02 SEP 2016 by ideonexus
Math Exercise: Comparisons
Select two boxes or cans of food that weigh 8 ounces and 16 ounces, respectively. Have students hold each as you tell them (or they read) the weights of the containers. Give students a box or can with the weight covered and have them compare the weight of the new package to the weight of the 8- and 16-ounce samples. Th ey can then estimate whether the new item’s weight is closer to 8 or 16 ounces. As students become more successful, they may want to predict a more specifi c weight. Ask them...06 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
A Worm's Mind in a Lego Robot Body
The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is tiny and only has 302 neurons. These have been completely mapped and the OpenWorm project is working to build a complete simulation of the worm in software. One of the founders of the OpenWorm project, Timothy Busbice, has taken the connectome and implemented an object oriented neuron program. The model is accurate in its connections and makes use of UDP packets to fire neurons. If two neurons have three synaptic connections then when ...08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Direct Observation is Dead
The faith of scientists in the power and truth of mathematics is so implicit that their work has gradually become less and less observation, and more and more calculation. The promiscuous collection and tabulation of data have given way to a process of assigning possible meanings, merely supposed real entities, to mathematical terms, working out the logical results, and then staging certain crucial experiments to check the hypothesis against the actual empirical results. But the facts which a...Folksonomies: observation experimentation
Folksonomies: observation experimentation
Everything is through instruments now.
07 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The USA Should Adopt the Metric System
You, in this country [the USA], are subjected to the British insularity in weights and measures; you use the foot, inch and yard. I am obliged to use that system, but must apologize to you for doing so, because it is so inconvenient, and I hope Americans will do everything in their power to introduce the French metrical system. ... I look upon our English system as a wickedly, brain-destroying system of bondage under which we suffer. The reason why we continue to use it, is the imaginary diff...Kelvin predicts Britain is stuck with it, but America will adopt.
07 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Reason Comes After a Plan
When Galileo caused balls, the weights of which he had himself previously determined, to roll down an inclined plane; when Torricelli made the air carry a weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or in more recent times, when Stahl changed metal into lime, and lime back into metal, by withdrawing something and then restoring it, a light broke upon all students of nature. They learned that reason has insight only into that which it produces a...Folksonomies: experimentation
Folksonomies: experimentation
There must be experiments to guide reason, without which reason will make up it's own explanations.
30 NOV -0001 by ideonexus
Should Spelling be Modernized?
The time taken to teach the decimalised system for currency, temperature, weights and distances is far shorter and more certain than when 240 pence equalled a pound, 32 degrees Fahrenheit equalled the temperature of ice and pounds and ounces were taught. Already there is a generation that was spared these ancient measurements. To improve literacy in the general population, modernisation of the spelling system will bring similar benefits to what decimalisation brought.Folksonomies: phonetics
Folksonomies: phonetics
It takes just one generation to fix spelling and improve literacy for future generations. Just as it took one generation to move to the metric system or change currencies in Europe.