Monty and a camper at Camp Inquiry '09

Let me tell you a story about one of Monty’s songs. Monty and I met at Camp Inquiry last summer, where he taught songwriting to the campers during the day, and entertained us with his own songs around the campfire in the evenings. It is hard to say which of his songs was our favorite, since they were all so fun, but one that had everyone humming all week was his astronomy-based ditty Roundy Round. Monty couldn’t come to camp this year, so my Handsome Skeptic Husband brought along his twelve-string and played several Monty tunes each evening as we ate S’mores. On the first night of camp this year, Roundy Round was new to many of the campers, but the younger girls who had been at camp last year jumped up to dance and spin in circles as soon as it began. By the end of the week, all the campers knew the song. I was surprised, though, at the last campfire, to see kids of all ages, even teenagers, jump up and start spinning in circles to Roundy Round. In my experience, it takes a lot to get a teenager to act goofy in front of their peers, and to let go and have fun, rather than worry about how they look. But the infectious fun, and sneaky science, of a Monty song has the power to get a cool teenager to let loose and enjoy the moment.

You could wait until later in the fall to buy Monty’s new album, or you can play a part now in getting it produced. Monty is crowd-sourcing the cost to professionally produce this album by getting pledges on Kickstarter. You can listen to Episode 21 of Podcast Beyond Belief to hear Monty explain the whole project, or watch the video on the Kickstarter page.

Monty is already more than half way to his goal, but the deadline of August 22, 2010, is fast approaching. If, instead of waiting to buy the album later, you go to Kickstarter and pledge $20 now, you will receive a physical copy of the CD once it is ready, as well as two bonus MP3s. Of course you could pledge more to help him reach his goal faster. In fact, if you pledge $750 or more he’ll give you and your group a free concert. $2000 or more will even get you your very own song, based on your favorite science topic, included on the album! This is a great idea for your local skeptics group. Band together to raise $2000, and Monty will write a song specifically for your group. How awesome!

Watch this fan video my Handsome (and Multi-Talented) Skeptic Husband made for Monty’s song Roundy Round and try to picture 70 people around a campfire, singing about Copernicus, and dancing in circles. Because Monty makes science fun.

Roundy Round by Monty Harper

We’re looking for someone to take on a once-in-a-lifetime assignment: spend a Month at the Museum, to live and breathe science 24/7 for 30 days. From October 20 to November 18, 2010, this person’s mission will be to experience all the fun and education that fits in this historic 14-acre building, living here and reporting your experience to the outside world. There will be plenty of time to explore the Museum and its exhibits after hours, with access to rarely seen nooks and crannies of this 77-year-old institution.

If the contestant is successful in staying inside for one month, he or she will win $10,000 and a bunch of tech gadgets. Plus, you get to explore as much as you want! The museum has a lot of very cool things, like the only German U-Boat in the U.S., a coal mine, and the Silver Streak passenger train.

The contest information page is here. But hurry–submissions are due by August 11th.

I am interested in science and science education, and I firmly believe that a great way for kids to learn science is to give them the chance to do it themselves. There are a gazillion fun, easy science experiments your kids can do at home using everyday household items! My goal with this series is to show you, dear readers and dear podcast listeners, how to do a few, so maybe you can try them with your kids!

There are several different types of gooey science that you can make, and people call each by different names. The one we will make today is what I call oobleck, but many people call it goo, glop or quicksand goo, and it is basically cornstarch and water. (Not to be confused with silly putty or slime, which are both polymers.)

Oobleck gets its name from a Dr. Seuss book called “Bartholomew and the Oobleck“, in which the King of Didd decides he’s bored with the regular weather, so he asks his magicians to make something different. Unfortunately, what then falls from the sky is ooey, gloppy oobleck, which turns out to be the kingdom’s largest environmental disaster ever. The king asks for advice, and Bartholomew solves the crises by suggesting the king admit he made a mistake in thinking he needed to use magic to improve on nature, and to say he was sorry. This happily causes the oobleck to melt away. So, while we wait for the CEO of a certain oil company to apologize, we can make our own oobleck!

