Maybe you were like me when the Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) ads first started showing on television, not believing that RLS was real, thinking that it was a fabricated condition to sell more pharmaceuticals.  Or conversely, maybe you suffer from RLS and became impatient with non-believers like me. I am now convinced that RLS is a real condition that we can use in the classroom when we study brain and nervous system function.

The video centers on the business of marketing pharmaceuticals, but it also touches on several aspects of brain function that I have not mentioned before.  For example, the drugs used to treat RLS are dopamine agonists, which means that they mimic dopamine, originally intended for use with people suffering from Parkinson's disease.  In a unit on the brain, one could have students explore the role of dopamine in normal brain function. The University of Utah's website, is an excellent resource for this topic.  Not only is it interactive and fun for students, but it has links to other dopamine functions, such as the connection between dopamine and ritalin, for example, which may be quite pertinent to many students.

If students want more information on Parkinson's disease itself, the Mayo Clinic has a comprehensive overview which covers symptoms and causes as well as treatment.  This site contains an extensive explanation of the various medications for Parkinson's disease, including dopamine agonists and explains how they work in the brain to alleviate the symptoms.  Interestingly, this site also refers to deep brain stimulation as a treatment, a topic on another WIRED science episode.

A separate topic which fits with RLS and brain function is the issue of sleep and sleep deprivation, a subject about which many of our students have personal experience.  However, I would be willing to bet that many of them do not know why sleep is important, or how lack of sleep can impact their health.  The Sleep Foundation site is a good one, covering such topics as mechanisms controlling sleep and wakefulness, the stages of sleep, why sleep matters and sleep disorders, including Restless Leg Syndrome. 

We all know that lack of sleep can affect our mood and attention, but students may be surprised to learn from this site that lack of sufficient sleep over just a few days can impair alertness and memory.  Moreover, lack of sleep is correlated with obesity, the immune system, and cardiovascular disease.  Part of these effects is due to the effect of sleep on hormones such as growth hormone and leptin.  The fact that RLS can interfere with normal sleep thus becomes crucial to health.

To explore the topic of sleep further, go to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute site, one of my favorites. You can find information on biological clocks there.  You can also order the Holiday Lecture DVD, "Clockwork Genes: Discoveries in Biological Time."  This site provides a wealth of information and interactive lessons about circadian rhythms and the function of the suprachiasmatic nuclei which control these rhythms.

Finally, the discovery of a gene specifically associated with RLS establishes the condition as a real phenomenon and may lead to further treatments.  WebMD presents the information about the gene that was first announced in The New England Journal of Medicine.  In this study, Kari Stefansson from Iceland and David Rye from Emory University in Atlanta, studied the genes of 306 people in Iceland with RLS and more than 15,000 people who did not have the syndrome.  They were able to find three variants of a gene known as BTBD9 that are tied to RLS.  What does the gene do?  We don't yet know, yet knowing the variants make screening possible, and when we find out what the gene does, it is possible to produce therapies that are directly targeted to the gene product.

Additional WIRED Science Video Segments
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In the World War 2.0 segment, various banks, police and government organizations, and businesses throughout Estonia were subjected to a variety of attacks via the Internet. Specifically, Estonia was attacked by a botnet - a set of computers all controlled by an outside computer attempting to access a single server and flood it with requests. As noted in the article, a similar attack against the United States, grown proportionately, would effectively cripple the country. As such, it is imperative that we learn at the very least basic techniques that can be used to counter such an attack, as well as the basics of how such an attack worked. One solid way of doing this is to set up the proper security within a classroom computer lab, as well as set up other items brought up in the episode.

The first line of defense is to make sure some sort of firewall is set up on the computers. As you can read right here, a firewall is a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. In this case, each individual computer is considered a private network. The most convenient firewall we can use for most PCs comes with Windows XP - the Windows Firewall. To start Windows Firewall:

1. Click "Start"->"Control Panel".
2. Double-click "Security Center".
3. Select "Windows Firewall".
4. Select "On" in the "General" tab.
5. Click the "Exceptions" tab, and check everything currently used for computer-to-computer communication (LANSchool, FTP, etc.).
6. Hit "OK" and hit the red "X" at the top right of the Security Center window.

A tutorial video for Windows Firewall can also be researched.

Another free firewall is the Comodo Firewall. In addition, there are other pieces of software that serve as excellent lessons in computer security for students. One example is a free piece of anti-spyware software called Ad-Aware; there is an online tutorial for this software as well.

Ad-Aware specifically checks for worms, Trojans, spyware, etc. Similarly, a second excellent piece of software is called SpyBot - Search and Destroy.  Like Ad-Aware, Spybot - Search and Destroy scans and fixes spyware. There are tutorials available online for Spybot - Search and Destroy.

One of the ways the Estonian government fought the attack was by blocking any internet traffic that did not come from Estonia. You can determine where internet traffic is coming from by the IP address of the requests; an IP address, or Internet Protocol Address, is a unique set of numbers used in communication between two computers to locate each other. A computer's IP address is very important and vital information; someone that knows your IP address can access and manipulate your computer.

There are other uses of IP addresses that are both more legal and useful to students. It is possible to determine, for example, where an e-mail is coming from based on its IP address; a tutorial on this can be found on the internet.

One interesting exercise with this involves an IP address scavenger hunt; challenge students to find a number of e-mails originating from different areas of the world ("Ten e-mails from the US Southwest", "Five e-mails from Europe", "Twenty e-mails from outside of Texas", etc.).

