A pretty good list from Wired, focusing mainly on the classics (man, I must have seen Time Bandits and The Last Starfighter at least a dozen times when I was a kid). As for the newer stuff, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the Potter films, but Miyazaki rocks.
Make 4096 noodles in a hurry
A clip from Philip Morrison’s 1987 PBS program “The Ring of Truth: Atoms” featuring chef Kin Jing Mark making noodles to demonstrate the principle of halving.
(Via BoingBoing)
Light Bot is a Flash game that works much like Lego Mindstorms, where you have to arrange a set of basic command “blocks” in order to control a robot (getting it to light up all of the blue tiles). The challenge comes as the robot must navigate increasingly complex spaces using only a limited number of programming steps. As with Mindstorms, it’s a neat way to introduce kids to some basic computer programming concepts. I particularly like the ability to create “functions” - a set of commands that is bundled into a single block and that can be re-used again and again.
Video: 2100 Barrel Paintgun
From Wired’s Gadget Lab:
MythBusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman were hired by Nvidia to demonstrate the speed differences between CPU and GPU processing. First, we see the pedestrian “CPU” in the form of a one-pixel-at-a-time paint gun. Painfully slowly, a smiley face trickles onto the canvas. Next, the “GPU”, represented by the truly awesome “2100 massively parallel barrel processors”, a huge paint gun with 2100 barrels spitting paint all at once. The results is a pixelized rendition of the Mona Lisa sprayed onto a wood-reinforced canvas. Total time elapsed? 275 ms. Watch to the very end to see the slow-mo version.
From the GeekDad blog:
Fantastic Contraption is a fun physics puzzle game where you create assorted machines to reach a goal. You can play 20 levels for free at their site. If spending money is your thing, $10 will give you access to a level editor as well as the ability to try out other players saved work. Good stuff!
Update: Greg wrote in to mention another cool physics-based game called Magic Pen. Thanks for the tip!
This is a really cool blog put together by Arthur Shapiro, a psychology professor at Bucknell University. The site is intended as a place to discuss the illusions that he and other vision scientists create in order to study visual perception. Many of the illusions are very striking, and each one is followed by a brief (but quite thorough) explanation that’s not too heavy on the jargon. It’s a really fun way to learn something about human visual processing…
From the review at Geekdad:
Originally published in 1949, Red Planet was Robert A. Heinlein’s fourth novel, and the third of his Juveniles Series for Scribner’s. Some of the other titles in the series include Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, Starman Jones, and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. Time, and the rapid march of science, have not been as kind to Red Planet as they were to some of Heinlein’s other work. This story takes place on a Mars as described at the end of the 19th Century by astronomer Percival Lowell, complete with water filled canals and semi-breathable air. Heinlein has populated this landscape with large-scale native flora and a population of Martians with their own ancient cities and culture. This novel also contains some topics which probably would not make it into young adult fiction today, including the rights of colonists to own and carry weapons.
Be that as it may, Red Planet is a great example of Golden Age Science Fiction and is a very well told adventure story. I believe it is an excellent book to share with your kids, especially young boys. For the über-geeks among us, it can also be the catalyst for a teaching moment, illustrating how far we have come in planetary science in the last six decades. Red Planet is still in print, now by Del Rey, and is available from Amazon. The most recent printings of this book contain Heinlein’s entire work (the original version was quite severely edited) which is a much better read, in my opinion, than the one released in 1949. Even with the extra pages, the book is relatively short and is suitable for even the shortest of pre-teen attention spans. Enjoy!
What strikes me as particularly cool about this book, especially given the era it was written in, is that the young heroes are guided by a strong sense of independence, intelligence and justice, in the face of an authoritarian system of government and schooling… sound familiar?
Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:
Young Mars colonist Jim Marlowe leaves his home in South Colony to attend a school at the Martian equator, and brings along his round, furry Martian friend Willis. When the friendly creature is captured and held hostage by the militaristic headmaster, Jim and his buddy Frank mount a rescue operation to save Willis—and stumble upon a terrible secret that threatens the survival of the Red Planet colonies.
I’ve become a fan of this podcast (iTunes link), which comes from the writers at HowStuffWorks.com. A couple of times a week, they talk for about five-minutes (with a great sense of humour) about a new article from the site. It’s an easy way to learn a little bit about topics that you probably never thought much about. If you find a topic particularly interesting, you can go to the site for a more detailed article and links to other resources.
Some recent topics include:
- How manufacturing water works. (iTunes link)
- How death-proof cars work. (link)
- Why does toothpaste make orange juice taste bad? (link)
- Can I Survive a Shark Attack by Gouging Out Its Eyes? (link)
- Does Gum Stay in your Stomach for Seven Years? (link)
Project: Build you own spectroscope.
A spectroscope is an instrument used to break light up into its constituent colors, like a prism does, showing the light spectrum. Why would you want to do this?
A spectroscope is a device that lets us find out what things are made of. It works by taking light and splitting it up into its component colors. Different elements make different colors when they glow. We can make objects and gasses glow by heating them up in a flame, or by passing electricity through them. The spectroscope spreads out the colors of the light, and we can identify the elements by the bright lines we see in the spectroscope. (scitoys.com)
The video above shows you how to make one out of a cardboard tube, an old CD and some card-stock. This page from scitoys also describes a few variations on home made spectroscopes using similar materials found around the house.
From MAKE magazine’s series of weekend projects, build yourself a digital microscope by taking apart a basic webcam and turning it into an ultrafine ”shadow imager”. From the introduction of the PDF:
Behind the lens of a webcam is an imager chip with thousands of tiny light sensors, each about 1/10 the diameter of a human hair. If you replace the lens with an LED light source, and place tiny objects on the imager chip, shadows will project onto the sensor creating a lensless microscopic image. You can use the webcam’s regular software to save pictures and video or stream live images to the internet. Or use the imager chip from a security camera to see a colony of live plankton on TV.
In addition to the detailed printed description of the project, there is a nice video that shows you the basic steps. I love projects like this because you (or your kids) are not only exploring the world around you, but you are actually building your own tools to do it!
Back from vacation....
Hey everyone. Hope you’re all having a fun summer. I’m back from my vacation and ready to start posting regularly again!
Cheers,
Doug.
Immune Attack is a video game designed by the Federation of American Scientists to help teach immunology concepts to students in senior level high school biology and first year university biology.
To play the game, users control a microscopic robot and navigate through a first-person 3D body, completing a series of stepwise missions to detect a bacterial infection and activate the appropriate defensive immune cells. These stepwise missions follow the actual biological process that occurs during an infection and how immune cells are stimulated to kill the bacteria.
Immune Attack is a supplemental teaching tool, designed to be used in conjunction with HS and freshman college biology textbooks.
It’s a free download (registration required). To learn more about the game see the Teacher Guide, Game Guide and System Requirements.
Ever thought your family deserves its own coat of arms? Scion has made a fun Flash tool for creating one…
HomeSchool 2.0 brings you links to computer software, hands-on projects, literature (fiction & non-fiction) and web-resources, with an emphasis on learning by *doing*.
