YOU'VE GOT THIS!

 

There's nothing more fun than figuring out...

"What will happen next?" 

This is a great STEM challenge and brain tickler because it isn't always what looks likely at first glance.

First, look for clues, including ones that are not obvious at first glance.  

1. What will the bear need to do to catch the fish?

2. What will the fish need to do to escape?

3. Which is likely to be faster--BEAR? FISH?

YOU'VE GOT THIS!

Actually, the bear got this!

So how's your reaction time? 

YOU'VE GOT THIS!

To test it, have a partner hold a ruler at the top with zero end down.

Hold onto the ruler so your thumb is close to the zero.

Next, open your grip so your fingers are no longer touching the ruler and stay alert.

Your partner will suddenly release the ruler.

Grab it.

Then look to see which number is under your thumb. The lower the number, the faster you were able to react.

Repeat this test two more time.

Does your reaction time improve with practice?  Switch and test your partner's reaction time.

Now, really STEM this nature moment. 

What if you needed to catch fish to eat? How could you mimic the bear--and even do better to catch not just one fish but a bunch? Brainstorm! Plan! 

Native Americans and early pioneers needed to do exactly that to store food for winter. 

Check out these sites:

Native American fish traps

Learning from the past

ONE MORE CHALLENGE

  

Will the fish be able to gulp in the frog? 

Or is a frog quick enough in the water to be likely to escape? 

Imagine yourself in the frog's place. What would your next move be?  

Imagine yourself in the fish's place.  What would your next move be?

YOU'VE GOT THIS!

Predict what's most likely to happen next.  Tell why you made that choice.

ON THE BALL!

   

It's the WORLD SERIES! 

Share some baseball Discovery-FUN!

Do Cold Balls Bounce Less?

In 1965, the Detroit Tigers accused the Chicago White Sox of refrigerating the balls used by their pitchers.  Should a team care if their batters are pitched ice-cold balls?  You can find out.

Slip at least two baseballs into a plastic grocery sack to keep things clean and chill them in a refrigerator for an hour.  While you're waiting think about how chilling changes other things, like pancake syrup or butter.  Then conduct this test to find out the cold facts.


Work outdoors on a paved area or indoors on a smooth, hard surface (after checking with an adult). 

Have someone hold a measuring stick straight up with the starting end of the scale on the floor.  Drop the balls one at a time from the top of the stick.  Be sure someone is watching closely to check exactly how high each ball bounces.  Write down each ball's bounce height. Divide by the number of balls tested to find the average bounce height.

Next, spend five minutes warming up the balls using anyway you can think of to do the job safely, such as holding the balls in warm hands or even setting them on a hot water bottle.Then repeat the bounce test with the warmed balls.

Were the warm balls better bouncers?  
They should be! 

Now, here's the rest of the story.  

Before this event, Major League home teams used to supply game balls to the umpire one at a time throughout the game. So the home team's pitchers could be given chilled balls. Worse, according to the White Sox, the Tigers baked the balls given to their team's pitchers. That meant the Tigers were slugging hot balls.  

    To end the squabble, today, Major League rules require the home team to supply all the baseballs to be used during the game two hours before game time.

The Balls Have Changed--But Not Much

In the past 100 years, baseballs have only changed in one way. In 1974, cowhide replaced horsehide as the baseball's covering.  Otherwise a baseball is exactly the same, today, as it always was.

There's a cork core inside a rubber ball surrounded by nearly a quarter mile of woolen yarn, a winding of cotton/polyester yarn and a leather jacket sealed with 108 stitches (not one more or one less).

The finished ball must weigh between 5 and 5.25 ounces (141 and 148 grams) and be between 9 and 9.25 inches (22 and 24 centimeters) around.

This CT-scan lets you peek inside a real baseball to see its parts.

Don't you love the unique way technology lets us look at things?

If you were on a design team to make a baseball go even farther when smacked, without changing the weight or size, what change might you make?

Find The Sweet Spot

You'll need a wooden bat and a hammer (either a real hammer or a wooden mallet) for this activity.  Your job is to find the one special spot on the baseball called the sweet spot.  

It has that name because striking a baseball with exactly that spot on the bat will make it travel farther than striking it at any other point.  That happens because striking the ball at the sweet spot causes the least amount of vibration within the wooden bat.  And that means the greatest amount of energy will be transferred to the ball.  So where is the sweet spot?

Have a partner grab the end of the bat's handle and let the bat hang straight down. 

Use the hammer to tap the bat gently near its fat free end.  Then repeat tapping the bat gently at points closer and closer to the handle.  

