You Learn Something New Every Day

portrait 1580 artist unknown - public domain

This month could well be historical in a truly revolutionary way and in more ways than one. Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer whose life spanned the 15^th and 16^th centuries. His brave claim went against the belief of the time that the earth was the centre of the universe. He put the sun there instead.

In his revolutionary book, On The revolutions Of The Celestial Spheres, Copernicus explained the observed motions of celestial objects in a theory that earned the name Copernican Revolution.

After almost four hundred years, he could be immortalised in the name that’s suggested for the heaviest known element, number 112 in the Periodic Table of the Elements. The new element, first created in 1996 by the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, is 277 times heavier than the lightest element, hydrogen.

Following recent confirmation of its existence, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has recommended that it be named Copernicium, and gave it the symbol Cp.

If there is no significant objection, within six months Copernicium will become the official name for a special element – a fitting accomplishment in the International Year of Astronomy.

Professor Martyn Poliakoff, Associated Professor Peter Licence
Research Fellow Meghan Gray, Nottingham University

For The Love Of Words!

Bud the Teacher made a deal, it being National Poetry month in US.

He has run a series of prompts on his blog this month, encouraging me, among others, to write a verse a day. I don’t normally splash the verse I write all over a post. But then the ‘word’ is one of my interests.

It being the year of astronomy, here are all the bits of verse that Bud coaxed out of me so far that have a particular cosmic element to them, and a few that are of themes closer to home:

In less time than it takes to say the word
A whole universe came into being.

One, two, three
wrote Gamow,
or more exact
Gamov,
from big bang
to tomorrow,
atomic fact
was off
beyond the
vicinity
of Gamov’s
infinity.

What it is to feel

soft sand under foot,

waves lapping at ankle,

warm sun on back.


Where else in the universe

is there rich pleasure as this?

“It’s been a long time since Cataclysm.

They said in the beginning
it might be quite a journey.
And so we are all here
in one form or another.
No one knew
it would be so simple to start it off.

Even Fermi didn’t, though more than most
he had the insight. ‘So where are they all?’
was what he put to them, knowing full well!

Fermi?
He’s over by the supernova.
Can’t get him away from it.
Addicted they say.
He always was fanatical.
Apparently he was among
the first to congratulate Hawking
when he got here.

Hawking knew all along of course.
It was only a matter of time.
And before he let it all out,
it was far too late.”

“Another crumpled Golden Kiwi ticket!
Jackpot’s 9.5 million this week.
Chance would be a fine thing.”

“Now that’s what I call lucky.
There’s a car with registration 319WXG!
What's the chance of seeing that?”

“Talk about flukes.
Looked up at the sky last night.
Saw two satellites crossing within,
well, millimetres.”

“Just think.
Of all the galaxies in the cosmos,
by sheer coincidence,
we happen to be right here.”

“You and I.”

“Better get another Golden Kiwi ticket.”

In the arid heat there’s nothing so dear
as water to a parchment tongue.

Nothing so peaceful in a cool evening
than the rippling lake in summer.

What is it about crystal clear water
That turns a tired mind from dull task?

Through the ages we got by
with a few basic tools,

fewer that even a child might use,
and for the same purpose:

a scrap of paper -
a bundle of crayons;

once shown how to use them
creativity needs no prompt.

Of cleanliness,
they got it right,
the marine tropicals.

I mean
the little fish
like Nemo,
in finding the same.

They just can’t hack the filth.
Enterprising aquarists,
to their cost,
found that out.

Yes, it’s to be pristine,
that’s the word,
like the clear crystal
water
they thrive in.

You can tell
as you look
through the
blue water
it’s clear
the fish are
in their element.

“Can I have a scissor please?”

“A what?”

“A scissor.”

“We only sell them in pairs.”

“I’ll have two scissors please.”

The Starlight Reserve

Have you ever thought of what it would be like to look up at the night sky and see, among thousands of brilliant stars, Herschel’s Jewel Box, or the beautiful Hercules star cluster?

