Lou-Vee-Air: April 2012

Activity 9 Supplement 1

Activity 9 Supplement 1

The Saga of Sam's Lost Legion

And their Halleluiah House

The story of Sam is designed to show you how you and your team can dream up, develop, test and demonstrate an original educational device.

Reading what Sam did and practicing by making a model of a house like the one Sam demonstrated to the class will show you how to do Activity 9.

Activity 9 asks you to come up with an original educational device, or modify one that already exists, something

A. Very educational

B. Very fun to work on

C. Very challenging and

D. Very inexpensive and "Green"

E. Very Green" – meaning earth friendly

F. Safe for people age 12 and over to operate

Why? The Center wants the Student Research Reports we publish on our Website to be reproducible anywhere on earth at low- or no-cost. We hope this inspired those who view our site to come up with their own original educational devices that our students in the USA can make. We hope we start a "viral revolution," where we aren't "teaching" our students, but rather letting them create lessons other students can use, and thus we hope to keep everyone busy doing real science and real product development technology, and not just memorizing stuff that other people have discovered long ago.

Here's the story of one TEAM, led by Sam, and what they did to "educate" their classmates about the value of insulating a home.

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Sam’s Halleluiah House

I stood at my open door awaiting the first period bell. Beautiful projects were lined up around our science room. Rube Goldberg machines dominated but there were three varieties of AirCars, two kites, an airplane and three helium balloons. One group had even modified my "Electric Pickle Lamp," so it would be safe for students to use. It was not very bright, it made funny noises, and it smelled funny. I had to intervene when someone said it reminded him of a certain guy in the senior class: Sam.

Sam lived a complicated life, and never seemed to thrive in a usual academic setting. His mom had placed him in my class because it had a kind of "sanctuary" dimension, where "difficult" kids could feel comfortable and safe.

It turned out that Sam's TEAM, called The Lost Legion, was in grave danger of missing graduation because Sam had not been able to work with them until a week before the final deadline, which was today, "Final Friday."

Sam came along carrying a large cardboard box. An electric cord dangled out of the top.

"Can we show our project today?" he asked.

"Of course," I said. We had agreed two weeks before that his group could do their demonstration of Final Friday, There was no way Sam would let his group down. The whole class loved Sam. It wasn't his fault that he was always getting things mixed up. He was born under a cloud, it seemed.

Just before the bell, Sam's team, Cashandra, Gale and Craig rushed in, and together they began setting up on the center lab table in the front. They seemed to move like a precision drill team. When Sam war "cooking," he could get amazing things done. The TEAM respected that, and cooperated.

My class came in, prepared to take their routine notes in the last pages of their notebooks. Gale would write data as Craig called it out, and Cashandra would run the stop watch, turn the lamp on and off, and insert the "AC system" when it was needed.

Just as I sent the attendance form to the office, and the class had finished their routine notes (Lesson Title, Topic, Aim and Motivating Question), Sam nodded that he was ready.

"Good morning!" he said. He looked great, transformed from the bumbling, accident prone teen we were familiar with into a Public Speaker and Skilled Educator.

"Today, we want to show you how insulating a house can save you money, make you more comfortable, and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions." You could see he was on a roll!

"This model house is a bigger version of the little paper houses me made when this course started. We made it one cubic foot below, and the attic is half a cubic foot. That's about 55 liters, actually, on the inside. We have a 100 Watt light bulb on the floor downstairs to heat the house, and we'll be using ten identical ice cubes in a bowl as our AC unit.

"Cashandra will turn the heat on and off, and Craig will monitor the temperature of the air in the house with his thermometer up at the top of the attic. There's an open floor in the attic, so hot air can get straight to the thermometer. When we use the air conditioning, we monitor the cooling process.

"Gale's at the whiteboard to write the data. Please copy it into your notebooks."

On the table was the cardboard house, with little plastic windows. A door was painted on the front of the house. An electric cord ran from the back wall of the house to an extension cord plugged into the wall. A pull chain at came out of a little hole at the bottom of the door so Cashandra could turn the light on and off.

