February 19, 2010

Happy Birthday, Nicolaus Copernicus




This German/Polish polymath (a person who is learned in many different fields) was born on this day in 1473. He was a mathematician, astronomer, doctor, translator, artist, Catholic clergy, jurist (one who studies, develops or applies the law), governor, military leader, diplomat and economist. He was a polyglot as well, speaking German, Latin, and Polish with equal fluency and also Greek and Italian.

During his lifetime, Copernicus might have been known to many as his powerful uncle's personal secretary, perhaps, or as the published translator of some poems written in Greek. However, we know him today from his contributions to astronomy and, more generally, to science.

Even though astronomy was just a sideline for Copernicus, he was able to work out the heliocentric, or sun-centered, model of the solar system.

For thousands of years it was thought that the Earth sat still at the center of the universe, and everything people could see in the sky, from the Moon and Sun to the planets and stars, circled around it. People thought this was true because we experience the world this way—as we stand on the Earth, we do not feel as if it is in motion, and we clearly see the Moon, stars, and Sun moving in our skies.

However, in order for our observations of the observed movements of the planets to make sense, we cannot suppose their paths around the Earth to be simple circles. Instead, thinkers like Ptolemy invented little circles cycling around larger circles—epicycles, deferents, and equants—in a very complicated system.

Copernicus demonstrated that, by simply moving Earth out of the central spot and supposing that it was in motion, too, most of those complications fell away.

Copernicus's system started with the idea that the Sun is the unmoving center of the universe. Mercury and Venus circle the Sun in closer orbits than the Earth's, and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn circle the Sun in farther orbits. According to Copernicus's model, the firmament doesn't move; this outermost celestial sphere was pictured as a sort of rigid shell onto which the unchanging stars were attached.

The fact that the unmoving sun and firmament (the stars) seem to move around the Earth once per day was explained, in the new Copernican system, by the idea that the Earth itself is spinning around like a top, rotating on its axis once a day. So the Earth has two motions—spinning on its axis and revolving around the sun.

You probably noticed...
...Hopefully you noticed that Copernicus wasn't entirely correct in every aspect of his heliocentric model of the universe.* However, he was correct that the sun was the center of the solar system, and this Big Idea was so important to astronomy, science and philosophy, that scientists have credited him with starting a scientific revolution!

*The sun is not actually the center of the universe. It's pretty far out from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, even, hanging out in an obscure corner of one of the spiral arms. Nor is the Milky Way galaxy the center of the universe. As a matter of fact, the phrase “the center of the universe” might not even make sense.

Also, there is no firmament. There is no solid shell or sphere onto which stars are glued. Instead, the stars are much larger and much farther away than they seem, great balls of burning gas similar to our sun, and they are at all different distances away from us. Stars—even our sun—are in motion, too, revolving around the center of their galaxies even as the galaxies rush away from each other. Also, the stars certainly aren't unchanging—new ones are born, older ones die.

Finally, of course, there are many bodies in the solar system that Copernicus didn't know about, most noticeably two more planets, Uranus and Neptune.

Ahead of His Time
Copernicus's Big Idea was a bit too radical for most people of his time, and for more than a century, most people didn't accept it. Remember, some of Galileo's findings confirmed the Copernican system, but he was put on trial and then under house arrest because of it—and that was 100 years later!

Watch a short video about Copernicus.
With the animated sequences about orbits, this one makes Copernicus's Big Idea easy to understand.

Read more about Copernicus's Big Idea.
This website explains the Sun-centered system with words and diagrams.

Copernicus has been honored with many memorials, with his face on Polish money, with a crater on the moon named for him, and most recently with a new element (atomic number 112) named copernicium.

February 18, 2010

Happy Birthday, Louis Comfort Tiffany

Born on this day in 1848, Tiffany was the son of Charles Tiffany, founder of the famous jewelry store. Louis Tiffany became an artist and designer who is most famous for his wonderful stained glass works – including Tiffany lamps.

In addition to the stained glass lamps and windows, Tiffany designed glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels, and metalwork.