This is the International Year of Astronomy. There is fascinating activity in an area of land in New Zealand, known as MacKenzie Country. Very little smoke or other pollutants rise to the sky from its less than 2000 inhabitants, so cloudless nights are abundantly rich in starlight.

Jet streams - high-altitude, high-speed wind currents - usually flow from the west at high speeds in the upper atmosphere and can spoil the view of the night sky. But there's no significant turbulence in the air above MacKenzie Country, for there is no jet stream near enough.

For these reasons, MacKenzie Country is tipped to host the first world heritage site in the sky.

Graeme Murray is the director of Earth and Sky Ltd, which has exclusive tourist rights at the Mt John Observatory, a main centre for astronomy research in New Zealand.

Murray’s dream is to establish a World Heritage Starlight Reserve in the MacKenzie Country by obtaining recognition and protection for sky in the region from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

UNESCO support for the project may well be celebrated this year.
New Zealand could then become the centre for The Startlight Reserve in this, the International Year of Astronomy.

Strange Observations in Cyberspace

I left a comment on Clive Shepherd’s post Blogging is No Longer What It Was. But this post isn’t directly about what I wrote on Clive’s blog.

It’s just that I love blogging. I love the blogosphere and everything that’s in it. I’m not on a doctor’s prescription. But when I see a new post, I just feel like I’m witnessing something fresh and newly created – very very new - shiny, like a newborn star.

Primal observation in space:

I’m sure that the feelings I get when I discover things in the blogosphere are similar to the feelings my ancestors had when they looked up at the stars. Their eyes filled with wonder at what hung above them.

The sky must have been a great sight in those days. No city lights to haze the atmosphere. Come to that, no haze. Astronomers using optical equipment today, talk about the ‘seeing’, when they refer to how clear the atmosphere is above their telescopes. The ‘seeing’ way back in the days I’m talking about must have been something special!

Present day astronomers refer to the magnitude of a star - a number that they hang on how easy it is to see a star, or other visible light source in the sky. The fainter the star, the larger is its magnitude number.

Our ancestors would have been able to see faint stars of about magnitude 7. Today, we are lucky to see stars of magnitude 5 near a town - that’s about 7 times brighter. It's simply because the glare of streetlights prohibits us from seeing objects much fainter than that in the sky.

Observation in cyberspace:

Often, when I look into cyberspace, I feel like an early, prehistoric observer, sitting high on a hill, looking up to a vast night sky.

I make observations, and think that no one has ever spotted them before. Of course, like my ancestors, I am probably seeing some things that have been witnessed many many times - long before I saw them.

In cyberspace there are some beautiful stars, some brilliant stars - some with planets, interesting nebulae and scatterings of faint luminescent clouds. There are comets and shooting stars. Now and again, a supernova explodes and releases so much energy that the whole of cyberspace seems to resonate with it.

One of the observations I've made is to do with how commenters put their comments on a new post. Have you ever noticed, when a post first appears in the blogosphere, how most of the comments appear almost immediately afterwards? Logical don't you think?

Some posts differ from others though. Some attract no comments at all. Others are like supernovae, attracting so many comments immediately after posting, that it takes a while before it all stops. But it is very, very rare that a swarm of comments appears against a post well after the period when that first activity has ceased.

I often wonder about this. I take pity on these cold, abandoned, commentless posts.

I even think about racing around cyberspace with a bagful of comments, specifically looking for old posts, perhaps ones with no comments at all (and there are millions) and just dumping comments, willy-nilly, wherever I can – copy and paste fashion - just to give these lonely posts a bit of company. A bit like one of the tasks in the past Comment Challenge, when participants were asked to write 5 comments in 5 minutes on 5 different posts. That caused a bit of a stir among sedate bloggers!

Black holes:

But posts go off y’know, like stars that appear in the night sky and then just disappear! They shine bright over a brief period, perhaps get brighter, fade a bit, glow dimly for a while, and eventually collapse into a black hole – lost in cyberspace, never to be found by the average observer. Not even winked at.

