Are the materials of a house worth more separately than together?

About 30 seconds ago I had a realization that I feel like I need to get out of me. Perhaps I just need to write about it in order to fully process it, so thanks in advance for indulging me.

Everybody knows that building materials are expensive right now. They're so expensive that it's preventing people from starting new construction projects. This idea took on a different light today when talking with a couple members of the city council and the city manager.

One of their houses is worth probably 300,000 on the market, but if they were to rebuild it right now, with the current price of materials, it would cost them a million dollars.

I think what this means is that the raw materials a house is made of are worth more than the house put together. That means houses right now are the opposite of a value-add to the materials. This is just the opposite of the way we typically think of processed materials - the more processing, like with cheese, the more expensive it is. It adds value.

But this is just the opposite. The processing of the materials (in this case, building the house) has devalued the materials. How curious!

Of course, I'm not totally surprised, because in the an economy that's bumping up against its limits to growth, it makes sense that new raw resources would eventually out-price old, used resources.

It makes me wonder though, would it be economically viable to buy a house and then disassemble it and sell its parts at a profit? If the gap between the price of raw materials and processed materials widens, it certainly seems possible.

Becoming a Maker?

Last spring or so I went to the Generator Launch up in Burlington, a maker space as they say. There were hundreds of people all milling about a warehouse looking at neat gadgety things spaced out amongst food and cubicles. There were some really neat toys creations there, some of which I hope to replicate, but mostly I came away with a sense that I had to become a maker and that decision mattered twice as much because of my gender.

I don't recall a single female exhibitor. That bummed me out a little bit.

There were a couple of devices that had rattled around in my brain for years that had never manifested, and so I decided they needed to come out. I had to at least try to build these things. I knew there was some kind of blockage that prevented me from doing so, but I have yet to fully name that blockage, but I knew I had to get through it for all of the other young female makers of the world. For my physics classes. For myself.

So I started this summer cleaning out a space in my garage for tinkering. I have three projects I'm working on at once (of course) so that when I get stuck with one of them I have something else to keep my hands busy. But I'm finding that for so much of this I don't know what I don't know. I feel like an utter novice.

Here's the basic plan for one of the three projects: music from a headphone jack is modulated over voltage of a very bright flashlight. That light is picked up by a solar cell, which then transmits that voltage to some kind of speakers (probably with an amp).

Yesterday I made a little progress.  It was a tiny tiny amount or progress, but it was still exciting. I had an old phone handset that could be used as the speaker end of the project, so I had cut the end of the cord off. Inside there were four wires. I attached two of these to the leads of a 1/8" headphone jack plugged into my iPhone. And you know what? I could hear the music playing on my iPhone in the handset. :D What glee!

But the next step was unclear to me. I thieved this plan from the former physics teacher and he really just told me about it, so I don't have any written instructions or diagrams.

Perhaps this is why the maker space exists. What I really need is advice and alone in my garage answers are sometimes hard to come by. I know probably 100 electrical engineers, and all I would have to do is call one, but there's this block.

Short term solution - I'm just going to email the former physics teacher for some clarification.

Ballot Item for Locally Sourced School Lunches?

So I've got this idea about how to get more locally source food in our school cafeteria. I really think it could work, but there's a lot of work that would need to be done over the next year. Here's the background...

I recently was published in the Huffington Post (twice actually) as a part of a series they're doing on school lunches. And while my colleague whom I interviewed did most of the writing, we did have some good dialogue about how to get even more local food in the cafeteria.

Here are the challenges to getting more local food in schools:
1) The food itself is more expensive. Sure it may be more nutrient packed, and it arguably has less embodied energy, but local usually translates to expensive - I would guess in large part to the federal subsidies of large food producers. Ug.

2) Local food typically requires more labor, and thus it's more costly. As my colleague likes to say, it will always be cheaper to open a can of carrots than chop carrots. We may be able to partner with a local food hub, like the Central Vermont Food Hub, and they could potentially supply us with pre-processed foods, so we could continue to simply open cans of carrots, so to speak, but they may be limited as to what types of foods are available.

3) Some local foods are not abundant. For example, the school might be hard pressed to get all of its red meat locally sourced because there is a bottle neck on slaughtering facilities. Dear politicians, what are we doing about this? This needs to change.

4) Government subsidies cost the cafeteria. You might not realize this, but for every "free" or "reduced" meal that the cafeteria "sells", the government doesn't reimburse the cafeteria for the price of that meal. It only reimburses something like 80% of that meal. (Don't quote me on that statistic. It's an approximation.) So the cafeteria makes up for its loss by selling a la cart crap at marked up prices. In case you're not familiar, this might be anything from chex mix to ice cream to cookies.

Ok. Enough with the problems. My point is that the limits to local food are primarily financial, with the exception of availability. So here's one possible solution.

What if on the next Town Meeting Day ballot there was an item that read, "Shall the City of Montpelier appropriate the sum of $__________ for the Montpelier Food Service to provide locally sourced meals for Montpelier students?" That blank could cover the extra position needed for additional labor as well as the extra cost of the food.

Here's why this makes sense:
1) We have exhausted other resources. I have heard some people say that getting extra funding is a great idea, but it shouldn't come from the tax payers it should come from grants. We already involved with Farm to School. Even if we received more grants, those would not be long term solutions. Ok, maybe asking the taxpayers isn't exactly a long term solution, but it's better than trying to find new grant money every year.

