Lessons of a BayCon Gofer: You Do What You Con

May 16, 2015| cometary| 0 Comment | 7:38 pm

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It’s a Sign From NASA

As of BayCon 2014, Saturday’s big event is the Variety Show (the event formerly known as Masquerade), so the halls of the Hyatt are full of costumed characters. My husband’s coming tonight, just for the Show. In the meantime, I need to cram in some of my own Con activities, beginning with a kaffeeklatsch (small-group discussion) with the artist guest of honor, Ursula Vernon. Then there’s that one panel discussion (I’m not generally keen on panels, but Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is on this one). And I have my eye on a session about cool Arduino projects, not to mention showing up for a presentation by some friends and acquaintances from the Bay Area Lego User Group.

Does this mean I’m not Gofering at all? Nope. Gofering is a flexible commitment. I can sign in just for the time block I expect to be free. And the Art Show happens to need an extra hand just then.

The Art Show is one of my favorite venues, always with something new to see. Plus this particular day began with that awesome-artist kaffeeklatsch. The only downside? No photography, for obvious reasons. It’s light work, helping things get organized. Sorting collections of paper, helping the Art Show leaders check that all the forms are there and all the pieces have their bid sheets and all the pieces on display are included in their records. There’s an old computer that needs someone to keep trying to get it to boot up. And finally, I’m entrusted with the queue of members needing to be assigned their bidder numbers and to be reminded of how the bid process works. My qualifications? Being an experienced art-show bidder, and relatively fussy with paperwork.

By the time the queue was down to the occasional new arrival and my services weren’t needed, it was time for the afternoon programs I wanted to attend.

More Fun With Arduino

And then I had the whole evening free to spend with my husband, who used his one-day pass for the variety show,

Vader & Son with Garcia

a tour, some pictures of paparazzi,

Dot Matrix & Her Fans

and an introduction to boffers, where a pair of energetic youngsters thoroughly trounced us both. He drew the line at staying for the midnight reading of Eye of Argon. Being a simply horrid spouse, I sent him home alone and dropped in on a few parties after that quiet, sedate, restful hour of reading, to whit:

The Eye of Argon appears at midnight

Gofer Lesson of the Day: Let yourself enjoy the convention, too.

On Aisle 42, Universe Components: The Atomic Marshmallow ProjectOn Aisle 42, Universe Components: The Atomic Marshmallow Project

View looking down of supply kit: pink powder (gelatin) in a white up, water in a clear plastic cup, a round red plate, two wooden skewers, two marshmallows, four small candies in a small container. — The Atomic Marshmallow Kit

Now that you have all of your supplies ready, it’s time to guide your group through the construction of a model atom.

Start by handing out the marshmallows and ice-cream topping pieces. With younger participants, it can maintain focus if you mention that there are extra supplies for snacking on afterwards.

Start with the marshmallow. Most of an atom is empty space. And most of a marshmallow is nothing but air frothed into sugar. So this marshmallow represents the “empty” space of an atom. For older participants, you can encourage them to think of the sugar of the marshmallow as representing not only the energy that permeates what we call “empty” space but also the forces that hold the atom together.

For a very long time, the atom was believed to be more-or-less of uniform density, an amorphous mixture of tiny negative particles called electrons swirling around in a positively-charged “pudding.” In 1911, Ernst Rutherford and his team completed a series of experiments that shocked the physics community by revealing that most of the mass of an atom is concentrated in a tiny, central nucleus containing all of the positive charge. For our model, in honor of Rutherford, we’ll build a helium (He) atom, which has a nucleus containing two protons and two neutrons. (Much of Rutherford’s research focused on the alpha particle–which happens to be exactly the same as a helium nucleus.)

Let your dark-colored candies be protons and your light-colored candies be neutrons. (It doesn’t really matter, but textbooks often draw protons as dark dots and neutrons as white dots.)

Assorted small candies in various colors, blue, green, purple, white. — Candy Nucleons

Two dark and two white little candies (close-up) — Candy Nucleons

Using the wooden skewer or toothpick, drill a small hole in the side of the marshmallow. Now use the same toothpick or skewer to push those nucleons (a word which here means “candy pieces representing protons and neutrons”) into the center of the marshmallow.