He began his art training and career as a painter. Tiffany worked in several glasshouses before opening his own studio. He used to make his stained glass using cheap jelly jars and bottles, because they had the mineral impurities he needed. Finer glass had no impurities, and fine glassmakers would not agree to Tiffany's request to leave the impurities in—so Tiffany responded by making his own glass.

According to Martin Eidelberg, Clara Driscoll and a team of talented women designers helped create some of the patterns on Tiffany lamps and other pieces.

Enjoy Tiffany's art

• Check out the Morse Museum (Florida) website to see a few of Tiffany's pieces. (Only a tiny percentage is available online, but Morse Museum has the largest collection of Tiffany's work in the world.)
• Tiffany's Wooded Landscape, from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is absolutely gorgeous. Be sure to press the play button to hear about the piece.
• Another piece at this museum is a beautiful vase.
• The Museum of Modern Art (NYC, NY) has several Tiffany works.

Crafts that look a bit like stained glass...

...using glue.
Cover a piece of cardboard with clear plastic wrap (tape onto back to hold). Then draw a picture using white glue, making sure that there are lots of lines creating different areas; carefully press black yarn onto the glue lines so that your picture is now formed by black yarn outlines. Allow to dry.

Put white glue into a small bowl and use several drops of food coloring to create the pastel color you want. Dab a thick coat of the colored glue into every outlined area you want to be that color. Create other colors using white glue and food coloring and continue to fill in outlined areas of your picture. Allow to dry thoroughly before peeling the “stained glass” off of the plastic-coated cardboard.

... using tissue paper.
Here is a window project, and here is a vase project. If you learn better from videos, here is the vase project explained that way.

... using crayons.

... using candy.
These cookies have melted candy in the center.

... using waxed paper.

February 17, 2010

Random Acts of Kindness Day

This is a day to really focus on making others a little bit happier. See if you can smile at more people, say nice things to the strangers you deal with, try to “be there” a little bit more for your friends.

You could also use this day to renew your efforts towards charities. Volunteer a few hours at a soup kitchen, send just a little bit more money to the Red Cross for Haitian relief, or clean up a littered park. Go here for more ideas.

Also on this day...

Anniversary of First U.S. Street with Gas Lighting – 1817

On this date in 1817, the first U.S. city with gas lights (Baltimore, Maryland) finished lighting the corner of Market and Lemon Streets. There were 16 gas street lights.

(Gas lighting in London, England, preceded the Baltimore lighting, beginning in 1807.)

Before streetlights, dark streets were quite dangerous; streetlights reduced crime substantially. In an effort to make cities safer before there were streetlights, there were laws that people had to put lanterns on street-facing walls or lamps in street-facing windows.

Gas street lights began to be replaced by electric lights in the late 1800s. But some streets are still lit by gas lamps. The largest example of this in Europe is probably Berlin, which has about 44,000 gas street lights. Certain parts of London, U.K., and New Orleans, Boston, and Cincinnati, U.S., remain gaslit. South Orange, New Jersey, has adopted the gas street lamp as the symbol of its town and so (of course) uses this kind of lighting on almost all of its streets.

The Dark Side of Artificial Lights

I mentioned above that city streets became safer when they were lit. I didn't mention that gas lighting made it possible to run factories far longer – even 24 hours a day! Even though humans had been “pushing back the night” with fire (campfires, torches, candles, lanterns) for years, gas and later electric lighting were a bit different—one didn't have to continually find and chop more wood or make more candles, for example, and people began to stay up later and do more and more activities later and later into the night.

Nowadays there are people who work their entire jobs at night, and there are cities that are said to never sleep. What has all this nighttime activity meant for people?

Some scientists are studying the effects of artificial lighting itself on people. Some forms of light apparently cause headaches, fatigue, and anxiety, and lighting design students are learning how to create better lighting to reduce these effects.

Other scientists are studying human sleep cycles and insomnia (the inability to sleep or to get restful sleep). There is evidence that humans evolved to get sleep in a more broken-up pattern—going to sleep soon after dark (therefore much earlier than most modern people) but waking up one or several times in the “middle” of the night, sometimes for hours. This is not a scenario of having “trouble” sleeping—this is apparently a description of normal, pre-artificial-light sleep that is still common in societies without artificial lighting. (Periods of daytime sleep are pretty common in these societies as well.)