2) The school cafeteria is arguably a public good, sort of like the library. The federal government subsidizes meals for students because students who are hungry just can't learn. The trade off now seems apparent. Either we have hungry kids who can't learn or we have obese & malnourished kids who can learn. Hm. I reject both of these things. We can do better.

3) This is a way for us to keep more of our food dollars in our local economy. Money spent on local agriculture has a multiplier effect of two or three, which means this is a better use of your kid's lunch money than where it's ultimately going now.

We're still in the very early planning stages, but the response seems generally positive. I hope it passes, but not just for its stated objectives, but also because this may be a model other cities and towns could use to transition to locally sourced food. If we can show that it works here, it could be a highly transferable model.

Starting a Church in Montpelier?

There's supposed to be seminars or classes you can take on this sort of thing. Now, I've never taken a course on church planting, but I don't even know where I'd go to take one. Plus, Vermont is such a unique kind of place I wonder if it would be of any use. Even if I did take a course, in so many ways it's easier to talk about what church should be than to manifest it.

But it looks like my Bible study may be moving that way...

Gosh, I don't how long my Bible study has been meeting - a couple years probably? People have come and gone, but this iteration seems pretty stable. At one point church planting was just about all that we ever talked about. Or maybe that was just me. :) 

I had dropped the subject months and months ago when one of the other couples said something about it a few weeks ago. And POOF! Tomorrow we meet for the 3rd time ever - we've been meeting every other week - and I'm actually really excited about it. Does this church have a name? No. Is that a problem? :) lol. Maybe. Can you tell growth is not high on the priority list? 

Here's what we do at church. We're attempting to chase down God through... 

1. EATING! usually potluck style. And we have 2 gluten free people and 2 vegetarians, so you know the potluck is an act of love. 

2. Prayer & Music. This is usually where I play guitar, but there are other musicians in the group - note to self: ask them to lead sometime (if they like). 

3. A Thought to Share + Discusion. The first week we read MLK Jr's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Tomorrow will be some reading from St. Francis of Assisi. 

4. Service. Two weeks ago, our second "church" time ever we gathered at my place, ate, and then visited an old guy who needed some help stacking wood in his basement. There were 4 of us, and it took us 20 minutes. SUPER easy. Delightful time chatting with this old guy. 

It's worth mentioning that my sister started a group at her church called "Do Kindness", a group whose entire purpose is to bless people. She told me this great story about one of their early meetings. 

My sister's got a great mac & cheese recipe and she knew of at least a couple invalids who could use some meals. But she figured there were probably others in her church that could use some meals, but she didn't know who. So, leave it to my sister, she just started calling around people in the church saying, "Would you like to receive a meal from the Do Kindness group?" People she called were very polite and generally declined saying, "I'm sure there's someone else in the church who probably needs a meal more than I do." Not to be thwarted, my sister changed her tactics. She found much more volunteer meal recipients when she asked, "Do you like mac & cheese? ... Would you like to receive some mac & cheese?" :) Ha. I love it. 

This sort of thing makes me so happy. I really hope it catches on in churches. It seems odd this this would be unusual or novel for a church. It seems with all these Sequester cuts to aid programs, the church may be able to step in and fill some of that gap. Here's hoping something fills that gap. 

Analyzing My Own FCI Data

I'm in that glorious time of year known as My Student Teacher's Solo Period where I just sit in the library and get other work done, while my intern handles my classes. How did I get so lucky?

So what have I been doing with all my time? Besides running an uncontested campaign for City Council, co-organizing the Montpelier Energy Fair, and refinancing my mortgage, I've been crunching data from my classroom.

Oh gosh this is embarrassing. But I think it's healthy to just put it out there!

I've been using the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) since 2007 as a pre and post test for my students, to see if I have actually taught them any physics. In case you're not familiar the FCI is a nationally recognized physics test and I could be comparing my results with traditionally taught classrooms or project-based classrooms all over the country, and that's great, but it seems too that at least in my case - there's something to be said for gaining experience. The algorithm for Normalized Point Gain (G) is (Average post test score -Average pre-test score)/(100 - Average pre-test score)

Back in 2010 I was floored by how good my scores were, and then in 2011 you can imagine my disappointment. Was 2010 just a good dream? What happened? This of course led to a serious revamp of some specific units and putting my entire curriculum in digital form. Apparently it's paying off! It appears yet again that I'm making progress. I've already disaggregated the data to tell me which unit is my weakest, so I know where to focus my energies for next year! 

In an industry where your product graduates, it's good to feel like you're making some kind of progress. 

Renewable Energy Project Revamp

So I've got this idea for my renewable energy project this year. Last year I had students look at their total energy (electricity and heating) bills for their own homes and calculate their BTUs per square foot, and then compare that with a standard number for what an energy efficient home ought to be. Of course most peoples were well over the recommended amount. But that's where I stopped last year, and fair enough. To do more would be asking students to stand up to their parents and challenge them to do better. I had a few conversations last year about this with the students. They said, "We are not the decision-makers in our homes, so what can we do?" I didn't have an answer for them.

But I have an idea. What if, in addition to the calculation of BTUs per square foot, students could research options for their households: PV, solar hot water, air source heat pumps, pellet stoves, pellet retrofits for oil furnaces, weatherization. They could do the calculations (they're not terribly hard) to figure out approximately how much money their family could save. Students fill out some form that would give parents some easy-to-look-at options and projected savings - specific to their house - and then we hold a parents night, where students present their work generally to their parents.

