April 20, 2010

Jacques Cartier begins a “Voyage of Discovery” – 1534

On this date in 1534, Jacques Cartier set sail from France, attempting to find for his king just what so many other explorers were trying to find: a westward passage to Asia and lands filled with gold and spices.

He didn't find these things.

What he did find was the mainland of Canada, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island. He found what he called the "Islands of the Birds," and his crew slaughtered around 1000 birds, most of them great auks. (Great auks are now extinct, but presumably not entirely because of Cartier's men!) And of course, he found people already living on the land. He engaged in some trading, but he also planted a 10-meter cross in the ground and declared the territory the property of his king.


That was a prequel to kidnapping two Iroquoians. (Yikes!)

This event may not have been quite as violent as the word “kidnapping” suggests, because (after they had the native captain's sons in their possession), Cartier apparently bargained with the captain for the right to take them back to Europe. The captain at last agreed on the condition that they return with European goods to trade.

On Cartier's return the next year, he brought back the two Iroquoians and things to trade.

He and his men ended up staying the winter that year. Scurvy broke out among the Iroquoians and the French, but one of the men he had previously kidnapped paid a friendly visit to the French and told them of a medicine they could make from a local tree. According to Wikipedia, the remedy probably saved the French expedition, with 85 of the 110 men surviving the winter. (Cartier guessed that perhaps 50 of the Iroquoians died from scurvy, despite the medicine.)

Cartier ended up describing and mapping the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, and he gave Canada its name.

Play a game about explorers.

Here is a matching game, and this is a version of concentration.

Learn about Canada.

Canada is the second largest country in the world, after only Russia. (We're talking area, not population.) Also, the border it shares with the U.S. is the longest in the world.

Canada is a bilingual nation, with both English and French as official languages. As you might guess, this is because both England and France laid claims to parts of Canada. France let go of its claims to the land in 1763, and soon Canada became a federal dominion of the United Kingdom (which is made up of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland).

Canada never fought a war of independence against England. Instead it slowly-and-steadily became more and more independent, until 1982 when the Canada Act ended the nation's dependence on the British parliament. Even now, however, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is considered the head of state of Canada is pictured on some of its money!

• Play a Canadian Sudoku-style game.

• This website has other Canada-themed games.

• The Kids' Zone of Statistics Canada has puzzles and coloring pages.

NOTE: I would avoid the quiz, since it is not oriented toward topics of interest to kids, plus it's really hard!!

• Zoom School is a cool place to learn about Canadian animals, geography, flag, culture, and more.

April 19, 2010

Celebrate South America Today!

Today is a holiday in three different South American countries.


In Uruguay, this is Landing of the 33 Patriots Day.

Today people of Uruguay celebrate the 1825 arrival of 33 “Orientals” (or Easterners who lived in the Oriental province that is now Uruguay). These men sailed by ship from an area near Buenos Aires and began a rebellion against the Empire of Brazil. The eventual result was an independent Uruguay.

In Brazil, this is the Day of the Indian.

A National Indian Festival was held this weekend (in other words, the past few days) in Bertioga in honor of this day. It is considered the largest “indigenous cultural event” in the world and features music, dance, food, crafts, sports, and body art. There are also forums and panels on climate change and other important issues. The event is meant to reduce prejudice and foster mutual respect among Indian and non-Indian peoples.

According to Funai (Brazil's national foundation for Indians), 460,000 indigenous people from 225 groups, and speaking more than 189 languages, live in Brazil today. Today many festival participants help plant trees.

In Venezuela, this is Beginning of the Independence Movement Day.

This day commemorates the 1810 coup that began Venezuela's struggle for independence from Spain. Because Napoleon was fighting Spain, in Europe, a group in Venezuela's largest city, Caracas, seized control and declared independence. Eventually, in 1821, the people of Venezuela and of what are now several other Latin American countries won independence from Spain under the leadership of Simon Bolivar. They formed the Republic of Gran Colombia until 1830, when Venezuela broke off from the republic to become its own separate nation.

Celebrate South America!

Do you know the ABCs of South America? Here is a list of countries on this continent. See if you can complete each name:

1. A ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

2. B ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

3. B ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

4. C ___ ___ ___ ___

5. C ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

6. E ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

7. F ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ G ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

8. G ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

9. P ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

10. P ___ ___ ___

11. S ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

12. U ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

13. V ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___


ANSWERS: 1.ARGENTINA – 2.BOLIVIA – 3.BRAZIL – 4.CHILE – 5.COLOMBIA – 6.ECUADOR – 7.FRENCH GUIANA – 8.GUYANA – 9.PARAGUAY – 10.PERU – 11.SURINAME – 12.URUGUAY – 12.VENEZUELA

Did you know...?

• The tallest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls, is in Venezuela.

