Category Archives: education

Christmas Presents

December 20, 2008 Tim Jones 1 Comment

With Christmas upon us, reflect if you will on how the greatest pleasure can result from the simplest of gifts. Babies, and children below the age of two, invariably delight more in a present’s packaging than its content; and things don’t improve much with age.

firstchristmascard1 — World's First Christmas Card

Nor do value and satisfaction correlate (value is in any case an alien concept to many children). A wind-up torch at £20 is of moderate interest to my young nephew; but far more engaging is the squishy polythene tube, filled with a shimmering emulsion and impossible to hold, at £1.50.

Unsurprisingly, you won’t be hearing any appeals for simplicity from the toy industry. If Amazon UK’s Top 10 toy list is anything to go by, it’s going to be a Christmas in front of the monitor for many households. Six of the ten favorites are either game console or game related, three are iPoddy things, and, worryingly for a nation already rushing to obesity, the number five slot is taken by a chocolate fountain. Also selling well are various robotic animals, Wall-E related goods, and the ubiquitous Guitar Hero.

That’s a pretty technological Christmas then. How did people ever get by without all this stuff? Cue the nineteenth century Christmas……

Transistors, integrated circuits, and laser technology were absent from the Victorian toy maker’s toolkit; but in the latter half of the nineteenth century, science and technology based toys and ‘fancy goods’ were, as today, a staple draw for vendors at Christmas time. They appeared in the special seasonal catalogues of vendors with names we have long forgotten: Theobald & Co. of Kensington, Shoolbred & Co on the Tottenham Court Road, Parkins & Gotto of Oxford Street, and the Economic Electrical Supply Company on the Edgeware Road. More familiar, and still to be found on Regent Street today, is Hamley’s – then ‘Hamley’s Model Doll and Toy Warehouse’ . With roots going back to 1760 Holborn, the firm was well established by1849, when a Henry Charles Harrod opened a small grocery store in London’s Knightsbridge district.

Animatronics were the rage in the 1880’s. Customers to Parkins & Gotto, if sufficiently motivated by the mechanised smoking fisherman that greeted them at the entrance, could take away their own mechanical wonder in the form of an elephant, capable of walking with children on its back; theirs for £20. Hamley’s also offered animated animals and birds, some with sound effects; and a mechanical fish that could swim in water. One of the more complex devices involved a clockwork polar bear chasing a sailor up a ladder, with another sailor fighting ‘the brute’ off (indulge in a modern vision with Palin and McCain substituting for the sailors). Theobald’s offered an electrified clock case that gave a shock when opened. Toys based on optical effects were popular, like the zeotrope, that relied on persistance of vision to give the impression of continuous moving images; and the Rainbow Bubble, a demonstration of Newton’s Rings between soap bubbles.

Indoor fireworks, indeed fireworks in general, were a popular Christmas treat. Pharaoh’s Serpents, known to us perhaps as ‘snakes in the grass’, ejected copious combustion products in the form of sinuous worms. Mid-nineteenth century health and safety pundits, popularly perceived as lax by today’s standards, warned of the toy’s perilous main ingredient – hydrated mercuric sulpho-cyanide. We might note, with some irony given how global trade later developed, one contemporary journalist’s observation that: “this plaything has had its day in this country, although the number sent to China and Japan is said to be enormous.” How we chuckled.

Other firey stocking fillers of the Victorian age, guaranteed to turn any modern health & safety inspector apoplectic, included Flash Paper – a commercial spin-off of Schonbein’s recent invention of Gun Cotton. Big deal, flash paper is available today; but not so Crocodiles Tears or Larmes de Diable – which produced a beautiful light show when thrown into water; what else from beads of potassium metal in a water soluble coating.

Magic Photographs were another entertaining Christmas novelty. Popular in the 1880’s, these were featureless white papers yielding an image when moistened with water. Made by treating silver images that had been developed, fixed, but not toned, with mercury bichloride, an invisible image of white silver chloride on white mercury chloride was produced. The image could be revived by soaking the paper, which included a backing sheet impregnated with sodium hyposulphite, in ordinary water – magic!

