Bringing Science and Math Into Writing? 434
I am an eighth grade English teacher. As much as I love my subject and believe in the value of skillful writing, I also believe that there is a terrible lack of interest in the sciences and maths among students in general. In some sense, I believe English to be a support subject for the others classes at this grade level. At my school, the average science classroom has time for labs and note taking, but reading and writing on the subject (beside textbooks) is usually limited. Math is in a similar situation: they have time to learn a concept and practice, but not to linger on possibilities. Therefore, I have two questions for the readers of Slashdot: which books / shows / movies caused a curiosity towards these subjects when you were young, and what suggestions do you have for incorporating these subjects into writing?
You're doomed (Score:4, Insightful)
The one good bit of news is that the next most influential person in a child's life is often a teacher. Your own enthusiasm for the subject will do more than you know. Just be your nerdy self; you will change their lives.
Reading (Score:5, Interesting)
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In the 1970's, I grew up on the Heinlein juveniles, and would read a Tom Swift book when I couldn't find anything better, although they were terribly dated even by then. The trouble is that the Heinlein juveniles are getting dated as well, and are disappearing from library shelves, and in general young adult SF is getting to be an endangered species. W
Re:You're doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You're doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we stop with the "one size fits all" mentality? Most schools have no idea how to 'educate'. They don't need "challenging reading material" you have to identify what the child wants to LEARN ABOUT, you have to hook whatever it is your teaching into a child's natural interest or curiousity and then work back from it. You really have to get into kids heads about the adventurous things they want to do, what they like, and what they (even if naively) dream about. I was a product of said school system and even I can see how alarmingly curiousity killing it is. I didn't learn to like learning until I got OUT of the school system completely including university.
What modern educational systems are doing is killing children's natural curiousity be forcing them to learn boring dry material that has no *relationship* to what kind of things they dream about, want to explore, think about or want to accomplish... if anything if I had the money I would open my own private school because I can see how criminal the "adults" of education have no clue about what it was like to be a kid! When you were at the ages of 6, 10, 15
When I was in school I had curiousity about a lot of things and how they worked:
-I wanted to know how cars worked (and how parts of it were made, I wanted ALL the details even if it was some simple small part)
-I wanted to know how to put (small) video games together (and I understood at the time after a bit of reading they required math, etc. If someone really smart from the game industry had come along with a 2D shmup / shooter (not to be confused with First person shooter). I would have sat there for days trying to build my own and gobble up everything I could about it after being shown step-by-step from start to finish how to put a small one together.
-I had a fascination with math but I think in pictures, gemoetric shapes and words, not symbol scratch like
Those are just the really quick and dirty ideas too. The truth of the matter is education really needs to become more individualized to the child's preferred mode of thought and data processing style in many instances.
Right now few people in the educational system understand nor talk about neurodiversity amd really understand what that means.
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Book wise, my parents had complete sets of Encyclopaedias and childcraft books that I seemed to read over and over again.
I can't think of any movies that I was really into Science/Math wise, but as far as TV and books... they worked wonders for me.
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I had an professor who placed great emphasis on the crucifiction of the A type
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Plus, not many parents, or men who had much respect for women in general, throw around the word "cunt" in answering a question posed by a schoolteacher about how to best inspire schoolchildren.
Or, you might just be an asshole. That's always a possibility.
Re:You're doomed (Score:4, Interesting)
There's other factors at play here too... what is the learning environment, what neighborhood do they live in, what is income of parents, child's IQ, natural intuition, ability to solve problems, explore the environment, ask questions. They might all play a miniscule role but all add up.
My father is a biochemist. I decided to study in university the natural sciences partly because he showed me some of the 'cool' stuff he did as a kid as did his coworkers. This still has an influence on my to this day
If anything, I think its most imporant that students being to realize the importance of math at the junior high level as they start doing algebra. When we asked "Why we needed to know this?" questions, almost all our math and science teachers rolled their eyes and said - because its on the exam, or you need to know this if you want to be x or y in a real smart ass tone of voice. Every single time. We didn't realize that algebra and calculus played such a vital role in statistics, economics, electronics, computers, business, social sciences. etc. We were listening for an informed response. Never got one.
