Quote for the day, for the scientists among us

From an article on Ernest Rutherford:

"That same year, he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship, enabling him to go to Trinity College at the University of Cambridge as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory under J.J. Thomson. There, he briefly held the world record for the distance over which wireless waves were detected. During the investigation of radioactivity, he coined the terms alpha, beta and gamma rays. In 1897, Rutherford was awarded his B.A. Research Degree and the Coutts-Trotter Studentship of Trinity College.

"When the Macdonald Chair of Physics at McGill University in Montreal became vacant in 1898, Rutherford left for Canada to take up the post. There, he did the work that gained him the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, demonstrating that radioactivity was the spontaneous disintegration of atoms. This is ironic given his famous remark, 'In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.'"

Article found at AtomicArchive.com.

School plans for Thursday

Opening time;  Hymns; read a couple of pages from Down to Earth

Ourselves Book II: "Instructors of Conscience"

Balance Benders Level 3

Science Part One:  Play The Periodic Table Game (printable board game from Ellen McHenry)

Picture Talk:  Jan Vermeer, The Geographer

Ivanhoe: chapter 29

Prepared dictation from Ivanhoe:  It was not until evening was nearly closed that Ivanhoe was restored to consciousness of his situation. He awoke from a broken slumber, under the confused impressions which are naturally attendant on the recovery from a state of insensibility. He was unable for some time to recall exactly to memory the circumstances which had preceded his fall in the lists, or to make out any connected chain of the events in which he had been engaged upon the yesterday. A sense of wounds and injury, joined to great weakness and exhaustion, was mingled with the recollection of blows dealt and received, of steeds rushing upon each other, overthrowing and overthrown---of shouts and clashing of arms, and all the heady tumult of a confused fight. An effort to draw aside the curtain of his conch was in some degree successful, although rendered difficult by the pain of his wound.

To his great surprise he found himself in a room magnificently furnished, but having cushions instead of chairs to rest upon, and in other respects partaking so much of Oriental costume, that he began to doubt whether he had not, during his sleep, been transported back again to the land of Palestine. 

Science Part Two:  How to Make a Universe, pages 16-17, about hydrogen and stars;  pages 18-21, about elements of the earth and our atmosphere

French Smart 7, Unit 2; practice French memory verse.

How to grow a young scientist (Dorothy Hodgkin, today's Google Doodle honoree)

Have you noticed today's Google Doodle?  It's in honour of Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994), the developer of protein crystallography.  She developed a way of showing how things like insulin are constructed--because scientists had to be able to see the structure of it before they could work with it.

"Though born in the twentieth century, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin had a typical late-nineteenth century upbringing. She was born in Cairo, Egypt, then a British colony. When Hodgkin was four, the family was back in England and World War I broke out. The parents returned to Egypt, leaving the children with family and governesses for four years. Hodgkin found an interest in chemistry and crystals, a popular hobby for women of leisure in the 1800s. But on her sixteenth birthday, she received a book by William Henry Bragg (a Nobelist in physics) about using x-rays to analyze crystals. She had found her life's work."  (PBS.org article)

"Her mother, Grace Mary Crowfoot (born Hood) was actively involved in all her father's work, and became an authority in her own right on early weaving techniques. She [Dorothy's mother] was also a very good botanist and drew in her spare time the illustrations to the official Flora of the Sudan. Dorothy Crowfoot spent one season between school and university with her parents, excavating at Jerash and drawing mosaic pavements, and she enjoyed the experience so much, that she seriously considered giving up chemistry for archaeology.  She became interested in chemistry and in crystals at about the age of 10, and this interest was encouraged by Dr. A.F. Joseph, a friend of her parents in the Sudan, who gave her chemicals and helped her during her stay there to analyse ilmenite. Most of her childhood she spent with her sisters at Geldeston in Norfolk, from where she went by day to the Sir John Leman School, Beccles, from 1921-28. One other girl, Norah Pusey, and Dorothy Crowfoot were allowed to join the boys doing chemistry at school, with Miss Deeley as their teacher; by the end of her school career, she had decided to study chemistry and possibly biochemistry at university."  (Nobel Prize biographical article)

"I first met the subject of X-ray diffraction of crystals in the pages of the book W. H. Bragg wrote for school children in 1925, 'Concerning the Nature of Things'. [More about Bragg] In this he wrote: "Broadly speaking, the discovery of X-rays has increased the keenness of our vision over ten thousand times and we can now 'see' the individual atoms and mo1ecules." I also first learnt at the same time about biochemistry which provided me with the molecules it seemed most desirable to 'see'. At Oxford, seriously studying chemistry, with Robinson and Hinshelwood among my professors, I became captivated by the edifices chemists had raised through experiment and imagination-but still I had a lurking question. Would it not be better if one could really 'see' whether molecules as complicated as the sterols, or strychnine were just as experiment suggested? The process of 'seeing' with X-rays was clearly more difficult to apply to such systems than my early reading of Bragg had suggested; it was with some hesitation that I began my first piece of research work with H. M. Powell on thallium dialkyl halides, substances remote from, yet curiously connected with, my later subjects for research."  (Her Nobel Prize acceptance speech)

More here.

What will we talk about in science today? Carbon, macronutrients, and carbohydrates

The next section of General Science is about macronutrients, starting with carbohydrates.  However, I would like to back up a little bit, and talk about carbon.  Look at the double-spread page "The chemistry of carbon" in DK Chemistry.  Think about carbon paper, eggshells, diamonds, and chalk. (Do you remember learning about coal last year? Updated link)  Where does the name "carbohydrate" come from?

Now turn the page and look at "The chemistry of life" in the same book.  See the diagram/photograph of the carbon cycle?  What is metabolism?

Now let's read from General Science, starting on page 304, and discussing the different forms of carbohydrates (studying the diagrams there).  Work out the names for the simple and complex carbohydrates.

So where do we get carbohydrates?

SIMPLE CARBOHYDRATE:

Sugar - fruit, fruit juice, table sugar, honey, soft drinks, and other sweets

COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATE:

Starch - bread, cereal, potatoes, pasta, rice, and legumes (dried peas and beans)
Fiber - bran, whole-grain foods, raw vegetables and fruit (especially the seeds and skins), legumes, nuts, seeds and popcorn

(This list and other ideas taken from a lesson plan at Utah Education Network.)

Make a list of your ten favourite "carbohydrate" foods.  Mark down which ones are simple and which ones are complex.  (Use the chart provided.)  Does it matter to us if we eat more simple or more complex carbohydrates?  Why?  Here's one answer.

Cartoon found here.

Ooh, oxygen!

Fun with chemistry and Jean-Henri Fabre: click on the PDF of Eleanor Doorly's Insect Man and read the chapter on pages 20-21. (Penelope, Geraldine et al are an English family visiting France and trying to find all the places where Fabre lived.) We happen to have a set of Bonjour magazines from Mama Squirrel's own school days and one of them has photos of Avignon, which we used along with this chapter. Since most people haven't saved their 1977 Bonjours, you can look at these pictures on Wikipedia.

Well, at least nobody got killed.