How Sally Ride Changed My Life

I am a child of the 80s. In January 1980, I was finishing up one of my favorite grades in all of my years in school-2nd grade. I graduated from high school in May 1990 and started college later that year. I am a member of generation X, the often maligned generation. Reagan and Bush were presidents for most of my childhood, especially the parts I remember. We were the first generation to own personal computers en masse. We played with other toys that used basic electronics. We lived through the oil boom of the early 80s and the bust in the later 80s. We learned about AIDS in school, and lost one of own, Ryan White, to the disease in 1990. Just like other generations, we lived through our share of crises. The day Reagan was shot was sort of like our generation's Kennedy assassignation. And there was a lot of corruption and greed, which lead to the 1987 Black Monday bust in the stock market.

What is rarely mentioned is that we were the first generation to see the changes in our culture that started back in the 60s. Desegregation of schools was largely finished. More girls played at least one sport, partially a result of Title IX and the recognition that it was just as safe for girls to play sports as boys and the girls wouldn't be any less "ladylike" if they played. Girls still had Barbie dolls and Cabbage Patch Kids, but we also had our small collection of Star Wars figurines and Matchbox cars. In my class, we still had some "homemaker" moms, but most of our moms worked when we were at school, and a few of my classmates were "latch key kids", those that were unlucky enough to go home after school to an empty house. But our mothers were raised to believe they could become teachers, nurses, or secretaries, and while many had rebelled, many women were still in careers that were considered "traditional" for women. 


For many girls, it was television opened our eyes and widened our world to all of the other possible careers we could have when we grew up. On television dramas, women would often be powerful (yet ruthless) business owners. Think Alexis Carrington (Joan Collins) in Dynasty- women could make it to the top of the business word but they had to be b**ches to do it. Or gorgeous. You could be a detective, but you had to look like Heather Locklear or Farah Fawcett.


But women in the news were different. Slowly women were beginning to be leaders in business and government.  Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the U.K., and we saw her in meetings head-to-head with the leaders of other nations. Sandra Day O'Connor sat proudly with her peer Supreme Court judges, all old white men. 


And then there was Sally Ride. The space shuttle program was still relatively new, the shiny white gliders with black undersides reminded me of a great whale. Every space shuttle launch was covered on television, and the astronauts were proudly paraded around to talk about the importance of the space shuttle. My generation was too young to remember any of the moon launches, so our knowledge about space exploration was limited to encyclopedias (the hardbound kind that I swear weighed more than me!) and stories from our family about watching the first moon landing on television. In the first few launches of the space shuttle, the astronauts and command center for the shuttle looked like a picture out of NASA's moon program days: a command center full of white men helping the white male astronauts during the shuttle's flight. Until Sally Ride. 

A young, attractive woman with dark brown hair, but not so pretty that you might think she got the job because of her looks. She looked like someone who could be the mother of one of my friends. (In fact, she was born the same year as my parents.) Sally Ride was going to space on a space shuttle mission! She may not have been the first woman in space, but she was the first woman from the United States to go and that was all that mattered during the Cold War. In interviews before her first shuttle launch, I remember her being quite shy, almost embarrassed by all of the attention she was getting. But in 1983, when she walked tall and proudly on the bridge to board the Space Shuttle, girls like me all across America realized they too could become astronauts or at least be a scientist because Sally was going to space! After returning from her first mission, the words "Sally Ride" quickly became synonymous with "women in science". She was one of the most visible female science since Marie Curie. Whenever a story or book was written about scientists, Sally Ride's picture always appeared. She was featured in many of those thin biography children's books written about famous people. Certainly women before her had made important contributions in science, but their stories were usually told as a footnote to the work of a male scientist--basically describing the woman as a helper or lab assistant to the brilliant male scientist. But Sally wasn't a lab assistant. She was a physicist and an astronaut!

I entered my first science fair project one year after Sally's first space shuttle mission. Never once while I was working on the project or being questioned by the male judges. (I didn't have any female judges the first year.) did I ever feel like I didn't belong because I was a girl. And when I won a second place ribbon for my project, I knew there would always be a place for me. In science. As a female.

I continued to follow Sally Ride's career after her work with NASA. The Sally Ride Science program and its resources to encourage girls to pursue science careers will be her legacy to young women and the work I hope she was most proud of.


Today, after learning of her death, I wondered how many other women were impacted by her like me. In college, about half of my classmates in my science classes were females. I can't help but think that Sally Ride played a part in getting many girls to pursue scientific careers. She will forever be known as a woman in science who broke the glass ceiling for future generations of female scientists. Thank you, Sally, for helping me realize that I too could one day be a scientist. 