Eons later, an intrepid wanderer might stumble across a darkly hidden post and check it out. Seeing this frozen, abandoned site of past activity, the observer realises that no one has been there for ages, and bounces off again into cyberspace, searching for newer, fresher territory.

As I post this, I realise that what I’ve written is like a newborn star. It may shine for a short while. It may even attract some attention - a comment or two. But eventually, it will join a growing mass of black holes, lost in the vastness of cyberspace.

They say that black holes are the re-cycling centres of the Universe.
I wonder how long it will take for this post to be recycled?

Digital Games and Learning Objectives

I recently left a comment on Rupa Rajagopalan’s post on eCube -
6 Quick Steps to Create a Game Based E-learning Course. Rupa is an information developer whose primary focus for the past few years has been instructional design with a specialty in game based learning.

She mentioned in her post about the importance of having the option to skip intros and tutorials in game based learning. Some learners can get put off doing something that is easy to work out during the game. Others need more help.

I explained in my comment to her that I had used an example of this in a star-map resource, that I’d built specifically for year 10 learners in New Zealand. I linked to the resource in my comment.

The following day, Rupa sent me an email asking if I’d like to write a post giving some detail about some of the ideas I’d mentioned.

Here’s how I built the star-map resource.

The objective:

The curriculum objective for this resource was straightforward:

Learn to use a digital planisphere to locate astronomical features.

I began my hunt for a resource for this objective with the intention of finding a suitable Internet based planisphere for the southern hemisphere.

A day scouring the Internet returned only star-maps and charts of the northern hemisphere. I decided to give up searching for a suitable resource in favour of building one from scratch. It didn’t take too long.

The vision I had for making the game was to first build the planisphere and to make a tutorial for it. A series of quests, perhaps one or two, where the learner followed instructions to locate a set of objects in the sky, would provide the game.

The main thing was to keep to the objective. For as much as I’d like to have veered off in cosmic directions, the objective was simple and the resource had to address that.

The planisphere:

I used Photoshop. I created a huge square and pasted in the scan from a paper planisphere that the school had used earlier to teach the same objective. With some elaboration, adjustments and additional features, the digital planisphere was complete. I used layers for the star names and constellations. When the planisphere was ready in Photoshop, I used 30 degree rotations to create 12 sectors that formed the twelve views of the night sky, one for each month of the year.


Considering that there were 3 layers to start with, this gave 36 different layers: 12 monthly star charts with the accompanying 12 monthly name labels for the stars and the 12 monthly constellations.

A crop in Photoshop, choosing the mid-month view of the night sky looking north, gave me the 36 views that were needed to make the complete planisphere.

The engine:

This was to be a web-based resource. I would use html built in DreamWeaver. A simple panel that I designed for monthly selection of views lay on the left of the view of the night sky. Two hourly intervals were convenient and provided a suitable range of three views from 8pm till midnight. Included in this panel were two toggle buttons that permitted selection of star maps, named stars and constellations. There was also a return to main screen button.

The tutorial:

It needed a tutorial. I felt that the best way to provide an optional tutorial was not to start with it. Instead, I put it as the first option so that it was always available, no more than two clicks away from the game.


The tutorial used the ‘engine’ of the planisphere with overlays, where appropriate, to provide instructional text. I felt that it was important that every function of the planisphere should be covered in the tutorial, with no repetition. Learners had to be kept on track during the tutoring.
I used a range of methods to achieve this.

The trails:

Originally the planisphere had two trails or quests. It turns out that they were quite successful. Learner feedback was more than favourable, though many requested more of the same. Eventually, I found the time to build a third and longer trail, which left scope for further ideas for projects in the future. The planisphere now has three trails – Cosmic, Stellar and Galactic.

Additional to the objective was a need to include a Māori cultural aspect as this is always a part of curriculum objectives in New Zealand. I included three relevant Māori legends, one at the end of each trail.

Why not more?

