Senor Parrot's Perch

Pink Tentacle has this post and video of a Japanese robot from the University of Tokyo that pitches with amazing accuracy. An updated version of a robot constructed first in 2003, this new model has super sensitive control of its fingers. The batter is a robot from MIT.

The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

It’s been a tough ride on the roller coaster for Pluto. Once the favorite planet of children, now ingominiously referred to as a dwarf planet, the status of Pluto had become something of an astronomer’s political football a few years back. In a day and age when we’re supersizing our meals, we are downsizing planets. How this came to be is richly detailed, albeit somewhat one-sidedly, in Neil deGrasse Tyson‘s very entertaining and informative book entitled The Pluto Files:The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet.

It is a very aptly titled book. It’s irreverent, funny and enlightening. It is also a great example of how science can be discussed on a layman’s level. Tyson’s sense of humor and pugnacious spirit shows on every page in clearly written prose. If it’s something you need to know to understand the topic, Tyson is very able to explain it in a way you can understand.

Covering the history of Pluto from the early search for Planet X through it’s (more…)

Robots are good for a lot of things, but this is about as good as it gets! I have discovered that someone has made a robot that can make your coffee for you. Now I love my daily grind, but if someone, or something, can grind and brew it for me, well, how can it get any better?Robot Living reported on this fabulous development from Japan.

I’m showing this to the rest of the family and hinting that it would be great for next year’s Father’s Day. I drink enough coffee, all by myself, that Ancora opened a shop around the corner just for me, their best customer.

I’m intrigued by the programming involved. I wonder if I could pull this off with a Lego Robot? Anybody know?

The Snake Scientist (Scientists in the Field)
By Sy Montgomery
Photos by Nic Bishop

Bob Mason is a snake scientist. Every year he travels to Manitoba, Canada to study the red-sided garter snakes that mass in amazing numbers about 100 miles north of Winnipeg. By the time the book was written, he had spent 15 years studying these snakes. Along the way he’s made some pretty amazing discoveries about snakes, including how they use their super-sniffing tongues – they smell with their tongues, to follow pheromone trails that lead them where they are going.

The book is a very enjoyable read, aimed at kids at about 5th grade and up. Author Sy Montgomery does a good job of describing the entire milieu of the research in a way that is easy to understand. He also poses questions like a scientist, which is the first step in designing experiments that give reliable results.

Nic Bishop photographed the book. He’s well known for his nature photography and he’s written or collaborated in a number of good books. In The Snake Scientist he found more folks happy to hold snakes than I thought possible. If you’re creeped out by the slithering serpents, then the photographs may spoil the pleasure of reading this book. But if you’re the type who is ready for anything, especially if its a photograph of someone else with a snake, and not yourself, you’ll enjoy this informative venture into science.

Pelican’s Catch (Smithsonian Oceanic Collection)

By Janet Halfmann,

Illustrated by Bob Dacey and Debra Bandelin

Pelican’s Catch (Smithsonian Oceanic Collection) traces a single day in the life of a young brown pelican. Having just learned to fly, the 11-week old pelican awakens and joins a group of pelicans that are flying overhead on their way to catch their breakfast. Brown Pelican still has a lot to learn, diving over and over into the clear blue ocean that surrounds the mangrove tree island where it lives before it gains its first catch.

Along the way, Halfmann depicts the life of a brown pelican very well. She has written this nonfiction book in a story format which allows her to show the bird’s habitat, social life, physical characteristics and behavior withinin the interesting narrative arc of a single day. The facts about the bird aren’t presented as scientific data, but rather as the features and elements of this bird and its environment.

The illustrations by Bob Dacey and Debra Bandelin are superb. The birds soar and dive with so much life and drama. And the final page is enough to make you quit your job and move to Puerto Rico. Say- I do have a friend from Puerto Rico. I’ve met some of his family that live there. Maybe, just maybe, I could do a bit of couch surfing until I can find a job on a boat down there.