Required supplies:

Corn starch
Water
Measuring cups
Spoons or popsicle sticks to stir with
Cups or bowls
Ziplock bag or airtight container for storage

How to:

Use two parts corn starch to one part water, for example 1/2 cup of cornstarch and 1/4 cup of water.
You can add a drop or two of food coloring, if desired.
Stir until all the powder is incorporated. If the ratio is right, it is hard to stir, but flows together when you stop stirring. Small children may need help with stirring.

To observe:

With gentle treatment, oobleck acts like a liquid.
With harsh treatment, oobleck acts like a solid.
For example, if you slowly push your finger down into the oobleck, the fluid will behave like a liquid and allow your finger to enter. However, if you quickly poke the oobleck with your finger, your finger will bounce off the surface, like a solid. Also, you can quickly roll a small amount into a ball and hold it in your fingers for a moment, before it begins to run and drip.

What’s happening:

Oobleck is what is called a non-Newtonian fluid. Non-Newtonian fluids act very strangely because they do not have a constant coefficient of viscosity. Regular fluids have a constant viscosity. Viscosity is the measure of how easily a fluid flows. For example, water has a low viscosity and flows easily, whereas maple syrup has a higher viscosity, and flows less readily. Oobleck’s viscosity changes depending on what you do to it. If you apply a force to it very quickly (poke it), its viscosity increases, and it resists flow, and seems solid. If you treat it more gently, and apply smaller forces over longer amounts of time (push finger in slowly), it flows more easily. Weird!

Clean up and Storage

Oobleck cleans up easily with a damp cloth and water. It is super messy on little hands, so we limit it to the kitchen table. You can store it for a few days in an airtight container in the refrigerator to prevent mold.

For even more cornstarch fun, check out Steve Spangler’s website, where his son Jack explains how to make cornstarch monsters (shapes that dance and jump around) using oobleck and an old stereo!

The strange properties of oobleck were ridiculously demonstrated using 1000 pounds of cornstarch by the Mythbusters. Don’t try this at home!!

Until now!! The nation’s inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival is coming to Washington, DC, this fall. Picture this: on October 23 and 24, the National Mall will be covered with booths sponsored by over 500 science and engineering corporations, and each will feature a fun, hands-on, science activity for kids.

(I’m such a nerd, this sounds so freaking awesome to me!)

I’m posting about this now to give you plenty of time to plan your vacations. If a trip to DC isn’t in the cards for you, they are planning to have many satellite events. Perhaps one will occur near you, or better yet, you could host one!

I’m really hoping my family can swing a quick trip to DC that weekend, since I am so crazy for science education. Besides, my musician friend Monty Harper is hosting a booth focusing on science music for kids, and we don’t want to miss it!

Another reason to go? They call themselves the “Woodstock of Science”!

Atheism is not this cold, arbitrary, removed thought process or ideology that promotes immortality or unethical behavior, as so many people think. In fact, atheism generally includes quite an extensive set of rational beliefs that just about everyone can agree with (or at least not disagree with); the general public just doesn’t know enough about it, and they have a lot of disinformation and misinformation to sort through in order to come to some sort of a conclusion that’s based on fact.

And I am worried a bit about how to explain to my now-16-month-old daughter, as she gets older, exactly what Mom and Dad believe, why we believe it, and why we so often seem to disregard the beliefs of other people she encounters, especially the beliefs repeated by their children.

Children are amazingly insightful and intuitive. I’ve met very few children who couldn’t sense discontent when adults around them were trying to mask it. And I’ve met very few children who aren’t really listening to every little thing you say even when you think they’re not. (Perhaps this is evolution in one of its finer moments.) So when my daughter, Lulu, comes into contact with someone who tells her that a god is real and if she doesn’t believe she’ll go to hell, or when one of the kids in her class says to her that her kitty may have died but is in heaven, I know I have to say more than just “Oh, we don’t believe that, sweetie. Here, finish your dinner.”

Because that’s not true! Who is the “we” here? Your dad and I? No, we don’t, but you might. Really. Does it make sense to you? Do you think it’s possible? What evidence do you have? Do you think you need evidence to come to a conclusion about something like this? And if not, why not?

We’re rational people. We’re not closed-minded, but we’re also not so open-minded that our brains fall out. We encourage critical thinking. In fact, I want nothing more than to encourage critical thinking in my child, because regardless of where it leads her, it will always guide her.

