Science Milestones

At our weekly Scout meeting earlier this week we talked briefly about how we, as individuals can make a difference. If you do your duty, then you can make a difference and though you are just one person, together youth activism has the power to impact the world.

Youth activism is youth engagement in community organizing for social change. Youth participation in social change focuses more on issue-oriented activism than traditional partisan or electoral politics.

As hard as it seems, it’s possible to make a difference. All it takes is one idea and the right mix of determination and willpower to effect change at the local level. Start with one thing you’re passionate about and find small, local ways to organize and find solutions to the problem.

GRETA THUNBERG

By now, everyone has heard of Greta Thunberg, a Swedish environmental activist focused on the risks posed by climate change. She began her school climate strike only a year ago. This past week, she inspired over 4 million people to take a stand for climate.

“Everyone is welcome. Everyone is needed.”⁣⁣ ~ Greta Thunberg⁣⁣

Greta is great. However, if we center our attention and lift up only the white youth leaders on an international scale, we risk recreating the exact same dynamics of instilling a culture of white supremacy that is present in modern, adult organizing spaces. We risk silencing the voices of black, indigenous, and people of color .

Indigenous youth and adults have been tirelessly leading the fight for climate justice for millennia and yet their voices have not received the same recognition. Let’s celebrate a few of these amazing young activists!

AUTUMN PELTIER

⁣Autumun Peltier, Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory in Canada, was appointed chief water commissioner for the Ashinabek Nation and was recently nominated for the 2019 International Children’s Peace Prize, awarded annually to a child who “fights courageously for children’s rights.” She was only 13-years-old when she addressed the UN General Assembly and told world leaders to “warrior up” to protect water.

ISRA HIRSI

Isra Hirsi, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, is the co-founder of the U.S. Youth Climate Strike. She helped launch the U.S. movement the same month her mother, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, took office. She says the climate crisis “is the fight of my generation, and it needs to be addressed urgently.”

XIUHTEZCATL MARTINEZ⁣⁣

Earth Guardians Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is an indigenous climate activist, hip-hop artist, and powerful voice on the front lines of a global youth-led environmental movement.⁣⁣ He has fought for climate protections and spoken to large crowds about the effects of fossil fuels on the Indigenous and other marginalized communities since he was six years old. In 2015, Martinez and 21 other youths filed a lawsuit against the US Federal government, Juliana et al. v United States et al. They argue that the federal government is denying their constitutional right to life, liberty and property by ignoring climate change.

ROOTS & SHOOTS

Are you a young person interested in making change, but don’t know where to start? Or are you an adult who is inspired by the recent wave of youth activism in the U.S. and want to help out? Consider Roots & Shoots; join an established group in your area or start a new group for your homeschool community or at your school.

Roots & Shoots, a program of the Jane Goodall Institute, is a global movement of youth who are empowered to use their voice and actions to make compassionate decisions, influencing and leading change in their communities.

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” ~ Jane Goodall

Founded by Jane Goodall in 1991, the goal is to bring together youth from preschool to university age to work on environmental, conservation, and humanitarian issues. Roots & Shoots is a movement for youth just like Greta, Autumn, Isra, and Xiuhtezcatl …. just like you or your children.

⁣

Imagine for a moment, it is the year 1844 and you’re walking down Broad Street in the small coastal town of Lyme Regis on the southern shore of England. Your eyes are drawn to a window of a cottage. Treasures lay on the other side of the glass: coiled ammonite shells long since turned to stone, sea shells carefully arranged in a pattern, and in the center sits the petrified skull of a long-snouted sea reptile with pointed teeth and huge eyes. A sign above the door reads Anning’s Fossil Depot.

This small shop of curiosities was owned by a remarkable woman of her time, Mary Anning. She spent her life collecting the Jurassic-era fossils displayed throughout the small shop, simultaneously providing for her family and unlocking the secrets of Lyme Regis’s ancient past. Today, her shop is a museum.

image of Mary Anning's Plesiosaurus fossil discovery

Born into poverty in a society famed for its class consciousness, the savvy businesswoman defied the odds to become one of the world’s most important scientific figures.