Close-up of marshmallow with hole poked in center, showing marshmallow-covered tip of wooden skewer. — Pathway for the Nucleus

Close-up of marshmallow, with one dark candy visible inside hole in center, and two white and one dark candy waiting on top. — Pathway for the Nucleus

This is a good time in the activity to stop lecturing and instead gather suggestions from the participants and sketch their ideas on a board if you have one, or to gather around some sketching paper for discussion purposes. You can expect to see pictures that look much like a planetary system, because that’s the way the atom often (still!) is drawn in textbooks. You might have a knowledgeable participant who’ll shout out something like, “Shells! The electrons are in shells!” or “They’re in the Cloud!” Regardless, during the discussion, build on these volunteered suggestions to reach a description of the electrons as whirling around the nucleus in a cloud, going so fast that you can’t really tell exactly where they are, only that you know roughly how far they are from the nucleus.

At this point, we have a positively charged ion, because we haven’t added any electrons yet. A helium atom needs two electrons, negatively-charged particles, to balance out the two positively-charged protons. Once it was established that the positive charge is concentrated in the nucleus, where did researchers decide that the electrons belong?

Our helium atom’s two electrons do indeed share an electron “shell”, a layer of electrons a known distance from the nucleus. So let’s put a very thin, energetic, sparkly shell around our atom.

Before setting up the shell supplies, pause to demonstrate the procedure. If you’re working with younger students, you may need to stress that everyone will get their turn. If the “mess” part of the activity is an issue, set up a protected area where the messy activity is OK and let the participants queue up to build their atoms in assembly-line fashion.

To create the “electron shell” skewer the marshmallow firmly on the wooden stick, then very briefly dunk it into the water, then tap off any excess water into the water container. Tapping off excess water is important, because otherwise the marshmallow can get soggy, which makes for a less-attractive candy atom.

Marshmallow on skewer dunked into clear plastic cup half-full of water. — Dunk

Wet marshmallow held by skewer on edge of plastic cup of water, drops of water dripping off. — and un-dunk.

Each group needs a container with about a cup of water in it and another container with a packet of dry gelatin mix emptied into it. (For fun, choose a gelatin color in keeping with whatever events are ongoing, or a local sports team’s colors…anything to drive interest.)

Finally, gently swirl the damp marshmallow in the gelatin mix.

Marshmallow on a skewer, being rolled in pink gelatin in a round white bowl. — Adding the Electron Shell

Set the decorated marshmallows aside on a sheet of waxed paper or a plate.

Two gelatin-coated marshmallows, on skewers, set to dry on a round red plastic plate. — Two Finished Helium Atoms

As time permits, participants can make other atoms…stuffing different numbers of protons or neutrons into marshmallows and adding a shell of electrons.

Chasing Comets: Supplies & ResourcesChasing Comets: Supplies & Resources

Supplies and Materials

Below, you’ll find a handy supply document you can download, with shopping lists for small and large groups and a range of cost estimates, depending on how much of the supplies you can acquire from available supplies or donations by participants. With a minimal outlay, you and your group can experience being comet chasers–observers of comets.

Basically, you need a bunch of badminton birdies for your comet heads—keep in mind you don’t need performance-grade shuttlecocks or even new ones. If your high school has a badminton team, they will have worn-out birdies you can take off their hands. A grungy, beat-up birdie makes a more realistic comet head.

Birdies for Comets

And you need a bunch of ribbon—curling ribbon for the comet tails. The supply sheet estimates ribbon packages at around $8, but if you look at this photo, you’ll see the last time I bought supplies, it was out of the clearance bin at $2. And if you can get one in five of your participants to bring in a roll to share, it won’t cost you a dime.

Zoom Out–Yes! Here’s All You Need To Make Comets

The one oddball item is that tulle fabric ribbon for the big comet. This you might have a hard time finding in your junk drawer unless you’ve been helping a bride make wedding tchochkes. But for $10 you can buy enough to make three huge comets. Cut five-yard lengths and tie one end of each to a vane of a single birdie, allowing a few inches of extra length to fan out as the comet’s “coma”. Tulle scrunches up easily, so even a six-inch-wide ribbon will feed through the holes between the birdie’s vanes.

