Posts Tagged nonfiction

STEM Tuesday– WELCOME to our new STEMTuesday Team Members

By on July 2, 2019   /   STEM Tuesday  

 

STEM TUESDAY is adding some STEM-tastic new team members!

 

We are thrilled to announce the addition of the following new members to our team. All of these awesome women are highly experienced authors, bloggers… and the one thing they have in common? They are all excited about STEM/STEAM children’s books. Check out their bios and click on their websites to find out what they do in the STEM kidlit world.

Consider  following  them on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, too.  We are delighted to have them on board and we know our blog will be even better because of their presence.

 

Week 1 new members:

Sue Heavenrich

www.archimedesnotebook.blogspot.com

 

 

Sue Heavenrich writes about science for children and their families,
from space to backyard ecology. Bees, flies, squirrel behavior—things
she observes in her neighborhood and around her home—inspire her
writing. A long line of ants marching across the kitchen counter
generated one of her first articles for kids. When not writing, you can
find her committing acts of science from counting native pollinators to
monitoring water quality of the local watershed. Her most recent book
is  Diet for a Changing Climate (2018).

 

 

Maria Marshall

The Picture Book Buzz

Twitter: MariaMarshall_

 

Maria is a children’s author, blogger, and poet passionate about making nature and reading fun for children. She was a round 2 judge for the 2018 & 2017 Cybils Awards. And a judge for the #50PreciousWords competition since its inception. Two of her poems are published in The Best Of Today’s Little Ditty 2016 and 2014-2015 anthologies. She is the parent of two amazing adults and lives in the Pacific Northwest with two Pixie Bob cats. When not writing, critiquing, or reading, she bird watches, travels the world, bakes, and hikes.

 

 

 

 

Week 2 new members:

Carla Mooney

www.carlamooney.com

Twitter: @Carlawrites

Facebook: @carlamooneyauthor

 

Carla Mooney loves to explore the world around us and discover the details about how it works. An award-winning author of numerous nonfiction science books for kids and teens, she hopes to spark a healthy curiosity and love of science in today’s young people. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, three kids, and dog. When not writing, she can often be spotted at a hockey rink for one of her kids’ games.

 

 

 

 

Janet Slingerland

website: www.janetsbooks.com
Facebook: @JanetBooks
Twitter: @Slingsong

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janetslingerland

 

 

Janet Slingerland grew up studying animals and conducting science experiments before pursuing a degree in electrical engineering. She spent 15 years writing code for things like submarines, phones, and airplanes before deciding to share her passion for knowledge and STEM with others. Janet now has more than 20 published books for readers in grades K through 12, including Explore Atoms and Molecules! With 25 Great Projects, Engineering the Eiffel Tower, and The 12 Biggest Breakthroughs in Sports Technology. Her books have been recommended by PSLA (Pennsylvania School Librarians Association), NSTA (National Science Teachers Association), School Library Connection, and others.

 

 

Week 3 new member:

Kirsten W. Larson

 kirsten-w-larson.com 

Twitter and Instagram @KirstenWLarson

 

 

Kirsten W. Larson used to work with rocket scientists at NASA. Now she writes about both science and history for kids. She is the author of 25 nonfiction books, including the Robotics in Our World series (Amicus). Calkins Creek will publish her debut picture book, WOOD, WIRE, WINGS: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane (illus. by Tracy Subisak) in 2020. Originally from Virginia, Kirsten lives near Los Angeles. 

 

 

****  A FEW REMINDERS about STEM TUESDAY ****

 

The STEM Tuesday blog is searchable! Have a topic that you want to find more books on, click on our STEM Tuesday home page and searchfor it.

If we don’t cover a topic you want, let us know. Send an email to stemmuf@gmail.com. We will definitely consider adding it.

DON’T FORGET! The last Tuesday of every month we giveaway a FREE autographed copy of one of the books of the month. All you have to do is to leave a comment in the post and you will be considered. (Hint: we usually only get less than 10 entries, so the odds of winning are HIGH)

Look for STEM Tuesday in other places on the web:

Reading with your Kids STEM Tuesday podcast

 

 

MG Book Village Blog for STEM Tuesday Spin-Off 

 

 

 

STEM Tuesday is now on Instagram!  Follow us at STEM_Tuesday 

STEM Tuesday is on Pinterest, too

Finally, Watch for our Second Annual Co-STEM Contest to celebrate our second anniversary. Details will be released in late July or early August!

GO STEM!

