July 17th, 2009
SciFoo post 2: electric something or other
#5:
I’ve never met so many people who so readily jived with my parenting philosophy. It was silly, here we’d all traveled from all over the planet to meet up with a variety of great minds from across many disciplines and what were we doing? Showing each other pictures of our babies. Ooooooh babies!!
But it was wonderful.
Popular culture tells us a lot of things about scientists and engineers and writers and programmers. But none of those things are warmth and joy and hugs, none of those things are about the excitement over watching your kids learn how to ride a bike.
At a conference full of high achievers, you’d expect a lot of comparing of our children’s grade point averages. But instead every conversation centered on things like:
- encouraging their kids’ curiosity
- honoring the child’s own personality
- not caring what other people think
- even if your son wants to dress up like a girl
- even if he wears a tutu
- to preschool
- every day
In a lot of ways these are the superparents — involved, supportive, open, educated — but their kids aren’t asked to be superkids. Several parents mentioned that they homeschooled until they found a great public school, and it was a given that a public school isn’t great because of high test scores or fancypants laser-powered movie screens in every classroom. Great schools are ones that offer real diversity, encourage parents to pay attention, and use a teaching approach that works well for their own kid. These are parents who sound the most proud when they talk about a kid who is not afraid to try something that he sucks at, or a daughter who found a way to cope with social pressures or public schooling by staying true to herself.
Cool thing #6:
A massive motherfucking tank of liquid nitrogen.
July 17th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
oooooooooooooooh! LOVES ME SOME LN2!!! i’ve even gotten to work with liquid helium – which is 4K (reallyfuckingcold). if you freeze a hot dog with LN2 and whack it with a hammer it shatters all over the floor. i use this for my “Cryogenic safety” lecture… unfortunately, about 3 days later, those hot dog fragments are thawed out and starting to get fuzzy and smell bad…
July 17th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Woahhh awesome.
This dude — who makes very cool science kits over at http://www.scitoys.com — demonstrated the joys of freezing marshmallows and then eating a mouthful of them. They crunch in your mouth and then you breathe the steam out of your nose like a dragon.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:24 am
That sounds like a really awesome group of people to hang out with :D (color me jealous!)
Oooh, crunchy off-gassing marshmallows. Sweet!
July 18th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
What’s in that cooler? Is that a head?
July 18th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
freezing marshmallows with LN2 would be almost like making your own dippin’ dots! love the science guy link – i get to do science outreach sometimes in the local schools and may swipe some of this! great stuff!
July 19th, 2009 at 6:41 am
I am so thrilled to hear about the parenting methods of these folks. They (and you) are the ones preparing children to lead us in the future. I live in Michigan and have seen people who believe in old-fashioned discipline, the parent is always right, beat the kid a little to make sure he doesn’t get too uppity. Well, you get the idea. The problem with that is that’s a good attitude to have if you want a lot of blue-collar workers. Your children, and those of your sci-foo folks, will be ready for the new technologies and mental challenges ahead. The world is changing rapidly. Thank goodness someone’s helping bring up our children to excel in it.
My parents weren’t bad, but sometimes I wish they’d been more like you and Kevin. :-)
October 17th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Yes, that’s me in the photo.
;-)
In the cooler is a balloon. I was demonstrating an interesting thing that happens when you put a balloon in liquid nitrogen. One would expect the balloon to get smaller, up to a point, and then remain partially inflated, since the nitrogen in the balloon will not get cold enough to completely condense into liquid itself (any more than a balloon full of steam would completely condense in a bucket of water in a 500 degree oven).
But it DOES all turn into a liquid. I got lots of guesses from famous scientists about why that might be, but we all ended up agreeing that my original guess was probably best — that the nitrogen gas was dissolving in the liquid oxygen that forms when you put the balloon full of air in the liquid nitrogen.
You might also like my latest project.
A high resolution spectrograph you can build in 15 minutes for $20.
http://bit.ly/HeGPY
Self calibrating, sub nanometer accuracy, lab quality.