Video by the Singapore National Park Board, on creating your own pesticide with just water, dish-washing liquid, chili, garlic and cooking oil.
Related: Pigs Instead of Pesticides – Automatic Cat Feeder – Rethinking the Food Production System – Build Your Own Tabletop Interactive Multi-touch Computer – Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids – Pesticide Laced Fertiliser Ruins Gardens – Living in Singapore
This reminds me of great times I had experimenting with my father when I was a kid. Though, to be honest, Sarah is much more impressive than I was.
Catapulting to Success with Design of Experiments
Sarah Flexman with her trebuchet at the Storm the Castle science challenge in North Carolina.
Here’s Sarah’s whole process: She built the trebuchet, tested it, used JMP for DOE during optimization, changed the hook angle and sling to improve performance, did more tests, entered this new data, reran the model, and made her final prediction graphs. The variables in her DOE were string length, counterweight and projectile weight, and she optimized for distance – that is, how far the projectile would go.
“Rather than doing 125 tests because we have three variables with five levels each, DOE found a way for us to perform only 26 tests and get approximately the same results. I typed in the results, ran the model and used the JMP Profiler. I understood how the variables predicted the outcome and found several patterns,” she explained.
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“I hadn’t done any building like that. The whole day was fun. It was a very open learning environment. You were experimenting with things you had never done before. I would definitely do it again,” Sarah said. And she will – next year.
I have collected quite a few design of experiments resources, for those who are interested in learning more. Here is a nice webcast by brother: Combinatorial Testing – The Quadrant of Massive Efficiency Gains, discussing the incredibly efficiency designed combinatorial testing (very similar ideas to design of experiments) can provide.
Related: Learning Design of Experiments with Paper Helicopters – Playing Dice and Children’s Numeracy – Statistics Insights for Scientists and Engineers – Sarah (a different one), aged 3, Learns About Soap – Statistics for Experimenters – Multi-factor designed experiments – Combinatorial Testing for Software – What Else Can Software Development and Testing Learn from Manufacturing? Don’t Forget Design of Experiments (DoE) – Letting Children Learn
Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
The study’s lead author, Dr. Lidy Pelsser of the ADHD Research Centre in the Netherlands, writes in The Lancet that the disorder is triggered in many cases by external factors — and those can be treated through changes to one’s environment. “ADHD, it’s just a couple of symptoms — it’s not a disease,” the Dutch researcher tells All Things Considered weekend host Guy Raz.
The way we think about — and treat — these behaviors is wrong, Pelsser says. “There is a paradigm shift needed. If a child is diagnosed ADHD, we should say, ‘OK, we have got those symptoms, now let’s start looking for a cause.’ ”
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According to Pelsser, 64 percent of children diagnosed with ADHD are actually experiencing a hypersensitivity to food. Researchers determined that by starting kids on a very elaborate diet, then restricting it over a few weeks’ time. “It’s only five weeks,” Pelsser says. “If it is the diet, then we start to find out which foods are causing the problems.”
Teachers and doctors who worked with children in the study reported marked changes in behavior. “In fact, they were flabbergasted,” Pelsser says.
Related: Nearly 1 million Children Potentially Misdiagnosed with ADHD in the USA – Lifestyle Drugs and Risk – Over-reliance on Prescription Drugs to Aid Children’s Sleep? – Epidemic of Diagnoses
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Very fun presentation by 10 year old on 3D printing and the open source Makerbot at Ignite Phoenix.
Related: 3D Printing is Here (2009 post looking at 3D printers) – Open Source 3-D Printing – Expensive Ink (for regular printers)
I write this blog because when I was a kid I was curious and had parents who gave me enough interesting answers and interesting resources to build on that curiosity. And I am still curious today. I love learning. And I love to hear about kids learning.
The Big Girl has worked out evolution
“Well, there would be no babies.” I didn’t quite get the problem seeing we were feeding the rather prolific guinea pigs at the time and we’ve been talking about separating them.