Paleontologist Mary Anning was an impressive fossil hunter who discovered the first articulated plesiosaur and was among the first to identify fossilized poop or coprolite. However, like many females scientists, her male contemporaries had a frustrating way of swiping credit from her.

Short Biography of Mary Anning

Born on the 21st of May 1799, Mary Anning was an English fossil collector and paleontologist. She became known around the world for important finds she made in the fossil beds along the seaside cliffs of the English Channel at Lyme Regis in Southwest England. Her findings contributed to important changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.

By the late 18th century, Lyme Regis had become a popular seaside resort and many locals supplemented their income by selling what were called “curios” to visitors. These were fossils with colorful local names such as “snake-stones” (ammonites), “devil’s fingers” (belemnites), and “verteberries” (vertebrae). Fossil collecting was a hobby shared by many and it gradually transformed into a science as the importance of fossils to geology and biology was understood.

Her father was a cabinetmaker who supplemented his income by mining the coastal cliff-side fossil beds near the town, and selling his finds to tourists. He married Mary “Molly” Moore in 1793 and together had ten children, though only Mary and one brother, Joseph, survived to adulthood. Their father, Richard, often took Mary and Joseph on fossil-hunting expeditions. Mary continued to support herself through fossil hunting as she grew older.

While scouring the beach in early December 1823, she came upon a fossilized skull that was like nothing she’d seen before. The majority of the skulls she had previously found belonged to Icthyosaurs; they were long and narrow, a bit like the heads of dolphins or crocodiles.

This skull, on the other hand, was small, beady-eyed, and had a mouthful of strange, needle-shaped teeth. Calling upon nearby villagers for assistance, Anning carefully unearthed the rest of the mystery creature’s body. Attached to a stout torso and broad pelvis were four flippers and a diminutive tail. The long neck was the most peculiar feature, however, accounting for nearly half of the 9-foot creature’s length.

She wrote to a colleague describing her discovery (see a page from her letter below) and her place in the scientific community was sealed, though many of her peers were initially skeptical. In fact, at a Geological Society of London meeting the following year, Reverend William Conybeare (a fellow paleontologist) stole the show with a well-received presentation on the nearly complete Plesiosaurus from Lyme Regis. He also published a paper featuring detailed original illustrations of the specimen. However, neither his presentation nor his paper mentioned Anning and he initially stole credit for the discovery.

Over time, Anning’s discoveries became key pieces of evidence for extinction. Her work also became well known in literary circles as well; Charles Dickens wrote of his admiration of her 18 years after her passing. Legend has it the children’s rhyme, “She Sells Seashells”, is also a tribute to her work:

She sells seashells on the sea shore.
The shells she sells are seashells, I’m sure.
And if she sells seashells on the sea shore,
Then I’m sure she sells seashore shells.

Anning died from breast cancer at the age of 47 on the 9th of March 1847. Admirably, when the Geologic Society learned of her diagnosis, its members began raising money to cover her medical expenses. Later, her funeral was paid for by the society which also financed a stained-glass window dedicated to her memory that now sits at St. Michael’s Parish Church in Lyme Regis.

Bring it Home – Lessons from Mary Anning

Nature journals are as valuable a learning tool today as they were in earlier centuries. The image below comes from a letter written in 1823 by Mary Anning describing her discovery of what would be identified as a Plesiosaurus.

Visit a local natural history museum and create a nature journal entry on one of the specimens on display. Inquire with the staff about the process and care involved in curating skeletal specimens.

Participate in a fossil walk.

Begin your own collection of fossils.