Part of me feels like this is too nosey and meddling. Part of me feels like if education does not have real-life applications, then why do it?

I think I'm going to do it. It gives students as voice with their parents (or at least an opportunity for them to have a voice). It could save people money. It could save the earth some long-cycle carbon. Those seem like good reasons, even if it is meddling.

And then, my whole curriculum was digital!

This school year is shaping up to be possibly the best school year ever (I know - I say that every year), but just about every year I've been right about that! But this year perhaps more so than even other years because I worked my tuchus off going over my entire curriculum this summer, through the very sexy process of converting my notes into power points.

I told a science-teaching colleague of mine about my summertime endeavor and he replied, "Anne! Are you a closet lecturer? I'm shocked!" I assured him I was as constructivist as I knew how to be in my classes, but these power points serve a rather different purpose.

I will confess that my thinking can sometimes be non-linear, and hopefully this will help me to stay on track and removes the nagging question "What comes next?". When I get brilliant ideas for other units, I have a go-to location for depositing that thought for development at another time. I don't have to worry about creating notes for next week's class, or even next month's class, not to mention the benefits of when a student is out sick or leaves early for field hockey. I'm already more relaxed than this time last year, and I already feel like a better teacher.

Why did it take me so long to get to this point? Frankly, I knew this would be an intense undertaking, and at this point my compilation of files represents at least 80hours worth of work. But my gosh, it has been well-worth it.

Ending the School Year with a Bang!

... or at least a lot of smoke!

I was working with my advanced physics students building a bicycle generator. We had all the wiring purchased and ready to set up. We were about to hook it all up to the alternator, when...

We got one of the connections switched, and in the process of pulling it out to fix it there were some sparks, and then there was some smoke, and then there was LOTS of smoke.

Long story short, we got to pull the fire alarm, use the fire extinguisher, and evacuate the entire school. That was an exciting day! It really was the best possible situation though.  No one got hurt, no property was damaged (except we melted some wires), and some genuine (and I mean genuine) learning occurred as a result. In hind sight there were at least three things we should have done differently: 


1. Don't bolt down the wires until you're sure they're where they should be.
2. You can never have too many fuses.
3. Don't forget: the frame is negative.

The best part was we couldn't figure out why it happened until we were outside, and THEN we realized it. Ok - the best part might have been that everyone was SUPER supportive: the superintendent, all the teachers who were outside with me, all the students. It was awesome. And there's no better advertisement for physics!

But there's one more portion of this story to write. The rest of that day we had class outside because my classroom was COVERED in fire extinguisher dust. For anyone who's experienced that stuff, oh man, I commiserate. That stuff gets EVERYWHERE, and it's NOT easy to clean up. The custodial staff at the high school did a _great_ job cleaning things up, but the thing they were not excited to touch: my closet.

Unfortunately, the door to my closet had been open and every surface was covered in white powder.

Truth be told, I have never cleaned out my closet in 8 years of teaching. There are boxes in there that I inherited which were never opened when I arrived, and I have never opened them. There were objects in there for which I have NO CLUE what they're for or how they work. So here was my opportunity. After school was out I got a couple of supplementary custodial workers to help me go through EVERYTHING in my closet and make the decision to either wipe it off or throw it out.

I didn't think to take a "before" picture, but here's the after picture with everything cleaned out:

And the rest of the room: 

I was able to donate a lot of the stuff I didn't want - most of it was electronic equipment from the 1980's, like oscilliscopes, multimeters, a centrifuge, etc. Great stuff. I hope some shopper at Resource in Barre will want those things!

Fuel for Thought

I received an interesting email today:

Dear NSTA authors,

An article you previously published in one of our journals has been chosen for inclusion in a new NSTA Press compendium titled Fuel for Thought. This volume is intended to help high school and upper middle school teachers demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of energy in their classrooms. If you would like to receive a copy of the book, please send me your name and address. In addition, please don’t hesitate to ask any questions.

Thank you for your continued contributions to science education in general and the mission of NSTA in particular!

Woo hoo!

Remind me to write more articles! :)

The Rekabites, the Amish, and the Year of Jubilee

I bet you've never heard of the Rekabites. I've read through the Bible twice and apparently glazed over their tiny spotlight both times. But their story caught me by surprise and resonated with me this time when I chanced upon it in my random daily reading, which happened to be in Jeremiah 35 the other day.

What's noteworthy about them? Why did they get a spotlight in the first place?

They bring up at least two important ideas. One: they're not exactly Jewish, and yet God says "Jehonadab son of Rekab will never fail to have a descendant to serve me." That sounds to me like another example of a non-chosen group of people being effectively recognized by God as "saved" if you will. This is a monstrous and what feels like a flagrantly heretical idea, but this is not the main idea I want to discuss. Someday I should write a post about this idea its connection with the book Eternity In Their Hearts by Don Richardson.

The other idea that I find fascinating about these people is that they are hardcore about holding back. Their ancestor apparently told them "Don't drink wine. Don't plant crops. Don't build houses." And so they didn't. Can you imagine the kind of culture that instills in a group of people, I mean besides the part where it means they are nomads.

First off, it reminds me of the kind of respect we Vermonters accord the Amish. Wow, what relics of culture! What self-reliance! What independence! The Rekabites were holding on to cultural ideals that were at the time going out of fashion. Cultures had only probably within the last 1000 years or so at the time become agrarian, moving "forward" from being hunter-gatherers.