I first learned about this book through a review on someone’s blog. I really don’t recall whose it was, but it may have been this review over at The Well Read Child. It does look familiar. I checked out some of the other spots that review science and nonfiction regularly and found this excellent interview with author Janet Halfmann over at Lori Calabrese’s blog Lori Calabrese Writes! I was unfamiliar with Janet Halfmann before reading this book. But now, after reading Lori’s interview with her, I’m looking for more of Janet Halfmann’s books.

The Warlord’s Puzzle

The Warlord’s Beads

The Warlord’s Fish

The Warlord’s Messengers (Warlords)

The Warlord’s Alarm, A Mathematical Adventure

Children’s Books by Virginia Walton Pilegard
Illustrated by Nicolas Debon

Also in the series, The Warlord’s Puppeteers and The Warlord’s Kites, which I haven’t read.

Powerful, rich and proud, the Warlord always seems to find himself in a bind. Young Chuan somehow always gets him out with one sort of invention or another, and always with good, old fashioned clever thinking. Always using his brain, Chuan, and sometimes with the help of his friend Jing Jing, solves every problem using mathematical or scientific principals learned illustrated in another context.

These books are very fun to read. Despite the “Warlord” in every book, there is no violence, except in one, where the young boy, Chuan, and the artist to whom he is apprenticed are kidnapped. Each book emphasizes problem solving, which makes them ideal for stimulating younger students eager to learn. They would also make a great supplement for learning about ancient Chinese culture since they are set in feudal China. At the end of each book, author Virginia Walton Pilegard shows how the Chinese really did use solutions similar to Chuan’s and she includes a fun craft or other activity for kids that applies the same science. The publisher also has study guides available at their website.

Study Guides:
The Warlord’s Beads
The Warlord’s Fish
The Warlord’s Kites
The Warlord’s Puppeteers
The Warlord’s Puzzle

Bubble Homes and Fish Farts by Fiona Bayrock
Illustrated by Carolyn Conahan
ISBN 9781570916694

On the strength of several reviews a couple months ago, I went out and got Bubble Homes and Fish Farts by Fiona Bayrock and Illustrated by Carolyn Conahan. I read it through quickly and found it quite good. I thought it would be over the head of my 6-year old, but I also thought that this book may help turn her into a junior naturalist. We learn a lot looking at the world around us and books like Bubble Homes and Fish Farts help us know what to look for and how to look. In particular, this book helps explain how animals use bubbles to survive and thrive in their environment.

My family spends a lot of time exploring a local lake in kayaks or sailboats and we enjoy looking for cool stuff. My 6-year old has an old root beer bottle with a cap that she uses to collect her lake specimens, usually weeds and other floating stuff. She’s already beginning to look closely at nature. As we read through the book last night I spent time talking about what we might find in the lake that’s making those bubbles we see from time to time. Now, we have even more things to look for now. I then reminded her of the spittlebugs inside the foamy bubbles on many of the plants in the neighborhood that we look at while walking the dog. All this was fun for her and made a connection in her mind.

Along the way in this book, I did learn about fish FaRTs, that is, Fast Repetitive Ticks. Herring, at night, swallow air and pass it out the other end, possibly using this to communicate amongst themselves in the dark ocean waters. There’s an experiment for you – how do you test the communication theory? I remember when I was young, and way up north in the frigid taconite country of Hibbing, Minnesota. In winter we’d all be outside shivering and talking excitedly but never hear a word that another was saying. Our words froze up in our breath and fell onto the snow covered playground with hushed clunks. We’d pick a few of our frozen conversations up and take them inside, where they’d thaw out and produce a random, nonsense conversation as our words escaped their frosty prisons. Maybe herring farts will be like that. We just need to pop the bubbles to hear what they’re saying. I can see a research grant proposal here! Stranger ones have been funded.