And finally – as today, toys were seen as educational; but, perhaps anticipating the worries today’s parents feel when their kids pull away from them in matters digital, there were concerns. This quote, from an 1866 edition of the Lancet, comments on the educational value of toys, while playfully alluding to the danger that an over-inquiring mind might present to the establishment:

“If the word “science” mean that which is known, and if the term “knowledge” indicate that which is demonstrated and understood, then a child who comprehends the true story of any half dozen of the new scientific toys would be a serious antagonist to tackle in a discussion. It is probable, however, that the rising generation is content with the charming results, and inclined to fight shy of all explanations. This is lucky for pastors and masters who might be rather bothered by close questioning………”

Happy Christmas all !

animals, conservation, education, technology

First Gibbon Sanctuary In Second Life

December 5, 2008 Tim Jones 1 Comment

Well maybe that’s overstating things. But I don’t know of another one, and from small acorns do mighty oaks grow; I’m quite proud of my new land investment in Second Life.

The plot, which has great sea views, already hosts a nice cherry blossom and one high resolution gibbon – complete with gibbon song environmental sound.

gibbon-home_001 — Be it ever so humble......

This is all part of an effort to explore and get to grips with virtual worlds as a vehicle for science communication. Having bought the land, I now have somewhere to practice building and scripting. Second Life uses a Java type coding language, but as the last coding I did was of a thermodynamic model for energy minimisation in silicate slag systems – in FORTRAN77 – I’m on a learning curve.

Watch this space…….

(I took the gibbon photo at the Santa Clarita Gibbon Conservation Center run by Alan Mootnick – hereby acknowledged and to which you are welcome to make a donation 🙂 )

Update January 2009 – Zoonmian’s Second Life presence can now be found at this location.

education, News, Politics

Dumb Dee Dumb Dee Dumb

November 27, 2008 Tim Jones 2 Comments

Okay – in September I made this little joke about the dumbing down of education standards in the UK; a tension reliever from the continuous and often anecdotal murmur around grade stats going up while exam difficulty goes down.

But the issue is dead serious, as we are reminded today by the Royal Society of Chemistry‘s publication: A wake-up call for science education?

The report describes what happened recently when 1,300 of the nation’s brighter 16 year olds were tested on chemistry exam questions taken from over the last 50 years. The selected questions were of the more mathematical type that test a pupil’s ability to analyse and understand the fundamentals (I think the word ‘hard’ has become politically incorrect), as these are the more useful skills critics say have been fogged out in contemporary tests weighted towards memory.

The report is here, but in a nutshell: the authors say there has been a real and significant reduction in the difficulty of numerical or analytical type questions moving from the 1980’s to the 1990’s, which corresponds to a change in the exam system. UK readers will recognise this transition as the move from a combination of O-Levels (for the ‘brighter’ kids) and CSEs (for the others) to the single GCSE system. Things have stabilised a bit since the transition but, as the authors observe, there are fewer of the analytical type question in the new regime.

What’s more, the average test score on these more analytical questions was only 25%, causing the RSC to call for an urgent increase in this type of question in today’s papers.

Consistent with the authors’ thesis, pupils did least well on multi-step maths oriented problems where there was no prompting of what to do next. Even problems requiring basic maths presented difficulties. Part of the explanation -although its arguably nothing to be proud of – is that some of the more complex content is no longer taught at this level.

In a double whammy that will have the sociologists wetting themselves: the study found that pupils from independent schools (that means private, where typically middle class professional parents pay for their kids’ education ) did significantly better than the state educated pupils; also that boys did better than girls on the hard maths problems. The independent school result is put down in part to the tendency for these schools to teach science as separate subjects – physics, chemistry, biology – and to them having more specialised science teachers (of which there is a chronic national shortage). The authors consider the gender result ‘unusual’.