They remind me of Romaine Tenney, the Ascutney farmer who used animal power instead of tractors through the 1950s, never got electricity hooked up to his house, and resisted the building of high way 91.

The Rekabites remind me of Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. Oh, you haven't read it!? Visit your local library and read it right now! In Ishmael, there's a re-interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel, which I appreciated since the sermons I had heard about that story since childhood were ummm... shall we say, unsatisfying at best. The moral of that story is usually, "give your best to God. If you don't he won't be satisfied." But how do we get that from the story? How are we, the readers, to know that Abel's gift of the fat from livestock would be more acceptable to God than "fruits of the soil"? Ishmael proposes that this story is actually a warning for the non-agrarian Jewish people against increasing cultural pressure (read raiding and pillaging cultures) that were agrarian. And that somehow God was more pleased with the sheep herder than the grain grower. Here again, we have the Rekabites probably tending herds, but not planting crops, and God is pleased with them.

This all funnels towards the idea of a year of Jubilee. I mean, come on. I'm not going to change my lifestyle back to one of hunting and gathering. Though I will confess the Roots School may empower me to do that. But there's this other idea in the Bible about a year of Jubilee as described in Leviticus 25, which feels slightly (though perhaps only slightly) more feasible. "The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. ¹² For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields." Ok, I'll confess this seems contradictory to me. How do you eat what is taken directly from the fields without "harvesting untended vines". Perhaps the difference is in the word "harvest" there's an idea that you're not "storing up" anything. This is exactly the idea proposed in Ishmael, an idea lived out by indigenous cultures around the globe. Why should they plant crops when the forest is already full of food? What a lifestyle! Sit around creating art and music and when you're hungry, just go to the fields and pick something tasty. It's like the whole natural world is one large refrigerator. You probably don't believe me, but it's true, and you can learn about how to eat from the natural refrigerator from the Wisdom of the Herbs class on Wild Edibles.

The only difference is it's a refrigerator where we don't directly control what's in it.

People used to live this way. My ancestors, western caucasians as they were, used to live this way if you go far back enough, and it's almost as if God wants us to remember that way of life. It's a lifestyle that's deeply dependent on God's provision, but also synchronized with the local ecosystem.

There also seems to be a separate idea for every seventh year, like a mini-Jubilee. "You may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?” ²¹ I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years." It seems as those God also wants us to be skilled in the art of food preservation.

Wouldn't it be interesting to run an experiment, to try to do these things, to live for a year on preserved food, to live for a year on only that which comes directly from the fields. In all honesty, in Vermont, that seems like a skinny kind of idea - one full of deer, racoon, and squirrel for 6+ months of the year. But... I'm sure it could be done.

Zooming out from this topic slightly, I have to confess that I feel like these parts of the Bible (Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) get overlooked mainly because they're hard to apply and also pretty boring to some degree. Some might even say, "well, that was a part of the old covenant. Jesus brought the new covenant, so we don't need to follow those old rules." This is why we eat pork after all! And fair enough, I get that, but these rules were made for a reason. Pork wasn't always as safe to eat as it is now. So I look at the rest of this part of the Bible with its large-scale economic and zoning outlines, and wonder why have I never had a conversation about that in a Christian Community?

What if our national debt policy was governed by Deuteronomy 15? Where eventually all debts are canceled. Woe. That would be revolutionary.

Fracking the Future (or opting for something better)

Yesterday I went in to see the school's facility manager to talk about the school's underground oil tank. According to one study I read this tank placed the school on Vermont's hazardous waste sites. I didn't think it was being used, but our conversation when in a couple of unexpectedly places. Here's basically the gist of what I got out of that conversation:

• We're still using that tank.
• It can and will fail at some point.
• When it fails it will be expensive
• The heat planned to be delivered to the school through the District Heating project in Montpelier will not replace our oil burners.
• If we did want to replace the oil burners with something above ground, the maximum size allowable is 250 gallons, which means a delivery once a week, and that's where all the danger comes from: the transport of oil.
• The tank below ground now has a capacity of 12,000 gallons.
• The tank at the elementary school has already had a leak within the last few years.

Isn't it funny how reality can be so much more complicated than it is in one's head? :) Oh dear. So I don't think I'll be leading any crusade to dig up these tanks and replace them with anything.

Among other things, Thom, the facilities guy, and I discussed how natural gas is going to largely replace oil where it hasn't already in the coming years. He said, "natural gas is going to become just disgustingly dirt cheap and will stay cheap for a long time." I believe he's probably right, and that concerns me. Anyone who's seen the documentary Gasland knows hydrofracking is shady at best. Oh man. Don't even get me started on fracking.

I'm just thankful that the VT house passed a moratorium on any new permits for fracking in the state of Vermont.

Truth be told I _really_ don't want to see us become dependent on another finite resource, a resource which, once mostly depleted, will force us to push the limits of safety to satisfy our addiction, just like we're doing now with oil. I hear that call to resist the coming attraction of natural gas also coming from Bill McKibben in a recent post on VTDigger.

I know I'll be talking to my students soon about fracking, and asking the question, "Which would you rather have: a fuel that's dirt cheap and will speed up the destruction of species, or a fuel that costs more but is renewable?" I know some of my students will either with curled smiles or straight faces say "the dirt cheap option." And they may mean it. Heck, who isn't completely self-centered when they're 17? ... ok, I know quite a few generous 17 year-old souls, but still. How will I get them to see the more generous side? How can I get them to think beyond their wallets?

