rev 8/6/04, http://www.home.earthlink.net
We have a new page: http://www.mkinsler.com. Try it. Meanwhile, this page is still valid.
Materials, machines, structures, and electricity: systems that keep us alive, healthy, and working, and why you should understand them.
This web page is about a program that teaches non-technical people how things work.
From John Dewey (Experience and Education, 1938).
"Contemporary social life is what it is in very large measure because of the results of application of physical science. The experience of every child and youth, in the country and the city, is what it is in its present actuality because of appliances which utilize electricity, heat, and chemical processes. A child ... does not read by artificial light or take a ride in a motor car or on a train without coming into contact with operations and processes which science has engendered. It is a sound educational principle that students should be introduced to scientific subject-matter and be initiated into its facts and laws through acquaintance with everyday social applications." (p. 79, 80)
I've just removed some old stuff and will be making some renovations, most of which will have to do with the current project. This is the curriculum I am writing: about thirty short units on every topic I could think of. Each contains a tutorial on the subject--e.g., refrigeration, light bulbs, printing in color, telephone switching--plus a set of class activities, self-test questions, and vocabulary words. If things go right, there may also be a videotape, starring me, that helps explain and amplify the entire topic. The videotape allows me to show things that aren't easy to get into the classroom, like the intake of a sewage-treatment plant or the pressroom of a newspaper.
To join the How Things Work e-mail discussion group, send a blank, no-subject e-mail message to howthingswork-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Admission is open to everyone, including young people.
(1) A short introduction to me.
(2) A diatribe about the motivations for this project.
(3) An outline of the program that I hope to pursue.
(3.5) An update on The How Things Work video project
(3.6) A note about my lightning work.
(4) An ongoing bibliography of books and materials that relate to the program.
(5) A discussion of how the How Things Work approach can improve the physical science component of general-science programs in public schools.
(6) A discussion of Star Trek and the science in science fiction in general.
(7) A resume.
Mark R. Kinsler
512 E. Mulberry St.
Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
(740)
687-6368
mkinsler1@earthlink.net
My scholarly work is in high voltage, lightning, and the history of technology. I have a PhD in electrical engineering from Mississippi State University, home of one of the world's largest high voltage laboratories. My dissertation research explored how lightning can interact with overhead electric power lines to blow holes in buried pipes and cables.
Right now, my interest is in the improvement of science and technology education. This does not mean computers. I'm at the early stages of establishing a program to teach the way the world works to elementary school teachers, who will then be in a position to teach it to their students. It's too late to introduce electrical engineering students in college to topics like how electricity gets to your house and what makes a telephone work. I'm not exaggerating: they don't know.
The program was initially aimed at science teachers in primary grades, but the ultimate aim is to educate the general public.
Objectives of the program:
1) To assist in the teaching of physical science by linking it to the technology--i.e., systems, materials, and machines-- that people see every day.
2) To encourage people, especially adults, to explore every-day technology independently, thus promoting greater understanding on both sides of the technical/non-technical barrier.
3) To form the foundations for the establishment of a technology curriculum for all school students from primary to post- secondary levels. This means *technology*, not computer software.
There's been some progress along these lines: I've been working on a curriculum for general-science programs in public schools. A long explanation and justification is shown after the bibliography section.
The program will accomplish these objectives by
1) teaching technology to teachers through demonstration-oriented seminars
2) sharing ideas by means of an electronic discussion group and publications,
3) continuing a research program to develop better ways of demonstrating how
things work.
In 20 years of teaching post-secondary engineering, engineering technology, and technical trade school courses, I found that students, through no fault of their own, are far more poorly prepared for a technical education than I was thirty years ago. I think that similar observations could be made by any engineering professor. The difficulty is that most students have had very little contact with the machinery that they use every day. Automobiles, especially since the advent of electronic vehicle computers, now seem untouchable to erstwhile "Saturday mechanics." Electronic devices have shrunk to monolithic integrated circuits connected to LCD displays; both are the very essence of inaccessibility. Moreover, an increasing proportion of formerly accessible household mechanical devices like typewriters, thermostats, clocks and watches, and cameras have themselves been turned into inaccessible electronic devices. These devices themselves are much improved, but what is there for the children to discover inside?
Contributing to the loss of technical curiosity is the fact that there don't seem to be as many fathers taking apart toasters and carburetors on Saturday mornings as there used to be. Social scientists tell us that there aren't as many fathers as there were, and it seems to me that fathers who spend "quality time" with a joint-custody child probably won't spend it fixing the toaster, which is easily replaced. Moreover, the car no longer has a carburetor. And the father likely doesn't know how to fix either one.
