Posts Tagged space

STEM Tuesday — Planets and Stars — Writing Tips and Resources

By on September 22, 2020   /   Planets and Stars, STEM Tuesday  

Look Up

“We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” ― Carl Sagan

 

Orion Nebula, By NASA, JPL-Caltech, J. Stauffer (SSC/Caltech) – NASA JPL, Public Domain

Estimates calculate our speed traveling on Earth through the universe to be around 492,126 miles per hour. That’s fast! Under such conditions as our tiny planet races through the heavens, our very existence on Earth seems against all odds. We are improbable beings. Nevertheless, we exist. We occupy our tiny niche on our tiny planet revolving around a tiny star inside a tiny galaxy.

There are times, though, when our world seems to be spinning out of control. We drift farther away from each other at the very moment we need each other the most. At times like these, it’s good to step back, take a deep breath, and remember the gift of having our place in the universe. We need to remember humans are designed to explore, discover, create, and share. This holds true not just for STEM but across the spectrum of existence.  

We are improbable beings, yet here we are. Why not make the most of this improbable existence?

This STEM Tuesday Writing Tips & Resources post will seem a departure from the usual fabulous content delivered by Heather Montgomery and Kirsten Larson. The Writing Tips & Resources tip for this month’s Planets & Stars theme (and all year!) is simple and yet often forgotten.

Look up.

Be awed. Explore. 

Be curious. Discover.

Be inspired. Create. 

Be humbled. Share. 

Look up.

Creation. Sistine Chapel. Public Domain.

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 has its origins in my childhood fascination with space. It’s fueled by my recent STEM writer’s interest in electromagnetic waves which, in turn, led back to space and the study of our place in the universe. In short, all roads lead to the rabbit hole of curiosity and inquiry.

The Cosmos Series

This family of TV shows, originally by Carl Sagan and revived by Neil deGrasse Tyson, are some screen time I definitely need to catch up on and revisit.

Speaking of Neil deGrasse Tyson…

               

Starts With a Bang

I’ve been reading Ethan Siegel’s stuff for a few years on Medium and recently found out he has a podcast too. Highly recommended by me!

Down to Earth (Netflix)

To say I was skeptical about this Zac Ephron documentary series would be an understatement of galactic proportions. I was pleasantly surprised, however, and despite a bit of pseudosciencey stuff, I learned and/or realized a great deal about our interactions with the planet. It was also my first introduction to superfood guru, Darin Olien, which has been a good thing. My single favorite lightbulb moment was in Episode 2 about the changes Paris has made about their water supply and access to it. After years of water quality issues, followed by the years of generating mountains of plastic waste with the bottled water “solution”, Parisian officials did the most Occam’s Razor thing possible. Instead of continuing to create more problems by solving the basic problem of poor water quality, they simply invested the capital in producing and distributing better quality water. A touch of brilliance I discovered in the most unexpected of places…from the dude who starred in that Disney movie my kids used to love to watch.

I guess there’s a hidden lesson there also –> Look up/Pay attention.

Down to Earth with Zac Efron | Netflix Official Site

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BOOK LIST FOR A BLACK HOLE

By on April 12, 2019   /   Articles, Book Lists  

Black Hole Photo History

It’s been an exciting week for space enthusiasts, space fiction fans, rocket scientists, and computer scientists. For the first time ever, we have an idea of what the elusive, oft-written-about black hole looks like.

Beautiful, right? Incredible even. What’s amazing to me is that we took pictures of light in a place where light gets sucked in but never spit out again. I always imagined that we could never see anything once that big vacuum cleaner in the cosmos had swallowed it, not even if we built the world’s strongest computer with the most sophisticated brain.

Fortunately for all of us, I’m not an astrophysicist or a computer scientist. Even more fortunately for all of us, Dr. Katie Bouman is. Bouman is a computer scientist who was part of a team that created a set of algorithms that took the “sparse and noisy data” collected from telescopes and turned them into an image. According to TIME magazine, Bouman says what really makes her tick is “coming up with ways to see or measure things that are invisible.”

The MIT postdoctoral fellow shared this photo of herself “watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed.”

Encouraging More Women in Space and Science

What’s great about Dr. Bouman’s story is that in addition to raising the profile of all the brilliant women researchers in #STEM, we get a chance to talk again about books that focus on women in STEM, computer science, black holes, and the study of space. (And we get to say Event Horizon Telescope a lot, which is just plain fun.)

Unfortunately, the numbers on women researchers in STEM fields are still dismal, hovering somewhere around 30% by many estimates. Clearly, we’ve got a lot of work to do encouraging and supporting women in these fields–and it begins with our middle-grade readers.

Book List for a Black Hole Moment

Here’s a handful of books to help stir our girls’ imaginations and spur them to become the next Dr. Katie Bouman.

NON FICTION

A Black Hole is not a Hole, by Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano

If a black hole is not a hole, then what is it? Find out what black holes are, what causes them, and how scientists first discovered them. Learn how astronomers find black holes, get to know our nearest black-hole neighbor, and take a journey that will literally s-t-r-e-t-c-h the mind.

 

Exoplanets, by Karen Latchana Kenney (Twenty-First Century Books TM)

Until the mid-1990s, scientists only guessed that the universe held exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system. But using advanced physics and powerful telescopes, scientists have since identified more than three thousand exoplanets. This work has revealed fascinating worlds, including a planet that oozes lavalike fluids and a planet that glows bright pink.