I could go all game theory on them. What's good for the whole is ultimately what's good for the individual in some cases. This is one of them.

I may also just have them do some writing based on a quote from Dumbledore (found here):

Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.
Albus Dumbledore
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Perhaps it will feel like Sunday school, but I don't mind that. I think I may just do both of these things, because I don't think this lesson can be taught enough. Certainly, I am still learning it.

Questions About Light

A biologist friend of mine recently emailed me with questions about the nature of light, so I figured I'd share his questions and my response. My favorite part is part 3 about the color magenta.

Hi Anne,

I'm teaching my kids in freshman bio about spectrophotometry tomorrow. To really understand it well you need to know how light wavelengths and filters work. I understand it well enough to teach it, but looking into color theory led me to some questions I am utterly confused about - we thought maybe you could help. Ok, here we go:

1. Supposed facts:
- White light is actually a combination of all light wavelengths from ~400nm to ~800nm
- White light can be made by shining blue light (450-475nm), green light (495nm-570nm) and red light (620-750nm)
Problem I have:
- If I make white light from red, blue and green light, how can I then derive yellow light (570-590nm) or cyan light (476-495nm) from it? How can white light be BOTH a combination of all wavelengths AND be successfully formed from three specific wavelength bands? If I use only three bands there are several holes in the spectrum.

2. Red light (620-750nm) plus yellow light (570-590nm) makes orange light (590-620nm).
- Does this mean that we perceive the light as orange as an average of the red and yellow - OR do the wavelenghts in the range 590-620 ACTUALLY exist - if so, from where did they origniate? Did the red wavelenths somehow shorten and did the yellow lengthen? If so how? Did the red wavelentghs somehow cause the yellow to lengthen? Likewise did the yellow cause the red to lengthen?

3. Similar to problem 2 - if I mix blue light (450-475nm) and red light (620-750nm) I get violet (magenta) light (380-450nm).
- How can mixing these two lights result in a wavelenth BELOW the lowest wavelength of origin?


Clearly I don't know much about light theory and it seems to me that it isn't a simple matter of adding and subtracting.

Anytime I do an internet search about "how to make magenta light" all I get is information telling me to mix red and blue - yes, but that doesn't tell me HOW the light (i.e. the wavelength range) is formed.

Any insight you have would be very welcomed!!!

Thanks so much!


My response:
Hey!

Wow. Those are _really_ good questions, and I had to do some poking around to fill in my own gaps... ok, big gaps in my understanding. Here is what I've got for you, not total answers, but I hope it helps:

1. Since "white" is not really a color, you could say that the color white is just a construct in our minds. I wouldn't even say it's always made up of "all the colors". It's just the "color" we see when each of the 3 kinds of cones in our eyes are stimulated with an equivalent amount of red, green, and blue light. Though you could also get white from simply mixing cyan, magenta, and yellow monochromatic lights. So... yes! There can be holes. In fact, I'm pretty sure that most "white" light is full of imperceptible holes anyway, known as absorption and/or emission lines. They're not the same thing, but basically amount to the same idea: white light is not necessarily always made of "all the colors".
Here's more info on absorption/emission spectra:
http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node107.html

2. I think it's good here to keep in mind that light is just the superposition (or overlapping) of many frequencies, so while I think orange can exist on its own (say as it's emitted from some glowing element), if you had orange light, composed of a red source and a yellow source, you could break it down through a prism, into those components. The yellow is not longer and the red is not shorter. It's a question of these two being superimposed and perceived as one color in this case - similar to white light that's composed of some set of other colors (red, green, blue, or magenta, cyan, yellow). This is governed by something called chromaticity, which is, as you suggested, a weighted average of the wavelengths of the ingredient wavelengths.
More here: http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color5.html

3. Ok, so here's where things get super weird. I don't think it's really fair to say that magenta has a wavelength. Magenta: not specifically included in the electromagnetic spectrum. You _can't_ get magenta without mixing two colors. I know. That's weird. Magenta on the color wheel is that special place where the two ends of the spectrum meet. I would think that our brains would just take an average like every other superposition, but no, in this case, we mix and get something entirely new. But then, why should I be surprised? When we mixed red, blue, and green we got white - also not in the spectrum.
more here:
http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science/strange-but-true/colour_spectrum_magenta_complimentary_bizarre

I hope this has been helpful. I certainly had fun digging into this stuff a little deeper.
Cheers!

*** not included in the email: I suspect that all the non-spectral colors (including magenta, brown, grey, white) are physical examples of emergence. Emergence is one of my favorite concepts in the universe.

Building Cider Presses with a Physics Class

At the beginning of the year I had this great plan for my Experimental Physics course. We could build cider presses in the fall (tis the season), and use them as a vehicle for learning about simple machines, force, and torque. Sounds brilliant, right? Engaging! Interesting! Culturally relevant!

Buuuut yeaaaa... Oh dear. They're still not done and it's quarter 2 now (yikes!). We have the school harvest festival on Tuesday, and we were hoping to get them TOTALLY completed by then. That may still happen - we just have some pieces that need to get welded and then attached, and BOOM. Done. And I, for one, will be very pleased to let them go. Btw, we're auctioning them off... more news on that to come.

With the imminent end of this gigantic process just around the corner I've been reflecting on how I would do this differently next time. Let's just say, there were several things I would do differently should I do this project again. Here were the problems and their potential solutions.