Science education has changed as well. It has been argued that the increased emphasis on biology is a reflection of an anti- industrial bias amongst science educators. It can also be argued that the sheer volume of advances in medicine and biological science are simply displacing the older industrially-oriented topics. Despite the cause, children no longer learn how things work in school, and I believe that this has caused a great disempowerment of recent generations of kids.
Water, sewer, power, transportation systems and structures are life-support systems. Thus nuclear power, flood control, EMF's, air travel and automobile safety issues have become political issues. If citizens do not know why an aircraft flies or where their water comes from, there is ample room for opportunists to step in. Technical illiteracy is a major failure of our educational system and has been neglected in favor of the far narrower pursuit of proficiency in computer software.
So even if you or your kid will never have a job title that includes the words "engineer" or "technician," you are a user of complex machinery and systems and depend upon them for your very lives. This is not an exaggeration. Suppose electric power, water and sewer service were to cease. What would happen to the rates of disease? Then we'll dump telephone and other communications services as well, and remove our air and road transportation so each little community will be isolated in its squalor. We _are_ engineers, all of us.
Technical literacy is a womens' issue as well. In most of the engineering courses I've taught there has been a small percentage of female students. (University engineering schools have been largely unsuccessful in recruiting more women into the "fraternity" of engineers, but that is not our concern here.) My observation is that women have, with only a few exceptions, had even less familiarity with machines than their male counterparts. They also seem to have an extra layer of reluctance to become involved with real devices sitting upon a workbench. There is a kind of look I've seen on the faces of my female students in the laboratory, and it can really only be described as fear. How is it that women have been scared away from machines, and at an early age?
Science museums, as they are currently constituted, don't address the problem. The objectives of the old museums (pre-1980, about) were modest but realistic: they were to be educational and research institutions which catered mainly to adults and which were, in the great tradition of philanthropy, not particularly concerned with making a profit. Children liked them because adults liked them: kids will always be interested in anything which interests adults. Some exhibits and programs would be too advanced for kids, but that usually brought the kids back as they got older.
The new science centers and childrens' museums cater to children. The museum gift shops are large, the math and science content of the exhibits is carefully regulated to preserve the self-esteem of the children, and there is a heavy emphasis on dinosaurs, DNA, dolphins, and environmental politics.
The current aim of the program is the development of a course about 30-40 hours in length. This corresponds to about a three-credit college course, and the course is, for the sake of convenience, taught on a college level. If there's a way for them to do so, kids are, of course, welcome to join in, but we're really aiming at fairly well-educated adults here.
Update: {Since this was written a few years ago, I've managed to accomplish this. The course has been offered in several forms and venues, mostly through Ohio University. With luck and some assistance through the good offices of one national organization or another, I may be able to take How Things Work for Teachers on the road soon.}
Much later update: Most of the nation's colleges of education have been essentially been taken over by their respective state boards of education, which now dictate what material shall be taught to teachers. While I cannot argue with the intent of this change, it pretty well eliminates any creativity in science teacher education. Similarly, the requirement that primary and secondary students take science proficiency tests has eliminated the opportunity to teach science in new ways. So I'm searching for new venues.
Thus, we must go from reinforced concrete to digital audio in quite a short but intensive course. As I've learned what works and what does not, the course will change. However, the basic outline, shown below, is likely to remain fairly stable: we learn what things are made out of, how they're joined together, and how basic structures and machines work. With this introduction, we can learn how power is transmitted (compressed air is used as an analog for electricity, then we learn electricity itself.) After a look at our nationwide (soon to be world-wide) electric power grid, we turn to electrical and electronic communication.
A. Materials and how they are joined into structures--concrete through plastics.
B. Designs and alternatives for houses, roads and vehicles, water and sewer systems.
A. Pumps, gears, seals, hydraulics, pneumatics, heat engines, refrigeration.
A. The basic electric circuit for transmission of power and information.
B. Generators, lamps, motors, telegraphs, telephones, amplifiers, fax, TV.
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Occasionally I get an inquiry about my work in lightning protection. I'm always glad to give advice and discuss the subject and I do a good deal of it, generally for no charge.
