On the last day of school before the exams, a physics student of mine gave me a present. It's called a Styrobot. It's made of a styrofoam cup, painted and decorated as if it was a head, but when you press a button it moves around. She made the robot! It looked cool and I was very excited to get it to work. Unfortunately, it didn't.

Recently, I got an email from a previous student of mine. He wrote this:

"I wanted to inform you that I qualified for the Canada-Wide Science Fair this year! And my project is reminiscent of the one I had when you taught me - instead of simulating an ecosystem, now I'm simulating mass transit networks. And I can definitely tell you all about my project later by e-mail, when I'm not so rushed!"

If you are visiting Nucleus Learning after reading the recent West Island Chronicle article, welcome!

Tomorrow I am teaching a class on waves. I wanted to talk about waves at boundaries and interference.

Here is a great animation of the "waves at a boundary":

http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos/reflect/reflect.html

Great visual explanation of constructive and destructive interference and standing waves:

http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaEd/e-wave2.html
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaEd/e-wave3.html
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaEd/e-wave4.html

Here is a good demonstration of constructive and destructive interference:

When I learn a new game, I like to know the rules and that's it! I hate when people try to teach me the strategy. “Do this, don't do that. If you do this, then this will happen” etc. Just keep this all to yourself, is what I want to say...

The shade of your teeth has a lot to do with your genetics. In other words, not everybody’s teeth are the same shade of white. With that being said, there are some external and internal causes that can change the color of your teeth. If you are aware of these, you can help to keep your teeth as white as possible.

Although everybody seems to know about all the simple machines, when I started teaching this unit I still had to look it up to make sure I have all of them. I tested my husband to see if he remembered all of the machines, and although usually he has a great memory, this time he remembered only four of the (six? seven?). Try it yourself...

In a previous blog post (Optics Project - Creating a Book), I wrote about a project I assigned my grade 8 classes. It was a collaborative book on optics. I promised to publish it here when it's done, and here it is: Optics Book - Gr. 8-01; Optics Book - Gr. 8-03; Optics Book - Gr. 8-04. Enjoy!