“Thar’s gold in them there petri dishes !”

Are you about to remodel your home and always wanted a room like this:

Or have you been looking at the Nieman-Marcus Christmas Catalog  and  thinking about this gift for that special someone:

 

 

 

 

 

 

But then you remember you are a Science teacher and not a Hedge Fund Manager.

Take heart !  That biology degree is about to pay off.

Superman-Strength Bacteria Produce 24-Karat Gold

Sciencedaily.com Oct 2, 2012

Michigan State University researchers, building on earlier discoveries in Australia found that the  “metal-tolerant bacteria Cupriavidus metallidurans” can survive in naturally occuring but highly toxic gold chloride long enough to produce small amounts of solid gold.

ASSET staff are hard at work on a new module.

This could also make an interesting lesson when combined with  a Social Studies teacher  covering alchemy in the Dark Ages.

Just a thought.

Pierre Vernier

On this date in 1638, Pierre Vernier died.  This French mathematician, although born into the Spanish Hapsburg Empire developed the measuring system  and calipers that bear his name.  The measuring system is still used in many devices.

 

Today we live in the digital era where countless devices tells us time, temperature, length, and eight.  It is easy to forget that the invention and production of precise mechanical measuring devices was crucial to daily life for centuries.

IT’S NOT A JOKE

Remote controlled cockroaches.  Proof that scientists will go where nobody may have wanted them too.  Here’s the article from CNET:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57509894-1/eek-remote-controlled-cyborg-cockroaches-are-real/

Shake it off, then read the article.  There are some serious applications that you might want to present to your classes.  But leave some time for their re-action to subside.

Here’s a UK link with video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2199734/The-Bond-The-remote-control-cockroach-spy-future.html

Here’s a link to the science fiction movie that predicted this, 15 years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrHMBletjXg

Now here’s a new feature on the blog that we are trying out.  It’s called FRANTIC TEACHER DOWNLOAD.  For those times when you might have some unplanned time.  Click on the FTD button and you will download a PDF of a short classroom activity based on the blog post.  If readers like it, great.  If not, the famous dustbin of history awaits.

FTD cockroach

Enjoy

Hector

The Return of the Blog

Joseph Campbell wrote:

“You enter the forest
at the darkest point,
where there is no path.

Where there is a way or path,
it is someone else’s path.

You are not on your own path.

If you follow someone else’s way,
you are not going to realize
your potential.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

Of course, Joseph  Campbell never had Middle School Cafeteria duty.  Still his advice for heroes is well taken.  So the blog left on a journey in search of enlightenment.

The blog has been to see all the great thinkers:

 

Each one in turn dropped a small bon mot of wisdom on the Blog.  Finally,  penniless  but refreshed, like a teacher in the last week of August, the Blog stowed away on a tramp steamer and returned to ASSET. ( OK, technically it was a container ship carrying Snuggies for the upcoming winter.  Apparently there are no more tramp steamers.  Where’s the romance ? )

In any event, the Blog resumes.  Here you will find stories of and links to the intersection of science and history.  Hopefully you will find some ideas to use in your classes.

Check out the archives also.

If you find something useful, please tell about it in the comments so others can use it.  Also leave critiques, suggestions, and requests.  The blog will try and help wherever possible.

or if you need a snuggie ….

Hector Peabody

 

Say it ain’t so, Indy !

Archaeologists have discovered seventeen new pyramids in Egypt.

Not this kind of archaeologist:

No – SPACE ARCHAEOLOGISTS !

Using satellites and infra red imaging, a team of space archaeologists have located the new pyramids, along with 1000 tombs and 3000 heretofore undiscovered settlement, the BBC reports. The work has been pioneered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham by US Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak.  Dr. Parcak closed an era when she said “Indiana Jones is old school, we’ve moved on from Indy. Sorry, Harrison Ford.”

BBC One will broadcast the television special on May 30th.

But now that  you won’t have to waste time digging up the backyard to locate ancient cities, you may have time to come to the ASSET summer workshops at Cornell.  Check it out here.

Today in History – The Scopes Trial & Social Studies Teachers

Today in 1925, a preliminary hearing began to determine if John Scopes, a Tennessee school teacher who had been charged with violating the Butler Act, should be remanded over for trial.

The Butler Act forbade  teaching ” any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals”.

The case would present the made for Hollywood showdown between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan.

History and Science often intersect, and the ASSET Program offers a summer workshop at Cornell University  for Social Studies Teachers to explore just this  intersection.

Download this  flyer for more info :  Social Studies flyer

To apply for the workshop, download this application:2011_SS appl_long

Then come and enjoy a summer day at Cornell.

SUMMERTIME at Cornell…..

And the living is easy…cooling lake breezes …….mountain vistas……Shakespeare at the Plantations…….hiking mountain gorges…all yours…. especially if you’re a science teacher attending our world re-nowned summer workshop!

Just click on the image to enlarge.

Or visit the main website.

Then stock up on sunscreen and seersucker and send in your application.

Need more time?

They can’t make more time for you to get things done, but they may be able to make more of you.   Think Avatars.  No not the movie. However gaming technology is moving ahead so quickly, that a NYT article says the days of sending your avatar to a meeting while you go to yoga class are not far off.   So if you’re stretched for time take a look.

Remembering Yuri

On this date in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.  Gagarin flew in the Vostok 1 spacecraft, which wasn’t as a big as a respectable hot tub today.

The flight lasted 108 minutes, and unlike later flights, Gagarin left the capsule and parachuted to earth separately.

He didn’t have any Tang on the flight.

First the light, and then the dark

When the Tevatron particle accelerator  at  Fermi Labs was first built in 1983, it was the largest circular accelerator in the world.  Yesterday the facility in Batavia, Illinois announced that it had found evidence of a new particle.  This discovery described as ” the most significant in half a century”  could be the long searched for Higgs Boson particle or could possibly be evidence of a new force, to be added to the already known gravitational,electromagnetic, strong and weak forces.

Theoretical physicists were quick to add that this could be a statistical bump. Final proof will have to be done at the Large Hadron Accelerator in Europe.

Due to budget cuts, the Tevatron will go dark in September.

keep looking »