A Great Spinning Optical Illusion

If you look at the spinning girl's silhouette below, you will think it is spinning clockwise, probably. When you check her shadow below, momentarily the spinning direction changes in your mind, and now the girl is spinning counter-clockwise. It can be quite hard at the beginning to notice switch of the spinning direction, but eventually you'll manage.

More Rooms With a View on the Space Station

From APOD,

The International Space Station Expands Again
Credit: STS-117 Shuttle Crew, NASA

Explanation: The developing International Space Station (ISS) has changed its appearance again. During the past week, the Space Shuttle Atlantis visited the ISS and added pieces of the Integrated Truss Structure that mirrored those added in September 2006, including a second impressively long array of solar panels. The entire array of expansive solar panels are visible at the edges of the above image taken by the Shuttle Atlantis Crew after leaving the ISS to return to Earth. The world's foremost space outpost can be seen developing over the past several years by comparing the above image to past images. Also visible above are many different types of modules, a robotic arm, another impressive set of solar panels, and a supply ship. Construction began on the ISS in 1998.

Only in Japan: Bubble Wrap Toy

via Gizmodo...

"...the pocket device simulates the feel of popping bubble wrap while using a tiny speaker to make that ever so satisfying popping noise. What bubble wrap aficionados will find disturbing, however, is that every 100 pops bestows the user with a fart, barking dog, door chime or sexy voice."

Get it here.

Twilight Turtle: a Planetarium Night Light

Too cute for words. Start conditioning those young scientists early!

Buy Twilight Turtle here on Amazon.

An Aurora from Outer Space

A Mechanical Marble Computer

Matthias Wandel has developed a fantastic mechanical binary adding machine using a simple series of cascaded chutes to store numbers and perform carries through mechanical toggles. Don't miss the video embedded below to see it in operations.

Ingenious!


More details can be found on his web site: www.Woodgears.ca along with all manner of interesting contraptions.

A Catapult Watch: For the Geek that has Everything

Do you have friends who still play Dungeons & Dragons? Well, then this is the perfect gift for them. The Catapult watch. Co-workers will never again sleep within range.

Purchase the catapult watch here.

FIRST Lego League Registration is Open!

Have all of you student and teacher readers out there already registered for the FIRST Lego Robotics League? Well, what are you waiting for? Register for the First Lego League Here.

This awesome robotics contest registration opened May first (and will likely fill up by the end of the summer: 1,715 teams have already signed-up!) so get those applications in!

Here is the tentative schedule for the year:

May 1
Registration Opens

Mid-May
Registration Materials and Robot Sets Begin to Ship

August
Field Setup Kits Begin to Ship

September 5
International Challenge Release

Mid-to-late-September
Team Registration Closes/Last Day to Order Products

October 1-12
Tournament Applications Accepted (If FLL is handling applications)

November- January
Tournament Season

April 2008
World Festival

Registration costs $200 per team, but also be sure to order the Field set-up kit (which should start shipping around August first) when you register, or it will be difficult to practice.

Click on the following links to find:

• Product Information and Pricing
• Contact Information
• Teams and Tournaments in Your Area

And don't forget the opportunities for the younger and older set with the JFLL [Junior First Lego League], and their community web site. Check out these budding scientists!

And, of course, there is the FIRST league proper for the older kids.

Hell, I want to sign-up. Why don't they have a league for us grownups?! I guess I'll have to live with being a mentor or something. It appears as if there are plenty of volunteer opportunities in support for frustrated teachers like myself.

I just love the fact that these tournaments are becoming better attended than the school basketball games! I can only hope now, that FIRST will rise to eclipse football as well. Just imagine a nation of youngsters innovating instead of bashing into each other!

If you can't tell already, I'm a big fan of this program. I've always been of the opinion that this is exactly the sort of open-ended creative challenge that nurtures the seeds of inspiration, and that these sorts of activities should be fostered at an early age. Now there is some data to back up my faith. From a recent Brandeis University study, the impact of the FIRST program is astounding. From the study:

When compared with the comparison group, FIRST students are:

• More than 3 times as likely to major specifically in engineering.
• Roughly 10 times as likely to have had an apprenticeship, internship, or co-op job in their freshman year.
• Significantly more likely to expect to achieve a post graduate degree.
• More than twice as likely to expect to pursue a career in science and technology.
• Nearly 4 times as likely to expect to pursue a career specifically in engineering.

How can you turn your back on statistics like those, even if there is a bit of self-selected sample group?

Go forth and Innovate!

ISS Fly-by Images Taken From Earth

From Spaceweather.com:

Mike Tyrrell photographed the expanding spaceship through his 10-inch Meade LX-200. The new panels are indicated by the arrow:

Meanwhile in the Czech Republic, Martin Popek photographed an "ISS flare" from his hometown of Nýdek:

Track the Hubble Space Telescope and ISS

From the European Space Agency web site comes a nice Google Gadget mashup that shows the ground track of several noteworthy satellites including the Hubble Space Telescope [HST], and the International Space Station [ISS]. Just click on the links in the table below to see exactly where overhead any one of these satellites fly displayed on Google Maps.

Teach Both Theories, Let the Kids Decide

Indoor Radio-Controlled Plane

Some of you may remember my post last year on the "Butterfly" living room flier from Plantraco Hobbies. Technology is marching on though, with new composite materials and ever more integrated electronics in smaller and smaller packages. Witness the latest in living room RC technology, the Carbon Butterfly. (you can purchase one at the previous link complete with controller and padded carrying case for $299) (hint...hint...anyone planning ahead for my 2007 Birthday/Christmas season...)

(Check out videos of the Carbon Butterfly in flight here.)