For just as the parents who teach faith as fact to their children acknowledge that the child will most likely repeat it to other children, our children will repeat, in some form, our responses. Civility is key here, but misunderstanding in this kind of situation can so easily happen, especially with such vested interests in these kinds of beliefs.

So I ask the rational parents out there—all of you: atheists, theists, nontheists, and anyone in between—how have you handled a situation in which your child was confronted with faith as fact? What do you do? How do you explain it? What advice can you give other parents who really need some guidance on how to confront this problem?

The top places to be a mom are Norway, Australia, and Iceland. The worst places are Chad, Niger and then Afghanistan at the very bottom. Surprising (to me) was that the U.S. ranks 28th, which is actually down a spot from the previous year. Here’s why:

One in every 4,800 American women dies due to pregnancy. It’s one of the highest maternal-morbidity rates in the developed world. To put that number into perspective, in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Greece and Italy, the risk of maternal death is less than one in 25,000 — and in Ireland, it’s less than one in 47,600.

But it’s not just American moms who die due to pregnancy: American babies don’t fare so well, either. Our infant-mortality rate is pretty dismal for the developed world, with eight out of every 1,000 children dying before their fifth birthdays. A child born in the U.S. is more than twice as likely as a child born in Finland, Iceland, Sweden or Singapore to die before his fifth birthday. Also, the U.S. has the least-generous maternity-leave policy of any developed country, fewer women in elected government positions than other developed countries and fewer kids enrolled in preschool.

The list illustrates that access to education, economic opportunities and proper health care provide the best chance for mothers and children to survive and thrive. In the U.S., we should do a lot better. So, what’s the deal with the ranking?

First, let’s look at infant mortality.

“Infant mortality is defined as the number of children born alive who die after birth — but this differs state to state and country to country,” said Dr. Benjamin Sachs, a fellow of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

For example, he says in the U.S., a baby born at 17 weeks who later died would be considered a miscarriage. But, a baby born at 23 weeks who later died would count towards the infant mortality rate, even though it only had a 20% chance of survival outside the womb. In some other countries, this would instead be considered a miscarriage.

Abortion politics in the U.S. also are thought to play a factor.

“About 20 percent of the children who die in the U.S. do so from birth defects,” said Sachs. “In a country that has a liberal abortion policy, those children will die in abortion — some countries even allow third-trimester abortions so their rates [of infant mortality] are going to be lower,” he said.

Next, let’s look at maternal mortality, which is shockingly high for a country so rich as ours. Only, that’s the difference. If you’re a rich American, you’re more likely to be better educated, with better health care. But, if you’re in a lower economic class, or an illegal immigrant, you’re at greater risk.

Powers said Save the Children’s research has also found that pregnant “minority” women who seek medical care do not end up getting the same quality of care as pregnant women “in the majority.”

That is appalling.

There are 40 million people in the U.S. without health insurance, a large population of which are illegal immigrants. The doctors interviewed agreed that the rates would improve if every pregnant woman were guaranteed access to health care.

Also, other factors at play may include the obesity epidemic here as well as the older age of some mothers.

The bottom line: Maternal and infant mortality rates are complicated issues where more than one factor may be at fault. Still, the U.S. has a long way to go–especially when it comes to maternity leave, flexible workplaces, and affordable health care. We can do better for our mothers.

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Here in the U.S., kids must be at least 5 years old to start kindergarten. But, some parents hold their child out of school another year until the child is 6 years old (”redshirting” them, for you non-sports folks). The reasoning is that the child is more mature, will have an easier time keeping up, and won’t be the runt of the class. According to the post, the number of parents who have withheld their child for a year has doubled since 1980.

The initial research to date seemed to back up the theory. It was concluded that children who started a year later ranked 4 to 8 percent higher than the youngest children in both 4th and 8th grades. However, two new studies now contradict this thinking.

The first study looked at the seasonal patterns of when mothers gave birth, and found:

So it turns out those fourth and eighth graders aren’t doing better just because they’re a few months older. They’re doing better because more of them are born to mothers who are affluent, college-educated, married, and white.

Then, the second study really debunked the whole “older kids do better” theory:

It used to be argued that older kindergartners can soak up more from their teachers, learning at a faster rate. Each school year, this tiny advantage compounds. Like the NBER team, Elder and Lubotsky found the driving variable wasn’t how old the kids were, but how prepared the kids were by their preschool, day care, and home environment. The better-prepared kids learned more.