A second legal and educationally useful usage of the IP Address is to connect to another computer. In fact, you can connect to a computer at home from a computer in the classroom; this may be very handy for teachers. Windows XP allows this as well, using its Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection; you will need to note the IP address of your home computer. Instructions for doing this can be found on the Internet. The basic steps to establishing a Remote Desktop Connection include:

1. Enable Remote Connections in the Remote tab of the Properties of My Computer.
2. Add your account to the list of accounts that allow remote access.
3. Verify the IP Address of the source computer.
4. Establish your Remote Connection from the destination computer.

Finally, one of the methods of communication noted in the episode was chat rooms; it is speculated that the attackers utilized the chat rooms to organize the attack. A better usage of chat rooms include general classroom communication; provided with proper supervision, students can work together to help each other with difficult ideas and assignments. There are free Internet chat rooms available, including Chatzy. Similarly, many instant messaging services offer chat room services, including AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Instant Messenger, and Yahoo Instant Messenger. You can also create your own instant message service as part of a class assignment.

Additional WIRED Science Video Segments
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The demonstrations that Dr. Megavolt gives in this episode are an ideal way to get your high school kids "charged up" about physics.  I used this clip as a catch to get kids interested in the topic of magnetism and electricity.  After twenty years of teaching physics I can safely say that the Tesla coil is the number one science demo kids want to see.  So I want to give a few pointers, and suggestions about how to use these safely in the classroom.

The Tesla coil is often confused with the Van DeGraff generator. Both can give high voltage (close to a million volts), but the Van DeGraff is a static source of charge while the Tesla coil is an alternating potential of charge.  Since both excite kids, lets start with the Van DeGraff Generator and lessons you can do to introduce static charge.

I introduce static charge with the familiar rabbit fur and plastic.  It helps to bring in a chunk of Amber, which in Greek means "Electron".  Apparently Amber was used as a material to rub and transfer charge way back before our plastic generation. If you are crafty, you ought to hang two pieces of plastic from the ceiling and charge one negative and the other positive; you can do this by experimenting with different types of plastic.  Bring one charged strip to each and you will see one repel and the other attract. Usually I then hang a piece of Aluminum foil from a string and bring a charged rod close to it. You can have kids talk about induced charge.  Another favorite is to bring a charged rod close to a two by four lumber that is carefully balanced on a watch glass. You can move it quite well back and forth through induced charge in the wood.

The best static demo comes from the San Francisco Exploratorium.  Check out their Snack Book of Ideas.  Here you can find a way of charging by induction that produces a sizable charge.  Have your kids charge up a pie pan and then levitate a small loop of Christmas tree tinsel.  It is an exciting hands-on lab, and it is even cooler to watch as the tinsel becomes charged and suddenly repels from the plate. There are lots of other cool physics ideas there.

Some cool demo's you can do with a Van DeGraff generator are presented at The Science House.   I would like to add a few suggestions to these standard demos. It is very important to clean the ball.  This removes small points that carry off the charge. I use a dry erase cleaner and that seems to do a good job.  Also, to store lots of charge and release it, consider purchasing an oblong discharger, it concentrates the charge by capacitance.  We use this to discharge through a Television set.  If you can find an old TV tube, bring the generator close to the back where the wires attach to the filament inside the tube.  You will get some amazing colors as the three filaments fire electrons randomly toward the screen.  You can check out a photo of this below.

Other fun things to do with the Van DeGraff Generator are making chains of people holding hands, turning on a fluorescent bulb, or giving each student a Neon bulb to light as they bring it close to the generator.

Once a teacher has covered static electricity, it is normal to move on to magnetism.  All magnetic fields come from moving charges, even the magnetic moments produced by the electron itself!  There are many demo's on magnetism, but lets cut directly to the Tesla coil.   The coil itself is nothing more than a transformer.  So by all means have the kids build a simple transformer.  To do this, have each student wrap an iron nail with #26 gauge wire (this takes lots of wire!), energize one coil with a function generator, and bring it close to another coil.   Hook the second coil to an LED and you will see it go on.  I like to bring out my Jacob's ladder at this point and show them how you can make large sparks with a larger transformer.  I made mine from the igniter of an oil burner and simply attached two coat hangers to the end.  A time exposure of a Jacob's ladder in action is shown to the right.

Once students understand a Tesla Coil you should bring out the smaller demonstration ones available from science supply companies.  This handheld one works very well and produces sparks a few inches long.  You can have fun making long sparks and you can get a few lessons across.  I like to produce ozone with it, as the temperature of the sparks are high enough to slam Oxygen molecules together to make Ozone, and this has a unique odor that kids can sense.  I use this in a lesson about the ozone hole from my time spent in Antarctica launching ozone balloons.  A strong WARNING though.  It is often fun to hold onto the end of the Tesla coil and become the electrode yourself.  It does give a small burn to the skin if you are not careful in doing this, so I do not recommend you ask kids to do it. If you are confident you might get a colleague to come in, dim the lights and you can run sparks down the persons back with your fingers.  Kids like this.  Also, a BIG WARNING, and I have not seen this published anywhere.  I once started a fire on a student's sweater by sparking them with a Tesla coil.  The small fibers that stand up on a sweater are an ideal kindling for these sparks.  So be careful!

Finally, your students will want to build their own Tesla Coil and do all the cool things the Dr MegaVolt does.  There are so many plans on the internet for this. You can check out this instructional video. 

I had my students build one out of a neon transformer and a large tube with a hand wound secondary coil.  They used glass plates with foil as their capacitor. We actually cracked the quarter inch glass from the heat generated by the sparks.  A really cool thing to do is to turn on an AM radio while the Tesla coil is in operation, you will get a lot of crackle from the sparks going off at radio frequencies. This is a nice way to demonstrate that the sparks are different from the Van DeGraff generator.  I am told that you can touch this high voltage at radio frequencies because the current will traverse over your body instead of through it. However, I have not had the guts to try that, and you might note that Dr MegaVolt has a well grounded suit to make sure that it goes over his body and not through it. So be careful and have fun.