The new version above weighs in at a scarce 3 grams including all of the receiver, rudder actuator, and prop motor hardware despite the addition of the new landing gear. Smaller carbon fiber rods and a redesigned mylar-coated wing comprise the major advances. Here's the older version for comparison (at 3.6 grams):

The new Carbon Butterfly sports a fully proportional 2-channel controller for both the throttle speed and the rudder actuator, and a nice light gear reduction to drive the prop.

Better-yet, the founder of the indoor flyer community, Michael Hendricksen, has started an indoor flier blog showing how you can make your own miniature actuators with simple coils and magnets!

and the Plantraco Micro-RC web site has all the supplies and components you could need to build your own miniature airplanes and helicopters and indoor flying pleasure. These sorts of things are great starter projects to get kids excited about electronics, mechanical design, and aeronautics, all at once!

Rube Goldberg Machines From Japan

The best collection I've seen so far made with ordinary household objects.

Prefab Treehouse Artistry

It figures that as soon as I set up a play structure for the kids, I discover the real artists of the playground world. Check out Daniel's Wood Land.

My one consolation is that while incredibly cool, they look out of my price range....well, that and the hopes that the kids won't be jaded by the Disney Land quality gear when we actually make it to SoCal.

Water Baloon Popping In Slow Motion

Leonardo, A Social Robot

One of my grad school friends turned MIT professor, Cynthia Breazeal, has teamed up with Stan Winston Studios of animatronic movie robot fame to create an astounding new robot named Leonardo.

Photographs, copyright Sam Ogden

This little artificial creature was not designed to move around or navigate, but rather to interact socially with humans. 61 different motors (32 in the face alone) articulate its limbs, hands, digits, expressive facial features, eyelids, and ears so that it can communicate its artificial feelings.

Photograph, copyright Sam Ogden

The software driving the robot is also interesting, and designed to learn by visual and verbal example, just as humans do. The video available through the preceding link is a little spooky in that regard. You can also check out the technical paper here, C. Breazeal, G. Hoffman, and A. Lockerd (2004). "Teaching and Working with Robots as a Collaboration."

Be sure to hunt around the main Leonardo web site for more movies foretelling our robotic future.

A Mathematical Mazda

Check out the model number on this bad boy.

Yes, it's Pi to 27 digits. From techEblog.

Paper Star Wars Models

Print a few copies. Build them. Annex your living room for the galactic empire.
















More models at Papercraft.

Teach Kids to Program

Last weekend, my wife and I took the kids to the Maker Faire, where I ran into some folks from MIT's Lifelong Kindergarten group. I would have to say that of the whole Maker contingent, they were showing the most refined educational tools of the bunch, kits and software to teach young children how to program.

The Scratch programming environment (download Scratch for free here) was designed to eliminate the requirement that a programmer understand code syntax and grammar before being able to do anything useful. The main tool here was to devise a simplified language encapsulated in graphical blocks with shapes that only fit together properly when slotted in the right order and positions.

The software package includes mechanisms for a host of graphically interesting drawing, sprite control, and audio effects, as well as a built-in mechanism for code sharing and community building. Don't miss the project pages to check out all the cool code a host of kids have already written.

One thing that I particularly about the Scratch system is that they have included a physical interface component called the Scratch Board, that allows children's programs to interact with the real world with sensor blocks, buttons, sliders and so on, each paired with a programming element in the software. Now they can learn to write code, and connect it to the real world!

You can check out a nice intro Scratch video here:

Another project on display from the Playful Invention Company [PICO] which grew out of the same group at MIT was called the Pico Cricket. The cricket kit is basically an extension and refinement of Scratch that includes smart blocks designed to interlock with Legos.

A lot of thought and work has gone into making the programming element even more clear, and the external components more bulletproof, dare I even say kid-proof. For example, each block that houses a sensor or processor or motor has a chip in it which identifies itself and automatically configures the use of interconnecting wires, so you don't have to worry about how any system is wired together, you just connect them with wires that are all identical in the same way.

Order your Pico Cricket kits here.

For more developed students in higher grades, don't miss Hackety-Hack, a cleaned-up (free) version of Ruby/smalltalk with a very nice community and instructional environment packaged around it. This is for the kids who outgrow the limitations of Scratch and are up for the rigors of typing the syntax themselves.

The amazing thing about this system is the thought that went into incorporating a fantastic Internet, web, and graphics library that is very powerful. As an example, you can implement an entire blog with in six lines of code:

blog = Table("MyBlog").recent(10)
Web.page {
blog.each do |entry|
title entry[:title]
puts entry[:editbox]
end
}

This testimonial from the web site says it all:

Our 8th grader reporting in: did Lesson Four in about 10 minutes but kept hacking for another 20 minutes. Today, video games lost the battle with Ruby. Unprecedented!
— Brian D

In researching the effectiveness of these tools, I came across a fantastic blog documenting both the opportunities and potential pitfalls surrounding the use of all these new technology tools to teach 5th grade integrated technology classes. Check out how ENGAGED and excited SOME of these kids are to be creating their own widgets and discovering things on their own! Others seem stuck without the proper guidance. (mostly stuck on the programming parts.)

I was also led, inevitably to the Playfull Inventing & Exploring effort [PIE]. From their site:

PIE (Playful Invention and Exploration) is an approach to using new technologies that integrates art, science, music, and engineering. The main goal of PIE is to enable and inspire more people to create, invent, and explore -- using a combination of traditional craft materials and new digital technologies.

PIE projects and workshops make use of Crickets, small programmable devices you can use to create your own musical sculptures, interactive jewelry, communicating creatures, and other playful inventions. The PIE approach was developed through a collaboration of six museums with MIT Media Lab, with support from the National Science Foundation. (For background on the project, see the PIE Network grant proposal.)

I couldn't have said it better myself.