Gender Bias as a Learning Opportunity & The Week in Reading

Pete the Cat: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Did you know that Twinkle Twinkle Little Star has more than one verse? Neither did we! The Pete the Cat series of books is as fun to look at as they are to read. Admittedly, this one lacks in the plot department, since it is literally just the verses to the song.

Giants Beware! The Chronicles of Claudette #1

This is a great book in that the hero is a girl! Tellingly, I had to teach our 5 year-old how to find the descriptions of main characters in order to convince her that the heroine was in fact a heroine, and not a hero. All in all, it worked out great though! We covered story openings, character introductions, and gendered pronouns. Beyond learning opportunities, and sexism foils, the book is also excellent in and of itself. It chronicles the quest of Claudette, a young Norman kid, and her siblings as they hunt a giant, hoping to eventually kill it for the attendant fame and fortune. Along the way, they learn a thing or two about misconceptions, honesty, and family bonds.

Superman #6

The authors have certainly got the heartstring tug down, but that may be about it. The story-line has been saved in every issue so far by a sprinkling of heroic moments involving either the new Superboy, (the son of Superman, and Lois Lane), saving Lois Lane, or vice versa. The authors are trying to do the right thing, or perhaps more aptly, they've been assigned to do the right things with this series. Their strengths at plotting, drawing dogs, and choosing non-grisly images are being sorely tested though.

Tiny Titans #4: The First Rule of Pet Club

This densely populated comic book has Streaky the Supercat, Krypto the Superdog, Beppo the Supermonkey, and Ace the Bathound, along with many other super-pets! The comic abounds with lots of goofy jokes, but frankly, I'm a sucker for superhero pets, so I was sold when I saw the cover.

Update:
But do they pass the Bechdel Test? That's what G+ 'er Richard Green wanted to know.

Pete the Cat doesn't pass because the main character is a male cat. His mother and sister at least make an appearance in this one, as opposed to "Pete the Cat: I Love my White Shoes" where he's the only character.

Giants Beware totally passes! The main character's buddy is a princess-in-training. They discuss things like princess councils, and how to count giants. Spoiler alert, at the end of Claudette's buddy decides to switch to diplomat-in-training.

Superman #6 doesn't even come close to passing. There's only a single female character: Lois Lane. Admittedly, she does some really cool things, but there's not another female character for her to have a conversation with.

Tiny Titans might pass. There's a conversation between Starfire, and her sister Blackfire. They discuss their lack of pets without mentioning any males. However, on the next page, Starfire sends her dad a letter. I suppose the story could hold up under a very loose interpretation of the Bechdel Test, but it's certainly not a rousing success..

By the way, if you're looking for interesting math posts please do check out Richard Green's G+ page!

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in concept very sim

Copasetic Flow

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