NSTA :: News Story

Who knew? Use of Microscopes to diagnose problems in NASCAR

Fascinating article about using science technology to solve a problem that a NASCAR team was having with their motors failing during races.

Search Your Engines: NASCAR Engineers Zoom In on Motor Problems with Powerful Microscope [Slide Show]: Scientific American

With NASCAR coming to Indy in a couple of weeks...

The NASCAR Brickyard 400 is coming to town at the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  There's something about the psychology of people that's unique after they've attended any of the race events. They go much faster on the interstate roads than normal. Is it because they want to see how fast their car goes, or is it just a mind game where going really fast seems normal after watching cars going really fast.

Some questions for your students:
The track is 2.5 miles long (1 lap=2.5 miles), and the cars go 400 laps.
1) How many miles do the cars travel during the race?
2) Each turn is angled at 9 degrees, 12 minutes.  Can you make a model that shows how much of a bank that is? What does the unit minutes mean in terms of an angle measurement?
3) Non-profits are "hired" to clean the track and bleachers after the race. How much garbage do you think they pick up after the race?
4) The fastest NASCAR time on the IMS track was over 186 miles per hour. If the driver had sustained that speed during the race, how long would it take for him/her to complete the race.

The answer to question 3 is 400 tons.

My comments about "Imagine the Future of School Science Fairs" | Wired.com

What will future science fairs look like, assuming they exist at all? If inquiry-based science instruction becomes the norm in the day-to-day science classroom, then I think the nature and quality of projects will change--particularly for middle school students. Instead of the annual dread of working on a required project with little foundation in asking research-able questions and designing experiments, students would have exposure to the design of science experiments to gain understanding about a variety of topics. When I attended the National Science Research Center (NSRC)-a major player in recommending inquiry science education, one of the middle school teachers mentioned to me that she doesn't have to work at all to help the students come up with possible topics for experiments. Whenever they do an experiment in class, if the students don't have time to do further investigation that they are interested in, they write down those ideas in their science notebooks. Some kids will even go home and try out their ideas, even though it's not a homework assignment. They just want to learn more! By science fair time, the students usually have a list of ideas that they could use for a science fair project and are excited to test their questions for further investigation.

As a former science fair participant (International Science and Engineering Fair in 1988 and 1990) and Westinghouse Science Talent Search semifinalist, you would think I would always be a proponent for science fair projects as a way of teaching students about the scientific research process (note I didn't say "scientific method", which is mostly used in the education field but not in "real science" labs). However, textbook-based science curricula do not prepare students to think scientifically. To then throw them in to a required science project is unfair to the students. It's obvious that the students aren't ready for the assignment based upon the amount of help they need from teachers, their parents, and even their neighbors. I created a list of all of the skills I developed while doing science projects, and I'll try to post it here sometime. No other assignment in school, even in high school, requires as much organization, thinking scientifically, writing and presenting well, collect data and use the right mathematical tools to compare the data, than a science fair project does.

I like that Wired.com is challenging its readers to think outside the current model of science fairs in schools and imagine a better process for the future. I'm torn about the desire for collaborative projects. In any group project (even at the university level), there's always going to be one or two students who do all of the work and at least one who doesn't have a clue but still gets credit because of the work of their partners. Yes, in real science, work is done in a more collaborative fashion, but not in the way educators imagine. You might have a team that's working on the same big problem, but each individual has a piece of the problem to work on. Then the group meets regularly to discuss the pieces of the research to determine how to proceed next. (Forgive me for the oversimplification.) Most of the hands-on work in many of the scientific fields is still done individually. For example, if a computer code needs to be written, one person will do most of the work, and will seek out advice from peers and mentors as needed. But, science groups don't have one person who records the experimental work, one person who gets the supplies, and two people who manipulate the supplies to execute the experiment. There's nothing wrong with that model in the classroom, but it isn't "how real scientists do science". The collaborative nature of science is usually much more subtle. In many areas of research, there are only a few people in the world working on a given problem. On the one hand, you would like to "talk shop" with those other people to see if you can help each other with your experiments. On the other hand, you're competing with those same people for grants, intellectual property rights, and first to publish. So, you can't share too much with other scientists because it may impact your own group's ability to continue their research. This is especially true in the corporate world, where first to patent and first to manufacture a product can make the difference between making a profit from the work or not even releasing the product if you have no competitive advantage. http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/05/ff_foundcontest_sciencefairs/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=twitterclickthru&goback=%2Egde_2332780_member_116354725


'via Blog this'

Following the corpse at the Missouri Botanical Garden

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150820825556134&set=a.119138616133.102533.21472821133&type=1

The 'Corpse' flower....about to bloom at the Missouri Botanical Garden

(6) Wall Photos
This is such an unusual plant. It only blooms once every few years...and only one giant flower. When the flower opens, it emits a terrible smell. Thus the common name of corpse flower.

