Sci-casts: Zeptoliters and tiny tiny bits of fluid

What do you call 10,000 atoms of liquid?

Try a Zeptoliter


(sourced from Wikipedia)

This table shows you how we label various volumes of fluid using the metric system.

Recently, we have been listening to podcasts of all sorts (got a new computer that has the ability to play the multimedia we need, before we were deaf to the podcast world!)

A podcast, lasting 60 seconds, that talks about the way scientists can dispense a zeptoliter of fluid can be found at the Scientific American podcast site.

"Using what is thought to be the world's smallest pipette, two researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have shown that tiny droplets of liquid metal freeze much differently than their larger counterparts. This study, focused on droplets just a billionth of a trillionth of a liter in size, is published in the April 15, 2007, online edition of Nature Materials." SOURCE



"Our findings could advance the understanding of the freezing process, or ‘crystallization,' in many areas of nature and technology," said Eli Sutter, a scientist at Brookhaven's Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and the lead author of the study." SOURCE



There are many more 60 second scientific podcasts there for you to explore.

Here is a list of other science podcasts, have fun!

Parents - preview them to be sure they are ok with you.

Science podcast directory
This week in science
Science Friday
NYT - Science Times
The Guardian
Berkeley groks science (go Heinlein!)

Labels: homeschool, podcast, science, scientific american, zeptoliter

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KD is beginning to homeschool now

3 year old KD is counting everything, anything at all, including completely imaginary things. This is a shot of a piece of paper she wrote over as she counted to a 100. Hope you can see how she was writing in lines.

Auto-homeschooling is awesome.



We have been printing a number chart for her to count with. She will, completely on her own, point to each number and say it out loud.



find it here

As with most kids this age, she does it intensely, constantly, and completely. She will not stop counting until she hits her target (often 100).

Some of the things she counts are:

things she is eating
snow flakes
crayons
pens
coins
bits of playdo

She has to say a number if she sees it printed somewhere. That often gets her started again.

She is really getting place values. When she sees the number "35" she doesn't say "three", "five", she says "thirty five."



The ONLY drawback with this is when it comes time for time-outs. We do them where the child has to count out loud.. this is now no longer the trial is was before!

Baby O continues his crazy self. He is getting better at being up on his tummy and doing pre-crawl stuff.

Here he is this last Easter.





Q is taking a break from EPGY this trimester (most of the kids in her class are). We recently did some photo-safari in Boston's Chinatown.

Will post that at another time.

Here she is at Easter.





Here is KD on Easter too.

Labels: count, homeschool, homeschooling, math, number

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