A few weeks ago, we had a beautiful lunar eclipse visible in North America. It was well worth sitting out to watch the Earth’s shadow advance until the Moon was completely covered and glowing with a warm red hue, then retreat until the Moon shone bright once again. Here is a combination of a poem written for a workshop many years back, inspired by another lunar eclipse, with a few photos from this year’s event. Multitudes of astrophotographers caught fine images of that eclipse. This time, my equipment on hand was my hardy little point-and-shoot Lumix, which yielded many images suitable for artistic manipulation, especially with effects added by the drifting fog that interrupted our clear view. Mars was in view as well, so I’ll include one image with Mars. Can you spot it?
I watch the Mother walk my night,
spreading her darkness through my shadows.
She turns to me as the night turns, and I watch, I gaze,
rapt in the music of her light.
Wrapped round and full in the stillness of this, my night,
she draws in light and darkness from the sky,
and sets them in my hands and at my feet,
until the whole land is an image of sky,
until I am full, full round and whole,
wholly wrapped in the music within my darkness.
She waxes as the night wanes, and I gaze, gaze,
until I dream I am a fish which has never before known water,
and now, for the first time, breathes …
until I dream I am a child who has never known her name,
and now, for the first time, dreams …
dreams she stands with a woman, a stranger,
in a land which bears an image of sky.
The other, the stranger, is silent beside her,
while she speaks to the mother as a favored daughter.
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.)
Candy Nucleons
2 Neutron, 2 Protons
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.
Pathway for the Nucleus
1 Down, 3 To Go
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.
Dunk
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.
Adding the Electron Shell
Set the decorated marshmallows aside on a sheet of waxed paper or a 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.
The Pixel Gravity crew are interested in astronomical phenomena outside the computer as well as creating simulations to run. Check out some of our videos on YouTube:
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.)
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.