Mentors Plus books! (Score:4, Informative)
Since studies showed how critical mentors were, NASA supports numerous programs where we mentored students ranging from annual Engineers Week where we visited classrooms at all grade levels, explaing how "cool" science and engineering concepts are and how great such careers are. Often this became the first time students had been exposed to a scientist or engineer and provided a connection with science and engineering that can be followed up on. I was also involved in mentoring dozens of high-school and college students on challenging problems making textbook learning alive - including sunmer or year-long mentorships [tec.va.us].
I'd encourage my students to get "hooked on" Feynman, Faraday (who turned on Edison) or others. who had a gift of explaning complex concepts of how our world works in a simple and intriguing fashion, like "unraveling an onion". For Example, Feynman's:
1. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) (Paperback)
2. What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character (Paperback)
3. Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character
Although books alone are NOT the answer, books, such as Feynman's, can go a long way in turning on our young people to science and engineering. Good luck on your worthy but formidable challenge so critical to our future.
MacGyver (Score:5, Funny)
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To take an extreme example, learning on which button to push to start a machine is not science - and never will be :-(
Re:MacGyver (Score:4, Interesting)
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(A really bad turnoff for me was an episode where MacGyver frees an East European dissident from a psychological ward where he was locked in by his commun
Re:MacGyver (Score:5, Insightful)
"Science can be useful." Well, that's certainly a horrible lesson to learn - Heaven forbid the kids might think that this stuff could actually be useful to them. Then they might learn it for practical reasons, rather than for love of abstract knowledge, and we just can't have such things tainting our pure and clean ivory tower, now can we ?
Sarcasm aside, science is a kind of magic, used to solve problems. Or just what do you think your medieval forefathers would think of the computer, the television, or even the light bulb ? Or heck, what would they think of refrigerators: "You have a closet which stays cold by itself ? Inconceivable !" And don't even get me started on electric heaters and microwave ovens.
Just a while ago there was an article on Slashdot, describing how stem cells have been used to fix damaged spines in rats. Making the paralyzed walk again is a miracle straight from the Bible; if that isn't good enough for you to qualify science as "magic", then just what does it take ? Huh ?
Actually, it is.
Science is about making hypotheses on how things work and then testing them, a process known as the scientific method. Now, if you are trying to switch on a machine, how will you go about it ? You first look at the buttons, seeing if there's any hints on which one is the on button. If there are such hints, you try that button first, if not, then you pick a button at random. Then you observe the results: did the machine turn on ? If not, then your hypothesis was incorrect and you try another button; if yes, then it is likely that this was the correct button (but not certain, since it could be a combination of buttons or something which started the machine).
Learning to operate a machine without instructions is an endeavour where the scientific method will become very handy. Sure, the machine itself might be technology; but your hopefully systematic attempts to learn about it are science, or at least they better be if you want to have success.
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As a nice example, consider this [xkcd.com] comic, and don't forget to read the tooltip text that appears when you hover over the image.
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Magic is the supernatural violation of natural law, science is the understanding of natural law. Stop pontificating.
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Magic, as the term is commonly used (especially by hackers) is anything that you don't understand. It doesn't imply a supernatural explanation in this context. The empirical approach that the GP described is exactly how we turn magic into science.
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As a child, I had the hardest time learning anything based around abstract theory. I kept asking "what's it for?" and without an answer other than "to
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McGuyver goes to visit a school where his old science professor teaches. The son to the science professor is also in the school and is trying his damned hardest to live up to his dad's standards, but fails as his father (the teacher) is not being a good father and is never satisfied with an A when there's an A+. In any case, all the scienc
How does it work? (Score:2, Interesting)
Good Luck (Score:2, Insightful)
at any rate, the best thing you can do is to talk with the math teachers in your school to find out what the students are working on and then collaboratively design some extensions that you can apply in your classroom. a writing assignment that gets the kids to crack a book and report on a famous mathematician... make it a 20th century mathematician to make the kids see math is a living subject.
perhaps get them to write some modern applications in the r
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Science Fiction (Score:5, Informative)
Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel has a nice discussion of acceleration and interplanetary distances. Arthur C Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise offers an introduction to material strengths and orbital mechanics. Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity juxtaposes gravity and centripetal acceleration.
Science Fiction != Science (Score:2)
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I'd say my three biggest childhood influences towards science weren't books, but Doctor Who (constantly solving puzzles with science), arcade games (how do they work?) and Usborne computer books (that's how they work!), though sci-fi literature played a large and very important role.
