mathmom's blog

Recently I helped Luke's classmates make geodesic domes out of newspaper, using this website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/educator/act_geodesic_ho.html It was very satisfactory: the kids learned about the importance of measuring accurately, keeping track of progress, and how something that looks unimpressive to begin with can be actually amazing at the end.  I was even amazed ("It works!  Math works!" I exclaimed as the kids put the roofs on) and I've done it before. To give the kids something to look at, we made a sturdier but smaller dome out of straws. I used this website, which has a mix of complete, accurate directions and pictures and vague, inaccurate directions, as well as nice pictures of a chicken run geodesic dome: http://sci-toys.com/scitoys/scitoys/mathematics/dome/dome.html One important note: you actually need the following numbers of straws: 90 long (7 3/4") straws, for 6 pointed stars 50 short (6 1/2") straws, for the 5 poi...

At some point in my life, I am going to open a restaurant.  Its name will be, "Caramelized."  All the food will come out 10-20 minutes after you expect it, and will have a blackened crust, or blackened flakes (probably the onions) floating in it.  Every once in a while there will be a fire alarm and everyone will have to leave while someone opens all the doors and lets the smoke out of the kitchen.  The motto will be, "It's not burnt, it's caramelized. " Not that I have any experience with this type of cooking at all.  Sigh.

Most days we go on our merry way without being aware that we are hurtling through space at millions of miles an hour.  The other day I saw something that made me take notice. Eleanor and I were driving to school, and as we drove up the hill out of our neighborhood we saw a beautiful picture of the moon and Venus framed by the trees on either side of the street. It was beautiful, and Eleanor took a picture with her phone. A month later, we were driving at the same time, and saw the same arrangement of the moon and Venus, but it was over to the right, no longer framed perfectly by the trees.  We had moved, the moon, had moved, Venus had moved... It looks like we are on solid ground, but the earth is not actually as static as we assume.  And I'm sad because that picture won't come around again until next year... when my life will have moved to some different place as well.

The other night I was exhausted and feeling ill, so after getting Luke to bed (early, because he was sick as well) I told Amanda, "You need to put yourself to bed.  Get to bed at a reasonable hour." Eleanor piped up, "Oh, you get 'reasonable hour' privileges!"  It struck me that the choice of when to go to bed one of the stepping stones on the road to adulthood.  Giving someone that privilege is not an assumption that they will always make the right choice (ask me whether, as a supposedly responsible adult, I always go to bed at a reasonable hour!). On the other hand, it does assume that the person can judge what the reasonable hour is, take steps to get to bed at that time, and take responsibility for their mood when they make a mistake.  The final step in responsible adulting involves evaluating whether what you did worked well, and adjusting your actions so that they are more constructive in the future. Unfortunately for Amanda, I then looked at the c...

Luke helped decorate the Christmas tree today---he's home sick, but you don't always feel like lying on the couch if you are sick.  He decided that the glass ornaments should be put on the lower branches, because, "If the tree falls, they are less likely to break."  It wasn't too long ago that putting the glass ornaments on the lower branches made it more likely that they would break. He also helped check every light on a string to find the ones that were burnt out so that the string would light again.  In the course of going through the lights we found some that made the string blink.  He wondered how it worked---after all, the bitty bulb wasn't big enough to have a computer controller in it.  When he looked inside at the bulb he saw a thick strip near the filament.  "A bi-metalic strip! That's brilliant!"  He was impressed by the genius of a bi-metalic strip for the next few hours.  I wonder if that's how they really work...