If possible, visit the Natural History Museum in London or the museum in Lyme Regis. We recently had this opportunity when we traveled to England in 2017. Here you can learn more about the pioneering work of Mary Anning and see some of the most complete fossils of prehistoric sea animals, including ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Plus, look out for the skeleton cast of the giant ground sloth, a land mammal often mistaken for a dinosaur.

Novelist Tracy Chevalier (author of The Girl with the Pearl Earring) has made a career of bringing history to life. Chevalier’s newest novel is called Remarkable Creatures centers around the life of Mary Anning. The novel introduces readers to Mary’s unlikely champion, Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class woman who shares her passion for scouring the beaches. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy, but ultimately turns out to be their greatest asset. Based on real characters, I found the story interesting. I was moved to realize just how difficult it must have been to persevere with the social obstacles she encountered in her time.

Visit my Science Milestones page to learn more about scientists whose discoveries and advancements have made a significant difference in our lives or who have advanced our understanding of the world around us.

At a time when women mostly married and stayed home, or were teachers or nurses if they wanted to work, Nettie Stevens became a research scientist and her discoveries changed genetics forever.

NettieStevensGeneticsPioneer Once she graduated with her PhD in 1903, she and a colleague (Thomas Morgan) began a collaboration on the controversial and unresolved question of how sex is determined in the developing egg. Did external factors, like food and temperature, set the sex of an egg? Or was it something inherent to the egg itself? Or was sex inherited as a Mendelian trait?

She examined the yellow mealworm, Tenebrio melitor, and made a striking observation. She had observed that this species produced two classes of sperm: a type that carried ten large chromosomes, and a type that carried nine large and one small chromosome. Body cells in the females contained 20 large chromosomes while males carried 19 large and one small chromosome.

Stevens reasoned that when an egg is fertilized by a sperm that carries the small chromosome, the result is a male offspring. The presence of the small chromosome might be what decided the individual’s “maleness.”

She published her research in 1905 and it eventually evolved into the XY sex-determination system we know today: The father’s sperm, which can carry either X or Y chromosomes, determines the sex of the offspring. Before Stevens’ work, scientists thought that the mother or the environment determined if a child was born male or female.

Biography

Nettie Stevens Nettie Maria Stevens was one of the first American women to be recognized for her contribution to science. Yet she didn’t begin her career in genetics until later in life.

Stevens was born on July 7, 1861, in Cavendish, Vermont, to Ephraim and Julia Stevens. After the death of her mother, her father remarried and the family moved to Westford, Massachusetts.

Initially, Stevens taught high school and was a librarian for more than a decade. Her teaching duties included courses in physiology and zoology, as well as mathematics, Latin, and English. Her first career allowed her to save up for college; at the age of 35, she resigned from a high school teaching job in Massachusetts and traveled across the country to enroll at Stanford University in California.

At Stanford, she received her B.A. in 1899 and her M.A. in 1900. She also completed one year of graduate work in physiology under Professor Jenkins and histology and cytology under Professor McFarland.

Stevens continued her studies in cytology at Bryn Mawr College, where she obtained her Ph.D. Here, she was influenced by the work of Edmund Beecher Wilson and by that of his successor, Thomas Hunt Morgan. Her work documented processes that were not researched by Wilson and she used subjects that he later would adopt along with the results of her work.

At age 50 years, only 9 years after completing her Ph.D., Nettie Stevens died of breast cancer on May 4, 1912 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Bring it Home

▶︎ Dive into Genetics with a fun unit study

▶︎ Enjoy a slide show presentation on genetics

▶︎ Try out this jigsaw format activity to explore the sex determination mechanisms of seven organisms, Xs and Os

▶︎ Learn about the Father of Genetics: Gregor Mendel

▶︎ Try this Gummy Bear Genetics lab from The Science Teacher (a NSTA publication)

▶︎ Use pipecleaners and beads to show how genes and chromosomes are inherited in this Pipecleaner Babies lab.

▶︎ Use pennies to do this How Well Does a Punnet Square Predict the Actual Ratios? lab.