• Venezuela means “little Venice.” The name refers to the fact that early Spanish explorers thought that the houses built on stilts reminded them of Venice, Italy.

• Venezuela's money is called a bolivar after the hero who helped win independence from Spain.

• The largest lake in Latin America, Lake Maracaibo, is in Venezuela.

• Uruguay's “national drink” is mate (pronounced mah-tay), which is made by brewing the dried leaves of the yerba mate plant with hot water. It is drunk from a hollow gourd (shown here) through a metal straw that also acts as a sieve to keep the leaves out (shown in gourd and alone). The drink is sort of like tea or coffee.

• 
• The capybara is the largest living rodent in the world. It lives in South America, including Venezuela, Brazil, and Uruguay.

• Brazil is the largest country in South America and is home to the largest river in the world, the Amazon.

• Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas.

• Brazil borders on every other country in South America except for two. (Do you know which two?)

Answers: ECUADOR AND CHILE

Here are some websites to explore.

• Venezuela for Kids

• Virtual 360-degree tour of Venezuela
  

• Intriguing beach sculpture in Uruguay

• Loads of info on Uruguay

• For more on Uruguay, including a cool photo gallery, check out this December post.

• Kids' Corner – Brazil

• National Geographic Kids – Brazil

• For more on Brazil, here is a post from November.

April 18, 2010

I deliberately chose the following commemorations with a certain scientist friend of mine in mind...Because today is her birthday!

1857-- Clarence Darrow born (Ohio, U.S.)

Darrow was the lawyer who defended John Scopes in the famous “Monkey Trial” over the teaching of evolution in public high schools. A Tennessee law called the Butler Act was passed in 1925. This statute made it unlawful to teach any ideas about the origin of humanity other than the Biblical account.

Immediately some people began to plan to intentionally break the law to make sure that there would be a trial in which the law could be declared unconstitutional (as it clearly broke the First Amendment of the Constitution). A biology teacher named John Scopes was just doing his job when he taught evolution from the textbook that the state had mandated that he use, but he agreed to be a part of this test case, even though it would mean that he would be arrested. (He was never actually taken into custody, and the bail was paid by the owner of a newspaper.)

Clarence Darrow defended Scopes on several grounds. He lost the case but was able to win lots of points with large sections of the public, who listened to the trial on the radio and read reports about the trial in newspapers. When the case was appealed, the “guilty” verdict was set aside.

• For older students, there is lots of information on the trial on this website.

• Another website discusses the play and later movie inspired by the trial, Inherit the Wind. (The play and movie are not accurate portrayals of the trial, and were never intended to be. They are fiction that was inspired by the actual trial.)

• If you want to know more about human evolution (part of what seemed to be on trial during the Scopes trial), check out these videos.

1872 – Bernard O. Dodge born (U.S.)

Dodge was a botanist who pioneered research on heredity in fungi. He was the first to study sexual reproduction of common bread mold, Neurospora.

1924 – Simon and Schuster publish the first crossword puzzle book.

Apparently, it was an odd-looking book with a pencil attached to it. For more information on the history of crosswords and crossword activities, check out this December posting.


1955 – Albert Einstein dies (New Jersey, U.S.)

Einstein was the German-born physicist who came up with some of the most important theories of the 20th Century, including the theory of relativity. For more on Einstein, check out this March posting.

April 17, 2010

Happy Birthday, Giovanni Riccioli

Born on this day in 1598 in Italy, Riccioli became an astronomer. He and another astronomer he worked with, Francesco Maria Grimaldi, carefully studied the moon using telescopes.

Not only did they study the moon, they drew a map of it and named many of the craters and other features they saw. We still use the lunar names Riccioli and Grimaldi assigned today.


During Riccioli's life, the Catholic church (including the Jesuit order) stood officially opposed to Copernicus's idea that the earth traveled around the sun rather than vice versa. (Do you remember what happened to Galileo?) Riccioli, who was a Catholic priest of the Jesuit order, apparently took the church's stance as his own and even argued against the ideas of Galileo and others in a book he published in 1651.

But did he really believe that the Earth stood still and the sun orbited around it? Or did he just say that so that he wouldn't be thrown out of the church or otherwise punished?

We will never know. But we do know two things:

1. Riccioli complimented Copernicus's hypothesis for being simple and elegant, even while he was arguing against it.
2. Riccioli and Grimaldi named a large crater after Copernicus (shown here, above), and they named other important features after Copernicus's supporters, including Galileo. They even named craters in that same general region after themselves....Some other craters they named after other Jesuit astronomers, and these all lay in a different part of the moon, near Tycho (shown here, right).

Some say that these two things indicate that Riccioli really did believe the heliocentric hypothesis that states that the sun, not the Earth, is the center of the solar system.