Re:Science Fiction - FANTASIA MATHEMATICA (Score:2, Interesting)
FANTASIA MATHEMATICA
Partial selections from Contents:
* "Young Archimedes" by Aldous Huxley
* "Peter Learns Arithmetic" by H.G. Wells
* "Socrates and the Slave" by Plato
* "The Devil and Simon Flagg" by Arthur Porges
* "--And he Built a Crooked House" by Robert A. Heinlein
Re:Science Fiction (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" also goes on at length about learning, the process of learning, how the public school system gets in the way of that, and how to get around that. That's at least as important - if not more - than any discussion of physics and math.
Best piece of math/science/technical writing ever (Score:3, Informative)
I went to one of the profs in my department. He does numerical electromagnetism, so he is very good at math and CG is familiar to him. I asked him if he could recommend a "CG for dummies" book.
He told me, as a matter of fact, there is: An Introduction to the Conjugate Gradient Method Without the Agonizing Pain [cmu.edu] by Carnegie Mellon professor Jonathan Richard Shewchuk. My E&M prof said it was the best bit of technical writing he'd ever seen. I'm about halfway through, but I have to agree - though it's complicated, it's by far the most comprehensible explanation I have ever seen. It really is a perfect example of what technical writing should be like.
Various approaches (Score:2)
If that isn't permitted, or doesn't appeal, various historical figures: Newton, and Einstein as obvious starting points
Either you should be expert and enthusiastic or you should work something out with so
Philosophy and Debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than attempting a direct approach like including science or maths related material in your reading list, I would suggest adding in a healthy amount of philosophy and debate to the curriculum.
Both demand understanding the subject matter (whatever it may actually be) and promote critical thinking. They also encourage the development of a larger vocabulary and command of more complex grammatical constructs, as expressing complex ideas necessitates a mastery of whatever medium is being used to convey them. These skills will be invaluable to your students in every aspect of their academic careers, and are fundamental requirements for sciences and maths.
The best part is that the subject matter can be something that they're actually interested in. In fact, the deeper their personal interest, the more likely it is that they'll actually put forth the effort required to develop coherent arguments and care enough to force themselves to learn how to express their personal positions more clearly and effectively.
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Science fiction (Score:4, Insightful)
As for TV, one used to say Star Trek, but recent versions have less and less to do with science, and in any case aren't in production now. I enjoy the new Doctor Who, but that has a great deal of fantasy these days.
But for reading please avoid at all costs any novelisations of TV or movies. Hack writers can't bring anything worthwhile to plots whose shortcomings are only too apparent without special effects and explosions to distract.
Short story anthologies might be a good bet. Many excellent ones, perhaps the annual Hugo Award Winners.
And see Mathematical Fiction [cofc.edu] for a listo f books and stories about maths. I like Greg Egan and Rudy Rucker, but they might be beyond most kids.
Science Fact (Score:3, Informative)
I have never understood the point of fiction, e
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By itself, this is not necessarily a problem. The one right answer ant
Three Words (Score:2)
Go to the Root (Score:2, Insightful)
LIVING the maths and physics :-) (Score:2, Informative)
I wonder if the time one has - or rather the time one finds to linger on possibilities is not bound to their motivation in exploring the subject. I for one remember having done that two times, once in 9th grade (internal composition laws) and in 10th grade (2x2 matrices). Being eager to explore that really new world to me, I was writing pages and pages of exercices without anybody asking me t
Biographies of scientists and mathematicians... (Score:2, Interesting)
watch discovery!!! (Score:2)
Please help your students by encouraging them to watch Discovery channel.
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First off, for highly entertaining lightweight science content it is hard to beat the Mythbusters. Yes, they can be a bit sloppy some times, and sometimes Adam's zeal overshadows his abilities, but still the show presents a lot of highly entertaining experiments that the average person does not have nearly the resources to attempt. This will be especially entertaining for your class since extremely large explosions and mass destruction are recurring themes. Kari will also like
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Discovery Channel - Nostradamus [discoverychannel.co.uk]
I have not seen it so maybe I am wrong. Maybe it exposes him as a fake. They describe it as a "factual based drama" but I have the feeling they take the popular route. I just looked at the science of prediction section and they talk about astrology and lucky charms.