Science Milestones

The bloggers of the iHomeschool Network have teamed up to create fun and original unit studies on fascinating people who were born in July.

For the past eight months there has been a constant click heard in my home. At the dinner table, while driving in the car, and even late at night when I am beginning to drift off to sleep, I can hear the subtle sounds of my son cubing. Cubing has become one of his passion projects and he spends every waking moment with a puzzle in his hands.

The Puzzling Impact of Erno Rubik @EvaVarga.net I had given him a traditional Rubik’s Cube a few years ago for Christmas but once it was scrambled, it sat in the corner of his bookshelf collecting dust. That was until he stumbled upon a recommended video on his YouTube feed of Collin Burns’ 5.25 world record solve. That was all it took. He was hooked.

As it is always in his hand, he gains a lot of attention and notoriety. He is now recognized around our community as the fastest cuber. Kids and adults alike bring him cubes that they “messed up” for him to solve.

His best solve time for the 3×3 is presently 7.22 seconds. He averages 13.09. Yet the 3×3 is not the only puzzle he enjoys. He also competes in 2×2, 4×4, 5×5, Megaminx, Pyraminx, and Skewb.

Biography

Ernő Rubik was born during World War II in Budapest, Hungary on the 13th of July 1944. His father, Ernő Rubik Sr., was a flight engineer at the Esztergom aircraft factory and a highly respected engineer of gliders. His mother, Magdolna Szántó, was a poet.

While Rubik has stated in almost every interview that he got his inspiration from his father, he also considers university and the education it afforded him as the decisive event which shaped his life. From 1958 to 1962, Rubik specialised in sculpture at the Secondary School of Fine and Applied Arts and later attended the Budapest University of Technology where he became a member of the faculty upon graduation.

“Schools offered me the opportunity to acquire knowledge of subjects or rather crafts that need a lot of practice, persistence and diligence with the direction of a mentor.”

In the 1970s, Rubik was a professor of architecture at the Budapest College of Applied Arts. It was during this time that he invented the Rubik’s Cube. The cube was originally designed to help Mr. Rubik explain spatial relationship to a class that he taught at the time. He soon realized the potential of the cube and began to get the cube mass produced, applying for a patent in 1975.

It was quickly a huge success. The cube was originally called ‘Magic Cube’ but after some discussion the name was changed to what it is known for today, Rubik’s Cube. In an interview with CNN, Rubik stated;

Space always intrigued me, with its incredibly rich possibilities, space alteration by (architectural) objects, objects’ transformation in space (sculpture, design), movement in space and in time, their correlation, their repercussion on mankind, the relation between man and space, the object and time. I think the CUBE arose from this interest, from this search for expression and for this always more increased acuteness of these thoughts…

In the nearly forty years the cube has been around, over three hundred and fifty million copies have been produced. Yet, only about 1.25% of the people who have purchased the cube can actually solve it.

The Puzzling Impact of Erno Rubik @EvaVarga.net Ernő Rubik witnessed his creation blow up around the world. The cube became the Toy of the Year twice in a row, and the first world championship for The Rubik’s Cube was in 1982. At this competition the first world record was set at 22.95 seconds. Nowadays that is what most cubers average.

Today, there are a variety of speed cubes available on the market. Each is designed to turn faster and more efficiently without the lockups or pops that speed cubers abhor. The current 3×3 record is 4.737 seconds held by a 19 year old from Australia, Feliks Zemdegs.

Bring it Home

Learn to solve the original 3×3 puzzle using online tutorials; there are many to choose from.

Challenge yourself to get faster or learn to solve another puzzle type.

Visit the World Cube Association and find a competition near you to see what it is all about.

Science Milestones

The bloggers of the iHomeschool Network have teamed up to create fun and original unit studies on fascinating people who were born in July.

