Turning a Nail Polish Disaster Into a Teachable Math Moment 126
theodp writes: In The Spiral of Splatter, SAS's Rick Wicklin writes that his daughter's nail polish spill may have created quite a mess, but at least it presented a teachable math moment: "'Daddy, help! Help me! Come quick!' I heard my daughter's screams from the upstairs bathroom and bounded up the stairs two at a time. Was she hurt? Bleeding? Was the toilet overflowing? When I arrived in the doorway, she pointed at the wall and at the floor. The wall was splattered with black nail polish. On the floor laid a broken bottle in an expanding pool of black ooze. 'It slipped,' she sobbed. As a parent, I know that there are times when I should not raise my voice. I knew intellectually that this was one of those times. But staring at that wall, seeing what I was seeing, I could not prevent myself from yelling. 'Oh my goodness!' I exclaimed. 'Is that a logarithmic spiral?'" So, got any memorable teachable math moments you've experienced either as a kid or adult? Yes, Cheerios Math counts!
Black nail polish? (Score:5, Funny)
When dealing with the shame of owning an Emo/Goth child, it's important not to blame yourself.
It was likely exposure to some toxic chemical that turned her bad, not your parenting.
At least that is what you should tell yourself.
Re:Black nail polish? (Score:5, Funny)
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She'll have a kid with a guy she meets at a nightclub who makes passes at everything that moves.
Re:Black nail polish? (Score:5, Funny)
Guys making passes at anything that moves is a redundant description.
Re:Black nail polish? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not necessarily. Any child who has a parent who would immediately think 'is that a logarithmic spiral' rather than 'how in the hell am I going to clean this mess up and how much is it going to cost me' is pretty much assured to wind up really fucked up.
Really? That's how you define bad parenting? A parent that's excited about a learning opportunity after a messy accident rather than being upset about something that a few dollars of touchup paint can cover over?
Some parents have literally killed children over far less, this parent gets an A++ in my book.
Re:Black nail polish? (Score:4, Funny)
"Cutting yourself again Brianna? Whoa look at those neato fractal patterns the blood splatter is making!"
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Covering over black so that it doesn't show isn't easy. It can take a surprising number of coats to do the job. Sometimes you can strip all of the paint off the wall and start fresh; other times you're better off going with wallpaper. Still, I agree with you that the father deserves an A++ for understanding that it was an accident.
I haven't come across anything that this won't cover:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/KIL... [homedepot.com]
Not even when the tenants thought it would be cool to paint a hexagram on their bedroom wall in black paint.
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Relax man. He was talking tongue-in-cheek. :)
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Completely redundant...... let me fix that "...Any Child.... is pretty much assured to wind up really fucked up" from somebodies point of view.
However, when you realize how fucked up that persons point of view is, it all averages out to normal, whatever that is.
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Not necessarily. Any child who has a parent who would immediately think 'is that a logarithmic spiral' rather than 'how in the hell am I going to clean this mess up and how much is it going to cost me' is pretty much assured to wind up really fucked up.
Are you in another world.
What a wonderful father. The damage was done, and the broken bottle was accidental. What a way to soothe a child's worries and to, at the same time, inject some tender loving care.
His wife must be very happy to have such a partner.
Re:Black nail polish? (Score:5, Funny)
The emaciated boyfriends could be a plus, less likely to pull a muscle while dragging the body to the trunk.
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Beating a dead horse here, but emo is not a style of dress. It was (I say was because there are very few bands that still hold true to the genre) a branch of hardcore punk in the 80's. I know I'm a rare breed, but I like to know what words actually mean before I go throwing them around like a beach balls at a Nickelback concert.
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Re:Black nail polish? (Score:5, Funny)
"Daddy! Daddy! Help!" isn't the response that you would expect from a Goth child. It would be more like "Whatever. We're all doomed anyway...."
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At least it wasn't a Vamp douche bag.
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It doesn't mean Goth...
If she wanted to make Ladybug design she would use Black and a Red Background, this makes the accident plausible as she is trying to manipulate a bottle with wet nails, combined with the possibility of trying to do more detail work.
It could be used as a base so the lighter colors will stand out better.