Detail–How To Tie Fabric Tails

You should be able to borrow a portable fan and a playground or soccer ball. If you can’t, it will take a roughly $25 expenditure to get those items in stock—a cost you can recoup in part by either donating it to the group you’re working with or simply deducting the expense as part of your cost of volunteering.

And it is presumed you can find a pencil, which makes holding the small model a little easier when you’re doing the demo with the fan; here’s the trick for hooking the pencil to the comet head:

Holder For Fan Experiment

Depending on how good you are at scrounging supplies and locating soccer balls, your costs will range from $10 to $85 for typical group sizes. The spreadsheet I use has a calculation column to adjust the requirements list for other class sizes So, if you want a copy of this fully-functional workbook, “like” the Facebook page & I’ll send you one via a Facebook “message”. (You can also try emailing me through the “contacts” page here, but you’ll get a faster response on FB.) Your FB contact will be used for nothing other than sending you a file and boosting the “likes”-count on my page. [Insert maniacal laughter, if desired.]

Meanwhile, you can get the static workbook as a pdf right away:

Just Supplies Chasing Comets

Resources and References

Now that you are all excited about comets, here are some fun places to go where you can find more cometary material:

A lovely one-page summary from the Spaceguard Program (sponsored by the European Space Agency) gives a clear description of comet tail structure and dynamics, including a neat animation of what both tails look like as the comet proceeds around the sun. The ion tail streams straight back, while the dust tail is curved a bit as the particles within the dust tail blend movement due to their individual orbits about the sun and the forces of the radiation pressure. Net, both tails roughly point away from the sun, as in our demonstration.

Sweet page from NASA with helpful animations and clear descriptions.

Follow the European Space Agency’s comet-chasing spacecraft, Rosetta, as it aims for the first robotic landing on a cometary nucleus.

Read this: a “real” science article with a good set of detailed discussions of the types of comet tails and how they work.

Or, try this excellent piece by freelance science writer Craig Freidenrich on the inner workings of comets.

The Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing’s educational site helps with details on the structure of comets.

Explore a public-domain catalog of Solar System images, from Hubble and other spacefarers.

Discover how Oort clouds may be one way star systems interact directly with one another, because the Oort clouds project so far out.

See the invisible part of a comet.

Find out all about radiation pressure.

Plan to catch sight of the meteor shower sponsored by Comet Halley.

Explore the origins of comets at this UC Berkeley site.

Check out NASA’s solar system photo gallery, with images from NASA and European Space Agency exploration missions and telescopes.

Visit the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s educational site, with even more hands-on activities for young astrophysicists. Roam their site for educator workshops and more.

OK, seriously, I’m not the only science blogger keen on comets.

A new comet is incoming this month (May 2014).

Our guy Euler was the first one to suggest that light exerts pressure, but we had to wait over 100 years to get to Maxwell, who proved it, and then another quarter-century went by before some Russians managed to measure radiation pressure. (Also, gotta love Google Books.)

Oh, and by 1915 the proof of radiation pressure made it into Scientific American.

My Instagram AdventureMy Instagram Adventure

I mentioned in my previous post that I’ve started a little Instagram project that allows me to play with my old books. This post essentially is an introduction to the content I’m putting into the Instagram series. Technically, these are supposed to help with promotion of my own book, but if I’m to work on a new platform several times a week, there has to be something in it for me–and renewing old acquaintances is as good a motivation as any.

Since this is my first try at an Instagram project, naturally, I’ve let myself start on a softer topic: ponies! yay, ponies! Below are my first two posts in that series:

Joanna’s Special Pony, by Hilda Boden, 1964 paperback edition

A friend put up a challenge on FB for us to tell about the first book we read on our own. I was stuck; I couldn’t remember. My mother used to say I learned to read “too early”, so that memory is, I suppose, lost to the fuzziness of preschool memory neurons. But . . . I do vividly recall the first book I bought by myself, for myself, and read until it was so ragged with overreading. It was about this girl, Joanna, who was just awesome–she could tame a wild horse, she could take care of herself on a deserted island, she could stand up to bad guys. I wanted to BE that girl so very much–so much so that when I had to choose a saint’s name for my Catholic confirmation (and, yes, we did that at age 10 in those ancient times), I insisted on Joanna. My mother was dismayed–she had already picked out a name I was supposed to use–Ann. It wasn’t too far off, though, so maybe Mom just had slightly-off foresight.