1. The groups were too big, thus too many people were unengaged.
Next time, the Maximum group size: 3
2. This was pretty much the first thing we did as a class, so I didn't know people's strengths, personalities, and group dynamics.
Next time, I wouldn't do a giant project right off the bat.
3. This class does not meet for 1.5 periods like my other physics class. There's less time in general, soooo...
Next time, I don't have a solution for this :P. Maybe require more out-of-class work to be done on these presses?
4. I allowed them pretty much free reign to choose a design for their presses. They looked at other people's plans, but in the end each group really did their own thing. This made the process much longer and more complicated, potentially more valuable, as well, but not when you have a limited amount of time.
Next time, I would have a more cut & dry plan that everyone follows....


Really? Did I just say that? I think really what I want is to have more time, more flexibility. I like Amir Abo-Shaeer's model where kids are required to put in x-hours of time into the class, and they can come in whenever to get stuff done, so long as they get it done.

Truth be told, I don't know if I would do this project again, unless I was teaching specifically an engineering class. I was thinking about proposing that, but (sssshhhhhh...) I've never taken any engineering courses. Lots of math and chem and physics. Bio even. But no engineering.

While I'm talking about dreaming of other courses, I've been thinking about the possibility of teaching a course I would call "the science of survival", but I'll leave that for another post.

Retrofitting the school's basement into a root-cellar

We grow a lot of our own food here at MHS, but of course you can never have enough local food, and one of the limiting factors to local food being served in the cafeteria is storage space. We would grow more if there was a good place to store it. I have fond memories of a box of potatoes being stored in a air-conditioned closet just off the computer lab that also housed a Scanning Electron Microscope. Frankly, there's just not enough room in that closet with the SEM.

So my students took on the challenge of designing and mathematically modeling a root cellar for the school. We found an appropriate site, a portion of the basement accessible by a bulkhead, that we could retrofit to become a passively cooled root cellar space*.

The kids were totally pumped! They dove into that math, the concepts, modeling the heat flow, taking data down there. It was awesome. They came up with a plan. We met with the principal, the head custodian, and a grant writer. They were all on board - provided that we do all the necessary fund-raising, and got all the necessary permits.

All of that momentum and positivity slowed to a dead hault when we met with the building inspector to make sure that we could permit the retrofit, and then his analysis was a total buzz-kill. (That's gotta be a tough job, to be fair: telling people their idea is literally "not permitted"). Not only could we not have students down there, but we would not be allowed to put up any walls to portion off the space. It's frickin HUGE down there, and there was no way we could passively cool the entire space to the necessary temperatures. Why not? There was  no sprinkler head down there. There was also no standard-sized doorway into the space. The bulkhead on the outside leads to a mini-door, maybe 4 ft tall. Bummer. Not exactly up to code for what we wanted to do down there.

So I thought the project was dead. Great idea. Impossible logistics.

But when I ran into the head facilities guy, Thom Wood, who was also at the meeting with the city building inspector, I was shocked to hear his impressions of that meeting. I was all "Bummer about the sprinkler system, and the no building walls down there, huh?" And he was all "What do you mean? We can easily just add another sprinkler head for like $100, no big deal. Also, I was thinking we should call up that company from Barre that cuts cement. We could get them down there to cut the foundation so we can have a standard-sized door." I was aghast with delight. What!? This was possible again? Sweeeeeeeet! Thom Wood: unexpected hero of the day!

So we're still working on it. Here's where things stand presently: one of last year's juniors is still working on this with me as an independent study. We've continued to meet with Thom Wood who outlined the process of getting all the necessary permits, starting with the zoning permit, since we'll need to build a little shed over the now-existing bulkhead. We've met with the city zoning permit guy and he was like "You don't need to present this to the Design Review Board. Just send me a letter with sketches and a description of the outside." No problem, sir. No problem.

The student got that done, and now we're on to the Building Permit application, which will be a little more mmmm... in depth. But hopefully we'll have that done by December. We're still chugging. I love this stuff!

This is what the bulkhead looks like now.

This is the student's rendition of the bulkhead with the shed-entrance to the root cellar over it.

*"What the heck is a root cellar?" is a question I run into more frequently than I would have expected. It's a cool space (usually 35-50 degrees Fahrenheit) used to store vegetables like carrots, potatoes, cabbage, onions, etc. It was how people stored food before electric refrigerators were available. Typically built into the side of a hill, or a basement, the naturally cooler temperature of the earth helped to stabilize the temperature at a slightly below comfortable level.

Peer Tutoring Update

The peer tutoring program is up and running! WOO HOOO! Well... halvesies anyway. Specifically, we have started to match people up with one-on-one tutors; they've started to meet, and the feedback thus far is VERY positive. *whew* :) win-win-win (if you will).

The drop-in tutoring: meh, not so much. I think if we had a school larger than 350 students for 4 grades, we might actually have enough students to cover every period and be able to keep that room open, but as it is, it just hasn't come together - though not from lack of willingness on the part of the students.

Perhaps if we had a good start-date for that it could still get off the ground, but what we're finding is that some students we would otherwise have put in the drop-in room, wind up being the only one available for one-on-one tutoring a particular student. And THAT is where we think the real benefit occurs. So, I guess the one prong of this fork is eating the other. (Bad analogy? maybe. But I'm leaving it for now).

