20 JUN 2017 by ideonexus
Category Practice
Students appear to use a different kind of thinking when they create original patterns following rules they create (Grabowski, Damasio, & Damasio, 1998). Activities that engage students in building categories can start as early as preschool. Building category practice can be done with a bag of mixed buttons. After first modeling the procedure, you can have students work on their own or in pairs to sketch the categories they discover. Th is would also work as a language arts learning cente... 1 
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notesThis would work great with dice. Sort by color or number of sides.
30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
The Danger of Dumbing Down Science
'Dumbing down' is a very different kind of threat to scientific sensibility.
The 'Public Understanding of Science' movement, provoked in America by
the Soviet Union's triumphant entry into the space race and driven today,
at least in Britain, by public alarm over a decline in applications for
science places at universities, is going demotic. 'Science Weeks' and
'Science Fortnights' betray an anxiety among scientists to be loved.
Funny hats and larky voices proclaim that science is fun, fun, f... 1 notes
notes17 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
The Origin of Interest
The international trading became the most profitable of all enterprises, and great land-"owners" with clear-cut king's "deeds" to their land went often to international gold moneylenders. The great land barons underwrote the building of enterprisers' ships with their cattle or other real wealth, the regenerative products of their lands, turned over to the lender as cccollateral.
If the ship did come back, both the enterpriser and the bankers realized a great gain. The successful ship ventur... 1 notes
notesFrom when bankers would hold cattle as collateral, and the cattle had calves. The calves were the interest.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Science Depends on Revolutions Large and Small
Scientific development depends in part on a process of non-incremental or revolutionary change. Some revolutions are large, like those associated with the names of Copernicus, Newton, or Darwin, but most are much smaller, like the discovery of oxygen or the planet Uranus. The usual prelude to changes of this sort is, I believed, the awareness of anomaly, of an occurrence or set of occurrences that does not fit existing ways of ordering phenomena. The changes that result therefore require 'put... 1 notes
notesSmall ones, like the discovery of oxygen and Uranus, that requires thinking in a way to uncover anomalies.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Man is Distinguished from Other Animals by his Imagination
Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment, but to change it. And that series of inventions, by which man from age to age has remade his environment, is a different kind of evolution—not biological, but cultural evolution. I call that brilliant sequence of cultural peaks The As...
1 Man evolves culturally.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
How Radiometric Dating Works
Briefly, a radioactive isotope is a kind of atom which decays into a different kind of atom: for example. one called uranium-238 turns into one called lead-206. Because we know how long this takes to happen, we can think of the isotope as a radioactive clock. Radioactive clocks are rather like the water clocks and candle clocks that people used in the days before pendulum clocks were invented. A tank of water with a hole in the bottom will drain at a measurable rate. If the tank was filled at... 1 notes
notesA great summary of how we date fossils using Uranium and Carbon atoms and their decay rates.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
A Reversible NAND Gate
The great discovery of Bennett and, independently, of Fredkin is that it is possible to do computation with a different kind of fundamental gate unit, namely, a reversible gate unit. I have illustrated their idea--with a unit which I could call a reversible NAND gate. It has thre inputs and thre outputs. Of the outputs, tow, A' and B', are the same as two of the inputs, A and B, but the third input works this way. C' is the same as C unless A and B are both 1, in which case it changes whateve...Folksonomies: computing
Folksonomies: computing
1 notes
notesFeynman describes a reversible logic gate, with three inputs and three outputs, one of which tracks the change in input and output, allowing the computer to reverse its operation and potentially pursue a different route.