Even more fascinating, scientists think that some exoplanets might contain life. Many orbit in the Goldilocks zone, the region around a star that’s not too hot or too cold for liquid water, a key ingredient for life. This book examines exoplanets, the possibilities for life beyond Earth, and the cutting-edge technologies scientists use to learn about distant worlds.

This book features astrophysicist Sara Seager.

 

Astronaut/Aquanaut, by Jennifer Swanson (National Geographic)

Margaret on the Moon, by Dean Robbins and Illustrated by Lucy Knisely (Knopf)A true story from one of the Women of NASA!

Margaret Hamilton loved numbers as a young girl. She knew how many miles it was to the moon (and how many back). She loved studying algebra and geometry and calculus and using math to solve problems in the outside world.

Soon math led her to MIT and then to helping NASA put a man on the moon! She handwrote code that would allow the spacecraft’s computer to solve any problems it might encounter. Apollo 8. Apollo 9. Apollo 10. Apollo 11. Without her code, none of those missions could have been completed.

Dean Robbins and Lucy Knisley deliver a lovely portrayal of a pioneer in her field who never stopped reaching for the stars.

FICTION:

 

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux/Square FIsh)

Not a new entry, not even from this century, but I couldn’t resist reminding everyone that an early and definitive female character in a book about space was Meg Murray.

A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newbery Medal in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe. They are in search of Meg’s father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem — a wrinkle in time.

A Wrinkle in Time is the winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal.

 

 

 

Beep and Bob, by Jonathan Roth (Simon and Schuster)
In this adorable chapter book series that School Library Journal said is for “kids who love funny stories but may be too young for books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” space-school attendee Bob and his alien bestie Beep star in hilarious intergalactic adventures.
Does anyone have any other books that should make this list? Let us know in the comments. And in the meantime, let’s keep reading and encouraging our girls to reach for the stars.
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Middle-Grade Meets the Moon

By on January 21, 2019   /   Book Lists, Curriculum Tie-in, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, STEM, Teacher Tips  

By the time this post goes live on Monday, January 21st,  we will have all experienced (or slept through) the Blood Supermoon Lunar Eclipse of 2019.  The eclipse is, of course, the passing of the moon through Earth’s shadow. The “blood” comes from the crimson and oranges colors that can be seen, and “supermoon” refers to the how large the moon appears due to its relative proximity to Earth.

NASA has prepared some very useful tools for parents and teachers, and even though the event has passed, everyone will be talking about it. What better time to investigate further? Look for NASA’s Teachable Moments for the 2019 total lunar eclipse here  and lunar eclipse moon lessons guide for teachers is available here.

And, what better time to bring the moon into our to-be-read lists?

Let’s make a list of middle-grade books that capture our imaginations using the mystery of the moon – at least in their titles. I’ll start. Please comment below with additions to this list!

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin is a Newbery Honor winner and it received the 2010 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature.

From Indiebound:  In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life’s questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family’s fortune.

 

 

Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool is the 2011 Newbery Medal winning middle-grade tale of Abilene Tucker and a Kansas town called Manifest. Abilene navigates Manifest’s present and past mysteries in order to find the answers she’s been looking for.

This is one of my favorite middle-grade novels.

 

 

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle, proud of her country roots and the “Indian-ness in her blood,” travels from Ohio to Idaho with her eccentric grandparents. Along the way, she tells them of the story of Phoebe Winterbottom, who received mysterious messages, who met a “potential lunatic,” and whose mother disappeared.

As Sal entertains her grandparents with Phoebe’s outrageous story, her own story begins to unfold—the story of a thirteen-year-old girl whose only wish is to be reunited with her missing mother.

 

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill is the winner of the 2017 Newbery Medal.  Wait. I’m seeing a pattern here. Are you? Wow! There are a lot of Newbery books with “moon” in the title!  Anyway, this book didn’t stop at the Newbery. It has racked up Best Book of 2016 Awards from School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Chicago Public Library, Entertainment Weekly and New York Public Library. Filled with mystery and wonder, magic and suspense, this is a book comes along once in blue moon. (I had to. I’m sorry.)

 

I haven’t read The Moon Within yet, but only because it isn’t out yet! The pub date for the Aida Salazar’s The Moon Within is February 26, 2019.  But, what a cover! WOW!

From Indiebound:Celi Rivera’s life swirls with questions. About her changing body. Her first attraction to a boy. And her best friend’s exploration of what it means to be genderfluid.

But most of all, her mother’s insistence she have a moon ceremony when her first period arrives. It’s an ancestral Mexica ritual that Mima and her community have reclaimed, but Celi promises she will NOT be participating. Can she find the power within herself to take a stand for who she wants to be? 

 

 

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a firm believer that picture books belong in middle-grade readers’ hands. So, although this is a picture book, I’m featuring Margaret and the Moon.   Written by Dean Robbins and Illustrated by Lucy Knisley, it is the true story of Margaret Hamilton, whose code writing for NASA helped put a man on the moon.

 

 

 

The Far-Out Guide to the Moon was written by Mary Kay Carson, who is one the Mixed-Up Files STEM Tuesday contributors.  A wealth of information and facts, the book makes an excellent addition to middle-grade reading lists.  Strike now while the lunar interest is hot and everyone is talking about the eclipse we had last night!

 

 

 

 

What titles would you add to our Middle-Grade Meets the Moon list? Drop them in the comments below!

 

 

 

 

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