Archive for the 'science education' Category

The Lives Of The Stars

Published
by
Clifford
on October 17, 2006
in Los Angeles, astronomy, galaxies, planets, science, science and society and science education
. 5 Comments

Well, I’m back from the visit to the preview of the Griffith Observatory that I mentioned to you I was going to. It was a rather good visit. They organised it well, and -boy!- have they done a great job on the restorations! I’ll try and assemble the several pictures that I took into some sort of narrative for you, and report soon. While you wait, here’s one of my favourites:

main sequence exhibit

This is particularly poignant, in my opinion. The children are looking at the lovely Continue reading ‘The Lives Of The Stars’

Not In Tower Records

Published
by
Clifford
on October 16, 2006
in art, entertainment, science and science education
. 8 Comments

Well, this arrived the other day:

annenberg dvd1 annenberg dvd2

It’s a rather highly-produced DVD of the “Uncertainty” event from August 31st event, produced by the people at the Annenberg School of Communication. (See description and discussion in this previous post.) Gosh. Well, since this might be my only appearance on a DVD of such vast distribution (i.e., I expect it was in a number of other mailboxes around campus), I imagine I should be breaking open a bottle of the bubbly. But instead, having just got back from the airport, I’ve got to go play catchup, such as introducing the colloquium speaker(s) in a few minutes.

Rather than wait for it to appear in a store near you, or on Amazon (a very long wait), if you are interested in seeing the event, I’ve heard that there is working video at this link. Apparently (I have not seen it) the sound is poor for the first several minutes, and then it picks up.

-cvj

Happy Flipping Memories

Published
by
Clifford
on October 13, 2006
in personal and science education
. 5 Comments

A couple of magazines showed up in the post the other day, unlooked for (as JRR would write). Spent a short (unfortunately) time lying on my bed in the sun flipping through them, and it reminded me of my youth. Do you remember something similar? You’d go out and get that next issue of that magazine you’d been waiting for and you’d just drink it all up in a general way for a while, lying on your stomach, legs kicking in the air: The smell of the pages, the glossy pictures and other juicy tidbits of writing and other stuff to digest more fully later on….

flipping magazines

For me, when I was young it was mostly magazines about music, electronics, computers, science, photography… some crochet, macrame, and knitting (yeah, I know - I’ll tell you more later), and of course lots of comics (these latter I did not browse first… I would read Continue reading ‘Happy Flipping Memories’

Griffith Announces Opening

Published
by
Clifford
on October 5, 2006
in Los Angeles, astronomy, science, science and society and science education
. 1 Comment

Griffith ObservatoryYesterday, I forgot to point you to the press release from the observatory itself. There, you will find more information about the opening, on November 3rd, and about how to actually get there. They are forbidding access to the parking lot, and so you either take a shuttle bus, or you walk or cycle. It is depressing to me that people are already complaining about having to walk up a small hill from the picnic sites below (people who walk up are generically referred to as “hikers”, in the press release, which would give someone the impression that you need special equipment or something just to walk up the hill. Sigh.).

Anyway, some chatter from the press release. Let’s start out with 4th District Councilmember, Tom LaBonge, a veritable Paul Dirac of understatement and wall-flower-hood:

“Griffith Observatory is one of the best public spaces in the world if not the universe…”

Oh yes. Good ol’ Tom. He makes statements like this all the time. How can you not Continue reading ‘Griffith Announces Opening’

SEA On Colbert Report

Published
by
Clifford
on October 3, 2006
in entertainment, science, science and society, science education and science in the media
. 1 Comment

Believe it or not, the SEA (Scientists and Engineers for America), about which I blogged recently, was on the Colbert Report last night! Video here.

SEA on Colbert Report

What a way to bring global attention to a new organisation about science!

-cvj

(Via SEA’s blog.)

Observing the Observatory

Published
by
Clifford
on October 3, 2006
in Los Angeles, architecture, science, science and society and science education
. 2 Comments

griffith observatoryWell, here’s a bit of news. For one reason or another, I have been invited to a preview, later this month, of the soon-to-be-reopened Griffith Observatory, and so will get to see it before it opens to the very general public. (Library photos, by E. C. Krupp, by the way.)

griffith observatoryI will try my best to bring you a full report on the splendiforous contents… assuming they have not all been replaced by movie memorabilia, or some other desecration. (I’ll try very hard to not play the role of the obnoxious scientist, and so won’t yell “where the hell is the science!?” at awkward moments - I hope. I’ll try not to ask awkward questions at all. In fact I will just try to say very little in the way of contrarian remarks, since I’m an invited guest and should be polite. Actually, it’s best I don’t say anything at all.)