I was always tempted to expand the resource. One idea I had was to link to some of the wonderful NASA sites at relevant points in the trails. I didn’t pursue this, simply because it would detract from the intended objective.

The advantages of a digital planisphere:

The original paper resource used in teaching to this objective involved the learners in an activity to cut out and construct a paper star-map. They were then asked to use it to locate stars at night.

One fine starry evening, I tried one of those star charts and found that it was impossible to use. There were two reasons for this. One was that there was not sufficient light to read the star-map when looking at the night sky. The other was that even a torch didn’t help. Shining a standard torch onto the white paper star-map has a blinding effect on the eyesight.


Some planispheres, like the one above, are printed with white dots for stars on a black background. This helps, but even the glare from the white writing on such a star chart, or the white border of the page it’s on, causes temporary ghost images in the eyes that ruin night vision.

It is impossible to see any stars in the sky at night until these ghost images disappear. This can take several minutes and by that time you need to refer to the star chart again!

This project was finished in 2000. One jubilant learner sent me an email after she’d used my digital star-map. She found it to be ideal. She had taken her wireless laptop into the garden, late one summer evening, and spent an hour or so locating Stars of The Southern Sky.

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There and Back Again

If this is the first time you’ve visited this blog, or even if you have had a chance to read a few posts, you may be wondering what this blog is all about. If you are a regular visitor, you might still be wondering - you should also be congratulated for sticking with me this far.

On this auspicious centennial occasion, I have pledged to give you a quick run down on how this blog started, what its reasons are for being, and whether it’s going to be worth your while visiting again during its next hundred or so posts – a daunting thought!

When and why was it built?

Construction began in May 2008 as part of the Comment Challenge - a set of reflective learning tasks for commenters and beginner bloggers. May was not an easy month for me. During that time, the framework of the blog was put in place on a foundation of blood, sweat and tears.

Before June, the blog generated 24 posts (and well over 100 comments). Many of these posts related directly to the assignments given by Michele Martin to help me to become a blogger. Michele is to be thanked profusely for her patience, advice, determination and her attempts to create a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Why Blogger?

I’d like to think that the ‘Blogger’ bit is evident. But in all fairness to the critical thinking reader, I chose ‘Blogger’ because:

• It’s the nickname of the provider of my blog.

• I always wanted to be a blogger (at least since the end of last century).

• The sound of the word connotes someone who is down-to-earth (cf. bog (ger), logger, etc) and I think of myself as a down-to-earth straight thinker. (I know! Many will dispute this. So?)

Why Middle-earth?

Middle-earth is the name that J R R Tolkien gave to the mythical land of the hobbits. It is also the name given affectionately to Wellington City by Peter Jackson who has a home there. He is the Oscar-winning film producer whose genius blossomed in his Lord of The Rings film trilogy, premiered in Wellington.

Much of that epic was filmed in Wellington. As well, Weta Workshop is in Wellington. Weta created the amazing animated creatures and other props used in the making of the trilogy.

I live in Wellington, so the Middle-earth part of the name is relevant on several counts. The same reasoning sprang to mind when I named my little book published last year, called Sonnets of Middle-earth. Though my interest is poetry, what I write may not be.

Why astronomy?

The use of observations of planets, stars and other phenomena in the cosmos dates back thousands of years. Through watching the stars, legend has it that around 950 AD, Kupe navigated his way to the shores of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Astronomy is part of the culture and folklore that belong to the Māori people of Aotearoa.

Regular visitors may have noticed that, occasionally, I write a post related to astronomy (not astrology). No, I’m not an astronomer. But I do have an interest in Science. Believe it or not, astronomy was the first true Science.

Why learning?

Science and knowledge are often said to be one and the same. Many people believe that knowledge can only be acquired through a journey into learning. Which brings us to another reason for this blog.

Of the hobbits who lived in Middle-earth, one or two in particular went on what were amazing journeys, there and back again. With the help of others, they brought back many secrets. My hope is that, in this blog, we can continue our journeys of exploration, into the little-known land of elearning.