Lightning, however, is a tremendously controversial subject. It's as random as every other weather phenomenon, yet there seem to be a good many lawsuits generated in the US by people who've been struck by lightning or whose equipment has been struck by lightning and feel that someone should take the responsibilty for their misfortune. There are a number of people who work as expert witnesses in such cases for one party or another.
My view, and it's turned out to be an extremely unpopular one in the lightning protection community, is that lightning is far too random and involves far too many unknown factors to be a motivation for litigation.
(1)Put a minimal surge protector on your equipment or preferably on the main service entrance of your home or business. Your refrigerator is probably more sensitive to surges than your computer equipment is.
(2)Keep your files backed up and your fire insurance paid up. And that's about all you can do.
(3)If you're in a rainstorm, try not to get wet. Your instincts are your best guide, and you can't dodge, predict, or otherwise deal with lightning if you're outside.
(4)If you're concerned with lightning strikes on your home or business, install a lightning protection system. It's not a big deal: get a reel of #6 aluminum wire, some ground clamps and some good-quality ground rods. Electrically bond all exposed metal objects on your roof and run lengths of the wire along the roof ridges. Run the wire in as straight a path as possible down to the ground rods, which should be driven deep into the soil at the base of the building. Use the rest of your wire and clamps to bond the building's electrical conduit, telephone, communication lines, gas pipes, and water pipes together and to the outside ground rods. If it makes you happy, made a few 12" lightning rods out of some of the wire and clamp them at intervals to the wires strung along your roof. This system isn't guaranteed to do anything, and neither is any other lightning protection system, but it's about as good as you'll do, being pretty much what Ben Franklin specified in 1752. No improvements in lightning protection systems have been made since then. For further enlightenment, check polyphaser.com or erico.com. They make industrial lightning protection equipment and have a high degree of integrity.
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Good books on technology are not easy to find. Many engineers cannot write very well, and many writers have a difficult time understanding technology. Here, in no particular order, are some recommendations. Some are very new and some are out of print. Unless otherwise indicated, all of the books listed are for adult readers.
A note on British books: You may run into problems with titles and terminology. For example, you may find the same British book under more than one title. This has to do with some strangeness on the part of publishing houses in the UK. British technical terms often differ from those in the US. Power lines are "mains," a wrench is a "spanner," and they drive on the wrong side of the road. Patience and perseverance are recommended.
1) _Experimental Science_, George M. Hopkins, Lindsay Publications, ISBN 0-917914-49-X. There are two volumes.
This book is a reprint of a collection of Scientific American "Amateur Scientist" columns from around the turn of the century. Filled with one science demonstration after another, beautifully illustrated, carefully explained. The emphasis tilts a bit more towards theoretical science than applied science. The assumed audience is very similar to ours: adult, responsible, intelligent, and curious. Some materials are dangerous or obsolete, and some of the terminology is a bit odd: many terms pertaining to radio and electricity hadn't been standardized at that time.
2) _Incredible Everything_, Biesty, DK Publishing, ISBN 0-89577-850-5. Most "how things work" books seem to be from the UK, as is this one. Just published in 1997, it is very carefully illustrated and on a quick examination (at a Learning Zone store at a Columbus shopping mall) seems to be accurate, pertinent, and perfectly suited to US readers.
The format is a thin book with big, illustrated pages. Most of the discussion is of modern industrial processes: papermaking (not the handicraft kind, but the real stuff), aircraft manufacture, newspaper publishing, building construction and water treatment. There are also several historical processes as well, e.g. medieval castle building and armor manufacture. Hasty spot checks revealed no errors within my realm of knowledge. My impression is that this short book packs a lot into a small, attractive package, mostly by extremely clever layout and well-conceived illustrations.
3) _The Ancient Engineers_, L Sprague DeCamp.
Much of the history of technology involves works of civil engineering, like pyramids, canals, aqueducts, bridges and roads. Most modern civil engineering does not differ from the ancient work very significantly: the Romans used concrete and the Babylonians used asphalt. Thus an understanding of the ancient techniques gives a fairly good sense of how such work is done today.
The author is principally known for his writings in science fiction and adventure (he didn't create Conan the Barbarian like I thought, but he wrote several books in that genre) and is very entertaining. His research is meticulous and the book is very well organized and easy to read. There are a few line-drawing illustrations where needed.
The period covered is up to about the 15th Century, after which engineering became less empirical and more applied science. Since works of civil engineering are typically works of governments, a good deal of the material relates the structure of ancient nations to the structure of their roads, castles, and churches.