I am an optimist, and so despite recent news, I remain excited.

[Update: The post on the visit is here.]

-cvj

Looking for a SEA Change?

Published
by
Clifford
on October 1, 2006
in energy, energy policy, environment, politics, science and society, science education and science in the media
. 13 Comments

SEA BannerI’ve previously mentioned examples of the manipulation or suppression of scientific information by organisations such as the Bush Administration. See for example a recent post on hurricanes and global warming. Various scientists have made it their business to speak out against these types of wrongs, either as individuals in the line of fire, as individuals noticing it in the news and blogging about it to as many as care to read, and as part of organisations here and abroad.

Well I’d like to point out a new organisation I heard about* called “Scientists and Engineers for America”, and I am pleased to share with you that their website says:

…a group of scientists and concerned citizens launch a new organization, Scientists and Engineers for America, dedicated to electing public officials who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy.

The principal role of the science and technology community is to advance human understanding. But there are times when this is not enough. Scientists and engineers have a right, indeed an obligation, to enter the political debate when the nation’s leaders systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interests ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research.

We ask every American who values scientific integrity in decision-making to join us in endorsing a basic Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers. Together we will elect new leadership beginning in 2006, and we will continue to work to elect reasonable leadership in federal, state and local elections for years to come.

America needs your help. Will you join us?

(Personally, I don’t see why it is necessary to be so America-centric about it, but there you have it. It’s their choice, of course.) Their Bill of Rights is linked here. Here are the points they list: Continue reading ‘Looking for a SEA Change?’

Acting Up At Griffith Observatory

Published
by
Clifford
on October 1, 2006
in Los Angeles, astronomy, entertainment, science, science and society and science education
. 13 Comments

griffiths observatory roofAs mentioned before, I am really excited about the re-opening of the Griffith Park Observatory. See this earlier post. [Update: See post about my viisit here.]


[Further Update: After reading the rest of the post, be sure to read the comments (starting here) for some commentary on the planetarium show since it was launched.]


[Yet another update: The discussion has continued to another post, with more contributions from various people concerned with the shows and the observatory, past and present. Link here.]

I’d noticed (on their site) the employment notice:

The Observatory will complete its four year renovation and expansion project in the Fall of 2006, with improvements including the new 200 seat Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon theater, doubling of the exhibit space to house more than 60 new and exciting exhibits, and new sound, lighting, interior dome and digital laser projection technology in the refurbished Samuel Oschin Planetarium theater. Employment opportunities will continue to increase as we approach our reopening date.

… and the job decriptions for the Museum Guide:

Job Qualifications
12 semester units or 18 quarter units in a recognized college or university in Architecture, History, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy, Zoology or related field. Six months experience working in the above fields may be substituted for education.

Job Description
Demonstrate and explain exhibits relating to astronomy and related sciences. Answer questions related to the observatory, astronomy and related sciences. May be asked to safeguard exhibits, and open or close
facility.

and thought it was ok (”may be substituted for education” was a bit worrying, but I think I know what they really meant), and assumed that the guides would be supplementary to more experienced staff who know more about the actual science, etc.

It seems I was wrong. A newspaper from the neighbourhood that the observatory is in, the Los Feliz Ledger, has a story (by Kimberly Gomez) entitled “Actors Get The Call Over Astronomers”. It seems that:

The traditional planetarium lecturers, who in the past led hour-long talks in the planetarium at Griffith Observatory, are upset that when the observatory re-opens this fall, they will be out of a job. According to four past lecturers, their position which traditionally required an education in astronomy, has been changed.