“But what if there were no boys at all? So no-one could have babies?”
“Eventually, they would all die.”
“But there wouldn’t be any left!”
“No, they would die out.”
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“How did humans start?”… a puzzled little crease in her forehead. “Because if there weren’t any around with the dinosaurs they must have started sometime. How could there be no humans and then they’re there? What was the Mummy?”
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“Well, they weren’t sudden. You know how you are a little bit different to Mummy and Daddy? That’s how it happened. The babies were just a little bit different to their parents and over a really, really long time they became people.”
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“But if there was only one it would die out.”
Well that came out of nowhere, did I miss half of this conversation?
“You know, the first person. It needs to have both a boy and a girl to have more people babies. So if there was only one it would die out.”
“Oh, from yesterday. Yes, you’re right. But people live in groups, so they’re all changing a tiny little bit at the same time.”
It is great to see developing minds at work. Exploring their natural curiosity. And taking in new information puzzling it out over time and then coming back to the ideas. This kind of curiosity is what drives learning and success.
Related: Playing Dice and Children’s Numeracy – Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap – Letting Children Learn, Hole in the Wall Computers – Illusion of Explanatory Depth
Eight-year-old children publish bee study in Royal Society journal
Absolutely great stuff. This is how to engage kids in science. Engage their inquisitive minds. Let them get involved. Let them experiment.
Some of the children’s questions when looking at what to discover using experiments:
What if… we could discover if bees can learn to go to certain colours depending on how sweet they are?
What if… we could find out how many colours they could remember?
Related: Playing Dice and Children’s Numeracy – Kids on Scientists: Before and After – Test it Out, Experiment by They Might Be Giants – What Kids can Learn – Tinker School: Engineering Camp – Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class
And some of their comments:
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Watch this fun webcast on how to make a rocket.
Related: Home Engineering: Bird Feeder That Automatically Takes Photos When Birds Feed – Lego Autopilot Project Update – Young Engineers Build Bridges with Spaghetti – Home Engineering: Building a Hovercraft
During a trip to the Smithsonian last week I found this great home engineering project. Kayty Himelstein and Amy Darr were frustrated: birds came to their bird feeder while they were away at school, so the girls never got to see them. They decided to build a bird feeder that automatically takes pictures of all the birds that came to the feeder. I believe, they used Lego Mindstorms as part of building it.
Related: Lego Mindstorms Robots Solving: Sudoku and Rubik’s Cube – Awesome Cat Cam – Science Fair Project on Bacterial Growth on Packaged Salads
I wrote about the Tinkering School, Engineering camp previously. I am a strong believer in the value of helping kids (even adult kids – the few that haven’t resigned themselves to limited capacity to wonder since they now are grown up and not suppose to waste their time dreaming) explore their ideas and assisting them in making those ideas into reality. I think this is the best way to learn, not learning to pass a test, but learning to gain knowledge and accomplish things. Here is a nice 15 minute talk by the founder of the Tinkering School, Gever Tulley: “Turning Curriculum Design On Its Head: Engage First Then Look for Learning Within”
The format of the tinkering school is week long sessions where the kids stay overnight.
Some quotes: “we would use real tools and real materials and we would build real things, not model building, [but instead] actual building.” “create a meaningful experience and learning will follow”
Gever Tulley recently published: Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do).
Related: Home Engineering: Building a Hovercraft – Kids Need Adventurous Play – Automatic Cat Feeder – Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids – What Kids can Learn
So usable 2 year olds and cats can use them. Fun. Apple sold 500,000 in the first week and demand has outstripped their capacity to produce so they are delaying the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May. Google is rumored to have a similar device based on their open Android operating system. Let the games begin. I must admit the iPad seems fun but it seems mainly like hype to me. But I can believe tablet-netbooks could evolve into very cool and popular devices.
Related: Hammer and Feather Drop on Moon – Dolphin Plays with Air Bubble Rings – Chimpanzee Riding a Segway
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