In most modern societies, we expect to get our sleep in one compacted burst of 6 to 8 hours, but doctors and researchers warn that many people are sleep deprived.

Another effect of artificial lights is light pollution. Astronomers—especially the amateur variety, who have smaller telescopes—find it much harder to spot interesting objects in the night sky when city lights cause the entire sky to glow. Some people are concerned that modern city-dwellers are cut off from the majesty and awe-inspiring night sky that all humans should be able to enjoy.

Animals, too, are affected by artificial lights.
Moths are well known to be attracted to lights and sometimes seemingly commit suicide by flying into hot lamps. This is because they evolved to navigate by using the light of the moon—and our artificial lights confuse this natural navigation system.

To understand moth navigation better, try the activity here.

Other animals that are confused by artificial lights include birds and sea turtle hatchlings.

Light pollution affects many organisms and ecosystems. We don't have to do without lights, but we could be smart about how our lights affect things we care about. For example, deaths of birds have been reduced by turning out or shielding certain lights on tall buildings during migrations.

Check out the light pollution photos above and on this National Geographic website.

February 16, 2010

Carnival (a.k.a. Mardi Gras)

This day is called many different things all over the world. Mardi Gras means “Fat Tuesday” in French. In English the day is commonly called Shrove Tuesday. In Christian traditions, this is a time of eating and dancing and parades before Ash Wednesday (tomorrow), which begins the time of Lent, a time for penitence and giving up meat or other tempting foods and activities.

In some places, the Carnival festivities take place over days or even weeks but culminate on this Tuesday. In other places, the only celebration is on the day or evening of Mardi Gras itself. Here are just a few of the colorful celebrations of Carnival:

• The city of Nice in France has a parade with floats covered in flowers.

• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Salvador de Bahia's Carnaval is the largest street party in the world, with more than 2 million participants.

• In Panama, people get soaked with water trucks and hoses during the festivities.

• In Venice, Italy, masks are one of the most important features of the celebrations. You can see and buy extraordinary masks all through the year in Venice.

Also on this date...
First U.S. Esperanto club begins in Boston, in 1905

Esperanto is an “artificial language” especially developed to be easy to learn and politically neutral. A Jewish ophthalmologist from Bialystok (then part of the Russian empire) named Dr. Zamenhof developed it in the late 1800s in the hopes that it would add to international understanding and therefore peace.

Even though Esperanto is the most widely spoken “constructed international auxiliary language language," only 100,000 to 2 million people speak it worldwide, and it is the native or official language nowhere in the world. Natural languages such as Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, French, and English have hundreds of millions of speakers and make better candidates, many would say, for true international languages (although of course they are not politically neutral!).

Zamenhof used root words from the Romance and Germanic languages as his starting point but used the sounds from the Slavic languages. Because it was carefully constructed by one person, the language has only one spelling for each sound and only one sound for each spelling.

Here are some words in Esperanto:

hello - saluton
yes - jes
no - ne
please - bonvolu
I love you - Mi amas vin

Which language is most international? That is, which language is most widely spoken? Here are the top three languages according to estimated numbers of people who speak them as either their native language or as a secondary language:

1. Mandarin Chinese – 1.12 billion
2. English – 489 million
3. Spanish – 320 million

Here are the top three languages according to how many countries use the language as either an official language or at least as a very important and influential language:

1.English – 115 countries
2.French – 35 countries
3.Arabic – 24 countries

And here are the top three most influential languages in the current world, considering all factors (number of speakers, number of countries, and number of fields), according to George Weber (in an article in Language Today, Vol. 2, December 1997):

1.English
2.French
3.Spanish

Making up languages

Tolkien made up several languages for his fictional land of Middle-earth (on the fictional world of Arda). Quenya is one of them. Tolkien made up alphabets, as well, such as Tengwar. Below is some text in Quenya written in first the Tengwar and then the Latin alphabet.