The final conclusion was that the current system doesn’t recognise the most exceptional students with a wider knowledge of the subject. I think that reflects a tendency to ask only questions the routine solution for which has been taught. Essentially, we have gone from a situation where the teacher gave you a knife with instructions how to carve, to one where the standard tool is a pastry cutter.

What the government will make of this latest grenade lobbed into the mire of UK education policy, we will have to wait and see.

The mainstream press on this story:

Also interesting:

This at Amused Cynicism.

And in Telegraph, June 14 2011, this on ‘Pupils Should Study Maths to 18‘

Books, education, Physics

Domestic Science – Not

October 19, 2008 Tim Jones Leave a comment

I’m not the first to ask why science has become less popular with school children and young people. It’s a fact, at least in the UK and the USA, that fewer students are selecting science subjects at school or making a college or professional career out of science.

While there are doubtless many complex reasons behind the decline, some of today’s thinkers put at least part of the blame on the reduction in first hand experience and active personal experimentation in science that young people engage in.

And could something as apparently innocent as the emasculation of the home chemistry set, or the retreat by schools from the more spectacular classroom science demonstrations, be a contributing cause?

While I’ve been musing over my own formative influences, which I put down to: inherent curiosity, parental support, inspiring teachers, a home culture of learning and DIY (do-it-yourself), and relatively unhindered experimentation; my latest reading is a warning of what can happen when home grown science goes too far.

David Hahn was an adolescent Boy Scout from Michigan when he built an operational model nuclear reactor in his parents’ garden shed. His improbable but true story is told by Ken Silverstein in The Radioactive Boyscout: The True Story of a Boy Who Built a Nuclear Reactor in His Shed.

Silverstein describes Hahn’s obsession with nuclear power and radioactivity, culminating in his own nuclear pile. It’s a frightening and fascinating study in single-minded ingenuity; the ultimate expression of ‘string and elastic bands’ resourcefulness. But it’s also a sad tale of misguided talent and lost opportunity, with Hahn’s informal career in science never blossoming beyond the confines of his backyard. I’ve just finished this book from 2004 – another volume from my latest ‘3 for £5’ trawl – and can heartily recommend it. It’s a good adult read, plus you won’t find a more mischievous gift for any young person with a maturing interest in home science experiments.

Hahn’s own inspiration was the doubly infamous Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, a product of 1950s/60s US techno-optimism that was subsequently banned from most US libraries. Certainly, some of the children’s experiments described within its colourful covers are way beyond anything that today we would consider safe – for the child or the publisher.

There is of course nothing new under the sun, and, despite the recent plethora of mimic Victoriana ‘thing-to-do’ books, titled ‘The Dangerous Books for Boys, Girls,…Whatever’, nothing compares with the original bane of the enlightened Victorian parent – ‘The Young Man’s Book Of Amusement‘. Packed with all sorts of nonsense, ranging from

the harmless to the downright suicidal, my favourite wheeze from this 1850’s bible of curiosity is the Artificial Volcano. The experimental procedure, which results in a runaway exothermic reaction of iron filings and sulphur, specifies minimum quantities of both reactants such that, in the spirit of all good compost heap construction, a critical and sustaining thermal mass is achieved – in this case 28lbs of each. The 56lb of damp mixture is buried two feet below the ground, and left to do its stuff. Never having got up the nerve or the resources to try this, on any scale, I can only imagine the combined impact on the senses of vigourous suphur dioxide production, rivers of molten sulphur, showers of burning iron particles, all escaping through an earth bulging under the pressure of a man-made magma chamber. Environmentally friendly – not. Politically correct – not. Fun, thought provoking, and inspiring….? For more excerpts from this cheery manual visit Lateralscience (but don’t fall for the apochryphal stories surrounding the text – which is real).

I’m not endorsing the building of volcanoes or nuclear piles, in our back gardens or anywhere else, but we should consider what has happened over the last thirty or forty years with regard to our freedoms and restrictions in the home-science department. Are we to be trusted with only baking soda and citric acid? – apparently so.

