January Geek Week: Physics, Michio Kaku, Lewis Carroll, and Legos.

Table of Contents

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Newton!

If you have stopped in Whistle Stop Books or the Cambria Toy Station in the last few years, there is a good chance you stopped for a minute and played with the Newton’s Cradle, a desk toy named after Sir Isaac Newton and based on one of the key principles of Newtonian physics. The “toy” illustrates the laws of inertia (Newton’s 1st Law of Motion), conservation / F=ma (force=mass * acceleration-Newton’s Second Law of Motion), and Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Want to know more about Newton’s Cradles? (None of which are appropriate for the average elementary student–above their pay grade, but interesting reading if you want to know more before you talk to the said same six or eight year old)…

Newton’s Cradle (Donald Simanek). 2016. Lock Haven University
Rocking Newton’s Cradle (Stefan Hutzler, et al.) 2004. Association of Physics Teachers.
How Does the Ball-Chain Work? (F. Herrmann & M Seitz). 1982. American Journal of Physics.

Try This @ Home

Pick a couple of projects from the Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations Collection. A great collection of science projects and experiments for home and science fairs…some very cool stuff. Start with Newtonian Mechanics.

Build your own Newton’s Cradle from Scratch (Compliments of the folks at Cornell). If you want to do Newton’s Cradle experiments, but you don’t want to go to the trouble of making one, swing by the Cambria Toy Station and pick up a Newton’s Cradle of your own.

Geek Birthdays and Adventures

1/22	Alan J. Heeger (b. 1936). Physicist and Mathematician. In 1992, Dr. Roberta Bondar became the first Neurologist (& Canadian Woman in Space.
1/23	In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became Doctor Blackwell, when she was awarded her M.D. from Geneva Medical College. She was the first female doctor in the United States. In 1997, Madeleine Albright is sworn in as the first female U.S. Secretary of State. Learn what is involved in being Secretary of State…play “Crisis of Nations” on iCivics (requires Flashplayer). Note, be sure to go through the tutorial before you start. You may also want to explore the other games in iCivics. Suitable for both adults and kids and is a great way to learn how government works!
1/24	Michio Kaku, American physicist and academic was born in 1947. In 1946, the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission was established through a resolution by the United Nations. Play Energy Quest (from the California Energy Commission), and check out the other educational climate resources from the UN and UNESCO.
1/25	Ilya Prigogine, a Russian-American chemist and physicist, was born in 1917 and won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1077 for his dissipative structures and how they fit into thermodynamic systems and beyond equilibrium. Back to Newton…Prigogine, in his book The End of Certainty argued that “Newtonian physics has now been extended three times, first with the use of the wave function in quantum mechanics, then with the introduction of spacetime in general relativity, and finally with the recognition of indeterminism in teh study of unstable systems. (Wiki) You can thank Prigogine for chaos. In 2004, the Opportunity Rover (MER-B) landed on the surface of Mars. Opportunity is still scuttling around the Red Desert on Mars.
1/26	Polykarp Kusch, German-American Physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in In 1949, the Palomar Observatory’s Hale Telescope, the largest aperture optical telescope (until 1976 when the BTA-6 was constructed) becomes operational.
1/27	Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) born in 1832. He may not seem like an obvious choice for geek week, but Carroll/Dodgson was a mathematician, who took issue with symbolic algebra but clearly loved symbolic logic.
1/28	And, finally, in 1958, the Lego company patented their bricks, however the original wooden bricks were developed in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen. Take a quick tour of Lego’s new design headquarters and factory in Billund, Denmark. Better yet, visit.