Starting a Peer Tutoring Program

According to a survey we administered in the spring of 2010, the majority of students prefer to receive help from their peers! Thus confirming what I or any person in a high school could've told you without the survey.

We teachers also know that probably the best way to understand something is to have to teach it.
For some reason I despise the phrase "win-win-win", but, for better or worse, it applies to this situation. Kids who need help get it. Kids who know stuff are pushed to get it better. Teachers who don't necessarily have lots of extra time at school get freed up a little bit. Sweet.

But I'm sure I don't have to make a case that a peer tutoring program is a good idea. It's pretty much self-evident.

We're launching it tomorrow at the class meetings. I'm pretty sure this program is going to live and die by its PR. We need a critical mass of kids who both want and need help, so we've gotta get the kiddos to sign up. There will soon be a blurb on the school website, going home to inboxes everywhere in the "eNews", and every teacher and guidance counselor will be given soft & hard copies of the forms for signing up and the forms for requesting help. We've also developed an agreement form that outlines that tutors won't do the work FOR the tutee, etc.

We're trying a two-pronged approach. We're creating a Drop-In space manned by seniors who are "generalists" and can help read through a paper, or give quick advice on a math problem, etc. In addition we'll be matching kids to meet one-on-one (in some teacher's unused classroom perhaps?) on a weekly basis.

In case this is interesting to you, I'm just going to copy/paste the forms we're using here. Feel free to steal them for your own purposes.

Peer Tutoring Form

Signing Up to Receive Help

Return to ______________________

Name ______________________________ Grade ________


Subject(s)__________________________


Requesting help for quarter(s) ______________


When are you available? (example: period 3 on Mondays & Thursdays, period 6 MWThF, after school Wed):





Frequency:

____ Once a week

____ Twice a week

____ More often if possible




Primarily needs help with (check all that apply):

____ Homework

____ Quiz/Test Preparation

____ General Understanding

____ Other: ________________



(optional) Referral from _______________________________

PEER TUTOR APPLICATION

Return to _______________________

Name__________________________ Grade____

Type(s) of tutoring I am interested in (check one or both):
____ One-on-one tutoring (where you are matched with a specific student)
____ Drop-in tutoring (where anyone needing help drops by for assistance)

I would like to tutor during

____ first semester ____ second semester ____ both semesters

I am available to tutor at these times (for ex. per. 3 M/Th, per. 6 MWF, after school Wed)



I am interested in helping with the following courses (circle):
NOTE: it is not necessary that you remember everything about a subject to be a tutor.

Science courses: ________________________________________________________

Math courses: _________________________________________________________

Social Studies courses: ___________________________________________________

English courses: _______________________________________________________

World Languages: Language # 1______________ Level(s): ___________
Language #2 ______________ Level(s): ___________

Other such as writing/editing, music, technology skills, lower grade levels: ______________________________________________________________________

Teacher endorsement:

I believe that this student will be a capable peer tutor: __________________
(signature)
Additional comments by endorsing teacher (optional):


NOTE: If you are accepted and fulfill your tutoring obligations, this community service will appear on your MHS official transcript that is included in college applications.

Peer Tutoring Agreement

We, _____________________ and _____________________, enter into the
MHS Peer Tutoring Program and agree to the conditions as outlined below:

The “Learner” and the “Tutor” will...

• Meet in _________________ (location) on________________ (day(s)) at ______________(time of day or period) for the duration of quarter ____(1,2,3,4).

• Communicate with each other in the case someone needs to miss a session.
• Make up a session promptly if one is missed.
• Communicate immediately with ___________________ (see contact information in last bullet below) if either person does not arrange or attend a make-up session.
• Work productively and stay focused on learning.
• The tutor will not do the work for the learner, but rather help the learner understand the material and find his or her own success.
• Turn in the Tutoring Record below at the end of the quarter.
• Maintain confidentiality regarding tutoring sessions
• Communicate with _______________ if tutoring is not working out for any reason.

Tutoring Record

Date	Today we worked on …(example: conjugating verbs)	Initials	Initials

Signed, ______________________________ Email ____________________

Phone _________________

Signed, ______________________________ Email ___________________

Phone __________________

Rural Teaching: Breaking the Isolation

It behooves us as teachers to be the best we can be. (Wait, am I in the army? Ok, no.) But it's difficult to critically analyze one's own teaching when... say, you're the only physics teacher in the school. For all anybody else knows you could be espousing that cherenkov radiation was Newtonian Mechanics and no one would be the wiser. Not that anyone would really do that, but the point is we could be totally missing the mark and subsequently go unchecked.

Also Cherenkov Radiation is really eerie! Check it out:

Here is where I must confess: I am addicted to feedback. I need other teachers to lay their eyes on my plans, my students' work, video of my classroom, and I crave their thoughts. Not because I doubt the value of my own work, but because there is so much to be gained in the exchange of ideas and views. If we are going to move the profession of teaching to a healthier plain of existence it must be a collaborative effort.

And just because I'm the only one at my high school is not a good enough reason to not get what I need. If I'm not getting what I need, it's because I'm letting myself starve. I refuse to be a victim of my own choices.

This is why I'm starting a Central Vermont crew of physics and chemistry teachers. It started with my friend (and first year physics teacher) Meghan and I last year getting together because she had curriculum ideas and advice for chemistry (and it was my first year teaching chemistry), and I had curriculum ideas and advice for her teaching physics. This year she has moved on to a different school, and it has taken two people to fill her position. It looks like this crew of four (the two new folks, Meghan and I) will be the crowd that starts this. I'd like to invite some other local physics/chem teachers. We'll just have to see where this goes.