I’ll wind up with a taste of how some of the ‘today’s thinkers’ I referred to earlier feel about the subject of scientific inspiration and freedom for self-experimentation. “Hands-on experience and experiments” was one of the ten categories highlighted by respondents to a 2006 study by the Spiked team who, working with Pfizer, asked some well-known scientists/thinkers (including Simon Singh whom I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting recently) – ‘”What inspired you to take up science?’” Many respondents emphasised the importance during their formative years of being able to do their own independent testing, experimentation, and indeed – risk taking. Here is the complete summary of responses.

education, News, Politics, Rational, religion

Reverend Reiss Causes Stir At Science Festival

September 13, 2008 Tim Jones 1 Comment

Two real hoo-hahs have gone down in the world of UK science this week. At the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool, the Director of Education at the Royal Society, Rev.Prof.Michael Reiss, appeared to support at least some discussion of creationism in school science classes. At the same festival, embryologist and TV science star Robert Winston stirred up journalists and festies alike with further criticism of what he sees as the irresponsible behaviour of the super-atheist clan (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al). This post relates to the Reiss storm; here is a podcast featuring Reiss that accompanied his entry on the Guardian Science Blog on 11th September, and Reiss’s pre-presentation press brief from the BA.

Reiss’s comments are surprising and, given his position and the ammunition he is handing to less moderate interests, politically puzzling. The arguments for and against debate of non-scientific, non-evidence-based, and logic-deficient world views in school science classes have been done to death (the comments on Reiss’s statement on the Guardian Science Blog say it all).

My personal stance is that it is important in schools to explicitly state what science is not, as well as what it is. Science is not a methodology for analysing non-evidence-based beliefs, which includes most religious beliefs as self defined. It is a separate issue if a student wants to argue a religion is evidence based; that’s a good discussion topic for the religious studies class. There would be less angst all round if boundaries, rules, and definitions were more clearly defined in this way.

It is the duty of the educational authority (in the broadest sense of the term, but here including Michael Reiss) to agree the ground rules, and to instruct and enable teachers to relay them to children at the start of term. It boils down to making sure kids know up front what science is and what it is not.

There are two reasons this has not happened. First, the authority setting the rules is itself confused over what science is; and second, there is political comfort in maintaining that ambiguity in an atmosphere where the setting of any boundary is seen as an implied attack on anything lying outside it. The first weakness may be countered with a relentless appeal to reason, defense of the scientific method, and political lobby. The second requires political courage from our leaders, faced with the inescapable truth that the intellectually honest position, without vindictive or malicious intent, will be painful to some.

Gibbon Half A Chance

September 10, 2008 Tim Jones 3 Comments

Last month, the International Primatological Society reported that nearly 50% of the world’s 634 primate species and subspecies are in danger of going extinct, with more than 70% of species in Asia coming under near term threat. Reading this on the way out to the USA earlier this month set a grim backdrop to an encounter I had very much been looking forward to.

Gibbons are found in three places: the jungles of Asia, the zoo, and, the subject of this post – a gibbon conservation center.

It was with bleary eyes that Erin and I arrived at the Gibbon Conservation Center in Santa Clarita, California, at the virtuous hour of 7.15 a.m. Erin had arranged the visit with Director and founder Alan Mootnick, as an anniversary present (I am a lifelong fan of these hairy cousins). Not an all-comers zoo, the Gibbon Center welcomes groups and serious researchers by appointment, so the personal tour was a bonus; a little politeness and a sensible donation helps.

The declared mission of the Center, established in 1977, is to help ensure the survival, preservation, and propagation of all gibbon species in the wild and captivity, to provide a captive haven for gibbons as a complement to protecting them in the wild, to educate the public and to further our knowledge of gibbon care, and to support ongoing field projects.