 

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Jennifer Swanson is the creator and administrator of the STEMTuesday blog. She is also the award-winning author of over 35 nonfiction books for kids. A self-professed science geek, Jennifer started a science club in her garage when she was 7 years old. While no longer working from the garage, Jennifer’s passion for science and writing is evident in her many books and also her presentations at the World Science Festival and the National Book Festival (2019). You can find Jennifer through her website, www.JenniferSwansonBooks.com

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STEM Tuesday — Chemistry ROCKS! — Writing Tips & Resources

By on June 18, 2019   /   Chemistry, Common Core & NGSS, STEM Tuesday  

“CHEMISTRY! CHEMISTRY! CHEMISTRY!”

The crowd chants as the June sun sets on the western horizon. The emcee, DJ “Atom” Mick Orbitals, takes the stage to thunderous applause.

“Ladies and gentlemen…

ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?”

The crowd explodes with a roar like an alkali metal added to water. 

 

“Welcome to the Chemistry Rocks Summer World Tour 2019! Let’s rock!”

By https://pxhere.com/es/photo/41796 via Wikimedia Commons.

STEM Tuesday fans, sit back, relax with your favorite chemically enhanced or brewed beverage and enjoy the show.

Chemistry Rocks!

It really does. Qualitative, quantitative, organic, bio, physical, whatever or whichever, they all rock the scene. From the twitch of a muscle to the Fourth of July fireworks display to the explosion of the LH2 (liquid hydrogen) fuel that propels a rocket into space toward Mars, chemistry is there. Reaction after reaction after reaction occurring all around us every microsecond of every day. Sight, smell, taste, touch (If you think about it, we can also technically go with sound when we consider the neurochemistry involved in processing a sound wave) are all affected by chemistry.

Chemical Fun!

Don’t throw your shoe at me! I realize not everyone has had a positive experience with chemistry. I understand. I’ve been there. The struggle was real. I was only able to dig myself out of a “D” hole in high school chemistry because of the additions I was able to add to my science teacher’s herpetological and ichthyological collections for extra credit on the biology side of his classroom. I washed out of Chemistry 101 as an immature, baseball-playing freshman in college and it took three full semesters to dig out of that hole in my transcript.

Chemistry is hard. It’s one of those sciences that is like a completely foreign language. Like the Tower of Babel, one can be confused, frustrated, and want to throw a shoe at that one person who tries to tell you that chemistry is fun. As with language, once you learn the basics, begin to understand the meanings of the words, and learn to navigate those foreign roads, a whole new world opens up. With chemistry comes a new understanding of the world around us and how it operates. We are able to drive our existence toward a better life.

And where else can you perform experiments where colors change, states of matter are shifted, and there’s a potential for explosions?

Celebrate the Periodic Table! 

In 1869 Mendeleev proposed the first periodic table of elements. That makes the periodic table 150 years old! In my opinion, it looks just a fresh and vibrant at 150 as it did in it’s 20s. Maybe even better! I guess some things get better with age, right? I’ve always marveled at the beauty of the periodic table. Well, I marveled when I finally gave in, buckled down and learned the basics of the periodic table. The periodic table is a masterpiece. Just as The Beatles had Sgt. Pepper’s, DaVinci the Mona Lisa, Michaelangelo his sculpture of David, chemistry has the periodic table.

Happy Birthday, Periodic Table!

Better Life

Chemistry has made life better.

I’m sitting on my back patio as I write this section. It’s a beautiful early June Saturday morning. Chemistry surrounds me.

  • I see the cat eating his store-bought cat food, which has been optimized through a blend of macro and micronutrients. In other words, chemistry.
  • There’s the gardener table I built from my kids’ old wooden swingset that both got a recent coat of water sealant. Chemistry.
  • The house paint. Chemistry.
  • The cement of the patio. Chemistry.
  • The flowers and vegetables in pots and in the garden which were recently fertilized with BR-61. Chemistry.
  • I just ate a bowl of rice cereal made from a chemistry-based recipe. The peanut butter on my toast is loaded with chemistry. Heck, even the toasting of the bread by electrical heating elements in a closed chamber is chemistry.
  • I’m working at a steel patio table painted with a rust deterrent coating while typing on a laptop that relies on rare earth metals. Tell me that’s not some amazing chemistry!

I could go on and on but the point is this:

We are surrounded by chemical marvels every second of every day.

Chemistry makes our lives better.