4) _The Great Iron Ship_, by James Dugan. This is the story of the _Great Eastern_, the first real ocean liner. Her lifespan covered a period of great technical and political significance: built to transport emigrants from England to Australia, she laid the first Atlantic telegraph cable. The technical details are carefully explained, and the story of the ship is skillfully related to the historical events of the time.
The writing is splendid: the author collaborated on several of Jacques Cousteu's books.
5) _American Science and Invention_, by Mitchell Wilson.
A large-format, finely-illustrated book which you'll generally find falling to pieces on the quarto shelves of your library, this history of technology from Colonial times to the 1930's was one of the great influences of my youth. The book richly deserves to be reprinted: the original edition was apparently bound using defective materials.
Wilson was a physicist who took up writing out of his fascination for the human aspects of science. The text is largely a technically-oriented collection of biographies of scientists and inventors. The illustrations include contemporary paintings, newspaper engravings, and patent drawings.
6) _Big Red_, author not recalled. I've had no luck finding out who actually wrote this: there are at least two other books by this name, neither of which is the one I'm talking about. I think its name might have been changed when they published the paperback edition I read.
One of that rare breed, the technically-oriented novel. It is a lightly-fictionalized account of the building of the Hoover Dam. The title is a reference to the Colorado River. The technical details are carefully researched and great attention is paid to the management aspects of a great construction project as well as the historical context of the dam.
7)_American Heritage of Invention and Technology_, a quarterly periodical published by Forbes.
This is an offshoot of _The American Heritage_ and a fairly unusual magazine. There is only one advertiser: General Motors. The articles are gloriously illustrated as only _American Heritage_ can do them, the paper is thick and glossy, and the articles are generally fascinating. Editorially, the emphasis is on the history of American technology, often very recent technology at that: aerospace and computers are well represented. Occasionally there will be an unfortunate foray off into the wilderness of the philosophy of science and technology, but all in all the magazine is worth reading and keeping.
8) _Weapons_, by Edwin Tunis
A good book for younger readers. It covers the history of weaponry from stone axes to nuclear weapons, and with it a good deal of the history of Western civilization. Superb illustrations.
9) _The World Book Encyclopedia_
Don't laugh. The encyclopedia should be anybody's first stop when researching a technical topic, and the _World Book_, copied word-for-word by generations of students the night before the report was due, does a particularly good job of explaining technology.
10) _The Trustee From the Toolroom_, by Nevil Shute (aka Nevil Shute Norway.)
The author's most famous book was _On the Beach_, but his other novels are equally remarkable in combining a technical outlook with excellent storytelling. He was trained as an aeronautical engineer, and most of his books contain airplanes and engineers. This particular book tells a good story about a quiet man driven to impressive deeds by unusual circumstances. In the process, it explains a good deal of the subculture of people who build machines as a hobby, and covers a fair amount of technology as well.
The author is British, and wrote extensively about Britain and Australia. Thus some of his terminology is a bit unusual, but easily translatable. This and his other novels explore the relationship between technology and human beings. One particularly interesting effort, _Round the Bend_, addresses the role of religion in a technical society.
11) _How Math Works_, by C Vorderman, Reader's Digest Books, ISBN 0-89577-850-5
Another new book spotted at the Learning Zone, this is an examination of the application of mathematics to technological problems. Written for young readers, it contains good illustrations and quite a few experiments to try.
12) _Airport_, by Arthur Hailey.
Again, don't laugh. Much of Hailey's work has been made into generally rotten movies, but his books are carefully researched and generally very accurate from a technical point of view. His _The Moneychangers_ is regularly assigned to finance students to teach them in a painless manner how banks work. _Airport_ is about the aviation industry, and it covers the operations of an airport well enough to make the dreary places look completely different after you read the book. Other good Hailey books are _Wheels_, which covers the automobile industry, and _Overload_, which is an examination of the electric power industry. For adult readers. Dean Martin made an unlikely airline captain in the original screen version of _Airport_, but beyond that it's fairly true to the original novel.
Hailey is everywhere. Remember an old movie, much quoted in more recent films, in which both pilot and copilot get food poisoning? The stewardess goes back into the cabin and, trying not to disturb the passengers, asks if anybody knows how to fly an airplane. That was _Runway Zero-Eight_, an early Hailey novel.
13) War novels of every kind.