Yes, black nail polish (Score:2)
Some people wear black nail polish for the same reason that Steve Jobs wore black turtlenecks: because black goes with everything.
If you're as fashion-impaired as I am, it's useful to stick with something that you know will work. Dressing with some modicum of sense is a courtesy to others.
Nope (Score:2)
RTFA (Score:2)
The author of the article states that the spiral probably is not really logarithmic, though it is a very good fit. He also makes a physics based model using the acceleration of gravity.
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Re:Angular momentum at the park (Score:5, Informative)
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Motorcycle+Roundabout (Score:2)
Re:Angular momentum at the park (Score:5, Informative)
He should be too. Have you seen what septic engineers make these days? No seriously, it's insane. Some of them even get in to the six figures.
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He should be too. Have you seen what septic engineers make these days? No seriously, it's insane. Some of them even get in to the six figures.
Making six figures and at knowing you are dealing with actual shit instead of corporate shit doesn't sound insane at all.
Re:Angular momentum at the park (Score:4, Funny)
He should be too. Have you seen what septic engineers make these days? No seriously, it's insane. Some of them even get in to the six figures.
I haven't seen what a septic engineer makes, but I'd imagine that they make the same thing as that guy's son, but larger (though 6 figures sounds like exaggeration unless you're measuring in milligrams). Of course, it all goes the same place when it's flushed.
Re:Angular momentum at the park (Score:5, Funny)
One of them once told me "It may be shit to you, but it's bread and butter to me."
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Do not underestimate the power of gnutella!
Re:Angular momentum at the park (Score:4, Informative)
Teaching kids to go faster on the roundabout [...]
This is terrible advice for children learning to drive! [collingwood.ca]
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That's not a roundabout...
This [premierfoo...ooks.co.uk] is a roundabout!
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That is absurd. Why have two concentric opposite rotating roundabouts? Why have the sub roundabouts? Why not just have one roundabout, it would do the same thing...?
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The counter circles allow a more experienced (with the roundabout) driver to avoid driving around the entire circle before exiting on the previous outlet. Simultaneously, inexperienced drivers freak-out and stay on the longest lane mitigating traffic in high volume areas. Swindon for the win.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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That is absurd.
No, it only looks absurd. It does, by all accounts, work well.
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Definitely.
If they follow the optional turn arrow painted on the inside lane of the far entrance they'll run head-on into another problem.
the crooked contractor (Score:2)
When my window replacement contractr cheated me by installing windows with IR coating I showed my kids how so visualize it from the reflection of a butane lighter flame. (the colors of the multiple reflections should red shift if it preferentially reflects red light).
I also showed them how the sun is about the size of a quarter and lands in arizona at night.
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I mean they were without the IR coating I had paid for.
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Interesting, so in AZ you prefer IR and now low-e coating.
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Interesting, so in AZ you prefer IR and now low-e coating.
the purpose of the IR coating is twofold in the southwest. First, the object is not to keep heat in the house but to reflect the heat away. Most houses have a brow to keep direct light out. But it hits the ground and walls outside and then comes into the house as IR. So the Low E coating is actually intended to keep the IR out of the house. In the northern winters it's the opposite where you want to keep the heat in the house.
Second, the IR coating turn out to also be correlated with good UV prevention
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Oh, IR and low-E are the same?
(I meant to say "not low-e" in my original reply).
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IR coating is the dominant contributor to low-e. the other is the argon fill gas, but that leaks out soon enough.
calvin and hobbes (Score:2)
http://www.gocomics.com/calvin... [gocomics.com]
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You didn't finish the story! What about getting your windows replaced? Did you get to demonstrate this property to the contractor?
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no the contractor stopped showing up and it was not worth going to court over a few thousand dollars so I just fired him.
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A prime number is a positive integer with exactly two different integer factors.
That excludes 1. There are many reasons to exclude 1; if 1 were prime then an integer wouldn't have a unique prime factorization which would make things messy.
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Fine, I have a better citation [wolfram.com] than the AC.
