January 2014 – ScienceMan!

ScienceMan’s Experience with… Juicing?

January 26, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 1 comment

Juicing – Introduction… Why Juice? At one point or another it seems we all consider improving our eating habits. About a year ago, I reached that point myself after many years of bacon addiction and carrying around an extra 30 pounds. Thanks to a very encouraging and supportive wife, and a great group of “maximum training” friends, I’ve really improved my fitness. At the same time, I’ve made some pretty straightforward and simple changes in diet – minimizing breads, pasta,…

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Home Hacks – Furnace Humidifier Pan

January 13, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 11 comments

Those of you with older homes might have an older model of Wait-Skuttle drum-style humidifier attached to your furnace. In my case, I’ve got the 45S model, which was very popular “in the old days”: Cleaning these humidifiers is always an unpleasant task. Even more so if you have hard water – the evaporation that occurs leaves behind crusts and deposits of calcium that are difficult to remove. The evaporator pad is not worth cleaning – replacement pads are very…

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Scientific Explorer Series on Dark Energy

January 5, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 0 Comment

A stunning series on the Dark Matter from Scientific Explorer has recently been published – this is a 14-part tour-de-force of physics that you really MUST read. Here are the links to every excellent entry in the series: Part 1: How Dark Energy Fits Into the Evolution of the Universe Part 2: What Expansion of Space Means Part 3: Two NASA Pie Charts Tell Us a Great Deal – And Bring Up Many Questions Part 4: What happened to the matter in the universe? Part 5: The…

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Tutorial – Yenka Chemistry – Alkali Metal Reactions

January 4, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 1 comment

Welcome to the Yenka Tutorial Series ScienceMan’s having a such blast playing and learning with Yenka, I thought, why not put some Yenka ideas online for teachers and students to check out? So without further any further blabbing, here’s today’s tutorial: Yenka Chemistry – Alkali Metal Reactions One of the great things about Yenka is its ability to simulate chemical reactions in a realistic way. This is becoming more and more important as jurisdictions move to ban more and more…

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Tutorial – Yenka Light and Sound – Eye Problems

January 4, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 0 Comment

Welcome to the Yenka Tutorial Series ScienceMan’s having a such blast playing and learning with Yenka, I thought, why not put some Yenka ideas online for teachers and students to check out? So without further any further blabbing, here’s today’s tutorial: Yenka Light and Sound – Eye Problems One of the great things about Yenka is its ability to bring static phenomenon to life. I’m sure you’ve all seen eye cross-section diagrams showing near-sightedness and farsightedness. But without the ability…

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Tutorial – Yenka Light and Sound – Ray Diagrams

January 4, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 0 Comment

Welcome to the Yenka Tutorial Series ScienceMan’s having a such blast playing and learning with Yenka, I thought, why not put some Yenka ideas online for teachers and students to check out? So without further any further blabbing, here’s today’s tutorial: Yenka Light and Sound – Ray Diagrams One of the great things about Yenka is its ability to simplify complex demonstrations. A good example of this is the optics bench, which for teachers can be a real hassle to…

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Tutorial – Yenka – Working With Objects

January 4, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 0 Comment

Welcome to the Yenka Tutorial Series ScienceMan’s having a such blast playing and learning with Yenka, I thought, why not put some Yenka ideas online for teachers and students to check out? So without further any further blabbing, here’s today’s tutorial: Working with Objects Yenka’s greatest strength is making it ridiculously easy to create simulations. In the past, complicated programming languages and skills would be necessary to make objects interact on your computer screen. Not any more! Yenka makes simulation…

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Tutorial – Yenka – Getting Started

January 4, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 0 Comment

Welcome to the Yenka Tutorial Series Yenka’s ability to do so much at a very affordable price has the ScienceMan very excited. And in today’s changing classroom where interactive whiteboard technologies are becoming more and more important, Yenka fits in wonderfully with its custom whiteboard features. Yenka Tutorial – Learning the Yenka Interface The first thing you need to explore with Yenka is it’s interface – thankfully, it is very intuitive and easy to use. When you start up Yenka, you will…

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Teaching Idea – Forcing Bulbs

January 3, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 0 Comment

Over Christmas, I had the pleasure of lounging around in a house that is loaded with plants… including blooming ones. Usually I just keep my mouth shut and leave anything associated with plant material to the very capable care of my wife. But I couldn’t resist asking about the hyacinths she had made bloom during the holiday season. I thought that the growing bulbs might be of use to science teachers who want a novel way of studying root systems,…

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Teaching Idea – CO2 Powered Cars

January 3, 2014 ScienceMan Comments 4 comments

There’s nothing more fun than racing things at high speed! But how to do it in a safe, semi-controlled, educational manner? One great idea is using CO2 cartridges to propel balsa-wood based vehicles. Here’s some of the the details! First of all, let’s look at a few of the creative cars. These babies are about a foot long, and the bodies are carved out of raw chunks of balsa. In order for the racing to be fair, wheels and axles can…

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