Your standard British submarine novel can be a good introduction to technology. For whatever reason, I've found very few technical errors in most war novels, and quite a bit of the action revolves around the machinery. _Ice Station Zebra_, famous for being Howard Hughes' favorite movie, covers a lot of the issues involved in more modern military technology.
CS Forester wrote superb military novels of both modern and past wars. His technical descriptions are very clear. Forester wrote the famous Horatio Hornblower series.
Brian Callison has written many World War II novels, plus one (_Sea Story_, highly recommended) about modern merchant shipping. I think Callison is also Alexander Kent, who wrote novels similar to CS Forester's Horatio Hornblower series.
Edward Beach wrote stories about modern nuclear submarines and those in World War II.
Rudyard Kipling wasn't an engineer, but he clearly understood technology and described some of its aspects splendidly in both verse and prose.
13) Alfred P Morgan, the father of us all, wrote a number of "boy's books" of electrical experiments that most of us old codgers recall with some affection. Some of the experiments aren't as suitable as perhaps they once were: one experiment describes the construction of an electric shock device and invites the young investigator to "see how much your friends can take." There are lots of illustrations and I want clothes like those some day. Kewl.
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Here's most of a note I got from Alfred P Morgan's granddaughter:
Thank you for the nice comment about my grandfather Alfred P Morgan. I have many of his books . I feel honored to have such an amazing person as a member of my family and wish that I knew this when he was still alive. He died in 1973 when I was in high school. At that time he seemed pretty weird always cooking up some experiment and always doing research for another book that he was writing . Actually, he wrote over 60 books, mostly in the field of radio and electronics but also pet books and aquarium books. He did all of his own research having all of the animals from the pet books living in his basement and always having an aquarium in each window of his house. His books were very easy to read and understand which was his gift to children. A few of them have been re-printed including the Boy Electrician by a company named Lindsay Publications 815-935-5353. (1913 edition) (http://www.lindsay.com)
He had three sons, which is why the books were always made for boys. The 70's editions were for boys and girls.
Best of luck to you in your endeavors. It sounds as if you have great ideas about teaching the world the right stuff. My children have always been allowed to take things apart and dig holes in the yard to see where they went. To the amazement of my neighbors both of my chidren are down to earth, inquisitive, bright, well-adjusted students...
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14) McCaulay, _The Way Things Work_, Houghton-Mifflin, ISBN0-395-42857-2, $30.00.
Everybody tells me about this book, and the CD, and the rest, so finally I found a copy. I wish I liked it better. Technically, everything's correct, but I'm puzzled by the context of the drawings. Here's a troop of medieval workmen building a giant electric typewriter. Huh? I suppose that the idea is to somehow cushion the hard edges of technology, which is accomplished in other venues by dressing up Bill Nye the Science Guy and his collegues in clown suits.
15) James Burke's _Connections_ series bears looking at, though I might be illicitly attracted to it by my interest in the history of technology rather than by any great relevance to the project at hand.
16) Forrest Mims III has written about the only generally-available texts with which an average sort of person can actually learn electronics. His stuff is, unfortunately, no longer sold through Radio Shack. But it is still available through http://www.forrestmims.com and is still modestly priced (_Getting Started In Electronics_, his comprehensive book on the subject, is about five bucks.) The lab projects therein use Radio Shack parts, or parts that you could get at either Radio Shack or a surplus outfit like http://www.allcorp.com. If you look at the prices for everything you could possibly buy to complete Mims' labs, it'll be obvious that nobody's making a lot of money off of this deal. Ages 12 to ninety can benefit. I use Mims' circuits in my demonstrations.
17) The Way Science Works, Macmillan, ISBN 0-02-860822-9, $30.
No author is listed, for some reason--it's just Macmillan. This is a big, colorful, thick, heavily-illustrated British book that pretty well encompasses most of the shortcomings of the genre. The section on aircraft is concerned with "fly-by-wire," not how you'd fly most aircraft, or why one might wish to apply automation to the process. There's also a thorough treatment of the magnetically-levitated train, whose perfection and general adoption has been eagerly awaited for the past thirty years.
There's a two-page treatment of the video recording camera, which is pretty short for the most complex piece of consumer equipment ever sold. More space is devoted to computers, but the same problem remains. Now it's patently impossible to give a proper treatment of complex electronic devices in such a general text, but the attitude reflected in this book seems to be pretty un-apologetic, not admitting that the student would have to delve considerably further into digital electronics or optics to have a good understanding of the product under discussion. Nope, they say: here it is!!! This is pretty much the attitude we see at the corporate science museums these days. There's a fear there of scaring the kids and admitting that we haven't told 'em the whole story.