Continuing… Continue reading ‘Acting Up At Griffith Observatory’

The Science, Art, and Mathematics of Origami

Published
by
Clifford
on September 9, 2006
in Los Angeles, art, mathematics, science and science education
. 4 Comments

origami dancing craneOne of my hobbies for a while when I was a young ‘un was origami. It was swiftly overtaken by other arts and crafts, and these were hobbies long before I started taking apart cameras and radios, and the like, to see how they worked, and collecting pondwater and pressing leaves and…

In retrospect, I think it might be obvious that (obstacles aside) I had a good chance of becoming a theoretical physicist. A lot of those arts and crafts hobbies were all about intricate patterns of one sort or another. I loved that stuff, although I did not think of it as mathematics… just a nice pattern. And I was drawn to playing with and creating those patterns. Some of them are amazing, as you know from staring at whatever your mum or grandmother is working on right now. Or perhaps you. I’ll tell you about more of that some other time. Let’s get back dancing crane pattern to origami. I stumbled upon (via NPR) an excellent website, that of Robert J. Lang. It is quite wonderful. The site tells you about Lang’s work, and shows you a ton of it. But the best thing of all is that it tells you about the Art, Science and Mathematics of it all together. The engineering applications of origami are growing as well. These include developing the best way of folding airbags for ready deployment, and the problem of how to fold up a giant array of solar panels on a spacecraft so that they can be successfully unfolded and put into use once the craft gets into space.

Imagine also the problem in a scientific context of how to design arrays of mirrors with Continue reading ‘The Science, Art, and Mathematics of Origami’

I Can Retire Now…

Published
by
Clifford
on September 6, 2006
in art, entertainment, science and science education
. 2 Comments

kc cole and cv johnson … since on Friday, our event of Thursday night, along with a photo of KC and myself in action, made the front page …of the campus newspaper, the Daily Trojan! This is a big deal, you see. Front page spots for faculty in the student newspaper…. and colour photos to boot. Such treatment is for the football team almost exclusively, I was led to believe.

Story, by Laura Simurda, is here.

Photo by Joseph Zuniga of the DT. (Heh… if you look closely you can see that I forgot to take off my cycle-clips. I wear them all the time as it is the best place to keep them, when on campus…. also, think of it as a sort of silent protest against excessive car use.)

-cvj

(Thanks Krzysztof)

Not the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Published
by
Clifford
on September 5, 2006
in fun, science and science education
. 4 Comments

How to pass a few minutes outside on a very hot day? Do a demo in front of 90 students when you’re not sure of your equipment, of course! This was in the cause of demontrating Newton’s Laws of Motion in my Physics 100 class today. I’m actually moving backwards at a good speed in this shot.

jet propel 3

jet propel 2jet propel 1Fun was had by all, and I got my first job-related injury from not realizing that the metal nozzle spins around and whacks your trigger hand hard if you don’t hold it…. Would have got better acceleration if I’d pointed it straight forward, but my hand was now injured a bit at that point, so I did what I could…. All’s well that ends well!

-cvj

(Thanks for taking the pictures, Tameem.)

Soon, Very Soon

Published
by
Clifford
on September 4, 2006
in Los Angeles, architecture and science education
. 0 Comments

griffith park observatory

I’ve been waiting for three years… another six weeks or so to go… It’s going to be great   !

-cvj

The Uncertainty Event

Published
by
Clifford
on September 1, 2006
in art, entertainment, science and science education
. 23 Comments

Well, we had a full house. Really full. The auditorium at Annenberg has a seat capacity of 220, and all of those were in use, with people standing at the sides and sitting on the floor. In view of the fact that I was prepared to live with the fact that only ten or fifteen people might show up, this was a pleasant bonus. I think it helped that we were the first of the events of the Visions and Voices program (not counting the big gala opening last week), a fact that I did not take note of until I began to notice several of USC’s big cheeses milling around. This is a manifestation of the (relatively new) Provost’s vision, and so why would they not be there?

The audience was exactly what I’d dreamed of -or more appropriately, what the Provost had conjured up when he pitched the Arts and Humanities Initiative to all of us (see my earlier posts for extracts of his speech, here and here)- there were students and faculty from from an astonishing cross-section of the numerous schools, departments and programs that one can encounter by tracing a random 20 minute path through the campus on foot. I’m lucky enough to know a lot of these people, so it was a pleasure to look into the audience and see faculty, students and other friends from from Physics and Astronomy sitting next to faculty, students and other friends I know from the music school; and behind friends from the English department; right across from friends from political science who in turn were near students and faculty from the school of theatre, of cinema-television, etc. It was rather like happens when you invite friends from lots of different cicles to all come together to meet each other at a dinner party at your house. You’re excited since you’ve always wondered what it would be like to bring these people together, but you don’t know how it is going to turn out….but you’re sure it will be interesting. And maybe that’s enough to make it worthwhile.