"When we have found out how hot the house gets in five minutes, and how cold it gets once we put the AC unit inside, we'll know how our standard house operates."

Jack was the "brain" of this class, and always sat in the middle seat. His hand was up. "What do you use for insulation?" he asked. He was staring at the eleven slabs of blue plastic foam lying to the side of the house. Masking tape was holding some of the slabs together at the edges. Maybe they would unfold like privacy screen.

"Good question, Jack." Sam was ready. "We'll get to that once we collect you benchmark data. "It's not very complicated." He sat down, and Cashandra called "Start!" to begin the observation.

The First activity, heating the house, began as Cashandra clicked the stopwatch and a called "Start."

Light shone through the windows, and Craig called out, "Starting temperature was seventy two degrees Fahrenheit."

"We got the thermometer at the dollar store. It uses red alcohol instead of mercury, and read in Fahrenheit," Sam explained. "We want to use cheap stuff, and write temperatures in Fahrenheit so everyone will know what we mean,” He took a chair and sat next to his little house.

The SI system of metrics still hasn't become mandatory in the USA. I though Sam was wise to use the cheap, safe thermometer and degrees everyone understands. Our classroom stays at 72^OF all year. The air in the model house started out at our classroom's usual temperature.

Soon Cashandra called "Stop" and turned off the lamp. Craig called out, "Ninety- seven degrees Fahrenheit!" and Gale wrote

"Elapsed time 5 min. Start Temp. 72^OF, End Temp. 97^OF."

I heard the student's pens scrumpfing along.

Sam tilted the house back on its back wall, and Cashandra inserted the AC bowl of ice.

"Start!" she cried, and clicked the watch.

Craig announced, "Start Temperature: 91 degrees." Hot air had evidently stayed high in the Attic. Being light, it did not pour out of the bottom floor while the house was tilted back.

It seemed like a long time before Cashandra said "Stop!" and Craig called to Gale, "Eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit!" She wrote the notes in the usual short form.

More scrumpfing of pens on paper.

Sam stood his place of authority next to the house. "So in five minutes, the temperature rose twenty-five degrees. No insulation. It's likely that some of the heat was lost through the walls and windows.

"Cooling for five minutes, the temperature dropped nine degrees." He tilted the house back again, and Cashandra handed him the bowl with the ten ice cubes. "The ice cubes are down to half size," he announced. Cashandra nodded, took the bowl, and poured the contents into a pail.

"And now that we have our Benchmark Data, we can begin our Controlled Experiments! Here we introduce, 'The Independent Variable!'"

He opened the attic and tilted the house as Cashandra fanned the used air out by waving a notebook at it. The fresh room air instantly replaced the old air, returning everything to seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit.

Sam closed up the cardboard model house, setting it straight on its floor and placing the attic securely on top of it. He smiled at Jack, and then with a flourish he unfurled the walls of the house, four square plastic slabs with plastic windows. They were hinged it took but a moment for him to completely wrap the inner house with insulation. Cashandra took only a second to stick a wide piece of masking tape across the edges where the walls met to fasten them in place.

"And the roof and attic," Sam said. With another dramatic move, he swept up the two roof slabs and laid them on the cardboard roof. Craig had quietly removed the thermometer, and stood by with it while Gale taped the two ends of the attic in place. They were attached at their bottom edges to the attic's floor insulation. In less than two minutes, the Controlled Experiments would start.

The routines were the same, but the experimental data was different.

Heating the house for five minutes made the temperature rise to a very hot one-hundred-and-twelve degrees, a forty degree change.

Cooling started at one-hundred-and-three, and the temperature went down to

ninety-five degrees. A change of eight degrees.

Jack's hand shot up. "Hey," he said to Sam, I thought insulation was supposed to make the AC work better, but without it, the ice brought the temperature down went down nine degrees, but with the insulation, the temperature went down one degree less. So the insulation doesn't seem to help the AC!"

The room grew quiet. The Lost Legion was on the spot. A couple of long moments passed. Then Sam tilted the house back and removed the "AC" system.

"Look at the ice cubes," he said, holding the bowl out for Jack to see.

"There's no ice in there," said Jack.