Dark Side

There’s little argument as to the benefits chemistry brings to society. But to everything good, there’s always a dark side. The dark side of chemistry often is a result of our attempts to develop a fix to one particular problem without consideration of the entire ramification spectrum. Pesticides that are also potent carcinogens. Pharmaceutical chemicals with side effects that almost override the positive effects or cause addiction. Chemical weapons.

I could go on with examples of chemistry gone wrong but the point remains we need to be more vigilant with the power of chemistry. The current and future generations of chemists need to design chemical solutions with an eye to the long-term effects and cost-benefit of the solution. This particular solution may work to solve the issue BUT what else does it do?

Writing With Chemistry

I was going to title this section, Writing Chemically, but had second thoughts about the unintended connotations associated with that title. Most writers would classify chemistry as something on the opposite end of the creative spectrum than writing. I understand but hear me out before launching the other shoe at my head.

An ionic bond forms between two oppositely charged atoms when an atom with the weaker force donates an electron to the atom with a stronger force. Covalent bonds form between two atoms when they share electrons to fill their outer orbitals. Hydrogen bonds are weaker bonds that form when the partial positive charge of the hydrogen is attracted to a negatively charged atom. When thinking about the interactions between story elements or characters, chemistry provides three good ways to explore these interactions and reactions.

Or how about using the principals of exothermic (heat released) and endothermic (heat absorbed) reactions to move the plot forward in your story? You can also think about character development in the structural terms of chemistry, primary structure, secondary structure, tertiary structure, and quaternary structure. All four structures contain the same basic bits; it’s a matter of increasing the complexity of the model.  

See? The principles of chemistry can help out the writer as well as the chemist. Another win for science!

By Thomas Shafee – Own work. Via Wikimedia Commons

Explore Chemistry!

Bottom line: Give chemistry a chance because it really does rock.

The benefits far outweigh the detriments.

The rewards in understanding the fundamentals of chemistry are well worth the failures, false starts, and frustrations of the learning process.

We are all a whole lot better off with chemistry than without (and it doesn’t even matter if we don’t understand a lick of the science behind it).

Chemistry Rocks!

Now go enjoy the show.

By Ian T. McFarland from Los Angeles, USA via Wikimedia Commons.

Mike Hays has worked hard from a young age to be a well-rounded individual. A well-rounded, equal opportunity sports enthusiasts, that is. If they keep a score, he’ll either watch it, play it, or coach it. A molecular microbiologist by day, middle-grade author, sports coach, and general good citizen by night, he blogs about sports/training related topics at www.coachhays.com and writer stuff at www.mikehaysbooks.com. Two of his science essays, The Science of Jurassic Park and Zombie Microbiology 101,  are included in the Putting the Science in Fiction collection from Writer’s Digest Books. He can be found roaming around the Twitter-sphere under the guise of @coachhays64.

 

The O.O.L.F Files

The Out Of Left Field (O.O.L.F.) Files this month take a look at close look at chemistry from all angles, from industry to academics to studying for med school. Plus, what’s a look at how Chemistry ROCKS! without a look at the chemistry of rocks?

 

 

 

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STEM Tuesday — Chemistry ROCKS! — In the Classroom

By on June 11, 2019   /   Cross-Curricular, STEM Tuesday  

 

Having majored in chemistry in college and then going on to teach the course a couple of times, I know how difficult this topic can be for students to understand. But really, chemistry is just the science of what matter is made up of and how it interacts with other types of matter. See? Not so hard at all. 🙂  I get it. Some students need to have more to help them become more comfortable with chemistry.

Here’s a list of things you can try:

Hands on Interaction:  I like to tell my students that the best way to understand chemistry is to think of it like cooking. Say you’re going to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies. You need the ingredients: the flour, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, and chocolate chips. Those are all different parts of matter. Then you mix them together with a certain amount of force by stirring or using a hand mixer. That gives you the cookie batter– a different kind of matter, but the chemical change hasn’t happened yet. Finally, you put the pan of cookie batter into the oven and voila you have cookies. Can’t you just smell the warm chocolate fresh out of the oven and imagine the first bite of gooey chocolate-y goodness?

 

 

During the whole process you are mixing and combining different kind of matter, but it isn’t until you apply heat that the chemical change takes place and you have cookies. Yum! This is a great way to get your students comfortable with chemistry.

 

Unfortunately, it’s not  possible to make cookies with your students in the classroom. Is there a substitute? Yes! Use these books. While it won’t get  you a warm chocolate chip cookie to eat in the end, you can do some pretty cool experiments with food.