George’s Secret Key to the Universe

by Lucy Hawking and Stephen Hawking with Christophe Galfard

Illustrated by Garry Parsons

Novelist Lucy Hawking has teamed up with her famous father, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, to write a terrific science fiction book for kids and middle grade readers. They get further assistance from Christophe Galfard and the book is illustrated by Garry Parsons. Their first effort is George’s Secret Key to the Universe. Within the framework of this novel the Hawkings have managed to create a very fun story that includes the latest fantastic facts about the universe and theories of its origin. Together they present an amazing amount of knowledge at a level that anyone can understand. Unlike much science fiction, which is really fantasy with a few smatterings of highly speculative and dubious science, with this book we have real science.

Next door to George’s home stands an old abandoned house, its yard and structure long neglected after the old man who had lived there disappeared. One night George pursues his pet pig, which had broken through a hole in the fence, into the overgrown yard. He sees lights are on and his pig has just dashed into the house through an open door. As he catches his pig, he is discovered by a girl, a bit younger, but close to his own age, who is not the least bothered by the pig.  She is Annie. George soon meets the girl’s father, Eric, also not bothered by the presence of the pig.

George discovers that his new neighbors have a secret. Not an evil secret, but a fantastic secret of great power. They possess the most powerful (more…)

Its raining today. The kids are home sick, too. They’ll want to get on the computer and play Webkinz or something like that, or they’ll want to watch TV all day. All brain rot, really. They’ll be bored and drive my wife crazy. They need an activity, and a fun one, and why not a brain building one?

Cool Gravity Activities: Fun Science Projects About Balance by James Hopwood is full of fun, simple, and thought provoking science activities. Beginning with some basic instruction on scientific method, the book sets some rules for the activities. Really, they’re hints on what to look for, and set the stage for kids to learn.

Second, there is a two page layout of things the kids can find around the house to use in their experiments. Maybe a hockey stick, or a rake, or a ruler or thread. Get some eggs, metal forks and wooden popsicle sticks. A few more things and you’re ready. I’d skip on the bathroom plunger, though. Yuck! Maybe a kid’s garden shovel, or something like that.

Now to the activities. Each has pointers on what to look for, instructions on performing the experiment, an explanation of the science behind the activity, and a practical application for real life. There’s quick projects like balancing a plunger, or a more suitable substitute, making tops from oddly shaped pieces of paper, or how an uncooked egg spins compared to a hard-boiled egg. Some of these will be fun for your kids to use to show off to their friends. Try balancing two forks and a popsicle stick on one finger!

None of the experiments takes too long and each incorporates writing data and findings in a journal. This writing part is critical. Scientists write down everything and then misplace it. Engineers know where they put everything. If you kid loses his or her notes, you know they’ll be a scientist. If they tidy them up, file them alphabetically and cross-reference them, they’ll be librarians. But if they just keep them organized on a bookshelf, they’ll be engineers.

For the most part, engineering is applied science. What makes engineering so fascinating is the context of how science is applied to solve problems and to do practical things. A lot of non-engineering  jobs use applied science, as well. Steve Wolf’s fun, informative, and fascinating book, The Secret Science Behind Movie Stunts and Special Effects is all about how he uses science to create special effects for movies and TV. It’s this Hollywood context that makes the book so fun and adds the “Cool” factor often needed to make a kid want to learn more and study harder so that he or she can do this sort of cool stuff, too.

This book isn’t some dumbed-down effort to coax kids to try science, because. Wolf jumps right in, using the example of setting off an explosion, to get started talking meaningfully about the several states of matter and chemical reactions, providing excellent working definitions and examples every time. He works forwards and backwards in his examples, beginning with something he might do on a set, stepping back to explain scientific principals involved, and then moving forward again to show other ways these principals are harnessed to create other special effects. He has an extensive glossary of terms at the end with additional supplemental material.

The book is well written, explaining fundamental scientific principals in clear and accessible language, making this book suitable for kids in middle school and up. It should appeal to all, but I bet that it hooks a lot more boys than girls. I’d recommend trying to get this into the hands of any bright kid who’s just not motivated to study science.  It has fun illustrations showing lots of the special tools and gear that special effects people use and how their special effects are pulled off.

Wolf has a website called, naturally, scienceinthemovies.com, that supports his book and the presentations he makes. He has videos of presentations and lots of links to science sites, grouped by topics.