Usually striking the bat at the sweet spot will produce a slightly different sound.  The person holding the bat should also feel less vibrations when the bat is struck at the sweet spot.

To be precise, measure about six inches (15 centimeters) up from the fat end of the bat.  That's where the sweet spot is usually located.

When a Major League player strikes the ball at that
spot, it's not uncommon for the ball to leave the bat
traveling 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour.

In the past, Major League ballplayers tried to make balls travel farther by swinging heavy bats.  Here's a photo of Babe Ruth at bat. The Home Run King regularly used a 42 ounce (1,190-gram) bat. Sometimes, he even used one that weighed 52 ounces (1,474 grams).

Today, players have decided they can knock balls farther by swinging faster. So they are opting to use lighter bats--ones weighing 32 or even 28 ounces (907 or 793 grams).

You might be interested in knowing that in the very early days of baseball, players were given four strikes before they struck out.

TAKE A BREAK! I'll READ TO YOU

 Ready for a story? Get comfortable.

I'm about to read.... 

 The Long, Long Journey (with permission from Lerner Publishing). 

Hurry. I'm ready to go. Click to start.

I loved sharing our TAKE A BREAK! story. 

What was your favorite part?

Till next TAKE A BREAK!

A REAL Computer Adventure!

 

J Presper Eckert in front of UNIVAC

One wonderfully, special part of my writing career has been the awesome people it has let me meet. I will never forget Bell Labs flying me to Pennsylvania to have lunch with J. Presper Eckert, one of the early computer inventors. He was key in working on UNIVAC. 

That was a dinosaur of a computer. It took up a large room which had to be kept cool so UNIVAC didn't overheat. Plus, the computer needed a big team of workers to tend its many parts and keep it operating. 

One of the stories J. Presper Eckert shared with me was being in charge of UNIVAC predicting the outcome of the 1952 Presidential Election. That was the election that pitted General Dwight D. Eisenhower against Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson. The press and polls all favored Stevenson. UNIVAC would be shown on CBS during the lengthy reporting of incoming state results. It was hoped, though seriously doubted, that the computer could predict the election outcome ahead of the West Coast polls closing.

There was a lot of pressure to have UNIVAC accomplish this never-bef0re-tried task. It was viewed as possibly turning the public's view to believing computers could be worth companies and government agencies investing in them. Remember, back in 1952 no one had an iPad, a laptop, or even a cell phone. 

In fact, I have to admit that when I interviewed J. Presper Eckert I was just beginning to work on a home computer, which took up half my desk and required me to use special codes to make it indent and capitalize. Text was green and I couldn't imagine color or pictures being on my screen. This was even before I wrote my first book about computers and kids creating their own computer programs.

Back to my story..... 

The next part never seems to be reported in historical accounts. But it's key. Eckert explained that for UNIVAC to be able to make a prediction for the Presidential Election it needed data for comparison. So Eckert had his team collect what he called "Bellwether" data on past results from across the US. Something is called Bellwether if it shows what tends to lead a trend.  In other words, UNIVAC was given a LOT of past election results it would then be able to compare against incoming data on Election Night. It's goal--LOOK FOR A TREND.

Eckert standing next to Cronkite looking at computer results which were, at the time, only viewed as printouts.

OK, the big night came. The famous news reporter Walter Cronkite was there. So was J. Presper Eckert. The data on polls reporting votes from each state came in and was entered into UNIVAC.  The computer churned away--actually it was a matter of LOTS of parts called transistors switching on and off. Then the moment came. 

IMAGINE A DRUM ROLL!!!

Before the polls were even closed on the West Coast, UNIVAC reported Eisenhower would have 483 electoral votes and Stevenson only 93.

Someone from the CBS news team took Eckert aside and said basically, "NO WAY! Impossible. Try again."

Eckert told me he was really sweating and nervous. He didn't want to let his company down by having UNIVAC fail and show computers really couldn't be counted on. He had his team try again. AND this time the results were....THE SAME!  But CBS would not report UNIVAC's results and predict an Eisenhower win.

However, when the night was over and all the results from across the US were in--all the votes were counted--the results proved UNIVAC was right. Well, overall. The actual final number of electoral college votes was Eisenhower 442 and Stevenson 89.  

Dwight Eisenhower was President.

Because of UNIVAC's success, computers became trusted data processors worldwide. Computers have, in fact, been counted on to predict the outcome of every presidential race since. 

NOW, when you're watching reports of this year's computer prediction of the Presidential Election results, pause for just a moment.  Remember UNIVAC, the computer that did it first, and wasn't trusted to be right.

