"

Sigh.

We decided to just slice our speciments in half in two directions to see what we could see. 

Cutting it this way wasn't especially helpful:

But cutting it this way was:

We didn't find everything we were supposed to find, but we did find the intestine, the gonad, and what we think is the cerebral ganglion.  We also saw some sinus cavities.

Next week we'll move on to the sea star dissection.  Woo-hoo.  At least I dissected one of those in high school.  (Not that I was paying attention or anything.)

Homeschool Grasshopper Dissection

I was just envying admiring Lisa's girls and their tidy dissections over at Wildflower Academy.  (They are always dressed nicely, too.  And they have great hair.)  Our dissections always start out nice and tidy.  See?  In this picture, Anemone is showing me how she delicately ripped off the wings and legs of her grasshopper.

So far so good.  JellyMan is checking out the spiracles on his grasshopper's abdomen.  The grasshopper breathes by way of its spiracles.  Our book says you can watch the spiracles in action by blowing into one with a medicine dropper, but that didn't work so well.  I asked Anemone just to blow into one herself, but she refused.  Lame.

Hey, things are still looking neat and clean(ish.)  Those little capsules are the grasshopper's eggs, in case you were wondering.  JM thought they were parasites at first.  I told him he was not far off the mark. 

"MOM!"

Yes, we can run a tidy operation for a little while, but eventually things start to go downhill.  We get frustrated trying to view the workings of grasshopper venilation and our specimens end up looking like this:

What IS all that stuff?  Frankly, we don't really know.  I mean, we know in theory.  We know which part is the crop, and which part is the stomach, and which bits are the gastric ceca, but could we identify the salivary glands?  The malpighian tubules?  The segmental ganglia?  No, we couldn't.  It turns out that the internal organs of the grasshopper, much like those of the crayfish, are made up of one nondescript brown tube after another.

After flinging bits of grasshopper all over the patio, The Goobers went to work on an extra credit dissection on a leftover crayfish I found underneath a fetal pig.  Then things really started to get messy. 

I can never take a good picture of JellyMan during these dissection sessions.  It's like trying to photograph Cousin It - all I can see is hair.  

Hey!  There's his chin!

And now it's gone again. 

But I know how to get a Goober's attention - just ask him what he wants for dinner.

Whoa! 

Hey, nose, where are you taking that kid?

Man.  I really wasn't expecting that.  The last time JellyMan took a bad picture was about thirteen years ago:

Two bad pictures in thirteen years.  Not too shabby, JM. 

Homeschool Crayfish Dissection

Before we start, I'd like to remind everyone that this dissection kit was a Christmas gift, okay? It is not a part of any formal science program; in fact, we're not trying to learn anything at all.  We're just trying to have a little bit of fun while we're still young.

The first thing you'll notice is that we are dissecting the crayfish in the house and not on the back porch as planned.  When we woke up the morning of dissection day it was pouring rain.  I wanted to reschedule, but The Goobers said, "Oh, but you promised!"  Ugh.  I hate it when I make promises - they always come back to haunt me.  The second thing you'll notice is that it's really hard not to learn something during a dissection.

See these worksheets on the exterior anatomy of the crayfish? I didn't assign them because I had some silly notion of this activity conforming to state standards for the study of biology.

I just needed some papers for their portfolios.  Besides, it's good for them to fill out worksheets. That's what kids in the real world do, right?  We must learn to embrace the worksheet.  And anyway, if I asked my Goobers to sketch their own crayfish, we'd never get to the fun part.

Once we learned to embrace the worksheet, we learned how not to hold a scalpel:

After that we learned that the person holding the book should be very clear when she reads the instructions, or people will end up cutting off bits that shouldn't be cut off just yet:

And here we learned that it's okay if somebody doesn't follow the instructions exactly because that somebody will probably end up doing it right in the end.  This picture is of a gill attached to a leg.  As the legs move, the gills wave like a flag, stirring up the water and delivering more oxygen to the bloodstream.  Nifty, right?  (I did ask The Goobers to sketch this part - I couldn't help myself.)

After the gill episode, we went on to learn more about how not to dissect a crayfish:

Don't do it this way, either:

Um, this way is also the wrong way, but by this time we had figured out that crayfish do not have veins, so all was not lost. 

Eventually we gave up trying to follow the instructions and just sliced and diced with abandon. When someone came across something interesting, I looked it up at Cornell University's crayfish dissection tutorial. Between the three crayfish, we found almost (but not quite) everything we were supposed to find. It is my hope that by the time we get to high school labs we'll have refined our dissections skills enough so that we can each find everything in only one crayfish. It's good to have goals, yes?