Additional WIRED Science Video Segments
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In his demonstration of CAPTCHAs, those ubiquitous pattern recognition challenges we face when we need to authenticate ourselves as humans on the internet, Luis von Ahn describes challenges computers have with images.  He talks specifically about two very tough problems, optical character recognition (OCR) and labeling images with words.  By presenting humans with activities such as solving CAPTCHAs to create a new yahoo account or image labeling games such as ESP, von Ahn is orchestrating a grand teaching experiment -- teaching computers about image recognition through many millions of hours of online work and play.

In my class, we are working toward the solution of an image analysis problem to help our northern New Hampshire community deal with snow.  Called Project Argus, a series of students have been working during the past three years to build a network of small outdoor computers that will sense snow and ice conditions on remote roads and warn our local highway department.  With better information about remote road conditions, our local highway department can make better decisions regarding resource allocation and optimize road clearing efforts.

What I will present here is a description of where my students started and how far they have come during the past three years of this extra-curricular activity.  Supported by the Lemelson-MIT Inventeam program, my students have spent many hours in independent study classes, after school invention club meetings, and their own homes tinkering with hardware and software to collect remote environmental data.  This blog entry is less of a "how to" and more of a "look what they are doing".  I do this for pragmatic reasons.  They have not actually solved the problem yet.  But they have tinkered with some pretty cool hardware and software that might have application in your classroom today or in the future.

Where Did We Begin?

Matt, Tom, and Travis were seniors three years ago.  Having had them in three previous science courses, I knew their computer and problem solving skills.  I asked them if they wanted to help a local teacher solve a computer network problem.  Sure, they said.  The problem was that the teacher wanted to monitor his school's greenhouses remotely so he and his students could ensure that the plants inside were doing well, especially over weekends and school vacations.  Matt, Tom, and Travis set to work on this and decided to use a device called a "slug", a device that Matt had already started to tinker with on his own time.  "A slug?", I asked.  "Yeah", said Matt, "a slug is a $70 linux computer that we could use to control webcams and sensors. It has an ethernet port so we can tie it into the network and log into it from outside the school!"

It sounded good to me.  Matt, Tom, and Travis' skills surpassed mine so I was excited to learn from them as their solution to the problem unfolded.

What Did They Do?
What started as a greenhouse monitoring project quickly evolved into an outdoor environmental monitoring project.  Years before, my students had done some physics and engineering research for our town.  When our town's manager heard about our current outdoor computer project, he had an idea for us.  After several meetings with leaders in town government and the highway department, the students identified the issue the town wanted to address with the Argus system.  The issue was snow and ice conditions on roads.  The town was interested in the student's system because it would allow them to check on the condition of the roads at key intersections before heading out in the trucks.

 By the summer of 2006, Matt, Tom, and Travis assembled a weatherproof computer, webcam, and sensor package that was placed on the roof of the school.  This test of the system would show that all of the component systems worked together -- linux based computer, webcam, and sensors -- and that they could use the computer as a webserver so they could create webpages of data for the town.

 A Multi-Year Project

Matt, Tom, and Travis graduated in 2006 but they are still working as alumni members of the team.  They work as technical consultants to the team.  Matt continues to provide us with linux and programming assistance.  Tom created a website for the project which serves to keep alumni members of the team connected.  It has helped to ensure that all members of the team share a vision for the direction the project is going.  The website can be found here.

What Tom, Matt, and Travis started during the 2005-2006 school year has continued through the present school year.  Last year, team members Anson, Ben, and Greg joined the effort.  Their goal was to continue talking with the town and create a prototype system that could get us closer to the actual task of monitoring a road.   In order to achieve the goal of monitoring critical road intersections, the system needed to operate by its own power and communicate via wireless protocols.  Whereas the first year of the project produced a system that could operate outdoors, provide webcam images, and sensor data, the 2nd year of the project produced a system that could be powered by a solar panel and utilized short range wireless communication.

This year, Anson is joined by Alex, Tom, Chris, and Ben.   The current team of Argus students are exploring "long range" wireless and higher resolution image techniques.  As you can see from the movie sequence below, our current webcam produces only small images.  If we are to help the town discern between wet, icy, and snowy conditions, we will need better images.  By adding better imaging techniques and long range wireless, we should be able to set up an Argus system 1-2 miles away from the school and provide the town with rich data as a test case.

After three years of work completed by nine students during their independent study classes, after school and weekend time, we are now very close to the system first brainstormed in 2006.   With each year's work, we have added more components and increased the level of sophistication of the components of the system.  Because the project goals have remained the same and alumni students come back to help current students (and me!), we do not start at square one each time.  We can move forward slowly toward achieving some pretty grand goals!

Image Analysis?

I started this blog entry by linking this project with Luis von Ahn's work.  In actuality, we have yet to fully assemble the hardware that will allow us to do the kind of detailed image analysis for the town that will yield a desired outcome -- whether the road is wet, icy, or snowy.  That, however, is the lofty goal we are working toward.  As a high school project, this is not something you can give to a student for homework and expect it completed with all the i's dotted and t's crossed on Monday morning.  It is however, a great high school project that can be passed on from group to group.  Tom, Matt and Travis built the first working outdoor system.  Anson, Ben, and Greg took it from there and added short range wireless communication and solar power.  This year, Anson, Alex, Tom, Chris, and Ben are re-building the base computer to add long range wireless and better imaging hardware/software to the system.  Each year builds upon the previous, slowing assembling a very cool project that will help our town deal with the winter conditions that we face six months of the year!

Resources

I provide here a list of useful links if you are interested in working on a project similar to Argus.