Edible Science by Jodi Wheeler-Toppen (NGKids, 2015) is chock full of awesome food experiments! Many of these can be done in the classroom. Try the “Inflatable Marshmallow” on page 42. Kids learn about air pressure by watching a marshmallow expand and contract.

Another awesome one is watching how plants get water (page 9) by placing pieces of lettuce into bowls with different colored water (from food coloring). After a few hours students will see how the lettuce absorbed water through its leaves

My favorite one, though, is making slime (page 60). Your students will love it! This book is also great for homeschoolers since you can do a lot of the experiments in your very own kitchen. Happy experimenting!

 

Kathy Ceceri’s Edible Inventions: Cooking Hacks and Yummy Recipes You Can Build, Mix, and Grow (Maker Media, 2016)  also has some amazing experiments for kids to do with chemistry. She, however, goes a little more out-of-the box and discusses how kitchen gadgets can be used to make butter makers. She ventures into creating gelatin dots, and even agar noodles (don’t eat those!).

Finally, there is a whole discussion of 3D food printing and she gives you instructions on how to use your name-brand building blocks to make your own 3D food printer! Wow! This one is definitely for the more adventurous chemistry cook in your house. It will provide hours of fun.

After they perform each experiment have them analyze their outcome and discuss what happened. This is exactly what real scientists do. 

Questions could include:

  1. Did you get the outcome you wanted
  2. If not, why do you think this happened
  3. Could you repeat this experiment and get the same result? Why or why not?
  4. How is your result different from another team’s? Explain

By asking questions of your students you can help them to create a model to explain what happened. Perhaps they will end up changing the procedure or adding some requirements of their own, ie. use a hand mixer not a spoon to get a smoother consistency for the product.

 

 

2. Add some Fun Facts to your Experiments

Looking for a way to give your students a little more explanation of chemistry terms, and maybe a little history of the subject? Check out these titles, Explore Solids and Liquids! with 25 great experiments  by Kathleen M. Reilly (Nomad Press, 2014) and Explore Atoms and Molecules! with 25 great experiments by Janet Slingerland (Nomad Press, 2017)  have awesome experiments, but also contain explanations to describe the different parts of chemistry.

They have timelines the show the discovery of important scientific events, and also easy-to-understand definitions of words such as atom, molecule, solid, liquid, gas, states of matter, and mixtures and compounds.

These highly energetic texts and enthusiastic illustrations will grab your student’s attention and the experiments are all easy to do. Just follow the directions and you will have a great time in your classroom or homeschool environment.

After reading this book and doing some of the experiments, have students come up with their own examples of matter, molecules, and solids, liquids and gases. 

  1. Ask them to identify these different parts of matter in the things they see around the room or around their house
  2. Did they come up with something that can be both solid and liquid? How would they classify that?
  3. Discuss the types of conditions that might cause these substances to change from one to another.
  4. What types of evidence do they have to indicate the change

 

3.  Tie Chemistry to Literacy

If you have older students who are ready to learn more about chemistry, have them read The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (Little, Brown BFYR, 2018).  This book gives a lively and interesting history of the scientists who discovered the different elements of the periodic table.

Discovering an element is not as easy or amazing as you might think. In fact, it can be downright dangerous to your health. Ask Marie Curie. Many of these stories are about scientists who defied all odds to come up with a new element or perhaps stumbles upon it accidentally. It is a compelling read for anyone who is interested in becoming a scientist as it gives a behind-the-scenes look at real-life challenges many of the scientists faced.

After reading this book, have your students break up into discussion groups.

  1. Each group can choose a scientist or element and come up with a way to present it to the rest of the class.
  2. Maybe they dress up as the scientist and have them talk about their challenges
  3. Infographics or posters can show their process
  4. Be sure to include the pros and cons of each element (some of them are quite dangerous to humans)
  5. Have them show the element as it is used today (hint: it’s not just a two-letter symbol on a chart)

This is a great way to promote discussion about the periodic table in a place other than the science classroom!

 

Whatever way you choose to introduce chemistry into your classroom or homeschool, remember one thing, HAVE FUN with IT! Students will get enthusiastic about a fun, interactive, presentation and who knows, you may just inspire a future generation of STEM/STEAM careers.

 

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Science ROCKS! And so do Jennifer Swanson’s books. She is the award-winning author of over 35 nonfiction books for kids. Jennifer Swanson’s love of science began when she started a science club in her garage at the age of 7. While no longer working from the garage, you can find Jennifer at her favorite place to explore the world around her. www.JenniferSwansonBooks.com

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