FUN TO THE CORE!

There are thousands of kinds of apples. However, only the most popular are grown and harvested. Here are the top ten.

Pink Lady 

Honeycrisp

Fuji

Golden Delicious

McIntosh

Cox's Orange Pippin

Red Delicious

Gala

Jonasgold

Cortland

Collect any three and compare. Do the apples look different? 

Check color. 
Shape. 
Size.

Now wash and slice. Then taste one sample. Rate it from 1 to 4 on crispness with 1 being the softest and 4 being the crispest.
Also rate it on sweetness with 1 being the least sweet and 4 being the sweetest.

Have a swig of water. Next, repeat these two tests with the second apple. Then with the third. 

Now create an advertisement for your favorite kind of apple. Tell why that's the best kind to buy, eat, and enjoy. Share something that will make people who've never tasted that kind of apple really want to try it.

If you can, share your findings on sweet taste with at least five friends and build a bar graph to compare the kinds of apples. 

It's estimated that each person in the United States eats about 50 apples a year. So while your investigating, you'll be on your way to eating your fair share of this year's crop.

Your tongue is what let you taste the apples you tested. Don't miss finding out about some super cool animal tongues.

SHRINK A HEAD

In pioneering times, apples were carved and allowed to shrink and dry to make heads for dolls. You can make an apple head doll too. Just follow the easy steps.

1.  First, peel the apple. Leave some peel on top for "hair". 

2.  Plan what you want the face to look like.

3.  Pour 4 cups of water into a bowl and stir in a teaspoon of salt.  Place the carved apple in this for about two hours.
That soften's the apple's flesh. 

4.  Next, use an unsharpened pencil or a popsicle stick to push in eye sockets. Also carve the shape for a nose and mouth.

5.  Push raisins into the eye sockets for eyes. You may also want to poke unpopped popcorn kernels into the mouth for teeth.

6.  Set your complete apple head on a plate. Check daily to see how the face changes as the apple dries.

The dried apple head usually won't mold. That's why people used to preserve food, like apples, for winter by drying it.  The lower water content helps prevent bacteria and mold growth.

Now, create a doll body for your apple head. It could be made out of poster board. It could be made out of paint stirring stick and have cloth clothes. Or something else. Whatever you make, make a list of the steps to follow. That way, others can make an apple head doll just the way you did.

MORE FUN!

Cut and Stamp

Apples make great print blocks. Cut a nice firm apple in half. Use a sturdy plastic knife or popsicle stick to cut away parts of flesh. Pour tempera or finger paint on a sturdy paper plate. Touch the cut apple to this to coat. Then press firmly on paper. Repeat to "stamp" your design all over the paper. If you want more than one color, wash off the apple and pat dry with a paper towel. Then keep on stamping with a new color of paint.

Johnny Did It

Look up Johnny Appleseed on-line. Then make up a short play about his real life (at least what people think may be real). Or let children work together to make up a short play about something that Johnny Appleseed could have done--maybe even in your home town. Then invite visitors to see them act out this play.

NATIONAL WILDLIFE DAY!

It's National Wildlife Day--perfect day to share my newest book THE GREAT BEAR RESCUE! (Lerner Publishing).

Did you know there is a bear that lives entirely in a desert?

Did you know there is a bear whose population is fewer than 40 total--and only 8 of those are females?

I absolutely guarantee you will fall in love with Gobi bears. I did! Plus this is the story of the awesome effort scientists are making to learn about Gobi bears to try and help them survive. 

So, please join me in thinking of this as NATIONAL WILDLIFE/ SAVE THE GOBI BEARS DAY!

I LOVE TREES--HOW ABOUT YOU?

I've only ever written one book that's just about trees--OUTSIDE AND INSIDE TREES.  

However, as I looked back through the books I've written, I discovered something very interesting. Trees--sometimes whole forests--are an important part of many of my books.   

Check it out!

In THE CASE OF THE VANISHING HONEYBEES (Millbrook/Lerner) almond trees are possibly one reason entire colonies of honeybees are vanishing--and thought to probably be dead.

California's almond blossom season is the single biggest pollination event in the world.  

Over one million beehives full of worker bees are needed for about a months. So beekeepers truck in lots of hives, each full of its colony of honeybees. 

Having lots of bees on hand is the only way orchard owners can make sure nearly every blossom on their almond trees is visited by a bee.

That's what has to happen. The blossom produces a little sweet nectar. 

A bee pushes into the blossom to collect that nectar and in the process picks up a little pollen, the male reproductive cells. A little pollen from another tree is also dropped off. That fertilizes the flower's ovules, the female reproductive parts. 