A prime number (or prime integer, often simply called a "prime" for short) is a positive integer p>1 that has no positive integer divisors other than 1 and p itself. (More concisely, a prime number p is a positive integer having exactly one positive divisor other than 1.) For example, the only divisors of 13 are 1 and 13, making 13 a prime number, while the number 24 has divisors 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24 (corresponding to the factorization 24=2^33), making 24 not a prime number. Positive integers other than 1 which are not prime are called composite numbers.
Prime numbers are therefore numbers that cannot be factored or, more precisely, are numbers n whose divisors are trivial and given by exactly 1 and n.
While the term "prime number" commonly refers to prime positive integers, other types of primes are also defined, such as the Gaussian primes.
The number 1 is a special case which is considered neither prime nor composite (Wells 1986, p. 31). Although the number 1 used to be considered a prime (Goldbach 1742; Lehmer 1909, 1914; Hardy and Wright 1979, p. 11; Gardner 1984, pp. 86-87; Sloane and Plouffe 1995, p. 33; Hardy 1999, p. 46), it requires special treatment in so many definitions and applications involving primes greater than or equal to 2 that it is usually placed into a class of its own. A good reason not to call 1 a prime number is that if 1 were prime, then the statement of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic would have to be modified since "in exactly one way" would be false because any n=n1. In other words, unique factorization into a product of primes would fail if the primes included 1. A slightly less illuminating but mathematically correct reason is noted by Tietze (1965, p. 2), who states "Why is the number 1 made an exception? This is a problem that schoolboys often argue about, but since it is a question of definition, it is not arguable." As more simply noted by Derbyshire (2004, p. 33), "2 pays its way [as a prime] on balance; 1 doesn't."
With 1 excluded, the smallest prime is therefore 2. However, since 2 is the only even prime (which, ironically, in some sense makes it the "oddest" prime), it is also somewhat special, and the set of all primes excluding 2 is therefore called the "odd primes." Note also that while 2 is considered a prime today, at one time it was not (Tietze 1965, p. 18; Tropfke 1921, p. 96).
Take it up with the many mathematicians who disagree with you. The dictionary actually says virtually the same thing as Wolfram MathWorld. So, your point was?
a positive integer that is not divisible without remainder by any integer except itself and 1, with 1 often excluded
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However, mathematicians agree that 1 is not a prime number, so the dictionaries don't really matter. (You know that positive integers greater than one have precisely one prime decomposition? If 1 is prime, that's no longer true. It turns out that listing 1 as neither prime nor composite makes the math easier and more useful.)
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What's wrong with black nail polish? It's just a color. I like weirdly-colored nail polish. Right now I'm wearing dark blue. So what?
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Which the author's daughter probably was...
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Umm, WTF? Yes, I'm trans. And somehow that's why I think black nail polish is OK?
Lemme tell you something. My penchant for shocking nail polish colors was clearly passed along on the X chromosome because my mother far outdoes me with her colors.
Your "experience" with trans people is most likely limited to fighting with them anonymously on Internet forums rather than interacting in real life. Meet a few people in person if you want to understand us.
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Oh, and by the way, I know non-trans men who wear nail polish. Consider your mind blown and your world view smashed to smithereens.
Far Side (Score:5, Insightful)
As much of life does, this reminds me of a Far Side cartoon where a boy is sitting in front of a chalk board as his father writes equations on it, and to the right there is a broken window. To paraphrase the caption, 'Of all punishments Jimmy most hated his father's physics lectures.'
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As punishment for my daughter's carelessness, I told her that she had to help me input data from the photograph. She claimed that this punishment was "cruel and unusual," but she did it anyway.
Preachable Moments (Score:2)
http://www.clickhole.com/video... [clickhole.com]
Seriously: get a sponge (Score:1)
Did somebody buy out slashdot while we weren't looking?
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The sponge may have been removed from market before this daughter was conceived. Sadly, it's probably also too late for "get an abortion."
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The sponge may have been removed from market before this daughter was conceived. Sadly, it's probably also too late for "get an abortion."
No, to wipe it up.
God, no wonder no woman will have kids with you ...
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Oh, come now, who fucking wouldn't come to Slashdot for our insightful, helpful, utterly fucking hilarious, and family-friendly parenting advice?