Hardware We Use
Tiny computers that currently run or can run linux:
   NSLU2
   Alix 1c   
   Vernier Labquest

Webcams:
   Logitech Zoom
 
Wireless ethernet bridge:
   Linksys wireless game adapter

Temperature, Humidity, and Pressure sensors:
   iButton Link 1-wire sensors
   1-wire pressure sensor

Solar panel
   Unisolar solar shingle

Charge controller
   Built from a schematic from CirKits

Software
Linux:
   NSLU2-Linux (we currently use unslung)
   Ubuntu
   Debian

Webserving:
   Apache via unslung linux (see NSLU2 link above)

1-Wire sensors:
   One Wire Weather

Image acquisition:
   gphoto

Image analysis:
   ImageMagick
   ImageJ

Many Thanks and Other Credits

The students and I are not alone in our work on this project!  I can not complete this entry without thanking the following supporters for helping my students and me on this project:
• Town of Littleton Highway Department
• Littleton High School Faculty, Staff, and Students
• Hugh Galen Vocational Center Faculty
• Lemelson-MIT Inventeams
• Tufts Center for Engineering Educational Outreach
• John Wheeler, Dan Holmquist, and Dave Vernier of Vernier Software and Technology
• Cisco Systems
• Ed and Nancy Roberts
• Dick Ratico of Solarwind Electric
• Forrest Cook of Cirkits
• Tony Ffrench
• Steve Halasz
• Jon Aurnou
• Elizabeth Turtle
• Sarah Turtle
• John Turtle
• Ralph Lorenz

Additional WIRED Science Video Segments
Don't forget to check out our Video Section for other segments from WIRED Science that you can use in your classroom.

Wow.  The "Body Builders" segment of WIRED SCIENCE brings home the great strides we have made in tissue culture and organ repair.  This information fits into our biology classes in several places--when we talk about immunology, when we talk about cancer, and when we talk about body systems.

In a discussion of immunology, ask students why the cells have to be removed from the pig bladder scaffolding.  Why are transplants so difficult and the chance of rejection so high?  What is it that gives the cells the ability to recognize "self" from "non-self?"  A discussion of the MHC antigens naturally follows.  Human blood typing is an easy way to illustrate this concept, and many kits, either using artificial blood or the students' own blood (depending on the state) are available from biological supply companies.

What about cancer?  The incidence of esophageal cancer is on the rise, although we don't know why, according to the WIRED video.  In a class, one could have a discussion of possible causes of cancer.  What are the risk factors?  Several good teaching resources are available for free download or web use:

1) The National Cancer Institute provides a Power Point presentation which covers the biology of cancer and is available for free download.

I have used this presentation with my classes, and have found it a good introduction to the biology of cancer.

2) If you have more time, consider using "Inside cancer--Multimedia Guide to Cancer Biology" published by the Dolan DNA Learning Center.

An excellent resource for teaching, this module takes students more deeply into the causes of cancer, the epidemiology of certain cancers, and the mechanism of action of some of the drugs used.  Using this module requires several class periods, but students can do some of it on their own as an extension.

Often, surgical removal of the affected organ, or part of the organ, is part of the treatment.  In many cases, as in removal of part of the esophagus or bladder, the quality of life of the patient is significantly reduced.  If such surgery is part of the treatment, a bioengineered esophagus or bladder could be invaluable in allowing the patient to lead a normal life.

In any discussion of body systems, understanding both anatomy and function is vital.  In the digestive system, for example, why is esophagus important?  What kinds of muscles have to be present for function?  What happens at the cardiac orifice, and why is it important to prevent reflux (heartburn)?  What happens to the patient if part of the esophagus has to be removed due to cancer?  In the urinary system, what is the importance of the bladder?  Why does it have to be "stretchy?"  What is the advantage of using the patient's own cells to "regrow" a bladder?

Many students have had first-hand experience with someone who could benefit from a replacement organ, which makes this segment powerful.  The potential of the techniques fires the imagination.  For an additional "wow" factor, check out this National Geographic video on a beating rat heart grown in a lab.

For an introduction to human organs, try National Geographic's interactive website about the human body which includes the heart. The site allows students to explore both the anatomy and physiology of the heart, including the electrophysiological aspects of the heartbeat, and gives them an appreciation of the complexity of growing an entire heart in the lab!

The idea of using a printer (a printer!) to generate organs may be new to students, as it was for me.  This ScienceDaily article reports progress made toward "printing" organs at the University of Missouri, and provides information for students who want to extend their knowledge.

Students at all levels can get excited about the prospects of building new organs in the lab.  The possibilities, seemingly endless, also show students how science, engineering and technology all contribute to advances in the field of "body building."

Additional WIRED Science Video Segments
Don't forget to check out our Video Section for other segments from WIRED Science that you can use in your classroom.

For this installment of the "In Your Classroom" blog, I would like to share with you two examples of projects related to remote data collection.  The example projects are a high school robotics project using LEGO Mindstorms robots, Vernier sensors, and video instant messaging technology to collect data on "Mars" and an elementary school project using the same technology for a simulated marine biology expedition.  I would also like to share an idea for helping teachers use "new" technology tools in their classrooms.

So, how does this parallel the work documented in the "Quiet Zone"?  On the surface, my examples are remote data collection projects like the grand radio astronomy projects at Green Bank.  Deeper, though, these projects represent my desire to push the envelope of what is possible through mixing technology tools.  In this piece, I'll describe three technology tools that were not originally designed to work together but when mixed together provide you and your students with a pretty cool and scalable science project.  I say "scalable" because whereas we are exploring rooms within a school, these projects could be scaled up to include "remote" location anywhere the internet reaches.  As I tell the students, what they are doing is a "proof of concept" for truly global work!

Well let's go to "Mars" then, shall we?