Seeing Doubles
Another of Riccioli's contributions is that he realized that the star Mizar was really two stars. We now know of many double stars, which don't just appear to be nearby in the night sky, but which actually are near each other and which, in fact, revolve around each other. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you should be able to spot Mizar – it's the middle star in the handle of the Big Dipper.

Picturesque Lunar Names


Earlier lunar observers had named the flat-looking dark plains of the moon maria, or seas, even though they aren't water at all! Instead of naming the seas after famous scientists, as they named the craters, Riccioli named them after moods, such as Tranquility, Serenity (pictured here), Crises; or after weather conditions, such as rain (Mare Imbrium), clouds (Mare Nubium), and cold (Mare Frigoris). All these names were in Latin.

Whose names?
We often find that the first person to discover something gets to name it, but apparently several people named the moon's features before Riccioli and Grimaldi did so—and yet these earlier names didn't catch on. In 1645, Michel Florent van Langren named most of the visible features of the moon, many of them honoring a Catholic “royal” of his time or a Catholic saint. In 1647, Johannes Hevelius published his own map, which ignored all the names suggested by van Langren. Hevelius's names were names from places on the Earth, especially place names from the ancient Greek and Roman world. A few years after that, when Riccioli and Grimaldi named the same features, THOSE are the names that stuck!
What's in a name?

People throughout history have told stories of various goddesses of the moon, and some of the goddess names are used today in modern words. Match the numbered items with the lettered items below:

1.Selene
2.selenology
3.selenography
4.selenium
5.Luna (match with two items)
6.lunar
7.lunatic (and loony)
8.Artemis
9.Diana

A. the study of the moon
B. a chemical element
C. Roman version of Artemis
D. early Greek goddess of the moon
E. having to do with the moon
F. name of Earth's moon
G. insanity, crazy (it used to be thought that the moon caused madness)
H. Roman version of the goddess Selene
I. the “geography” of the moon
J. later Greek goddess of the moon and the hunt

ANSWERS: 1.D – 2.A – 3.I – 4.B – 5.F and H – 6.E – 7.G – 8.J – 9.C


Phases of the moon
Can you see a full moon tonight? Without waiting for nightfall, is there a way to find out?

• Hopefully, you looked for the moon last night, and the night before. People who make frequent observations know what to expect in the future, and people who routinely look up at the sky are likely to spot beauties such as “falling stars” and lens-shaped clouds and halos around the moon.

• Many calendars mark “full moon,” “new moon,” “first quarter” and “last quarter.” See if yours does!

• Here is a free online site that shows you the phases of the moon for each month of the year.

Learn more about the moon

Universe Today has gathered together some interesting moon activities for kids. Make your own craters, figure out your moon weight, listen to a podcast, and more...

April 16, 2010

Happy Birthday, Hans Sloane


(who sorta' kinda' started the British Museum)

Pictured here, above, British Museum, including the Tree of Life, which was made from decommissioned weapons.

On this day in 1660, Hans Sloane was born in Northern Ireland. As a kid, he loved collecting all sorts of natural items and curiosities, and after moving to London, England, to go to medical school, he continued to collect. He even started buying other collector's collections!

Sloane got to go to Jamaica as the doctor of a duke, and although his job ended very quickly (the duke died, I'm sure due to no fault of Sloane's!), he collected about 800 new species of plants. He published his Jamaican findings and became well known as a doctor and collector.

Another thing that Sloane became known for is "drinking chocolate," or cocoa. While he was in Jamaica, he was exposed to cocoa mixed with water. Sloane apparently thought that tasted terrible, but he tried mixing the cocoa with milk. When he returned to England, he brought back his recipe. Apothecaries made up his chocolate drink for sale as medicine, and much later a company sold Sloane's drinking chocolate as a pleasant beverage.

In 1753, Hans Sloane died (aged 92!), leaving all his collection to his nation (for the low, low price of 20,000 pounds). The gift was accepted (and the monies paid to the executors of Sloane's will), and his collections were opened to the public as the British Museum in 1759.
(Later, a lot of his collection became the foundation for the Natural History Museum.)

For more on Sir Hans Sloane, read this post from Poor Richard's Almanac.

Shown here, above, is the Reading Room of the British Library.
It really is a most spectacular museum!

Create a Collection!

What fascinates you? You can copy Sloane and start a collection of natural items, such as rocks, shells, snake skins, or butterflies (among other things).

Or you can collect human-made things. In our house, among many, many natural collections, we have collections of colorful pencils, stamps, coins, troll dolls, Star Wars toys, nutcrackers, fairy tale books, unicorn pictures, and National Park patches and pins.

One of the best collections I ever saw was a HUGE and well-organized collection of different sorts of Band-Aids and other bandages. (Umm...new, unused bandages, I want to point out!)