It was worthwhile. We started off much closer to the appointed time than one can reasonably expect for any such large event. We had the Executive Vice Provost Barry Glassner deliver some introductory remarks, and then he handed over to Michael Parks, the Director of the Annenberg School of Journalism, who welcomed everyone to the Annenberg School and who in turn introduced KC Cole. He introduced her by recalling what he called a “typical KC Cole moment” back when he was her employer Continue reading ‘The Uncertainty Event’

Reminder of Uncertainty

Published
by
Clifford
on August 31, 2006
in academia, art, entertainment, science and science education
. 3 Comments

This is a reminder of today’s event here at the USC campus. I’ve no idea what is going to happen. Uncertain, I suppose I should say. That’s the fun of it…. we’ll just see what serendipity brings.

To kick off the events, I’m going to show that lovely clip from one of my favourite Coen brothers movies, “The Man Who Wasn’t There”, where the fancy lawyer from out of town, Freddie Riedenschneider, (played wonderfully by Tony Shalhoub) all of a sudden does this long speech about the Uncertainty Principle. I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it…. - it is rather overstated by the end of the scene, but as a piece of drama, it is excellent. Have you seen it? If not, get it. It’s an excellent movie all around.

Anyway, for more information on the event, see earlier post here. See poster below (large pdf here). Come back here for more discussion, or just give your impressions of the event!

uncertainty at USC poster

-cvj

Spinach Blogging

Published
by
Clifford
on August 24, 2006
in astronomy, dark matter, planets, science, science education and science in the media
. 8 Comments

I learned a new term from a producer at a television studio the other day (in a context I do not know if I’m allowed to blog about yet): “Spinach TV”. I love it. This is a term expressing the idea of television programming that is supposed to be “good for you” since it is educational in some way. Some of us are doing this sort of thing in the blogging world, for better or worse. See my about page.

With that in mind, I’d like to offer some words about this week’s science coverage of the two big Astronomy/Astrophysics stories. I’ve heard the issue raised a number of times today (including by my colleague Sean over on CV) that it is somehow to be thought of as a bad thing that there’s more coverage in the press of the Pluto demotion than there is of the new results giving new direct evidence of Dark Matter. The former is supposed to be all about the politics of science while the latter is supposed to be covered more since it is a profound new result.

With all due respect to my friends and colleagues who have expressed that opinion, I would say that such a view is somewhat short-sighted and has more than a whiff of elitism about it. They’re just missing the big picture. I completely agree that the Dark Matter result is vastly more important new science than the simple fact of Pluto’s demotion, but from the perspective of science education, the value of the Pluto coverage is immensely important, and maybe at least as important as the Dark Matter coverage. I can think of several reasons, and here are some:

Continue reading ‘Spinach Blogging’

Bleep Bleep Yet Again

Published
by
Clifford
on August 24, 2006
in science education and science in the media
. 8 Comments

If, like I am, you’re tired of people getting ensnared by the nonsense in the “What the Bleep…” movie, and asking you to explain it….(I scared myself just now by looking at the technorati tags for and …yikes)… please please help out Jennifer Saylor, a blogger who is a freelance writer with a passion for science. She wrote a post about the movie recently, which you can read here. She let me (and my colleagues over on CV) know about it, and -more importantly- let us know that she’d like to do something more than just blog about it expressing her annoyance. Let me reproduce some of her email:

Continue reading ‘Bleep Bleep Yet Again’

Uncertainty

Published
by
Clifford
on August 20, 2006
in academia, art, entertainment, science, science education and work
. 2 Comments

Below (nearer the end of this post) is the description of the “Uncertainty” event (Thursday 31st August, 7:00pm, USC’s Annenberg auditorium; much more here) part of USC’s Visions and Voices program I told you about in the previous post.

These are, as I said, events that build upon the Categorically Not! series held at Santa Monica arts studios on Sundays, and about which I have blogged extensively on Cosmic Variance (see some recent descriptions here and here). The old Categorically Not! series will not stop. The Santa Monica series will continue, but there will be some gaps to accommodate the USC events. We hope that the regular Santa Monica crowd will make the short trip across the city to USC on those nights. For more information on all Categorically Not! - type events, visit the Categorically Not! website.