Collecting Data on Mars
In this first project, students built robots that carried a data logging device.  It was "launched" to another part of our school where it investigated a "simple" Martian terrain.

First, let me explain the setting and assignment.  This project was assigned to students (juniors and seniors) in my robotics class; I am currently working on adapting it for use in my physics and physical science classes.  As you watch the video, note that the assignment was to "launch" a robot to "Mars" and determine the pattern of rocks with magnetic properties.  The actual "launch" required them to carry their LEGO Mindstorms robot to the basement of our school, the location of "Mars".  "Mars" was a small piece of plywood covered with fabric.  Embedded within the plywood were several ceramic magnets.  The students built their robots to hold a Vernier LabPro data collection device.  As is explained in the video, the students built small reed switch circuits and collected both video and voltage data.  Video data was streamed to them via a video conferencing connection (iChat in our case).  By syncing the video and voltage readings, they could map the location of the magnets.  They then discussed (not shown in the video) their observations and tested geologic processes against their observed data.  While the project was unfolding, we followed the progress of both the Mars Exploration Rovers and the Huygens Probe projects.  I made sure that they saw how our work was very similar to the work being done by NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) engineers and scientists.

What may sound complex in the above narrative is now easier to pull off.  Video conferencing programs are now easier and more frequently used.  While we used iChat, Skype is another great program with video conferencing abilities.  On the robotics/data collection side, Vernier is has recently partnered with the Tufts University Center for Engineering Educational Outreach (CEEO), National Instruments, and LEGO to make data collection through robotics a mainstream curriculum option.

Whereas the project described above took my students and I two to three weeks to complete in 2005, upcoming tools from LEGO, CEEO, and Vernier will make the same type of activity possible in less than a week.  With these new tools, I will most certainly move this project from my robotics class to my physics class.  The robotics class reaches out to students who are already interested in science.  I am excited about the prospect of bringing this type of project within reach of students who don't know that they are interested in science!

Deep Sea Vent
The next project that I will describe was completed in a mixed grade (3-6) enrichment classroom.   Through this project, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with an exceptional teacher, Jan Wood.  Two of my robotics class students who had completed the "Mars" project in 2005 helped Jan in 2006 to manage the technology in her project.  The goal of Jan's project was to explore a simulated deep sea vent that resided in another part of the school.  Specifically, the students needed to create a LEGO Mindstorms robot that could hold a webcam and explore a four foot square area to document the deep sea inhabitants of the area.

The ingredients to this remote data collection project were:
• Goal -- Explore a deep sea vent
• Remote setting -- simulated vent in another room of the school
• Robots -- LEGO Mindstorms
• Data Collection -- Webcam images obtained through video conferencing software
 
Jan broke down the tasks of the project to include:
• Build a robot that moves -- learn what is possible with the LEGO system
• Build a robot that can slowly move around within a 2 foot square enclosed area, "looking" at all the walls of the enclosure
• Mount a real camera on the robot
• Send the robot out of the classroom where it would be taken to the "Deep Sea Vent"
• Watch the video data streamed back to the classroom
• Document and identify as many characteristics and creatures observed in the vent and discuss findings with the rest of the class
 
Like the remote mars project described above and the radio astronomy projects completed at Green Bank, these students were undergoing an authentic remote investigation.  Unlike the Green Bank projects, Jan's school did not need a multi-billion dollar budget!  In the two examples provided here, students used network connected computers, webcams, and LEGO robots as the primary technology tools.  While not a billion dollar project, it is by no means a string and sticky tape experiment either.  What is the benefit of investing resources and time to get such a project up and running?  In the two examples provided, the benefit lies in modeling what scientists and engineers do in their own remote investigations.  Most major space or deep sea explorations utilize robotic and imaging technologies as essential investigation tools.  By using these same tools in classroom investigations, students feel that they too are "doing science".  The authenticity of the investigation increases the motivation and engagement of the students.

Using New to You Technology Tools
A note about STOMP:
When you watch the Deep Sea Vent video, you will see reference to a program called STOMP.  STOMP is an acronym for Student Teacher Outreach Mentor Program.  STOMP is a teacher professional development and student leadership model wherein high school or university students mentor teachers as they learn to use new technologies for teaching science, technology, engineering and math content.  In the Deep Sea Vent project, two of my high school students (the STOMP mentors) helped Jan (the STOMP mentee) and her students build the robots and set-up the video conferencing software to talk to the webcam on the robots.   Jan, the project's classroom teacher, created the vision for the project, the assignment for the students, and assessed their science content learning throughout the project.  What STOMP enabled her to do was achieve her vision through the technical assistance of the high school students.

For more information about the university version of STOMP, go to their website.

For information about the high school variation, visit here.

For another technology mentoring program, check out the GenYes program.

The bottom line -- if you are interested in projects that utilize unfamiliar technology, I encourage you to invent your own STOMP or GenYes type experience.  Seek out teachers in your district who use the technology you need and see if you can "borrow" a few of their students to mentor you.  It is an excellent way for you to gain professional development as well as providing the mentor students with exceptional leadership opportunities.

Additional WIRED Science Video Segments
Don't forget to check out our Video Section for other segments from WIRED Science that you can use in your classroom.

Wired Science's "GeekDad: UFO" video includes a fun and educational segment showing a step-by-step method on how to build a hovercraft with your students.  It is something that every physics teacher should have in their arsenal of fun toys that teach physics.  So what follows below are a few construction tips, some helpful advice, and some teaching strategies on how to use them.

Hovercrafts really took off in the early 1990s when powerful and cheap leaf blowers became available and plans began to proliferate on the internet.  They are extremely popular with kids and a teacher should not have any trouble asking a student to build one for the class.  I did that over ten years ago and I am still using the same one!