A noble quest ... (Score:2, Interesting)
What books/shows/movies influenced me...
Books:
The "Alvin Fernald" books - about the boy inventor
Popular Mechanics - how stuff works
Popular Science - sort of like Pop Mech, but substantially more cerebral
Shows:
Flatland (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Flatland (Mod up!) (Score:2)
Also worth considering the unofficial sequel, Flatterland [wikipedia.org] by Ian Stewart.
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It's not exactly plagiarism, seeing as he did provide a link to his source.
Try Nonfiction (Score:2)
Be prepared for resistance though, as schools are still a female-dominated sector, and sexist sterotypes are as strong as ever. You don't want to become the next whipping boy [slate.com] like Larry Summers.
John Wyndham (Score:2)
Dunno if it'll help you in your quest, but he certainly inspired me when I was young.
Technical Writing (Score:3, Insightful)
For science and math, focus on technical writing. English was viewed as "creative" writing when I was in school. There is not much to be creative about when it comes to writing about science and math. Unless things have changed, technical writing isn't covered until college, and that's only if you take a technical writing class. So if you want to help those interested in math and science with writing, try focusing on technical writing (even though that may seem dry for someone who teaches english).
well... it starts in the home..... (Score:2)
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Things that inspired me toward math and science. (Score:2, Insightful)
For me, fiction wasn't particularly inspirational. I was mostly intrigued by the automation power of computers. Since computers automate that which, at the lowest level, is mathematics, I was naturally inclined to attempt to learn mathematical techniques for tackling problems because I could then devise a machine that would tackle those problems for me with great speed and proficiency. So essentially, it was the computers themselves and their capabilities that inspired my interest in maths. Science was
War Games (Score:2)
Maths Books (Score:2)
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Million-Master- M agic-Numbers/dp/039331071X [amazon.com]
God Created the Integers - Stephen Hawking
http://www.amazon.com/God-Created-Integers-Mathema tical-Breakthroughs/dp/0762419229/ref=pd_bbs_2/102 -3884603-8680934?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189325102&sr =1-2 [amazon.com]
History Of Mathematics (Score:2)
Through the history of math, you get all sorts of interesting characters, exotic
Two suggestions from my own youthful experience (Score:2)
Then, a cartoon. "Donald Duck in Mathmagicland". Seriously. Includes demonstrations of the mathematics of music and three-cushion billiards. Would challenge students to consider the mathematical underpinnings of other activities in the junior-high sphere
Some more thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
Surely You're Joking Mr Fenyman
The Man with No Endorphins
Although technologically quite dated, the SF novels by Fred Hoyle.
I don't know if the transcripts or videos are available in the USA but the UK) Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are great vehicles for stimulating a child's interest in Science and Engineering.
They try to pose the 'What if?' question.
However much of the writing I have to do as part of my work is 'dry, technical and totally uninspiring'. (Reports, Specifications etc)
Get your children to express their imagination and be creative in their writing. SF (classical SF anyway) with a sold basis in Science and Fact can be a good platform to get kids to let their imagination run riot.
Why not let them have a go at writing a screenplay for a Dr Who episode? or something similar?
I think back in total horror at the 500 word English essays I had to write in School. As I am dyslexic these were a real bind. There was no stimulation of though or any need to be creative. One time I let my imagination run riot and instead of 500 words, I produced over 5000. IT was a proper story with a beginning, middle and end. I thought it was brilliant. I got an 'F' for my efforts (it was not 500 words approx) but won the School prize for best story of the year.
I write stories even today. Mainly they are for my (and my grandkids) enjoyment. They are what can only be classed as in the Classic SF genre. I do it for relaxation and fun. I also write everything in Longhand first.
Good Luck in your quest
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Score:2)
Also provides some interesting paradoy of Victorian society at the same time. And since it was written in 1884 teachers can claim it is a "classic".
There are some modern variations that are quite good too, and more politically correct in their handling of woman
Wikipedia has more on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland [wikipedia.org]
Rhetoric (Score:2, Interesting)
Time limitations (Score:2)
Some recommendations (Score:3, Informative)
Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
The Dancing Wu Li Masters - Gary Zukav
The Tao of Physics - Fritjof Kapra
The First Three Minutes - Steve Weinburg
The only one you will need (Score:2)
My sister bought it when she began to have an interest in science and I was amazed by Asimov's skill to tell the history of scientific discoveries like a thrilling tale. This is however a big book (800+ pages), I would recommend to choose some chapters or some extracts and to study them.