In my Facebook newsfeed recently, a memory popped up highlighting a field trip we took part in years ago when we first began our homeschool journey. Our visit to Paleo Lands Institute in Eastern Oregon is one of our fondest homeschool experiences. When we visit the Field Museum in Chicago last week, we reflected on this trip as we marveled at the many specimens they had on display – the most impressive, of course, was SUE (pictured below).

The unveiling of her 67-million-year-old skeleton at The Field Museum made global headlines in May of 2000. As the largest, best-preserved, and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever found, she is considered to be the most famous fossil ever found. She measures 40.5 feet long from snout to tail and 13 feet tall at the hip.

Interesting fact: While SUE is frequently referred to as a “she,” scientists don’t actually know her sex.

Virtually all parts of SUE’s skeleton are preserved in great detail—even the surface of her bones. Scientists can actually see where muscles, tendons, and ligaments once attached. Not only are most of the bones undistorted from fossilization, but cross-sections of the bones show that even the cellular structure inside remains intact.

If SUE is the most famous fossil, who then is regarded as the most renowned fossilist the world ever knew? The answer is Mary Anning.

Despite the fact that Mary Anning’s life has been made the subject of several books and articles, comparatively little is known about her life, and many people were unaware of her contributions to paleontology in its early days as a scientific discipline. How can this be, you ask?

Biography

Mary Anning was born on the 21st of May 1799 to Richard and Mary Anning in Lyme Regis, Southwest England. Mary grew up in a prime location to lead a life of fossil collecting. The marine fossil beds in the cliffs in this area remain today a huge source of fossils from the Jurassic period.

Her findings contributed to important changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth. At the age of 12, Mary Anning was to become one of the most famous popular palaeontologists, with her discovery of a complete Icthyosaur.

Interesting fact: Though she is now credited with the discovery, her brother had first found the specimen. Mary did find the majority of the remains and contribute significantly to the excavation work. Mary went on to find two more species of Ichtyosaur in her life.

In early 1821, Anning made her next big discovery with the finding of the first Plesiosaurus. She sent a drawing she made to the renowned George Curvier, who at first snubbed it as a fake. Upon further examination, he eventually reversed this statement finally giving Anning the respect she had deserved from the scientific community. This discovery is perhaps her most important find, from a scientific point of view.

The majority of Mary’s finds ended up in museums and personal collections without credit being given to her as the discoverer of the fossils. There are many factors contributing to this error: the lack of appropriate documentation of her special skills, her social status, and more importantly, her gender. Many scientists of the day could not believe that a young woman from such a deprived background could posses the knowledge and skills that she seemed to display.

For example, in 1824, Lady Harriet Sivester, the widow of the former Recorder of the City of London, wrote in her diary after visiting Mary Anning:

“. . . the extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong. She fixes the bones on a frame with cement and then makes drawings and has them engraved. . . It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favour – that this poor, ignorant girl should be so blessed, for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom.”

After her death on the 9th of March 1847, her unusual life story attracted the attention of scholars around the world. Her story was the inspiration for the 1908 tongue-twister “She sells seashells on the seashore” by Terry Sullivan and in 2010, one hundred and sixty-three years after her death, the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science.

Bring it Home

➤ For younger students, explore the fun games and activities at BBC’s Primary History Famous People: Mary Anning.

➤ Read the article, “Mary Anning: The Fossilist as Exegete” by Thomas W. Goodhue in Endeavour Magazine, March 2005 issue

➤ Build upon your child’s interest in fossils and geology in an in-depth Earth sciences curriculum study.

➤ Visit a local geology club in your area and inquire about getting started in collecting.

➤ Discover Ice Age Fossils at La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles

Interested in learning about others who were born in the month of January? Hop over to Birthday Lessons in March to read posts by other iHomeschool Network bloggers.

Unbeknownst to many, Alexander Graham Bell made outstanding contributions to aviation through his development of tetrahedral kites, the investigation of their application to personnel carrying aircraft, and his enlistment of talented associates who aided significantly in the progress toward accomplishing powered flight.

