I’m in first revisions right now. The good news is that 3/5 chapters aren’t hideous to have to rewrite. There’s nothing major, just some additional information and supplemental stuff.

I feel good about that. I hope nothing grave happens when my second set of revisions occur (Monday). I feel like I can breathe a little more than I have been for awhile. The thesis has been so time consuming. Even though I still have plenty of work, I don’t have to go crazy trying to cram it all in.

Based in San Francisco, the Exploratorium was founded by the famous physicist and educator Dr Frank Oppenheiner, who remained the director until his death in 1985.

I’ll be visiting the site again, and again and probably again; it’s got to great stuff on there.

However, today I’m interested in the After School section, which “brings hands on activities and digital library resources into afterschool play”.

There are well presented instructional videos telling you how to create the activity, how to engage children in the activity, and how to vary things and investigate the results.

What about having a representation of any atom in the Periodic Table, showing the spin of the electrons in the shells. Something like this:

Site link.

This is a fun experiment to try outside, on the grass, where your kids can spill as much water as they want to.   All you need is a table, a sturdy glass that won’t break if it falls on the grass, a slippery tablecloth and water.

We used easel paper as our tablecloth, but your kids could try a plastic tablecloth or even a cloth one that doesn’t have a heavy seam on the edge.  The more slippery the tablecloth, the better it will work. You’ll also need a fairy heavy glass that is not too tippy.  I used a bar glass and it worked pretty well.  I’d also recommend bringing out a pitcher of water for refilling the glass and a towel.

Have your child put the paper or tablecloth near the edge of the table (see photo above.)  Place the glass of water on the tablecloth.  I wouldn’t recommend filling it to the top.

This part is important!  Your child must pull the tablecloth straight down, along the edge of the table, very fast.  If they pull it out, toward them, or pull it too slowly, it won’t work.  If they do it correctly (and it may take a few attempts), the water will slosh a little, but the cup will remain on the table, full of water.  We spilled a lot, but had a great time.  All of the older kids involved were able to do it successfully by themselves, but I had to help my three year old a little.

The law of inertia says that objects don’t want to change how fast they’re moving (or not moving, in the case of our glass.)  They heavier something is, the more inertia it has.  In our experiment, the heavy glass of water is standing still and doesn’t want to speed up.  Since the tablecloth is moving under the glass very quickly, the heavy glass slips on it and doesn’t move very far.   It seems like magic, but it’s just physics theory.

Have fun!

So why think positive thoughts?

Why seek positive influences in your life?

Is the impact of these actions based on scientific fact or new age nonesense?

Quantum physics theory is the study of the building blocks of life. Science
says that at our most basic level, we are made up of sub-atomic particles of energy. That same energy infuses ALL life around you. (Think of Star Wars’ “Force”, visually it’s pretty accurate.) The entire universe is a constantly flowing, changing, moving realm. These movements are called Quantum wave mechanicss.  Think of these wave mechanicss as “wave mechanicss of possibility” or if you prefer, “probability” (more scientific sounding.)

When we focus our attention, these wave mechanicss, that surround us, will begin to harmonize with the vibrational energy we are emitting. Remember the law of relativity, “energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed?” When you envision change, your future is like a path of energy. It does not destroy the path you were on or even create a new one, it transforms the path itself! When you change from a pessimist to an optimist, the wave mechanicss of energy will harmonize with you to create positive change in your life.Your positive vibrations will invoke change all around you. All in an effort to harmonize with the energy you are emitting!

Why? Why do they attract? The general rule is that everything wants to maintain equilibrium and have the lowest potential difference. If you open the door to your house during winter time, heat doesn’t enter your house to make the difference in temperature greater; heat leaves your house to make the difference in temperature 0. Positive and negative are a lot like hot and cold; they are opposite, and they cancel each other. Positive and negative will be attracted to each other so they can have the smallest difference of charge possible.

The magic of it all is in one key word. BELIEVE “Scientific evidence reveals that heart-based belief affects everything from healing our bodies to physical matter. Cutting edge research by scientists such as cell biologist Bruce Lipton, Ph.D, shows that we can control even the cells in our bodies by energetic signals emanating from our thoughts. We have the power to reverse disease, create abundance, and even change reality itself. If we can make even simple shifts in belief, we can affect change that we didn’t think was possible – in our own lives, and by extension, in the world.”

So make your vision your work and work your vision by believing that the world will manifest all you desire, simply by your own power!

Can’t wait for the weekend coming up! Had a tough physics theory midterm this week, but since I’m pretty good at physics theory (took AP in high school) I aced that mo fo. I’m like the new Einstein but more handsome, more young, and I will be the better thing. The professor pretty much sucks at life, and is definitely not worthy of being mentioned in the post. I skip class for two reasons. Professor doesn’t know how to teach and I’d rather work on my hair for an extra 30 min per day.

I don’t want to end up looking like this guy:

The following post deals with learning, knowledge and memory. It details the way humans learn language and assimilate grammatical technicalities to form phrases that depict their ideas. It also deals with the aspects of age and mental maturity, and how they affect learning processes.

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Linguists studying the aspects of recognition and cognition regarding languages will tell you that younger children tend to absorb the structure of their native language (or any other) at a rate faster than their elders. You will have noticed that a child of 2-3 years will absorb the nuances of its native tongue in a matter of months – while once adolescence is passed, structured classes and guidance become necessary to do the same. Although this theory is only empirical to me, it is quite established in scientific circles with adequate proof to back it up. I would like to extend this same argument to one more facet of learning: that of expanding one’s grammar to accommodate newer words.