Anyhow, while trying to explain the book to my friends, I found a copy for sale on ABE Books UK. It was the exact paperback edition I’d owned back then–so . . . now it’s mine. Again. Joanna’s Special Pony is a classic “pony book”, with clever, courageous young teens up against adult malfeasance and bonded together by their love of horses and nature in general. The characters are distinct, not cookie-cutter–even the villains of the piece have second thoughts about what they’re up to. (Spoiler alert . . . When they connive to strand our heroine, one packs her a nice big picnic and the other insists she bring along a warm coat.) It’s set in Scotland, too, which for me is a nice bonus. (There are these little asides about “the English” that still ring true.)

I wish my mom had saved my pony books–but, then, they’re still out there to find. You can explore this wonderful “lost” genre at https://janebadgerbooks.co.uk/ or snag the Kindle edition of Jane Badger’s comprehensive book on the topic, Heroines on Horseback at https://www.amazon.com/Heroines-Horseback-Pony-Childrens-Literature-ebook/dp/B07S2ZSKNN/.

#formativebooks #whatimreading #mybookshelf #ponybooks #outofprintbooks #ilovebooks

Joanna Rides the Hills, by Hilda Boden, first edition, 1960

Once I found my first favorite book, it dawned on me there could be more out there. For one, my favorite book had a sequel . . . I actually found Book 2 while searching for Book 1. In the sequel, Joanna and her friends grow closer and become better friends. And they do a bunch of riding around on ponies.

It’s difficult to explain why finding the sequel to a kids’ book that I liked when I was 8, 9, and 10 got me so excited. Back when I was collecting pony books (in between the boarding-school books, the mystery books, and the cowboy books–no, cowboy books are not the same as pony books), I never managed to get my hands on the continuation of my absolute favorite book, to spend just a few more hours with the girl who was my childhood idol. Someday, I was sure, I’d find and rescue a wild pony and it would be my best friend and we would have people friends too, and we’d ride the wild hills all the time. Or at least until time for supper.

According to Jane Badger Books (The Source for all things pony-book, e.g., https://janebadgerbooks.co.uk/product/joanna-rides-the-hills/), this particular book is actually kind of rare. Some crazy has a “new” copy up on Amazon for nearly $1,000. Yeah, right, it’s “new”. I hesitated only long enough to be sure my copy of Joanna’s Special Pony was paid for on ABE Books UK, before clicking back to the Other Bookseller for a properly-priced, accurately described copy of sequel. Other Bookseller actually happened to be on this side of the pond, so I received the two books in reverse order–but both of them in time for my birthday! So, Quarantine Birthday came with lovely memories of wishing so very hard for my very own pony, while looking out the back door at . . . our family’s current pony-pet, Echo, as he whinnied for an extra round of supper.

Though I’ll try to keep the blog and the Instagram distinct, please don’t imagine it’s only pony books. The theme is “formative books,” which offers a broad landscape to roam. I’ve just done a post on a recent fantasy landmark work by Leslie Ann Moore, Griffin’s Daughter, which does have horses in it, but they are by no means the focus of the story. And I’m currently re-reading Leonard Wibberly’s The Road From Toomi, which, though two characters do make a long trek on horseback, primarily offers insights on racism and colonialism that survive the over fifty years since its publication. The next one on my list, Missing Man, by Katherine MacLean, has no horses whatsoever, so the streak will break there.

Lessons of a BayCon Gofer: You Do What You Con

You might also like to read:

On Aisle 42, Universe Components: The Atomic Marshmallow ProjectOn Aisle 42, Universe Components: The Atomic Marshmallow Project

Chasing Comets: Supplies & ResourcesChasing Comets: Supplies & Resources

My Instagram AdventureMy Instagram Adventure