My fear is that we'll meet a few times and then it will peter out. Here are my hopes for this group: That we would

• each come away feeling challenged and inspired
• each come away feeling like we helped someone
• get recognition or credit from our school districts for this work (not sure how yet?)
• get some kind of sponsorship from a local bar or restaurant
• have good mojo. You know... that we'd actually get to know and like each other.

Next Meeting: September 21st. I'll let you know how it goes.

Mysterious Optical Phenomena (that are so tasty!)

My research into diffraction and holography has thrown me into a vortex of new ideas that are eating my brain. I will list them here along with my favorite line from their corresponding wikipedia articles.

Parhelic Circles "Even fractions of parhelic circles are less common than sun dogs"

Anthelion "How anthelions are formed is disputed."

Solar Glories "Glories are not conclusively understood."

What is Science For?

Diffraction & Holography will just have to wait because there's something I need to post about like right now.

I recently spent a week in the woods at the Roots School, which is a place where people who are skeptical about "progress" can gather to learn primitive skills. I went almost directly from low-tech living to a science teacher's convention and the transition was simply too much for me. I broke down in tears on the southbound train taking me deep into the contiguous suburb that exists from Boston to Washington DC. Awesome. It was too much. I had lost faith that science as an institution was good. Science had become the enemy, particularly as I thought about the applications of scientific principles in the modern world. Would my students go on to invent the next equivalent to a nuclear bomb? Genetically modified crops that destroy entire species of insects or lack the capacity to reproduce solely for the purpose of making a corporation lots of money? I might even go so far as to throw skepticism on the Lowell Wind Farm project that will displace the native bear population. Where do we stop? And how do I know if my students will be any better prepared to make morally sound decisions with their science? How do I know that they won't sell out and use their science for their own benefit at the cost of public health or wellbeing? Yes, it was questions like these that ate my mind at that moment. What was I doing with my life? Would it actually lead to genuine good?

While I was trying to discretely get my emotion out through my ocular aqueducts the lady across the aisle from me turned to me and said, "hey, would you mind holding my sleeping kid while I go to the bathroom? Oh goodness! I'm so sorry to have bothered you while you were having a moment. Don't worry, I have moments all the time." I thought it was somehow fitting that while I struggled to believe that the future would be good with all the science I was stuffing into kids' heads that I got to hold a small child.

At the science conference people agreed that science posed a potential danger, certainly, but that in the end science was just a tool. The analogy that became popular was one of a chainsaw. Certainly science is neutral, neither itself good or bad, just a tool in our hands, but a rather powerful tool. As a science teacher it was my job to pass out chainsaws to students, and instruct them on how to use them. However, very few science teachers, engage their students in dialogues regarding appropriate use of the chainsaw. Is it good to use in the house? with small children? etc. You get the picture.

I will put it out there that one fellow actually espoused the idea that "science will save us." I didn't tell him this, but I find that idea laughable. Here I will quote Einstein: We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

It seemed to me that science was a blind and wandering child in the woods, aimless and stumbling. And the medical field had the distinct advantage of having clear goals. Where was the rest of science and technology going? What, then, are the goals of technology? At the time I would have said that it is goal-less.

But last night I had a conversation with a friend at a party about this topic, which I feel like shed a little light on the situation.

"Wouldn't it be great," I said, "if all science and technology were aimed at simply being delightful, making life more beautiful. Perhaps it could be used to make art or toys. Or perhaps it could be used to build relationships or make life more funny. Science should just really be used to make people happy. It seems like the aim of technology is to save us labor and time, when really, as long as it's not abusive or under compulsion, labor can be satisfying."

"Well, that's just the trouble" My friend said, "That is the goal of technology right now, to make people happy. The trouble is people don't know how to be happy."

POW. There it is. Technology is currently attempting to make us happy. But we just don't know

what makes us happy. We're not here talking about pleasure, you know: being drunk, high, or having sex. We're not even talking about cream-filled doughnuts or green jello. We decided we'd call that pleasure. But what about happiness? I asked him, "What makes you happy?"

He said he didn't know. He was one of those people. It's an important question, but he didn't know the answer.

So at the risk of looking like a sap I will make a short list of times I can remember being really happy:

• Sitting with my friends, Amanda, Will, and Dan at Fresh Tracks Farm while the sun was setting over the winery hills, talking about life and the summer.
• Making strawberry jam or relish or canning beans with my mom and my sister
• Discussing scientific developments with my Dad
• Standing still in the woods behind my parents house listening to the wind in the trees
• Eating out on the deck at my parent's place
• Walking anywhere in the woods and hearing a wood thrush
• The first time (or any time really) you finally get a flame going from a bow drill
• Reading C.S. Lewis and quietly having your mind blown
• Laughing and laughing and laughing with my friend Biz
• Learning about evolution and fossils at the Natural History Museum
• Hucking a frisbee deep to someone in the end zone
• Seeing kids' faces light up when they finally understand
• Imagining, assembling, and troubleshooting a machine until it finally and blessedly works
• Running laps around the church basement and rolling on the floor with laughter with Naomi, who is 4 years old
• Writing poetry or music that I enjoy but don't feel compelled to share
• Expressing myself through music to God

This is what life (and technology) are about. I think I may have my students do some exercise something like what I just did, making a short list.