This culture is fucked (Score:5, Insightful)
Been that way for a long time. There's the occasional aknowledgment of scholarship, but look at the schools. Great athletes are paraded about like gods. Great scholars get a Printshop certificate. It's a tired old complaint, but nothing ever gets done about it. Our pro sports teams have become high paid clubs for thugs, and still no one cares.
I mean, like, dog fights? A guy makes it huge and becomes a millionaire and is staging asswiping dog fights? He doesn't need to be put in jail, he need to be put to sleep and have his brain srudied by science so we figure out the fuck happened in there.
I still remember the time I was at a gym and overheard a guy complaining how his ex-wife was raising hid son. "Fuck, she probably has him coming home with straight-A's some stupid shit!", he said. I've seen this stuff over and over. Even the parents thing smart = bad because it's how THEY were raised. It's a generation that thinks it's perfectly OK for a 50 year old to be a bagger at the supermarket.
So you see, this is why I laugh when laws get passed that fuck over the population.
Whatever. We'll all be wiped out soon by nuclear holy war or an asteroid or giant bees, so what matter?
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He has worked his ASS off all his life to get as far as he has. He's damn good and his records are evident of that. Unfortunately, the pro-team that picked him already has a good player in his position and it looks as though his chances of making it pro are slim. Perhaps he'll get lucky,
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As for the giant bees, you heard it here first.
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Shows & Reading (Score:2)
Any show where you see people taking scientific measurements and using them relevantly within the show is useful. Show how science is relevant to them and the kids'll pick up on it.
For what's on today, I'd say havi
Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
And I absolutely disagree with the precepts your question. As an English teacher, you should be doing your best to teaching the English language, and an appreciation of the English canon. It's almost like you're sabotaging your own field, and hope to stress other subjects! The sciences already receive far more government spending and grants than the arts; anyway it's not your place to correct perceived imbalances.
Plenty of nerds here will advise you to read Heinlen or some shit. But the prose of science fiction (or really, of any genre fiction) is for shit and the metaphors shallow, and really don't add anything to being a well-rounded, broadly-educated youth. They're the literary equivalent of watching "the Matrix" and "Independence Day" in a marathon session, with no real depth or artistic value. Furthermore, the sort of people who would get anything out of science-fiction are the sort of people who would read it anyway.
I think people have too little appreciation for culture, here in China my friends (many in the Computer field) can rattle off 8th century poetry, and have a much deeper appreciation of history and culture. How many Americans can quote even a single poem? Honestly I think it's terrible that an English teacher has so little regard for their own subject. If you were the teacher of my child I would demand them being transferred out, and I strongly believe you're in the wrong field.
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I think you significantly misinterpret the poster's intention.
There is a great push to integrate cross-curricular activities to strengthen the connections between the various academic subjects.
The purpose is to strengthen the teaching of each of the subjects, not to weaken the teaching of one in favor of another.
You also seem to be confusing the teaching of literature with the teaching of composition. Composition cannot stand alone--students must write about SOMETHING. If, in choosing the topics about whi
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There's plenty that's mathematically interesting in, for example, poetry... You can study the structure of different types of poems mathematically and play games with that. Have students figure out which meters "work" (sound good) and which don't. Try to have them come up with
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A Wrinkle in Time (Score:2)
AAAS (Score:2)
They've developed some educational programs, and have a list of online resources [aaas.org].
One of their programs is Science Books and Films [sbfonline.com], which sounds like what you're looking for.
I think it's a great idea to get kids reading and writing about science in English class. As a scientist, I wish I was a better writer. The difference between a good scientist and a great one is often commun
Issac Asimov (Score:4, Interesting)
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Also, I still love Heinlein's juvenalia -- his early work written for teenage boys. Rocket Ship Galileo, Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Space Cadet, Starman Jones, etc... They all deal with teenage boys who think it perfectly reasonable to study tensor calculus
I remember kids with Ti-85s in English :P (Score:2)
There will always be geeks. (Score:2)
But I also liked Beakman's World on TLC when it was on.
Maybe you can show them the film "What the *bleep* Do We Know!?" and the pseudo-science crap will piss them off so much they'll want to learn the real thing.