There are many ways to build a hovercraft.  The method shown in "Wired Science" is foolproof and I would encourage folks to try that and then go and modify the design.  The particular one that I use in class is made from a half-inch piece of plywood cut three feet in diameter.  I used a center hole with a thick piece of cardboard to mount the end of the leaf blower.  You can view instructions at PBS's Dragonfly series.  A video of it in action is also available on Teacher Tube. 

When choosing a leaf blower, look for a motor with the highest amperage so that you have plenty of lift.  You might check your outlet as these motors can pull considerable current.   Hovercrafts work by filling the tarp underneath with a pillow of air.  If the floor is smooth enough the pillow will slide along with very little friction.   It is essential that air can get out of the pillow - otherwise it will fill and deflate suddenly.  You should test your fabrics before buying them.  Blow into the fabric and see if air is able to go through.  You want a fabric that can breathe a bit, but if it does not, you can simply add a few holes symmetrically until the right volume of air exits.  A smooth release of air is what is required.

!!!!!!CAUTION!!!!!!   And I Repeat  !!!!!CAUTION!!!!!

Leaf blowers have a cowling that protects the user from exposure to the spinning motor blades.  It is also safety protected so that if the cowling comes off the motor stops spinning.  This cowling is designed for everyday use in the garden.  It is not designed to sustain impacts with walls and other kids.  Once I had a child hug the motor as they spun out of control and bumped into a wall.  The cowling came off and the motor was so close to the stomach of the child that it scraped clothing and skin.  It could have been much worse.  I can only imagine the damage of getting long hair caught in the motor.  So I warn kids about this repeatedly and I tape the cowling shut so that it can not fall off.  I highly recommend you do the same.  The second safety warning is that kids really do not know how to push someone so low to the ground, they tend to push hard and at the wrong angle.  I instruct them to do a gentle and horizontal push and remind them that this is just a demonstration, not the Indy 500.  I feel comfortable at the low speed not using a helmet on the hovercraft but you might consider it.

There are several avenues a physics teacher can take on lessons with hovercrafts.  I usually bring it out when I discuss Newton's First Law - that an object in uniform motion stays in uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force.  A simple push and the kids keep sailing down the hallway.  There really is no better demonstration of this.  To make the day that much more special, I combine this with Newton's Second Law and bring out the CO2 cart.  I sit the kids on a cart with a modified C02 nozzle and with a short burst they can accelerate themselves down the hall.

There are many other websites for constructing hovercrafts.  One of the original hovercraft designs is posted at the Science Hobbyist with William Beaty.  Check out his website of whacky science demos.  Hovercrafts are usually built at physics meetings and you can check out blogs and physics forums for additional plans.

An interesting way to incorporate hovercrafts is in a physics lesson about air pressure, as this teacher did at the University of British Columbia.  Finally, kids always want to see the coolest thing in town, so direct them to this video of a gas-powered hovercraft.

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Listening to the interview with Paul Kedrosky, I was immediately struck with two ideas I currently use in my classes/department.  Although very different in their setup, purpose, and methodology, they are both excellent at producing quality student work.

First, as I listened to the inventions or products his group was looking at, I thought of all the wonderful mathematicians and the inventions/ideas they provided for our world.  Archimedes, Euclid, Des Cartes - all were great minds and great mathematicians, but they also provided some real-life applications to our everyday world.  Too often, students are told of the names of famous explorers or scientists and their discoveries.  They very seldom hear of the mathematicians of the past and their accomplishments.

To remedy this, my students complete a math history project.  They are to study a historical figure who made great achievements in the mathematics field, or an important theorem or concept in mathematics. Over the past few years I have accomplished this using different mediums.  Some years, my kids film a short play, commercial, or documentary about the mathematician they are studying.  Other years they do a PowerPoint, or other multi-media presentation.

This year, they completed a math history "happy meal" (as in McDonald's).  The students were required to create a box with specific dimensions.  On the sides of the box (all six of them) they were to create games, puzzles, stories about whom they were researching.  One side had to be biographical information in a report format.  However, the other five were for them to become creative with.  Finally, they were to create a toy to go inside the box that was reflective of the person they studied.

For example, one of my students studied Einstein.  He took one of those pencils with the hair at the end that, when you turn it back and forth the hair spreads out wildly.  He put a body and Einstein's face on the pencil and the "hair" became quite accurate.  Another student researched Copernicus and his planetary motion theories.  (I allow a little latitude into applied mathematics fields as well).  His toy was one of the spinning suckers kids eat.  He snapped off the head of the sucker, and inserted a model of the sun with all the planets around it.  When he pushed the button on the sucker, the planets spun around the sun.  It was very creative.  I believe students need to understand the purpose behind the mathematics they are learning.  I know my kids took a deeper interest in everything we learned after the history project.

A second idea is a stock market project some of my colleagues use.  They issue each student "$50,000" in pretend funds at the beginning of the semester.  The kids, with the aids or graph, printouts, and the internet, must invest this money in at least 10 corporations.  They are to turn in a portfolio on a weekly basis, showing a cost analysis.  At the end of the summer, they can use any money they made as extra credit for the course.  They also receive extra points for how they do in comparison to their fellow classmates.  It is a wonderful exercise in patience, research, graphical analysis, and even how luck or probability plays into our lives.  Every year, the kids leave those classes saying that the market project was their favorite activity of the year.

PBS has several online links using stock market ideas.  Big Apple History has very detailed lesson plans for middle school students.  Created by Thirteen/WNET out of New York, the website contains the history of the market, its uses, several worksheets, and various steps teachers can use in demonstrating how the market works.

The Community Learning Network has a a great Math History Theme Page which lists several sites on several pages relating to specific events or people in math history.  It is very user friendly, and should be easy for students to navigate and find information.