Alan warmly welcomed us at the gate and introduced our feet to a tray of disinfectant. Gibbons are highly susceptible to human disease and, with forty in residence, precautions are essential. It is unsettling to learn that more than 75% of Americans have oral herpes but downright scary that the gibbons who contract it will be dead within four days. Volunteers are the lifeblood of this Center, but medical tests are a pre-qualification.

The wire fenced compound houses several individual cages of gibbon family units – typically a male, a female, and one or two offspring. The family theme is very strong and not artificial – this is how gibbons live. One group we became absorbed with comprised a darker haired, white-bewhiskered male, a golden female partner nursing a gangly infant of 1yr, a hyperactive younger son, and an older sister – visible to, but separated from, the group; the consequence of uncontrollable spats at meal times. Anthropomorphising animal behaviour may not be in vogue or politically correct with some, but after three hours close to these families the parallels in behaviour to our own are obvious – whether we like it or not.

A successful breeding programme is essential to meet the Center’s conservation goals, and there was evidence aplenty of this during our visit. Between the five families on which we focused, we saw three recent offspring (including the acrobatic ‘Canter’ in the photo above) and two evident pregnancies. Such prolific reproduction is one indicator that the animals are relatively happy in their captivity. Also, while the chainlink fencing looks intimidating to us, its regular geometry and strength makes it popular with the gibbons, who strangely have spurned more sophisticated apparatus provided for their brachiating delight (that is their characteristic swinging from arm to arm). We certainly saw no evidence of the repetitive and obsessive rocking behaviours characteristic of bored, disturbed or mistreated animals. With no less than nine separate feedings a day, there is little chance of gibbon ennuie setting in within this community.

While Mootnick clearly cares deeply about his charges, he is not overly sanctimonious in pursuing his task. He delights in the gibbon’s hesitant yet rapid two legged walk, likening it to a man walking on hot coals. Indeed, the gibbons’ entertainment value may be their salvation; during the tour a call came in from a major TV company keen to film at the Center, and its not the first time, as this sequence for the L.A. Times and this half-hour interview with Alan Mootnick shows.

Inevitably, the conservation business has its own politics. The main players are zoos providing a more corporate approach; then the ‘activists’ – who seem driven mostly by the principle of keeping gibbons in their countries of origin; then groups like Alan’s (his model is not unique) – which, while a team effort, is also personally inspired with a flexibility that I sensed is not always endearing to more regimented interests. But from the recent visits and best practice exchanges that Alan described – not to mention gibbon exchanges – the Center is an important part of an informal network that essentially pulls together. 2% of donations to the Center go to support projects devoted to conservation of wild gibbons.

Despite the Center’s success, encroaching humanity from an enlarging Santa Clarita is threatening the gibbons and driving the current imperative and funding appeal to relocate and expand operations. Details are on the Centre’s website.

I will be following the fortunes of these California residents with interest, and plan to call in at the Center again over the new year. In the meantime, I would encourage anyone to learn more about the plight of primates, and especially gibbons, and consider supporting the Gibbon Center if you are able.

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

September 2, 2008 Tim Jones 1 Comment

Despite being a regular visitor to California over the last couple of years, I’ve only today made the two hour drive from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara; and a beautiful and interesting place it turned out to be.

Enviable Location. All rights reserved Tim Jones 2008.

Santa Barbara’s Museum of Natural History may be smaller than its South Kensington or Los Angeles cousins, but its collections are comprehensive and its situation enviable . Sitting atop a shady gully in a forest setting, the museum, like so much of the understated value in this city, nestles in suburban anonymity. Through the front door, all the expected departments – from mineralogy to dinosaurs – spar off from a central courtyard.

Found on the Beach. All rights reserved Tim Jones 2008.

There is a complete blue whale skeleton in the front parking lot and a tranquil nature trial in the ajoining forest. The current special exhibition is a collection of dinosaur finds from Paul Sereno and teams’ dig in Africa, including whole skeletons which tangibly illustrate the simultaneous but geographically isolated (post Pangaean break-up) evolution of Africa’s version of the T-Rex.