A fun one to share with students...if you dare!

BBC Nature - Dinosaur gases 'warmed the Earth':

I would have loved to have been in the room when the researchers came up with the idea of calculating how much gas a dinosaur would produce in a given day. Gas produced by the body isn't exactly something we humans like to think about, let alone talk about or study. When the first research was presented about how much methane was being produced by cows all over the world, it was the subject of many jokes. This study leads to a curious hypothesis that a known warming period in climatology history may have been due to dinosaur gas production. I can imagine a joke coming from this research too...maybe something like "how many Ford trucks does it take to produce as much gas as one dinosaur?"

This is a great example of really thinking outside the box in science.

'via Blog this'

Crafty cuteness...with lots of sciencey possibilities

It's gonna be a rainy school holiday-crafty idea with kids #1

Love this! Too bad I don't have any kids to make one with. I may just need to make one for myself.  8:)

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: Fun resource about plants updated monthly

Carol of May Dream Gardens blog hosts a monthly feature for other garden bloggers to post what's blooming in their gardens. On the 15th of each month (even the cold winter months), bloggers from around the world post links to their blogs on the May Dream Gardens website. The Garden Bloggers Bloom Day has attracted an international following, so there's always something in bloom no matter the time of year. The last two months have been particularly interesting for some of the U.S. bloggers because plants are blooming much sooner than normal. Carol and many of the other gardeners keep meticulous notes each year about many aspects of their garden: what they've planted (Latin names, not the common names), how well the plants are doing, what fertilizers they use, weather conditions, etc. So, it's very easy for them to compare their results in the garden across multiple years. Blogging gardeners are a great example of amateur scientists who use the tools of science  in their hobby.

I highly recommend that you check out Carol's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day as well as the rest of her website. She is quite humorous and has created garden characters to share some of the goings-on in her garden that might appeal to children.

http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/search/label/garden%20bloggers%20bloom%20day

Blue jean chemistry becoming Green chemistry

Imagine thinking that you think you can find a way to improve a a chemical reaction that's been used for over 100 years and completely changed the accessibility of colorful clothing to the masses. Before a method was created to synthesize dyes, only the wealthy could afford things made from dyes, particularly blue and purple. It had to be extracted

Related websites:
Wiki about indigo dye; includes structure of indigo
Improving a 100 year old chemical process

A perfect comic to accompany yesterday's Easter egg post

FoxTrot by Bill Amend Foxtrot is a great comic for lovers of science.  I miss when it was a daily strip. :( The link leads you to the main FoxTrot site. You'll have to look for April 8, 2012.

An Easter activity that you could connect with pH and indicators

Dyeing Easter Eggs the Natural Way | Food & Think

Food dyes can be used to explore the effect of pH on the color of the dyes. Because most food dyes can also behave as indicators, it would be easy to set up an experiment to determine why egg dyeing instructions always recommend that you add vinegar to the water. You could make the egg dye at three different pHs. 1. Water plus vinegar  2.  just water  3.  water with something basic that can be easily handled, such as sodium bicarbonate 

Questions to ask:
Are the dyes different depending on the pH?
Are some food dyes more sensitive to pH?
Which dyes have the most intense color?
Could the vinegar serve more than one purpose when dyeing eggs? Hint: Egg shells are made of calcium carbonate. How does an acid react with calcium carbonate?

The best chat I have seen that shows the colors of foods at different pHs (thereby, acting as indicators) is Chemical Demonstrations, vol. 3 (the green one) by Shakhishiri. It's a great volume but a bit pricy for most teachers.

Web resources
Here's a free website that has descriptions of some of the food indicators. http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/acidbase/faq/household-indicators.shtml

Video clip that shows food indicators in use
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/food-as-an-indicator-of-ph/122.html

Shakhishiri's website of chemistry resources
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/

Geek, Nerd, or Dork?

Have you ever had a debate with your friends over which is better: a geek or a nerd? Well, I have, and usually we all agree that a geek is someone who is passionate about one or more subjects, usually science, engineering, math, computers, and all of the things that stereotypically go with those, like comic books, games, reading (especially sci fi), etc. Geek friends often fit in well at Gen Con, or they at least know people who would blend in with the Gen Con crowd. I think that nerds can be geeks with the added social ineptness. Nerds would be extremely awkward in a crowd or a party. So, I've never been offended by being grouped with other geeks, but I've never been called a nerd, and I think that's a good thing! About a year ago there was a test floating around on Facebook to determine your level of geekiness, and I only scored a 4 out of 10! I was surprised and a bit bummed. My score was really hurt by me not liking board & role playing games or reading sci fi. But I'm totally a science geek, and I don't think anyone would disagree with that. :P

So, I thought it was funny to find this Venn diagram of difference between nerd, dork, and geek, courtesy of Great White Snark. I've never put "dork" even remotely in the same category as nerd and geek, but the diagram shows what I've always articulated but never thought to put in pictures. (I imagine pictures in my head a lot for data relationships, but I'm lousy about putting those images to paper. It's something I'm working on. See Dan Roam's site for an interesting study of using simple pictures (yes, even stick people!) to illustrate challenging topics Calling all visual thinkers: The Napkin Academy is here!.