We will start on the USC campus -in the Visions and Voices program- with Uncertainty, and we will do this theme twice this semester. We did this theme before, actually (we had K.C. Cole, Jonathan Kirsch, and Julia Sweeney) and it was very successful. We were planning to redo this first event with the same presenters, but at the time of planning, Julia (who did extracts from her monologue/show “Letting Go of God” (which you must see if it comes to a theatre anywhere near you)) was thinking of leaving LA for a bit -nooooo!- to go away for a year to New York to do her show there. So we modified things and added a different component - from actress Chloe Webb instead (which will no doubt also be thought-provoking, entertaining, and funny …see below). (I’ve since heard from Julia that her plans have changed and she’ll be staying in LA -hurrah!- and so I’m already thinking of some ways of collaborating with her on arts-meets-science related projects in the near future, which I’ll probably tell you about - as soon as there is something to tell.)

Why redo the theme? Why twice? What other themes will we do there? Have a read of the Science and Serendipity blurb at this link to get an idea of what we had in mind. An extract:

Science, Serendipity and the Search for Truth puts science on stage in an informal series of conversations and performances alongside music, theater, journalism, religion, film, dance and other disciplines to see what serendipitous connections might bubble up. The informality of the presentations and discussions will encourage intellectual risk-taking–both on the part of the presenters and the audience. People will feel free to “play” with ideas in any way they like–falling on their faces if need be, rather than bending over backwards to please some arbitrary convention. Nothing will be rigged, staged, hyped or in any way polished and sanitized or overly practiced. Because of this, we have reason to believe that real discoveries can be made.

“Uncertainty” is just an excellent theme for this, and we’ll use it this Fall semester. “Point of View” is also an excellent theme, and we’ll use that in the Spring Semester. We did that latter theme before too. We’ll get a chance to revisit both with performances and presentations similar to the ones done before, and then we and the participants will look at themes all over again with a fresh set of performances and presentations, having had time to discuss everything over the intervening weeks (maybe on this blog if you’re game?). It should be fun and instructive, I hope you agree.

Here is the blurb for the first Uncertainty event:
Continue reading ‘Uncertainty’

Visions and Voices

Published
by
Clifford
on August 20, 2006
in academia, art, entertainment, science, science education, science in drama and work
. 0 Comments

This year, there’s going to be even more to do on the USC campus to broaden your mind, and several events which link USC with off campus venues such as theatres, museums, and performing arts centers. The (then) new Provost, Max Nikias, announced his “Arts and Humanities Initiative” in his installation speech last year, where he reminded us of USC’s core values and then said:

These core values represent USC at its very best. They form its foundation and drive every aspect of President Sample’s creative vision for our future. And so we must pointedly ask: how can the university incorporate the rigorous exploration of these values into each student’s experience at USC, regardless of discipline? I believe we should turn to the arts and humanities. These disciplines fully capture the values of the university and provide students with an outstanding opportunity to examine their own relationship to these values on a truly personal level. The arts and humanities bring these values to life- illuminating their complexities and nuances…

and that this series is intended to:

affirm what is most essential and most enduring within the human spirit.

He then invited faculty to write letters of intent (and later, proposals) describing programs that they might want to see (and help make) happen on campus. In collaboration with other colleagues, I put in three. Actually, as I type, I recall that I blogged about this last year in my “Three Proposals of Marriage” post.

Tara McPherson, KC, and cvjWell, one of them was selected! When a campus news story was being prepared to announce it, somehow the Annenberg School’s K.C. Cole, the Cinema-Television School’s Tara McPherson (who chaired the selection committee) and myself were chosen to be the poster children of the event. This explains the purpose of the photo shoot, about which I blogged some time ago at this link. We had some fun with it, you might recall. (Official photo they used is to the right; contrast, if you will, with the one I showed back then.)

You can find a lot about the events from the news story that Diane Krieger wrote, linked here. Here are all the events (not all the descriptions are totally accurate, including the one of our event):
Continue reading ‘Visions and Voices’

Hard To Avoid

Published
by
Clifford
on August 14, 2006
in academia, science, science education and string theory
. 5 Comments