The Math Forum created by the Drexel School of Education is full of links to sites on women mathematicians, engineering fields, mathematical symbols and uses.  If you want to know something about the history of math, it's probably here.

Finally, the NOVA program, "Infinite Secrets," has many links to videos, books, lessons, etc. regarding inventions and inventors from our past.  It has extensive information on Archimedes and other inventors.

If you have any suggestions or ideas regarding math history projects, or stock market/business activities, I'd love to hear them.  Please post your comments below.

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"The Grapes of Math" segment brought forward a couple of wonderful math ideas.  The first one that I thought of was the use of modeling data.  The use of yeast in the fermentation process of making wine is an example of a substance being used to speed something up.  How does yeast work?  How fast does it work?  It has been shown that yeast, if left alone in a warm solution containing sugars, will multiply quickly.  My question to my students would be, "How quickly?"  As a class, we could get several containers of a solution of water and sugar.  We could run the experiment two different ways.  First, we have equal amounts of water in several containers.  We could add varying amounts of sugar to each container, thus making sure the ratios of water to sugar in each solution were different.  In the second set of trials, we could have equal amounts of water in each container and add varying amounts of sugar to each.  In both cases, we'd add similar amounts of yeast to the solutions.  We could determine the length of time it took to increase by 50%, 75% or 100%.  The students could plot these data sets for each set of trials.

Upon seeing the data sets, they could estimate what type of regression equation would fit the data best.  Would it be a power function?  Exponential?  Logarithmic?  Linear?  It would be up to them to decipher the information in front of them.  When they have come to the conclusion of which equation is "best," they would demonstrate how to use this equation to predict amounts of yeast, water, and sugar required to double the size of a solution/mixture.  They could experiment with their predictions to see how accurate they were.  Finally, I would expect a short paper explaining how they got their data, the graphs that ensued, the hypothesis/equations they got because of the data, their predictions, and the follow-up experiment and conclusions.

A second idea to use in an Algebra 1 or Pre-Algebra class would be the analysis of slopes.  In the video segment, they spoke of how the first winemaker analyzed the slopes of the hillsides of his land and tried to find the area that was the most similar to the hillsides in France.  This is a great practical example of the use of "slope" in the real world.  In a classroom, we could have several photos of mountains, hills, or inclines from photos or the internet.  Using a program, such as Geometer's Sketchpad, we could label certain points on each hillside.  Using the formula for slope, the students could determine which sections of each hill had identical slopes.  Or it could be used as an introductory lesson by having students determine visually which ones looked the same, and then come up with a method for testing their prediction.

The segment also made me think of a wonderful children's book, The Grapes of Math, by Gregg Tang.  My own children enjoy reading this book (designed for children in grades 3 through 5), and they like solving the picture and word riddles.  A review by the School Library Journal said:

Picture puzzles accompanied by clues in verse encourage readers to embark on some inspired problem solving.  Each riddle and an illustration are set on a two-page spread.  The goofy rhymes set a humorous tone.  Through patterns, grouping, and creative thinking, the problems to be solved will have children adding, subtracting, and multiplying.  Throughout, Tang sneaks in useful visual strategies that can be used in solving other computation problems.  Bright, appealing computer images add to the playful nature of the title.  The solutions provided at the back of the volume include a miniature color reproduction of each picture and a clearly diagrammed answer along with text outlining the process employed to arrive at that answer.  A fun addition to classroom and library shelves.
-- Lucinda Snyder Whitehurst, St. Christopher's School, Richmond, VA

There were a plethora of websites teaching slope analysis and projects.  One is part of the Hotchalk's Lesson Plans Page website.  It is a lesson written by Mikel Whiting.  His lesson has students exploring real world situations as it relates to slopes, such as stairways and inclines.  He details a 6-part lesson, where students are actively engaged in determining the conceptual basis of what slope is, how to find it on a graph, and finally how to derive the equation.  It is complete with assessment references and suggestions as well.

A second website I found to be useful in my statistics and Pre-Calculus class is the USA Today's education website.  The lesson, "Heat Watch," gives two more hyperlinks.  One is for the student information, handouts, questions, graphs, etc.  The other is for teacher resources, follow-up ideas, web site information, graphs, etc.  It is very thorough, informative, colorful, and pertinent to the student's daily lives.

See below for a really cool video on the fermentation process (for beer, not wine) which shows the several weeks-long fermentation process in just a few minutes.

If you have any suggestions regarding the segment, "The Grapes of Math," and its use in a mathematics classroom, please send them in and post a comment.  I'd love to discuss them.

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Recently, I was fortunate enough to be awarded an Fulbright Memorial Fund Scholarship to travel to Japan to observe the Japanese school system, its classrooms, its buildings, its teachers, and its students.  I was able to see several elementary, middle school, high school, and even university students in their educational settings.  At the elementary building, I received a gift of 100 paper cranes, folded by the students of the school I was visiting.  This art of paper folding has been around for generations in Japan.  The students tried to teach me how to do several animal shapes.  I watched in awe as they manipulated a very small piece of two-dimensional paper, into a wonderful three-dimensional object.  I also attempted, usually in error, to create one myself.

I have never used origami in my mathematics classroom, however, I found several websites and ideas online of teachers who do.  It was created by Eric M. Anderson.  It is one of the most thorough website on origami I found.  The website contains diagrams, the history of origami, the connections between origami and mathematics, photos of his work, and hundreds of links to other sites, books, and math theories behind this wonderful art form.  The site is designed for math students and/or instructors at the high school and college levels.