Since Geek Chic seems to be popular right now (Thank you, Big Bang Theory.), I can finally wear all of my dorky science shirts out in public and not get looked at like a total nut. I've even gotten compliments on a few of them. Weird, right?

So, what do you think? Is there a difference between a nerd and a geek? Which would you rather be? Do you have a story to share about a particularly geeky moment in your life?

Have you heard all of the buzz about Rare-Earth Elements?

Chemical & Engineering News Digital Edition - April 2, 2012

C&E News had a nice story describing the economic battle between China and the rest of the world, especially the US, over the cost and availability of the "rare-earth" elements. In the past, the US mined these elements here, but China strategically decided to find ways to mine these elements at such a low cost that other countries could not compete. It's becoming a major policy issue between the US and China. NPR also did a story recently about how we got into this crisis and why these elements are so important to modern manufacturing. 

Click here to go to the issue.

If you cannot click on the links, paste this link into a browser:

http://www.cendigital.org/cendigital/20120402/?pg=16&pm=2&u1=friend&sub_id=BzqVvXut4pW5r

Using video games to teach science concepts

Melanie Stegman was another speaker at tonight's Science Rocks! event at the National Science Teachers Conference in Indianapolis. Melanie uses computers to help educate people about molecular science, especially the immune system. She has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics, biochemistry, and microbiology.

She is evaluating Immune Attack, a video game where the player navigates a nanobot through blood vessels and connective tissue to help a ill patient with a non-functional immune system. The game is designed to help teach people about the immune system in a fun, interactive format.

You can try out Immune Attack yourself at

http://www.fas.org/immuneattack/

Grand Hank does science his way

Grand Hank was a performer at the Science Rocks! event. I had never heard of him before, so I didn't know what to expect. He's quite an impressive science entertainer. The children in the audience loved him! He also has a great story about overcoming challenges to pursue higher education. And he does science raps! Really well! A lot of educators try to incorporate rap into lessons, but he was incredibly effective and engaging. Check out his website to learn more.

NSTA mtg: Day 1 Science Rocks!

Got to participate in breaking the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest group of people doing a science experiment at the same time. Over 700 people learned about polymers while experimenting with instant snow. Even though I've played with instant snow before, I learned something new about it today...when you add water to it, the polymer releases heat....this is probably best described as the heat of hydration. It's not a true textbook chemical reaction because the water is just trapped in the polymer structure. If you let the instant snow sit out for a while, the water will slowly evaporate. The evaporation causes the instant snow to become cool. If you let it sit out long enough, the instant snow will dry out and become a fine powder like it was before you added the water. So, the hydration process is reversible.

The message for the night was Science Rocks!, but I think the true message was "Anyone can be a scientist!" (the anthem that we sang at the end). They had an excellent panel of speakers, although it might have been better to have them as a separate event. I would have loved to learn more about the accomplished panel. After all, it's not every day that you have two astronauts, a mathematician, a race car driver, and a biochemist on the same stage, along with an excellent science entertainer and a highly regarded science journalist. Here's a link to a list of the speakers.

http://www.nsta.org/conferences/2012ind/sciencerocks.aspx

Check out my list of interesting science news stories and websites

I can't believe I forgot to post this information to my blog. Since December, I've been working on consolidating all of my science and science education website links onto an account on Delicious. I've also been posting current stories in science that I think might be particularly interesting to science teachers. When I have a chance, I include some comments about what drew me to the stories. I have over 1000 websites and current event stories posted. You can view my list, search for specific topics by the tags I've assigned, and even subscribe to receive an email whenever I add new content.

Here's the link to my Delicious page.
http://www.delicious.com/everydayscience

Sometimes my commentary for a story could really be its own blog post, but I forget to post it here. So, check out my Delicious page!

Coke and Mentos (playlist)

This is a link to my unedited Code and Mentos experiments that I tried out at home. I need to write down all of the experiments I did. I wanted to illustrate how a scientist goes about the process of investigation and modifications while experimenting, so I hope I accomplished that.

Sorry about my poor voice and camera work. This was one of my first attempts to use my video camera. I really need a tripod.

('http://www.youtube.com/p/FF2812C47F0E3553?version=3&hl=en_US',)