"Feel the water," said Sam.

"It's not cold. It's almost warm," said Jack.

Everything seemed to be hanging in the air by a thread. What could this mean?

"Jack, the insulation kept the heat in the house. The reason the air cooled down was due to the AC system. The ice melted and the water warmed up even though the air in the room started off hot. So compared to the AC in the uninsulated house, the AC in the insulated house did a great job, okay?"

Jack thought about it, then smiled a great smile, nodded at Sam, and began to clap. Then he stood up. The whole class joined in the joyous standing ovation. Sam's Lost Legion stood together and started singing the refrain from a popular song, "Halleluiah!" over and over. The class joined in. The door popped open. The principal, Ms. Bowden, stuck her head in, then let Sam's mom squeeze by to get some video. It was the best "Final Friday" anyone could remember. I saw the two ladies, and Gale and Cashandra, and even Sam, brushing away tears. Halleluiah!

I hope this story helped you understand what we want you to do for Activity 9!DrHanzonScience

Supplement 2

What is “Inventing” and How Do I Do It?

What Inventors do:

Analyze, Synthesize, Try it Out

Design, creativity in music, drawing, painting, dance, literature and the sciences as well as sports and even systems architecture is nearly always a product of either

ANALYSIS or SYNTHESIS.

Analysis is really taking something apart to see what it is made of. The little house is a simple cube at the bottom and a half cube on top. Other parts are the columns, which are cylinders, the dormer windows in the attic, which are half cubes, and the chimney, a small half cube plus a small cube.

To be creative, all you have to do is change the number of parts or the size of the parts or the kinds of parts., but first you have to “analyze” an object, substance or process to see what’s in it.

Synthesis is putting things together. “Synthetic fuels” are made from various products such as corn or sugar cane, combined perhapswith some petroleum (fasoline).

When they vegetable ingredients are processed by a chemist, they turn to vinegar or sugar or alcohol. If they are alcohol, they can be combined with gasoline or other substances and used as fuel in a motor. The fuel is “synthetic” because it is made from parts that are put together.

It seems that most creative people have an active imagination and see what things are in something – they can analyze something, or they can see how ingredients in a substance or device can be put together in a new way to make something new. They can “synthesize.”

A lot of this can happen when a person is not really trying to be creative. The “subconscious mind” is always computing, kind of in the background, like the processer in your computer. Sometimes it comes up with something “new” even while you are sleeping, and you may wake up with a whole book in your mind, or a new invention, or the solution to a problem you had not been able to solve while you were awake. Some thinkers actually suggest that there is some kind of “universal mind” we can tap into, but it’s not a proven fact.

In other cases, people have reported getting ideas from some kind of “super consciousness,” as if they were sharing the thoughts of a person or persons they don’t even know. There seems to be something about the mental states we go through while sleeping that tunes in somehow to ideas, even complete songs or long stories that people have been able to record or write down when they awake.

There’s no scientific “proof” or explanation for this yet, but some famous book and songs have emerged from dreams, according to those who “created” them. So far, no way of proving what happens in these “inspirations” has been developed, but such reports are found frequently in history and legends. There is an old saying in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the sun.” I’m sure you’ll find that in other traditions too. The only thing that is “new” and different is that new parts may be found, like uranium or plutonium, so that new things can be made. Or, new ways of combining old materials can be discovered, When doctors found the notes of a researcher who wrote a note about how his sandwich accidently fell into a plate of bacteria in the lab while he was gone for some days, and when he returned, the bread had gotten moldy and the bacteria next to it were gone. The clumsy lab worker was Dr. Fleming, and the people who read his notes tried making medicine out of moldy bread and it did control the spread of bacteria. They spent years to make it a medicine called “penicillin,” but Dr. Fleming got the credit for discovering it, and won the Nobel Prize. The men who actually saw the importance of the moldy bread got little notice and did not share in the Nobel Prize. So maybe you will just accidently discover something, or create something artistic or scientific, and it will benefit humanity forever.

Lou-Vee-Air

Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Brand New 6th Generation Lou-Vee-AirCar

Supplements to Activity 9 of Teachers Manual & Handbook

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