Most fictional languages have the least amount of vocabulary and grammatical rules possible—just enough exists to present a song or poem, for example, in the particular piece of fiction in which it appears. However, Quenya is a fully functional language, and lots of people take the time to learn how to read and write Quenya, although they usually use the familiar Latin alphabet.

Another fully functional language that was originally created for fiction is Star Trek's Klingon language. Here are a few of the many fictional languages (NOT fully functional) that have been created:

• D'ni for the Myst computer games
• the Na'vi language in Avatar
• Newspeak in George Orwell's 1984
• the Mandalorian language in Star Wars
• the Lapine language in Watership Down

Research these or other languages, or invent your own language!

February 15, 2010

Happy Birthday, Susan B. Anthony Born on this day in 1820 in Massachusetts, Anthony was raised in a Quaker family that believed in reforms such as abolishing slavery. She worked for reform in the anti-slavery and temperance movements but then moved in an unexpected direction—working for women's rights. Susan B. Anthony is especially known for her efforts toward gaining the right to vote for women in the U.S. She helped organize women's suffrage groups, spoke and wrote about her cause, and in 1872 she (and 14 other women) voted in a presidential election—and two weeks later was arrested for doing so! Anthony died in 1906, and U.S. women finally won the right to vote in 1920. Although she didn't live to see her goal reached, Anthony's work toward the goal was key to obtaining women's suffrage. Do you think that she felt her life was in vain? Was it? Did you know...?

• Anthony learned how to read and write at age 3!

• Susan B. Anthony traveled through the U.S. and Europe giving 75 to 100 speeches on women's rights every year, for 45 years!

• At her trial (for voting in the 1872 election), Anthony was fined $100 plus the costs of the prosecution. Anthony refused on principle to pay. The judge didn't want the case to go to a higher court, so he didn't imprison her....Sure enough, Anthony never paid a penny of her fine!

• The trial was really unfair, by the way. If you want to read an interesting (but long) account of the trial, look here.

• I said that U.S. women didn't win the right to vote until 14 years after Anthony died, but actually women in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Colorado COULD vote within her lifetime. Also, worldwide, women's suffrage was passed in New Zealand and Australia before she died and in Finland the year she died.

• Anthony was the first actual (not virtual) woman to be honored on a U.S. coin (the Susan B. Anthony dollar). It was only minted four years: 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1999. (I don't know why there was such a long gap.)

Here is a short video about Anthony's life. 

Do a jigsaw puzzle about Susan B. Anthony and one of her co-workers for suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 

PBS has a gorgeous website about women's rights.

February 14, 2010

Valentine's Day

Ever since the High Middle Ages, Valentine's Day has been associated with romantic love. Declarations of love traditionally include gifts of flowers, candy, and greeting cards, called Valentines.

Nowadays, many spread the greeting and gifting beyond romantic partners to parents, kids, relatives, and friends (plus many more).

Did you know...?

• A “High Court of Love” was set up in Paris, France, on Valentine's Day of 1400. Here judges dealt with promises and betrayals of love and ruled on disagreements between couples. The judges were chosen by women based on how well they read poetry.

• When postal rates were lowered in Victorian England, it became easy to mail Valentines rather than hand-deliver them. And that made it possible to send Valentines anonymously—without signing one's name—and THAT made it possible to be a bit racy in the verses on the Valentines.

• The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that one billion Valentine's cards are sent each year worldwide. I can't help wondering if that counts all the handmade ones?

Make Valentines for your friends!
You might consider making a special Valentine cootie catcher for a special friend. Here's how to make a cootie catcher—you decide how to V-Day it up with red and pink markers!




Heart Facts Valentine's Day is all about hearts, right? Well, this website has an interactive lesson about real human hearts—click away to learn about the thing beating in your chest.



