Camping, Outdoor Free Play, and Parental Freedom Too

I'm a huge fans of unsupervised outdoor play. I had yet another great experience with it during our camping trip over the last weekend. The kids headed out early in the morning with their nanny to get our campsite setup. Since they’re able to get there early, we're usually able to get a tent site, even during the busy summer months. The days, the kids haul their own sleeping bags and the tent. When they arrived, they set up the tent, (the nanny doesn’t know how), put their backpacks inside to anchor it, and then headed out for a five mile hike into the nearest little town at the bottom of the mountain. (The place the raptor class took place as a matter of fact.)

LetGrow.org has a great interview about the value of free, outdoor play.

That afternoon, I met the gang in the same little town, took over from the nanny, and we all headed back up to the campsite via public bus line. By the time we arrived back at the campground, the wind had tumbled our tent down the mountain a little bit. I took a moment to collect myself, figuring out what we’d need to do, but before I could say anything, the 8, 6, and 4 y.o. gang of kids sprang into action. The three of them picked up the tent, hauled it back up the mountain, set the ground cover down again, and placed the tent back upright in its original spot. I gave them my heavier pack to put in the tent so it wouldn’t slide off again, and the problem was solved! I wound up having to do nothing because the gang is used to being outdoors and used to handling things on their own.

With the campsite set back aright, I had a few phone calls I needed to handle. I hiked down—closer to the ranger station—where there was signal. The kids played up by our campsite, wandered in and out of the forest a bit, and generally had a blast. The kids' free play freed me up to do what I needed to get done as well.

The next day, the kids set out to explore the forest with an orange plastic camp shovel the next morning. They didn’t make it far before they discovered treasure. They stopped to dig below a tree just into the forest beyond our tent. My partner read in the tent, I walked down to the ranger station again to hit the potty. When I returned, I the kids weren’t digging anymore. They were using the shovel to pry at the side of the tree trunk. My partner had climbed out of the tent. We sat with out backs against a fallen log, and got to catch up on our weeks.I’d been out of town for the prior two days, and we hadn’t seen each other much. About ten minutes later, (yup, that’s right, we got ten minutes of quiet time!), the gang turned up with their treasure. They were elated! They'd’ found small copper balls, (BBs) in the bark of the tree. Someone had used it for target practice with a BB gun. They’d never heard of such a thing, so to them, it was tree that gave treasure if you took the time to look.

We all got treasure thanks to free play. They made an unexpected new discovery and walked away with BBs—which I suspect are still in their pockets. My treasure was a chance to snuggle outdoors, enjoy the fresh air, and catch up with my partner.

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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