Above is how the comic ran. Below is how I wanted to do it, but was unsure of NASA copyright at the time. Turns out, NASA images are not copyrighted, so I could have.
The truly amazing thing is Spirit and Opportunity were supposed to be 90-day missions. Spirit ran for 7 years and traversed more than 7.7 kilometers. Opportunity reached its 12th year of operation, traversed more than 26 kilometers, and is still operational at the time of this writing.
At my last STEAM activity for the year, the class presented me with a very nice booklet of thank-you messages written by the students. In it, many of the students mentioned their favorite activity. Being the numbers-driven engineer that I am, I decided to chart it and see if my perception of their interest levels per subject matched what the students professed.
Here are the results:
Every activity got mentioned, so there were no duds (phew!). Stomp rockets was the clear winner, as I expected. And the Transit of Mercury was more popular than I expected it would be.
Things that Spin wasn't mentioned, obviously, because the messages were written before that activity.
All in all, a successful freshman foray into being a STEAM educator.
Will I continue to volunteer to do STEAM activities next school year? If the teacher will have me, absolutely.
For the final STEAM activity of the year, I wanted to steer things towards active experimentation instead of just build and play (Transit of Mercury notwithstanding). I did not want to lose the sense of wonder I've been nurturing, however, so quantitative experimentation was discarded for qualitative. Experimenting with something with a surprising property seemed like a good idea as well, so I decided to base an activity on things that spin.
Spinning things, if you've not observed them before, can be very non-intuitive. The simple act of imparting angular momentum gives rise to stability, in most cases, and very unexpected behavior in others. To demonstrate the different behaviors, I assembled a small collection of spinning devices.
They're not toys. They're educational tools.
I started with an Euler's Disk acting as a very large and heavy coin. The "coin" at rest on its edge is inherently unstable and wants to fall over. But when it's spinning, it does not just fall over. The act of spinning the "coin" makes it want to stay upright.
Next, I used the top to reinforce this idea. The top wants to lay on its side when it's at rest. But if it's spinning, it will remain upright.
I then asked if anyone knew how to tell the difference between a raw egg and a hard cooked one (neither shown in the picture), then demonstrated the answer. I also showed that once you've got the raw one going, it doesn't want to stop, even if you halt its rotation momentarily.
I used the plastic egg to demonstrate when you spin an egg-shaped object fast enough it wants to stand on end.
The celt (rattleback) was then pulled out because it is vaguely egg shaped, but it does not act at all like an egg when spun. Especially in the wrong direction.
The dynamic celt was used to explore the action of the celt.
And tippe top was there to keep them guessing.
I then asked the class what they have learned about spinning based on observations of all the items, guiding them to the idea that spinning exerts a force, and the force is proportional to the rate of spin.
To reinforce this idea, I used the gyroscope to demonstrate unusual behavior when things spin really fast. I spun the gyroscope with a Dremel tool (a high speed rotary tool, for those who aren't from countries where the brand name has supplanted the noun) with a felt polishing wheel attached, so I got really good action on it.
After the demonstrations, I told the class I wanted to explore what it is about spinning that creates force. I had the students return to their desks where they found five squares of card stock with a small hole in the middle of each, and a toothpick. "We're going to do some experiments by making a top," I said.
Top, deconstructed.
The first step was to try spinning the toothpick by itself and observe what happened.
The next step was to add one square about 1/3rd of the way up the toothpick spin that, and observe what happened. I solicited hypotheses from the students as to what they thought would happen when the second square was added.
This process was repeated for all five squares. At the end, I asked the students what they thought was required to generate the stabilizing force in a spinning object.
After that, it was top spinning time. And Euler disk. And plastic egg. Pretty much everything I had brought with me. Fun was had by all, and I got some really good hypotheses from the students about spinning things.
As a total aside, after I had designed this activity, Physics Girl published a video on bizarre spinning toys on YouTube.
Yep. Mosquitos are family Culicidae under order Diptera (flies).
If you look at them closely, you can see the familial similarities. The two antennae-like protuberances from between the very large eyes. Only one set of fully-formed wings.
You can't tell from this photo, but the proboscis has a rectangular cross section! I wonder why that is?
Edit: Maybe it's because there are six needles in that proboscis!
While out in the backyard, exercising some long atrophied macro photography muscles, I came across this drone fly (at least I think it's a drone fly) who was kind enough to stay still long enough for me to take some fairly average pictures of it.
Taken on its own, this picture is nothing to write home about, but I love it anyway. Not for the drone fly, but for the other arthropod in the photo. It's very hard to see, so I will circle it for you.
Still can't see it? Let me zoom in.
Imagine the world at the scale of this little guy. Where a 15mm long drone fly towers over you like Godzilla. And a speck of pollen is the size of a baseball.
Speaking of pollen, that drone fly has a nice dusting of the stuff. Yep. Flies are pollinators, too.