What's good for the trees is hard on the bees. Beekeepers transport their hives from all over the U.S. to California but they arrive early, ahead of the trees blooming. So they have to feed their bees a sugary syrup to keep them going. It's not a healthy diet. And because of it the worker bees are weaker than normal. And the bees have just come from pollinating other crops.

Being overworked could be one reason honeybees are dying causing honeybee colonies to collapse. 

Do you think honeybees should be trucked to different places to pollinate crops? Why? Or why not?

Read the CASE OF THE VANISHING HONEYBEES to find out at least two other things that could be effecting honeybees.

A tree plays a dramatic role in my book LITTLE LOST BAT (Charlesbridge).

In this story, the mother bat leaves her baby in the bat colony's cave nursery and goes hunting for insects to eat. On night, she passes a tall oak tree. 

Read this story to see what is in that tree.
Keep reading to find out what happens next.

And keep on reading to find out happens at the very end of this story.

Trees are a key part of my story FINDING HOME (Charlesbridge).

First, something happens to a forest to start this story. What happens?

Then there is a big search for one kind of tree. Why is that?

Finally, list five steps that tell what happens along the way to finding that special kind of tree.

FINDING HOME is an exciting story. And people lend a helping hand. 

So don't miss finding out what happens.

A tree stars in my book BUTTERFLY TREE (Peachtree Publishing).  This story is based on one of my very own childhood experiences. I grew up in Ohio near Lake Erie. And one autumn, I had the unique chance to see the migrating Monarch butterflies come across the lake and settle into a forest for the night.

Read this story to see where the butterflies spend the night. It will surprise you!

Next, write your own story. Make up a story where a tree plays a key part.

What tree's fruit is a pod the size of a football, hard as wood on the outside and full of beans surrounded by white pulp?  

Did you guess its a cacao tree?  

CHOCOLATE: A Sweet History (Grosset & Dunlap) is a whole book starring the cacao tree. Yes, it's true. Chocolate is made from cocoa powder. And cocoa powder is made from the seeds of the cacao tree.

Ready to dig for treasure? Then read this book to find facts you can treasure an share with your friends and family.

• How did the ancient Mayans make chocolate spicy?
• What king was the first to sweeten chocolate?
• Why did Antarctic explorers take chocolate with them to the South Pole?
• Why does chocolate sometimes turn gray?

SUMMER MEANS DISCOVERY FUN!

Okay, it's summer! So here are ten things to enjoy while it's hot, sunny and being outdoors is fun....

1.  Make something out of mud. Even better do it after it's rained. What is that mud like? How is different from dry dirt? Is there one way it's still the same? 

And then read Mud by Mary Lyn Ray with illustrations by Lauren Stringer.

2. Play flashlight tag in the dark. 

3. Go on a shadow hunt to find the following shadows. But take an adult along because grown-ups need to have fun too:

a. Find a shadow with a bright hole in it.

b. Find the biggest shadow you can. Figure out what made it.

c. Find the littlest shadow you can. Figure out what made it.  

And then Read Flashlight Night by Matt Forrest Esenwine and illustrations by Fred Koehler.

4. Fly a kite. But make one first. Here are sites with easy how-to instructions.

Easy Paper Kite

How To Build Kites

And read The Emperor's Kit by Jane Yolen with illustrations by Ed Young

5. Make a FOOT painting. Sure, you've probably done fingerprinting. But have you ever painted with your feet? It will really let you STEP UP as an artist. Try mixing your own paints first. Here's some how-to sites to help you. 

 

Homemade Edible Fingerpaint

Homemade Fingerpaint

And read What If You Had Animal Feet?! by ME Sandra Markle with illustrations by Howard McWilliam.

6. Look at the world through a magnifying glass. Especially something you never thought to look at closely before. See anything that surprised you?  

7. Put on a puppet show with puppets you make yourself. Here's some sites with ideas to help you do just that.

Puppet Craft for Kids

How To Design Hand Puppets

8. Learn one constellation you didn't know in the night sky. Find out what story people used to tell about it. Then make up a new story yourself.

Mmy favorite constellation is ORION. And here's a couple of sites with star stories, including ones about Orion.

Windows To The Universe

SkyServer

And read Zoo in the Sky: A Book of Animal Constellations by Jacqueline Mitton

Hope you have fun with these activities. And to share an adventure that happened one summer, Read my newest discovery fun book WHAT IF YOU COULD SNIFF LIKE A SHARK? (Scholastic) Of course, any time you read one of my books it's like I'm right there sharing it with you.

HAPPY SUMMER!