Africa's T-Rex. All rights reserved Tim Jones 2008.

I found the range of exhibits truly diverse and a little surprising, particularly with slices of Von Hagens’s ‘6 metre woman’, (on loan from Bodyworlds in LA) suspended nearby a more traditional collection of 1920s stuffed mammals. Well worth the $10.

education, Physics

A-Levels Dumbing Down?

August 22, 2008 Tim Jones 2 Comments

There’s been some debate, but for sure, kids today get nothing like this question from my 1980 Physics paper (reproduced from memory, so there may be some insignificant errors).

Biography, education, History of Science

Fine Words

August 14, 2008 Tim Jones 2 Comments

In dusting down an old review magazine from my former school, I couldn’t help but notice a similarity, in tone and content, between the mission statement from one of the more formatively influential past headmasters, and some of my favourite lines from Thomas Huxley. As to which of these inspired me the most, or whether the ethos of the one led to a later empathy with the other – I cannot say. Both statements follow. In each case you will have to forgive the sexism; Huxley was a man of the Victorian Age, and Frazer was the headmaster of what was at the time an all boys school. Anyhow, not much evidence for ‘two cultures’ here. Both are worthy sentiments – enjoy !

Huxley first….

“That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a cold, clear, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gosamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature, and of the laws of her operations; and who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

“A school in the twentieth century must try to educate the hands and senses as well as the mind; it will do each separate task the better for attempting all three. It will teach its pupil to create as well as to criticise, by giving him the chance to create in a variety of ways, so that he can find his own particular medium while to some extent sharing the experience of artists and craftsmen of all kinds. It will teach him to find out for himself, as well as to absorb the findings of others. It will try to produce men who may earn a living as scholars or scientists or technologists or craftsmen or artists, but who are to a varying extent all of these at once, and gentlemen too. Thus only can we produce the all-round men we need if the next age is to be one of high civilisation as well as of great prosperity.”

Dr H. Frazer

ALSO OF INTEREST ON THIS BLOG?

– Happy Birthday Thomas Henry Huxley

– Thomas Huxley and the Return of the Rattlesnake Bones

education, Museums, Reviews, Science Centres, Visits

Thinktank – Birmingham Science Museum

August 9, 2008 Tim Jones Leave a comment

Thinktank, Birmingham, UK (Photo: Tim Jones)

It must be over ten years since I last visited the Science Museum in Birmingham (UK), so yesterday’s visit to the present incarnation at Birmingham’s Millenium Point was way overdue. Now called Thinktank, the museum’s new name reflects more than simple rebranding; there have been some real content changes. The most obvious change is the introduction of the Science Centre format.

Thinktank Birmingham: a mix of science centre....

And 'conventional' museum. (Photo:Tim Jones)

On reflection, the old Science Museum was always ahead of its time when it came to interactivity. The traditional glass-cased exhibits featured in abundance, but many could be brought to life by pressing of a button, activating a motor, sliding a piston, turning a cam, or rotating a prism. Modern science centres have taken interactivity to new levels, and the glass cases have largely gone, but Birmingham led the way.

The new complements the old in Birmingham — The new compliments the old in Birmingham

I enjoyed the agreeable hybrid of Science Centre and older style displays at Thinktank. Birmingham and the ‘Black Country’, as the region is still referred to in deference to its industrial past, has a rich history in science and technology; the evidence of that history needs a home too. Hence we find Thinktank Level ‘0’ populated by Boulton and Watt steam engines, plus other heavy engineering legacy exhibits from the former site: the steam locomotive City of Birmingham, and a speed record-breaking car. Shadows of the region’s former industries and crafts are also represented: jewellery, watchmaking, and gunmaking (the Birmingham gun barrel proofing house is still intact within a quarter mile of the site).

All in all a good day out and well worth the visit.

Find Out More

Thinktank – Birmingham Science Museum at Millenium Point, Birmingham

www.thinktank.ac

Communicate Science