Heart Phrases
Match the numbered heart phrases with the lettered definitions:

1. lose heart
2. broken heart
3. lion-hearted
4. tender-hearted
5. cold hearted
6. know by heart
7. wear your heart on your sleeve
8. pour out your heart
9. heavy heart
10. heart throb
11. heart beat
12. heartburn
13. heart-to-heart talk
14. heart of things
15. have a heart
16. heart murmur

A. pain in chest because stomach acid is splashing up into esophagus
B. be merciful
C. sadness
D. tell everything on your mind
E. a private, trusting chat someone
F. center
G. the rhythm made by your heart pumping blood
H. a gorgeous movie star or other celebrity
I. a slight sound made by your heart if your valve is leaky
J. brave
K. be honest and open
L. devastated in a romantic relationship
M. get discouraged
N. mean or unfeeling
O. kind and caring
P. have something memorized


ANSWERS: 1.M 2.L 3.J 4.O 5.N 6.P 7.K 8.D 9.C 10.H 11.G 12.A 13.E 14.F 15.B 16.I

February 13, 2010

Treaty of Lisbon –
Spain Recognizes Portugal's Independence –
1668

Although Portugal had been an independent nation since the 12th century and had been one of the most powerful nations in the world, with colonies in Africa, Asian and South America, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal lost full independence when it was “united” with Spain from 1580 to 1640.

The King of Portugal, Sebastian, had died without having a child, and King Philip III of Spain took advantage of the situation to claim the throne of its neighbor. Portugal still had its colonies and didn't formally lose its independence, but being ruled by the Spanish king meant that that Portugal was dragged into Spain's war with others (the Eighty Years War). Because of this, the Dutch attacked many of Portugal's colonies and disrupted trade. Also, Philip III died and was replaced by his son, Philip IV, and this new Spanish king tried to make Portugal into a Spanish province.

Disgusted by their loss of power and wealth, some of the Portuguese nobles united under John IV (seen here, left) and in 1640 staged a “coup,” which means a take-over of the government. However, Spain did not “recognize” Portugal's right to be fully independent. For the next 28 years, there were some serious battles and many skirmishes between Spain and Portugal (part of a larger conflict called the Thirty Year War). On this date in 1668, however, Spain finally formally accepted the loss of Portugal.

Did you know...?

Several countries in Europe—and nations around the world that were associated with these countries through colonization—speak languages that we call the “Romance Languages.” All of these languages are based on Latin, and the reason they are spoken in so much of Europe is because the Roman empire conquered much of that territory, bringing with it the Latin language.

Here's the question: can you name some Romance languages? Can you tell the major Romance languages apart from each other?

Try out your knowledge with this quiz:

1.We said that the new king of Portugal, as of 1640, was John IV. But that is the English version of his name. Below are Romance-language versions of the name John. Which would have been used by Portugal's new king?
A. Juan
B. Joao
C. Jean
D. Giovanni

2.The words for cat and hat are similar in English. Here are the word pairs in the major Romance languages. Which do you think is French?
A. gato and sombrero
B. gato and chapeu
C. gatto and cappello
D. chat and chapeau

3. Which of these Romance-language greetings is Italian?
A. Bonjour.
B. Bom dia.
C. Buon giorno.
D. Buenos dias.

4. Which of these words for peace is Spanish?
A. paz
B. pace
C. paix

ANSWERS:1.B. Joao (Juan is Spanish, Jean is French, and Giovanni is Italian) 2.D. chat and chapeau (A is Spanish, B is Portuguese, and C I Italian) 3.C. Buon giorno (A is French, B is Portuguese, and D is Spanish) 4.A. Paz (B is Italian and C is French)


Cook Portuguese Today

You can look up recipes for such feasts as octopus stew, hot pickled pork, and salt cod pie, but if you're not up for such adventurous food, how about trying Ana Patuleia Ortins' Sweet Rice Pudding, or sweet potato soup, or lavadores (“washboard cookies,” which have nothing to do with a washboard!).

(I did NOT link to a recipe that features the tentacles and suckers seen here, above. I'm just a wimp.)


Learn some Portuguese Words

This website has an English/Portuguese dictionary, lessons on Portuguese animal names, parts of the body, numbers, colors, and so forth, plus outline maps of Portugal and Brazil (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Enjoy the Beauty of Portugal

Portugal includes mountains, a long seacoast, and the Azores Islands, but this video concentrates on monuments, buildings, and other human-made beauties.

Visual Geography has some nice photos of the more natural sights of the country.