Who knows what treasure we may bring back?

Courtesy NASA

Mercury photographed by Mariner 10 - 1974

Courtesy NASA.

You may not have realised that the image of the Voyager record cover in my previous post was copyright free. Oh yes, I credited the image source - NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

At the turn of the century (I love that line) I was building a series of digital resources on astronomy. Where did I get my images from? NASA.

I remember getting a call from our copyright officer, way back in 2000. He wanted to check out some of the things I’d been building – for copyright clearance, etc. I bundled all the resources I’d had onto a CD. Some had already gone up on the web site.

I had my heart in my mouth, for I’d spent a lot of time creating these resources. But when I showed the pictures to our copyright officer, all he came up with was a beaming smile from ear to lug.

You see, I’d remembered to credit NASA on every photograph. Here’s a recent close up of Mercury. That’s right. The planet. It was taken by the Messenger spacecraft on its second sweep past the first rock from the sun. You can learn more about that mission at the Messenger site.

Mercury photographed by NASA's Messenger - 2008
Courtesy NASA.

NASA photographs of astronauts, or members of their family, are not quite the same though. It would be courteous to clear any such photographs with the people at NASA before publishing.

The pictures are fabulous - literally out of this world.

Thank you NASA! Thank you America! Thank you Obama!

Communicating in Space and Cyberspace

On November 16, 1974, the Arecibo radio-telescope in Puerto Rico, transmitted a radio signal to outer space. It was directed at a globular cluster, M13 - a massive cluster of hundreds of thousands of stars, some 25,100 light years away. This was an attempt to communicate with galactic civilizations outside our own galaxy.

Communicating in space:

The Arecibo message consisted of digital information. Laid out in an array of 73 rows by 23 columns, it may appear like the picture above.

The pattern in white, along the top row, defines the binary code used throughout the rest of the message. The second line shows information about the 5 essential elements of which we are made - hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus. The blocks in green and blue and the vertical white block show the special parts that make up DNA, the building blocks of life itself.

Other parts to the left and right of the little red creature, show respectively the average height and population of the creatures here on earth. The yellow line depicts the sun and the relative sizes and positions of its eight planets and dwarf planet. Earth is identified by its displacement in the pattern. The violet radio telescope points to the code in white that shows the size of the telescope.

If the Arecibo message is detected and decoded by a galactic civilization, it will take over 50,000 years before we will receive a reply. If we ever receive one, let's hope it's not the equivalent of a voice-mail message.

More detailed information about our position in the universe was sent in another direction in 1977 on the Voyager mission. A capsule contained a gold recording of sounds here on earth, together with explicit engravings on its gold cover showing our precise location in the solar system.

Courtesy NASA.

Communicating in cyberspace:

Much of the advice given to young learners networking in cyberspace is to do with the protection of personal identity. Young networkers, who understand the risks, use a nickname in their communications. They take care not to share personal data such as full name, age, phone number, email address or street address.

Both the Arecibo message and the Voyager information contravene the precautions now recognised to protect personal information when communicating. If these missions were launched today, would we be so willing to share precise details about ourselves as well as our precise location? We'll have to wait a bit to find out what the consequences might bring us.

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Who Dares to Dream Beyond the Paradigm?

The Large Hadron Collider is a gigantic particle accelerator beneath the ground, near Geneva. Very soon it may provide information that could throw light on the fundamental structure of matter.

The project aims to provide colliding particles with huge amounts of energy never before observed on earth. Information gathered may explain some of the unanswered questions surrounding the so-called Big Bang Theory of the origin and evolution of the Universe.

Fermi's paradox

Enrico Fermi was a famous Italian physicist who lived in the first half of the 20^th century. He built the first nuclear reactor. Known for his contribution to Quantum Theory, Nuclear and Particle Physics and Statistical Mechanics, he was awarded a Noble Prize in 1938.