A second site I found is one designed for the elementary students.  It was created by LearnNC, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education, and written by Cherl Hollada, Libby Morrison, Michelle Kaczynski and Susan Pope.  It is a detailed geometry lesson plan, aimed at students in grades three through five.  In the lesson, students will "produce an origami sculpture, use the appropriate vocabulary to describe the origami sculpture, and explain the sequence followed in its development.  They will also solve related math problems upon completion of the sculpture."  The lesson plan outlines student goals, pre-activities to be completed by the class, activities during the lesson, time requirements, materials list, and assessment ideas.  Based on the details given, and the thoroughness of the lesson, I would suggest finding this site and trying it out.

TeAch-nology is a great website containing 32 links to sites deals with interesting diagrams of origami.  Each of the links within this site are created specifically for teachers.  The complexity of the individual sites ranges from creating a simple swan, to another site that lists over 300 different diagrams and photos.  This site would be useful for an introduction, as well as a challenge for the students in your classroom that wishes to go above and beyond.  It can challenge them to create amazing things.

If you want to challenge your students to really think out of the box, check out the following articles which both describe uses of origami that go beyond just paper folding.  The first, "Origami Cell Phone Concept," is a prototype cell phone in which the screen actually folds out into a larger one through the concept of origami.  It was created by Bill Christensen of Technovelgy.com.  The second article, "Portable 'Halo,' and other 'Origami' concepts," demonstrates how the concepts behind origami have been used in creating the game "Halo."  They are amazing concepts that might just spur an idea out of one of your students.

A great video source for several hundred origami patterns, photos, and demonstrations can be found at Origami Video.

In introducing origami, I would suggest the children's book, Sadako, and the Thousand Paper Cranes, by Eleanor Coerr.  It is a true story of a young Japanese girl who lived at the end of World War II.  Through her struggles and eventual death, she became a heroine to the entire country of Japan.  Today, there is a peace monument dedicated to her memory in Hiroshima.  It is a wonderful book to be enjoyed by children of all ages.

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In watching this video, I thought of the wonderful engineering that goes on in constructing many things.  Seeing the junk yard and the materials NASA is trying use to replicate or mimic the Saturn rocket, made me think of the movie "Apollo 13" when the engineering leader brought in the square piece of piping, told his staff they had to make it fit into a round hole, and gave them all the items they had to use.  This is the essence of engineering to me.  Create what you want to create, but only using a limited amount of "stuff" or money.

A project we do on the first day of school really gets my students' minds working and we have a lot of fun with it, too.  It's called the Barbie Bungee Jump.  I used to use raw eggs in a handmade sack, but it got too messy.  I've found that the dolls work well and are fun, too.  To do this you need a lot of rubber bands, toy dolls (or anything that you feel you'd like to drop on a bungee cord), measuring devices (meter stick, ruler, tape measure), and a calculator.  Students attach a rubber band to the doll, and then loop several more rubber bands together and attach them to the band with the doll.  They then do sample drops of Barbie, determining the distance she falls, related to the number of rubber bands used.  Each group needs to find several (7-10) distance/rubber band data points.  This gets trickier for kids to find distances as the number of bands increase.  They get very creative in finding methods of measuring these distances.  They enter in the data into their calculator and determine a Linear Regression that fits best.  (It's amazing, with all the physics going on, how linear the relationship really is.)  On the final day of the activity, students draw a random number out of a hat.  This number corresponds with a step number of our football stadium.  The kids need to predict the number of rubber bands required to give Barbie a safe, yet thrilling ride.  We have a lot of fun with this, and the kids all do quite well.

Another related project is the Egg Drop Project.  Done mostly in physics classes, it could also be a fun activity to relate to mathematics.  There are several websites detailing the specifics of this project.  There is one that I have found which has several photos and a complete explanation of the activity.  It has a lot of great engineering concepts within it as well.  Posted below is a video clip of an egg drop activity.

In my classes, we also do a rocket launch project.  We use 35mm film canisters (you need the ones that don't have a lip around the lid), Alka-Seltzer, water, and a stopwatch for the activity.  Students fill the canister about ¼ full with water, place about a quarter of a tablet in the water, seal the lid, turn the canister on it's top, and wait.  They need to record the time it takes from the "Pop" of the canister to when it hits the ground.  After repeating this several times, each group chooses their best launch.  Using the equation for displacement (or in math texts - projectile motion: -4.9t2 + vot + ho) and the time the canister was in the air, the groups are able to determine the height it reached, the initial velocity, and the velocity at any given point during the flight.  While a very simple project, it teaches some of the graphing calculators capabilities, and reinforces the concepts of maximum, projectile motion, and derivative.  A video of a "rocket" launch is posted below.

I found a great book online dealing with rocket building and uses for school projects.  It is called 50 Model Rocket Projects for the Evil Genius.  It has received terrific reviews and looks applicable to both the mathematics and science fields.  Many times throughout the school year, especially in my upper-level courses, I will have students ask me about the field of engineering and I direct them to this informative website on UniXL.  Students want to know what it entails, what the different types are, and what I think they would be good at.  This site gives a brief explanation of several fields of engineering, the mathematics and science required for each, and possible responsibilities/jobs each field would deal with.  It also has several links within the site that direct the student and the teacher to engineering websites, project sites, etc.  My kids find it is a worthwhile site.

For students who are looking to go a step further in looking at rocketry, mathematics, and how they are intertwined, go to the PBS website, DragonflyTV.  It is about a couple of young ladies who went to a space camp and learned the intricacies of rocket building.  The site details several things they have tried to measure using model rockets, and gives suggestions to other students about investigations they can do as well.  It has videos, links, ideas, riddles, etc. and will maybe be a starting block for your students who want to try going a little further with rocketry than you have class time for.  It could help to create a great independent study project.

If you have any suggestions about using rocketry or engineering in the math classroom, please post them below.

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