The authors of the second study also noted that the math and reading abilities increased much more quickly once in kindergarten than not during the same time period. Again, it appears one of the biggest factors for success in school is what happens at home.

So, what do you think? Did you hold your child back, and what were the results? Or, did you find any difficulties in sending a younger child to kindergarten?

Only 50 percent of the students there graduate, and 7 percent are proficient in math. Seventy-seven teachers were fired, plus the principal, three assistant principals and other administrators – for a total of 93. The firings came after the district and teachers union failed to agree on a plan for teachers to increase their time with students in order to improve test scores.

The school district seems to blame the teachers–and only the teachers–for the poor performance of the students. To boost performance, the teachers were being asked to spend more time with students outside of school and agree to a longer school day–which the teachers then asked to be compensated for. Enter the stalemate.

Certainly there were poor teachers in that group that deserved to be fired, but ALL of the teachers and administrators? That sounds reactionary and drastic. And sad.

Many people believe the system itself is a big part of the problem. An author and education historian, Dr. Diane Ravitch was the Asst. Secretary of Education under the first President Bush. She was at the forefront of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiatives, and she has written a piece on why she has now changed her mind about school reform.

NCLB received overwhelming bipartisan support when it was signed into law by President Bush in 2002. The law requires that schools test all students every year in grades three through eight, and report their scores separately by race, ethnicity, low-income status, disability status and limited-English proficiency. NCLB mandated that 100% of students would reach proficiency in reading and math by 2014, as measured by tests given in each state.

Although this target was generally recognized as utopian, schools faced draconian penalties–eventually including closure or privatization–if every group in the school did not make adequate yearly progress. By 2008, 35% of the nation’s public schools were labeled “failing schools,” and that number seems sure to grow each year as the deadline nears.

I’m all for pushing students, administrators, and teachers to work smarter. But, at what expense? It seems this strategy doesn’t work for everyone across the board.

Because the law demanded progress only in reading and math, schools were incentivized to show gains only on those subjects. Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in test-preparation materials. Meanwhile, there was no incentive to teach the arts, science, history, literature, geography, civics, foreign languages or physical education.

Way to encourage well-rounded kids, federal government! Ravitch said this teaching method led colleges to complain about the poor preparation of entering students. If all you’ve been pushed with is reading and math, then why would any student care about anything else?

And, what about our role as parents? Based on the Rhode Island case, Bill Maher wrote a piece on Huffington Post called, New Rule: Let’s Not Fire the Teachers When Students Don’t Learn–Let’s Fire the Parents. If you didn’t catch this live on his HBO show, give it a read.

From Maher’s post:

According to all the studies, it doesn’t matter what teachers do. Although everyone appreciates foreplay. What matters is what parents do. The number one predictor of a child’s academic success is parental involvement. It doesn’t even matter if your kid goes to private or public school. So save the twenty grand a year and treat yourself to a nice vacation away from the little bastards.

I don’t know what his science is on the parental involvement claim, but it makes sense to me. We’ve all heard the studies on the benefits of eating a family dinner with your kids throughout the week. Wouldn’t it make sense to translate this family dinner idea to study time?

In her article, Ravitch said:

The current emphasis on accountability has created a punitive atmosphere in the schools. The Obama administration seems to think that schools will improve if we fire teachers and close schools. They do not recognize that schools are often the anchor of their communities, representing values, traditions and ideals that have persevered across decades. They also fail to recognize that the best predictor of low academic performance is poverty–not bad teachers.

Teachers make a pittance of what they should and most of them work incredibly hard to make our kids better people. Yet, we continue to set them up as the fall guys. A friend of mine who is a speech pathologist in the public schools said, “There are many more factors to consider as to why these students are failing: learning disabilities, parent responsibilities of making sure homework is done and kids are on time and in school EVERY day, a stable home environment etc.” In other words, it’s not always the teacher’s fault.

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The site, based on this series of books, is targeted toward tween girls:

What would it be like to build the first robot that could interact with people? Or to study human remains in search of criminal evidence? In Women’s Adventures in Science, readers will learn about the trailblazing women who are leaders in a variety of scientific fields, from robotics to forensics.

The site looks like a lot of fun and I hope that it inspires more young girls to embrace science.

[Via Science-Based Parenting]