Expanding upon the design of the rectangular-celled box kite that Hargrave of Australia invented, Dr. Bell developed a three-sided triangular form of cell which he adapted to various multi-cellular shapes. This research led to a large kite in which on December 6th, 1907, his associate, Lt. Thomas Selfridge, flew to a height of over 160 feet.

Science Milestones: Alexander Graham Bell @EvaVarga.net Although his greatest scientific accomplishment was the invention of the telephone, Dr. Bell deserves wide recognition for his promotion of aeronautics. He was a member the Aerial Experiment Association that formed in 1907 who conducted flight experiments from his summer home at Baddeck, Nova Scotia.

“I have no doubt that a machine will be driven from the Earth’s surface at enormous velocities by a new method of propulsion – think of tremendous energies locked up in explosives – what if we could utilize these in projectile flight!” ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Believing that the substitution of an engine and propeller attached to the kite might permit free man-carrying flight, dispensing with the tethering line, Dr. Bell and Lt. Selfridge secured the services of Glenn H. Curtiss. Curtiss helped them to construct a proper engine, and they also engaged the assistance of J. A. D. McCurdy and F. W. Baldwin. These five men formed the Aerial Experiment Association for the stated purpose of “getting into the air” – which also put them in direct competition with the Wright brothers.

Biography

Science Milestones: Alexander Graham Bell @EvaVarga.net Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His mother was the daughter of a Royal Navy surgeon and was a skilled musician and portrait painter whose hearing loss when Bell was just twelve years old, brought deafness close to him.

Bell’s father, Alexander Melville, was the world world-famous inventor of “Visible Speech”, a code of symbols to guide the action of the throat, tongue and lips in the shaping of various sounds. It was devised as a key to the pronunciation of the words in all languages, but had become of most use in teaching the deaf to speak. His grandfather, Alexander, was a specialist in the correction of speech defects as well as a renowned public speaker, giving public readings from Shakespeare’s plays on London’s stages.

“Don’t keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods.” ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Bell had natural musical ability and turned toward a career as a pianist. By the time he was 25, he was assisting his father at Weston House, a boys’ school near Edinburgh, and trading music and elocution lessons for instruction in other subjects. He continued his formal education at the University of Edinburgh and later specialized in the anatomy of the vocal apparatus at University College in London. At 22, with his formal education behind him, he became a partner with his father.

He moved with family to Ontario in 1870 and a year later Sarah Fuller, the principal of a school for the deaf in Boston, asked him to teach her teachers. His success lead to a professor appointment at Boston University.

Bell’s patent for his telephone was filed just two hours before another experimenter, Elisha Gray, filed his claim in the U.S. Patent Office.

While in Boston, Bell met the two men who financed his pioneer work with the telephone. Thereafter, Bell spent the latter part of his life in Washington, D.C. and his summer home in Nova Scotia. He became a United State citizen in 1882.

He died on August 2, 1922 at which time 14,347,000 telephone were in operation across the country.

Bring it Home

➤ Research and discuss the invention of the telephone, its origin, its innovations, its advantages and disadvantages, and how it has shaped today’s society.

➤ Watch a video about Alexander Graham Bell.

➤ Create a poster to illustrate the changes the telephone has undergone since Bell’s original invention.

➤ Build a tetrahedral kite of your own. Test the flight and refine your design to make improvements.

➤ Research his contemporaries (Glenn Curtiss, the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, etc.) and put together a presentation (PowerPoint, brochure, poster, video, etc.) to share with others their impact on technology.

➤ Although Bell is best known for inventing the telephone, he invented many other things. He held patents for 18 other inventions on his own and 12 for which he collaborated with others. Learn more about each of these.

Science Milestones

Interested in learning about others who were born in the month of January? Hop over to Birthday Lessons in March to read posts by other iHomeschool Network bloggers.