In the library, I always liked this one series of books about the planets. They were thin hardcover books and pretty large, each one dedicated to a planet (plus one for the Sun). The pictures and diagrams of the layers of the planet so
Interestingly, when teaching 9th grade physics... (Score:2)
When teaching 9th grade physics, I look for as many opportunities to include reading and writing in the curriculum as possible. Biographies and history are important to read, and I find that having students write research papers (of the short, reasonable 9th grade kind) is good exercise.
It is laudable that you want to include such cross-curricular activities in your language arts classes. Perhaps you can collaborate with the science faculty to do a joint activity--such as an experiment or research project
Donald in Mathmagic Land (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone should check Donald in Mathmagic Land [imdb.com] out. It's one of the best movies I ever saw in grade school and I still remember it to this day.
uncle albert (Score:2)
Here are a few books (Score:2)
2. What do you care what everybody thinks?
Both by Richard Feynman
The movie Infinity, Matthew Broderick, Patricia Arquette
The books are the best. The movie concentrates on the love story between Feynman and his first wife..
Computer games? (Score:2)
Computer games have to be an easy way to get people's attention, but working from there (for grade eight) your conversion rate into getting people interested in programming might be pre
get them young (Score:2)
Godel, Escher and Bach (Score:2)
The Real World (Score:2)
No, not that MTV "reality" show, the thing outside the window... Rarely a day goes by without the media quoting some bit or science or statistics (and usually getting it wrong - but that's fine - get kids to critique it and write letters to the paper explaining why they agree or disagree with the figures...) You'll get into trouble, of course, but maybe in English you have slightly more leeway to discuss possibly contentious subjects.
The big problem is that the Math taught in schools is so divorced from
Jurassic Park (Score:3, Interesting)
Then I read the book a couple of years later. I was around 13 or 14 and sick at home for a couple days. I read through it very quickly and I just remember how despite being a nut, Ian Malcolm was the one character who seemed to have a down-to-earth and realistic point of view on the whole situation. I also remember how cool it was that Crichton gave actual examples of computer code to support the story. It sparked my interest in computers and programming and logical, scientific thought in general.
Afterwards I convinced my grandmother to help me buy a computer and I spent the next few years going from pothead rocker to nerd teaching myself how to program the best I could.
Without having read that book my life would have turned out quite differently.
If you're trying to appeal to the average kid who watches far more movies than they do reading books, why not use something from pop-culture that was made into a successful movie ? Like most books vs. movies the two are rather different and so it would be difficult to impossible for one of the students to do any kind of report or test based on the movie.
It also has the advantage of demonstrating how powerful science can be. It's science fiction but it does a good job of coming off as plausible (if not then no one would have asked afterwards "could we do that?", even if the answer is "no because we haven't found such DNA still in tact"[1]) and it also goes to show how "cool" science can be. It deals with computers, biology, science fiction and logical thought and even touches on scientific ethics every once in a while. Over all it's a very entertaining book that most young people should enjoy reading while also doing a good job of advertising what science and math has to offer.
[1] Yes I realize there's several other reasons that it's still fiction, as well.
Apollo, Star Trek, Scientific American (Score:3, Insightful)
Joning Science and Writing (Score:3, Informative)
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I don't buy into these beliefs. I've been reading recently about the re
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I tried reading the Dune books by Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert. Eh... mediocre. Anderson should stick with the Seven Suns saga. He works best when playing with his own toys.
But anyway, I read message boards where people act like they want to kill Anderson and B. Herbert. You'd think someone flushed their Koran. They go on and on about what a visionary Frank Herbert was. Visionary about what? Some universe he made up? And after book o
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A Beautiful Mind
Oh, great! Two films depicting very smart people as highly dysfunctional!
Another movie of interest would be Pi by the wonderful Darren Arronofsky (Requiem for a Dream)
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND? Good flick, but WTF? The smart guy in that film DRILLS A HOLE IN HIS OWN HEAD!
And this is from an Arronofsky fan who *loved* The Fountain.
though I'm not sure how that would go over with your typical 8th graders.
Ya think?
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And if I get one more fucking "it has been 9 minutes since you have posted" broken warning, I'm going to hack an Al-Quaeda server and make Slashdot their next target. Fix that already. At least have the script realize it's completely bones when the variable for minutes is >2.
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