At a luncheon in 1950, Fermi asked the question, "Where is everybody?" when considering the compelling evidence, available at that time, that intelligent life was likely to exist throughout the Universe.

Fermi had already deduced that millions of civilisations could be far in advance of those on Earth. Some of them could have found solutions to many problems we have not yet solved, such as intergalactic communication and intergalactic travel.

Despite the SETI projects, conceived in 1971, and pursued even to this day, the ubiquitous absence of evidence for civilization, other than those on our planet, remains a mystery. It posed a conundrum known as the Fermi Paradox, that is still being debated.

Learning Objects & Other Useful Outdated Things

I read about the perceived demise of the learning object, or at least the preparation for its passing and I wonder.

I use learning objects, now called learning resources, in my teaching. They can be integrated into parts of modules and used for spot learning when necessary. They’re interactive and kids like them for this reason.

I’d never consider making up a module that contained more than one or two learning resources. I apply my Death by Chocolate metaphor

A poor chef may include chocolate as an ingredient in every dish, but it is a shortsighted one who excludes its use altogether. If the only recipe available that includes it is mediocre, then chocolate should be off the menu. Good chefs choose menus wisely.

Learning resources are easy to use. They can be sent by email, in a link or embedded as a link in an html or word file. They are splendidly useful when students need a patch somewhere in their learning, or need a shot of repetitive practice in a skill routine.

Here’s one suitable for year 10 and above on drawing graphs. Here’s another on body defenses, another on acid-base titration curves, one on genetic crosses and another on practice in circuit calculations. You can tell that I’m a Science teacher.

Fun for kids:

Learning resources can be fun for kids as well as assisting with their learning. Complex learning resources built around a theme can take advantage of virtual environments as in this year 10 Digital Electric Lab, or the guided Journey in the Solar System, or the mini-projects on the Southern Night Sky. My feeling is that there’s life in the old RLO yet.

The Lone Ranger:

Before I built my own web-based set of learning resources (they used to call people like me Lone Rangers), I'd look for sites on the Internet that I could email in a link to students. I still do this from time to time but these are rarely interactive in the way learning resources should be and there can be other problems.

Reputable sites on obscure topics are often hard to come by. The special site I spent so long looking for might suddenly disappear, leaving the frustrated student the option of getting back to me with the same plea for help. Or worse, the content of the site may change and the whole focus of it may alter, putting me in a professionally compromising situation. That doesn’t make me feel safe, let alone how I feel about the safety of the kids.

How safe is kid safe?

There are still some useful ways of using the Internet safely, however, and I’ll explain one here. I have found it specially good for helping kids with projects.


I use Onekey. I find it more flexible than Gogoogle for Onekey permits the use of Boolean search symbols – not necessarily for the kids to use, but for me. Let’s say there’s a project where kids need to gather data from various sources (and not always the Internet). If the objective does not involve having to do an Internet search (a task fraught with problems for poorly supervised distance learners) the student can be sent a safe list of sites.

Safer, reliable links:

Here’s a way that ensures safety and reduces the likelihood of sites being unavailable when the student goes to use them. I never list the individual sites on the digital worksheet. I tweak the search criteria so that I have a suitable number of hits on the final search: 10 to 20 is a good range to work from, depending on the project and student ability. Then I use the resulting search address for a link.

Here’s the criteria I used for listing suitable sites on a project involving making huge soap bubbles:

+huge +soap +bubble -gum -vending -wax -lube -bath -punk -nitro +mixture +recipe +glycerine

I enter the criteria in the search line and do the search. Then I copy the resulting search address into the Huge Bubbles link in a word or html file with the rest of the worksheet instructions. When the student accesses the link, it may not necessarily list all the same sites that I saw. There may be a few new ones and others may have dropped off the list, but it is almost certain that they will all be relevant to the topic.

The more time spent tweaking the original search criteria the greater the success.

Advantages of this method are:

• it delivers a safe list of Internet sites
• the sites invariably all work
• they are always relevant to the topic
• I can roughly control the range of sites listed.

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