We be experts at being all growed up and shit.
Good god, man, go ask a sales guy to teach a course in ethics while you're at it.
log spirals (Score:1, Funny)
No!
https://xkcd.com/spiral/
Wasted time (Score:2)
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You can remove even dried-on nail polish quite easily with nail polish remover; I do it all the time when my nail polish starts looking chipped and ragged. (Wait, is the chipping pattern a fractal?)
Of course, nail polish remover is likely to do nasty things to synthetic fabrics and possibly even walls, so you need to be careful.
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So in your world, it's wasted time to wonder at the rich and interesting complexity of the world, rather than simply getting into drudge work like cleaning. Your world sucks. I prefer his.
Consider yourself lucky if your wife allows you to use the same colors, and doesn't consider this an opportunity for a bathroom makeover.
Also, maybe he actually has a functional relationship with his wife.
Exponential Birthdays (Score:2)
l also enjoy hiding the Fibonacci Sequence in things, just to see who notices.
On my 27'th birthday I got a "Happy Birthday" message with Fibonacci exclamation points. I was most pleased.
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My son's birthday this year happened to be a palindrome. I also told him that he would only get one Palindrome Birthday ever. He got excited when I explained what a palindrome was. I, on the other hand, got sad when I realized that my Palindrome Birthday took place in 2008 and I missed celebrating it.
As far as the "nerd-glee" goes, I feel that every time my odometer hits a big round number (e.g. 47,000 miles), a palindrome (e.g. 47,674 miles), or some other mathematically significant number.
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He might live in Australia, where I hear everything is trying to eat you.
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I am Jewish and I only need to live 890 years to reach mine. As a bonus, if I live ten more years, I'll be able to say "When 900 years you reach, look as good you will not." Whether anyone will get the reference 860 years from now is another story.
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Octo (a nickname) was born on the 8/8/88. Totally meaningless otherwise except for the epithet.
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My son's birthday this year happened to be a palindrome. I also told him that he would only get one Palindrome Birthday ever.
Unless you cheat and use two digits for the year ;}
Using my preferred number formatting (Y-M-D) my last palindrome birthday was in 2012, and using US number formatting (M-D-Y) I'll have another one in 2025.
Sadly if I was to stick to four digit years my only actual palindrome birthday would fall in 2125, so barring any major life extension technologies I'll never see it :{
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I actually was cheating with the 2 digit years. Good point about using YY-MM-DD format, though. Using that, I'll have a palindrome birthday in 15 years!
Recipes (Score:2)
Following a recipe is like following a procedure or algorithm. A segue to programming.
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Then of course there is the entire physics and chemistry aspect to it such as what Alton Brown did.
And this is a great demo of a heat equation:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem... [dailymail.co.uk]
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It could be fun trying to follow a recipe literally, trying to misinterpret the recipe as much as possible within the bounds of the literal interpretation, then change the recipe until it works.
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Most recipes I have read have been poorly written. They are also poorly broken into parallel tracks such as what you would see in a PERT chart.
In unrelated news (Score:2)
Moms all over the country return to find their nail polish splattered against their basement walls.
Just kidding -- most of the nerds already left /.
Fuck teachable moments (Score:2)
Nothing ruins the world for parent, child, and innocent bystanders like making everything a teachable moment. Let's leave the teaching for the classroom and let the rest of the time be free of the tyranny of pedagogy.
It's easier to think than to do it (Score:2)
I was helping my son with his math homework.
It was factoring polynomials: stuff like x^2 + 5x + 6 -> (x+2)(x+3)
He basically had the mechanics down.
He looked at the next problem, and picked up his pencil to start grinding his way into it.
Without thinking, I slapped my hand down on the place where he was about to start writing, and said, "No! It's easier to think than to do it."
And he thought, and he wrote down the answer.
Pythagorean Cheez-its... (Score:2)
Two Games For A Quarter (Score:1)
Isometric (Score:1)
Sure. Isometric grid paper is a great thing to have around to teach 2d and 3d construction, geometry and can be very creative. Like lego blocks on paper.
I prefer the dot only type.
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So she can paint her nails black. HTH HAND.