Display a Collection!

If you already have a cool collection, you might want to take it to the next level:

• Build a display case for the collection.

• Find a public spot where you can show it off. Look into your county fair, which will probably occur in the summer or early fall. Many county fairs allow the entry of well-displayed collections.

• See if there are any similar collectors with websites on the internet. Maybe you can photograph your collection and display it on the web! If you can't find anyone with a website devoted to your particular specialty, consider making one!

Explore the British Museum!

This is one of the best museums in the world! (IMO)

There are so many ancient statues from Greece and Rome and Egypt, I get to wondering what's left in Greece/Rome/Egypt!

There are even whole entire temples INSIDE the museum, such as this one, above.

• Go here to explore some of the museum's collections online.

• And go here to play five cool online games about archeology!

Toast Hans Sloane with some chocolate milk or hot cocoa!

You might also want to check out the Sir Hans Sloane.com website. They offer a virtual taste-testing tour of their fine hand-made chocolates. Gosh, what an UNsatisfying virtual tour!!!

April 15, 2010

National El Paso Horse Competition – Peru

Today is part of the Paso Horse Festival held in Lima, Peru.

The Peruvian Paso horse is considered an elegant breed that originally came from a cross of the Spanish Andalusian horse and the Arabian stallion. Paso horses have a gait in which their back and front legs act in parallel. Some people think the “jaunty” steps, called “ambling,” almost makes the horses look like they are dancing.

There is video of the gait here.

At the festival, people can compare the craftsmanship of saddlers, carpenters, braiders, engravers, silversmiths and saddle blanket makers, plus the skill of the horse trainers and riders.

Learn how to draw a horse's head.

Did you know that there are YouTube videos on how to draw lots of different things? Here's one about horses! And here is another--this time, it's painted rather than drawn!

Learn about Peru

This country in South America is particularly known for its high mountain range, the Andes, and for its ancient civilization, the Inca. In 1532 the Inca were conquered by Spanish men and Native Americans under the direction of Francisco Pizarro. Peru was a Spanish colony until 1821.

One of the most famous spots in Peru is an Incan site 12,000 feet high in the Andes mountains, called Machu Picchu. This ancient city was suddenly abandoned and allowed to be overgrown until the early 1900s, but its excavation has told us a lot about the pre-Colombian Inca civilization.

Discover more about Peru with the National Geographic photo gallery. You may want to do a Web Quest about Peru. When you're confident you know a thing or two, take a quiz at Time for Kids.

Learn more about the Inca at Mr. Donn's site.
Read about how the Inca used llamas, how the Inca farmed on steep mountains, and how the Inca used knotted ropes for measurement and secret messages (under “Inventions”)--and of course, much, much more!

Check out the Ancient Americas Odyssey, too. Each picture and bit of text is a link to more—including one section that asks, “Why should I look at ancient things?” Be sure to visit the food section, too!

Older students may enjoy Ancient Web's write-up and wonderful photos, including one of an Incan mummy.

Here is a jigsaw puzzle of Machu Picchu.

Do you speak Quechua?

This language is one of the two official languages of Peru. (Can you guess what the other is? Which country colonized Peru for several centuries?)

Here is some vocabulary in Quechua, and here is some ancient Incan poetry (basically, prayers) in English and in Quechua.

More about Peru can be found in this January post, and more about the Inca can be found in this February post.

April 14, 2010

Anniversary of completion of the Human Genome Project – 2003

On this date in 2003, a press conference was held to announce the completion of the Human Genome Project, two years earlier than planned.

The goal of the project was to figure out the order of chemical base pairs that make up DNA and to identify and map all 20,000 – 25,000 human genes. Obviously, since nobody has exactly the same genome (other than identical twins), the project of mapping the genome involves sequencing variations of each gene.

This project and other parallel projects, as well as work on sequencing the genome of other creatures and comparison of various genomes, has furthered and will continue to be applied to medicine, energy and environmental projects, forensics (such as identifying the victim of a crime), agriculture, ancestry and human evolution, migration, and assorted other anthropology topics.

Learn more about Genetics

• Here is a wonderful online mini-course on genetics. Each concept has an illustrated explanation, animation, “gallery” of photos or diagrams, some audio-visual clips, biographies of important scientists, a problem or two for kids to answer, and links to other websites. Excellent!

• Zoom into DNA is an opportunity to see amazing real images of cells, chromosomes, and DNA.

• Explore the Eye Color Calculator (and learn more about genes and inheritance)!

• Here are some more lessons, labs (experiments), games, and puzzles. All the PDF files I looked at seemed to be for middle grades and up, and many are best done in groups or classrooms.

• This simple experiment uses ordinary household items to extract DNA from fruit. You can actually see and feel DNA!

• There are more DNA activities in this December, 2009, post.