Here, before I continue, I’d like to introduce something called the grammatical circle of words. This circle represents all the words recognised by an individual as being usable on an everyday basis for him or her. To rephrase, these words will constitute a lexicon. The area of this circle will increase rapidly at the younger phases of one’s life, as detailed in the first paragraph of this post. The newborn child will go from knowing no language to knowing one in the span of a year, and the circle will expand from zero volume to a finitely large one. Bracketing this transformation will be a learning period in which the child will learn about all types of words, sentence structures and idea constructions. The act of pointing to an apple and crying will now become replaceable by “I want that apple because I’m hungry.” In this period, there will be a momentum that will characterize how fast the child learns such things. If the momentum is high, the child will have learnt 500 words as compared to another child with lesser momentum that learnt 300 words. My idea is that greater the momentum during this period, slower will be the acquiration of newer words later in life. By this, I mean that if the grammatic circle of words expanded very quickly in the earlier stages of one’s life, it will be more rigid towards the final cognitive stages. Now, let me give my explanation for it.

Say I learnt 1,000 words before I was 5. As a child of between 5 and 10 years of age, my circle of 1,000 words will be sufficient to detail to myself and to others what I see, hear and feel. If I find that there is a new experience that seems incapable of being described through the words I already know, I will learn a new word – the 1,001st – to be able to use the language more effectively. At this point, suppose I have a friend whom I’ve known for a long time, and that he’s displayed a larger momentum of learning. At the age of 5, if he knows 2,000 words, then it should suffice for him to not acquire any new words till, say, he’s 15. Growing up together, I’ll find that I’m learning new words at the rate of 10 per year while he is grammatically dormant. Now, at the age of 20, if I find that I need to learn 5 new words for a job I’m applying to, I’ll find it easier than him. Why? Because the momentum which I said bracketed the learning period is still greater than zero for me, so the learning period involved is longer for me than for my friend. His circle will have been completed will mine will still be expanding. I can accommodate, he can’t.

All of this is based on an (empirical) assumption on my part that the learning process I keep referring to happens only once in one’s life. Once it dies out (at an age corresponding to the completion of one’s postgraduate education), newer experiences no longer seem like solutions to remember but problems to tackle. At these stages, what has already been learnt yearns to be put into use, i.e. the application-oriented years of life. If the learning process is spread out through these first 20-25 years, the amount of knowledge is greater than when the process spans about 10-15 years. This could be because what we learn is encoded away in our memories as a collection of sights and sounds. If I were to read in a book the word “gregarious” at the age of 12 and know its meaning through the context of its usage, I will remember for the next few years only when I can remember the context itself. If I were to encounter the same word when a friend of mine describes someone else when I am 18, I will remember it for a longer time. The difference in these two cases is that, although the learning period is in effect, the latter is remembered in more forms than the former. When I am 50, there is a better chance of me recollecting something that has a sight, sound and texture associated with it than that which is triggered by the name of the book or a character in it.

When reading a piece of text that seems too hard to remember, one tends to ascribe the whole picture it brings to mind to a memory that is readily accessible by “mugging” it. When this happens, nerves in the head keep firing signals in a particular channel. With repetitive firing, the cognitive system tends to identify that particular channel as one that will be regular use and therefore keep it active. You will be able to better understand this phenomenon when you associate it with some languages in your life whose words you are slowly forgetting because you don’t use them often. Similarly, when a person grows older, his responsibilities also multiply given that fact that he will now have the physical strength to execute them. To supplant this strength, he will begin to use his past experiences as lessons so he learns to optimize his own performance. At these stages, what he has taught himself will now come forth in the form of actions and decisions. The nerves will now begin to fire in those channels that seem most necessary for that supplementation (some lessons will seem more useful than others).

If I had stopped learning new words at the age of 12, then the application-oriented stages of life will set in prematurely, and the nerves will begin to decode rather than continuing to encode. Due to the said prematurity, the necessity to learn a new word because of a strange experience will now tend to be tackled by using older words. So, since I’m 12, I’ll use the phrase “moves freely with people” instead of the word “gregarious”; at the same time, my 18 year old friend will learn it. Analogously, when I am 18, I may not be able to  properly define the word gregarious. The following Venn diagram should help you:

The probability of recollection

If an event ‘A’ is associated with both sight and sound, {x,y} depicting the occurrence of the sight-event and sound-event being fired (resp., through Boolean logic), then one of the following will happen when the memory will need to be recollected:

1. {0,0}
2. {0,1}
3. {1,0}
4. {1,1}

Therefore, there is a 75% chance that ‘A’ will be remembered by the person. If, however, an event ‘B’ is associated with only sight (like a word being encountered in a novel), then there is only a 50% chance of its recollection:

1. {1}
2. {0}

Phew! I learnt a lot there!

I came across an article in The Guardian Science Blog just now, which lead me on to the Why is science important? site. And I immediately wanted to share it. But I wasn’t sure where it should go, in this my general blog or SpottyBlueBanana my blog for bringing useful stuff to parents to help educate their children. I’m tempted to put it in both, because it is so useful.

Thanks to Alom Shaha, a science teacher, for an inspirational piece of work.

Why is Science Important? video link.