Well, I have to face up to it. There’s been this embarrassing thing all around town here in Aspen that I have not told you about, but I have to get it done this week. Everywhere you go around town -and I mean everywhere- there are little piles or pinboards of free flyers telling you what things there are to do in Aspen this Summer, along with other information about bus routes, timetables, etc. So you’ll see things for the Summer Films, the Theatre series, the Music Festival, the Music School, the talks going on at the Aspen Institute, and…. the Summer Public Physics Lectures at the Aspen Center for Physics. I’m pleased that the latter gets such wide distribution, since…. well you know how I feel about getting more Science out to the Public. But here’s the embarrassing bit:

flyer at large

closeup of flyerI’m giving one of the Public lectures this Summer, and they decided to use an image of me as the cover of the flyer! So everywhere I go, there I am smiling back at me, holding up some strings. (Closeup on right, if you click.) It is actually quite an honour to be chosen to give such a talk, and more so that they wanted to use my photo for the series this year. Of course they got my agreement before using the photo, but it is still a shock to see it all over the town, but a bit embarrassing when asked about it by my colleagues! (I admit that am very pleased -given my passions in this area- to be alongside useful information about public transport. I like that a lot somehow….Perhaps I could have supplied them with a picture of me with the Brompton.)

The image they used, which is by the excellent photographer Phil Channing, has haunted me for years since it pops up to the front page of the USC website at least once a day -as part of a thing they do where they feature their faculty on the front page- which is always a shock when I need to go there for something. I have to explain to people from time to time that I am not always on the site and that I am not the face of USC. (You know, like Susan Sarandon and Halle Berry for Revlon, or Whoever-it-is-now for Maybelline, or Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz for L’Oreal… although if USC wanted to pay me their level of salary to do so, I’d be pleased with that… I could do the theoretical physicist’s equivalent of a supermodel swoop of the hair (write a long equation with brightly coloured chalk maybe) and say, in an annoying way, “Because I’m worth it”.) To be fair, the photo does a good job, since it gets people asking questions about what that thing is I’m holding up, and why.

(The backstory there is that the USC people in charge of the website project asked some of us to come to a photo shoot, and Continue reading ‘Hard To Avoid’

Kids and Chemistry

Published
by
Clifford
on August 11, 2006
in fun and science education
. 4 Comments

I’ve no idea what they were doing (I’ll try to find out and let you know), since I was at the concert, but it sure looked liked they were having fun out there in the Wednesday kids’ science picnic at the ACP:

kids science picnic

Two weeks ago, apparently they had the “Physics of Superheroes” author, James Kakalios, visiting for the picnic. I blogged about that book a while ago, at this link.

(Incidentally, I’m puzzled as to why a choice has to be made for the children: Go to the kids’ science picnic, or go listen to classical music….. It would be nice for a child to be able to go to both, but no scheduling is perfect, I suppose.)

-cvj

More Future Scientists Revealed!

Published
by
Clifford
on July 28, 2006
in science and science education
. 10 Comments

Just like last year, I can reveal to you several pictures of scientists of the now and of the future:

Marie E. Nielson

That’s Marie E. Nielson (left), in grade 8, talking about her mathematics project on experiments with perfect numbers. More here.

The California State Science fair took place again this year at the California Science Center, across the street from USC. I was a judge last year, which is such fun. Please consider getting involved in your local science fair; see my description here, and here is an extract:

The judges come from all sorts of backgrounds, academic and industrial, and this brings its characters, [...]

By about 8:15am you’ve forgotten the initial thoughts and feelings of dread and you realize that it’s just a great thing to be doing! Why? There are hundreds and hundreds of kids wide-eyed with enthusiasm about Science!!! These are the ones who’ve done well in their regional fairs, and now they’ve come to the Big City. They’re all over the place and you can feel their excitement and relish the taste of it because you remember what it was like to go to your first Big Thing and find that there are other kids just like you. You remember what it was like to go up to the Big Scary City for the first time. You remember what it was like to have Someone take an Interest in some Thing that you’ve been devoting your life to for the last year. There are kids with those feelings written all over their faces all around you.

This year I was unable to do so due to a trip across the Atlantic concerning the birth of my sister’s son (details of the london trip here, here, here and here; Last link has a fun trip to Harrods and to the Science Museum). But my USC colleague Chris Gould -the chief organisational engine behind the fair- has prepared hundreds of photographs again, and you can go and have a look here, and see some of the project descriptions also.

Here is the marvellous display of the project of Victoria Hutchins (grade 6), from Monterey, about using planetary observations to determine that the planets orbit the sun and not the earth:

display of the project of Victoria Hutchins

She built her telescope, and understood the role of the phases and apparent size of Venus in determining that the Copernican system is a better fit of the data than that of Ptolemy. This is of course one of the classic results of Galileo. More here.

Here’s a shot of several projects from Junior Zoology: Continue reading ‘More Future Scientists Revealed!’