18) Man the Builder, by Gosta Sandstrom This is an old coffee-table format book that was written by a Swedish tunnel engineer who's pretty sore about the fall of the Roman Empire. The technology is very clear, the history is fascinating, the writing is very good, and there are lots of illustrations. I read this maybe fifteen years ago and plan to renew the relationship if I can find a copy.
19) Machines, by Baker and Haslam, 1994, Thompson Learning, ISBN#156857-256-0
This childrens' book is part of a somewhat obscure series called "Make It Work!" It's confined to mechanisms which children are encouraged to build themselves. The designs are extremely clever--I particularly liked the gears made from corrugated cardboard--and the historical and technological context of each mechanism is concisely but thoroughly discussed. There is a high degree of technical integrity here: the authors are very careful to make only valid simplifications in the material.
20) Herbert S. Zim
I think I always wanted to be Herbert S. Zim. I lived on his childrens' science books when I was a pup in the 1950's and his work still stands up to the best of the genre. You'll find them scattered through the childrens' science section of your library. Zim also coordinated the Golden Nature Guides, which were small-format paperbacks about various sorts of plants and animals. I bought the one about spiders to see if it would help me overcome a phobia thereof. I still jumped, but I learned a lot about the beasties and calmed down somewhat.
21) The New Science of Strong Materials, J.E. Gordon
A glorious book. The author is a British aircraft designer who helped develop fiberglass-reinforced plastics. It's a highly technical book that happens to be extremely entertaining. And when you're done, you'll understand why an understanding of materials is essential to a mastery of technology, and you'll have a good start on it. This author apparently has two other books that I'll try to snag at some point.
22) Metals in the Service of Man, author also unrecalled.
Another splendid British book that runs through an introduction to metallurgy in an understandable and entertaining style. I'll get the author for this one, too. I learned a great deal from this one, but I'd suggest that you read entry (21) first--not as a prerequisite, but as an appetizer.
23)Automobile: The Inside Story, Frank Young, Gloucester 1982, 37pp, color, ISBN 531-03460-7
A British childrens' book that does a pretty comprehensive job of showing how automobiles work and how they're constructed. It happens to discuss the development of one of the Fiat cars which I think ultimately came to the US as the Yugo. But there's a good discussion of the automobile engine and transmisssion as well as modern manufacturing techniques. Some British terms (e.g.,bonnet and boot) are used, but not to excess. Adults would benefit from this sort of book, but it's hardly a dignified medium to teach them from. Therein lies the hook for my program.
24)Cranes, Dump Trucks, Bulldozers, and other building machines, Terry Jennings, Kingfisher 1993, 40pp, color, ISBN 1-85697-865-6
Still another British childrens' book, quite nicely Americanized. A comprehensive coverage of just about everything you'd see at a construction site, along with experiments for kids (and adults) to do at home that illustrate the principles of each machine. I learned a few things from this book myself: I never quite knew how those tall cranes built themselves as the building goes up. Fairly precise illustrations, though the more complex mechanisms seem a tad fuzzy in places. This is a problem in lots of books: it's not so clear that the author or illustrator knew how the device (in this case, an air hammer) works.
25) Science Fair Projects with Electricity & Electronics, Bob Bonnet and Dan Keen, Sterling, ISBN 0-8069-1300-2
I'm probably prejudiced against this book because I don't like the science fair format for teaching technical material: when you're learning how stuff works, it's pretty awkward to pose a formal hypothesis every time you go to a new topic. That's what they do in this book, and it's a bit strange at times.
The book has some 40 projects that might satisfy a science teacher who's forcing some poor kid to do a science fair project, but it's a poor way to teach the material and I'm very uncomfortable about some of the implied conclusions. There is, for example, an investigation of the static electric charge from a TV set's picture tube. That's fine, but it's packaged as an investigation of the harmful effects of sitting too close to the screen.
The book is recent, 1996, and it takes advantage of the fact that most kids have access to electronic devices unavailable to earlier generations, like a pair of cheap walkie-talkies or an electronic music keyboard. One good project has the kid use an AM radio as a lightning detector, and there's a reasonable attempt at a directional antenna using walkie-talkies and aluminum foil. Moreover, and we can be thankful for small favors, the text doesn't have any eco-political content. Unfortunately, many of the projects demand the use of a voltmeter, which I generally don't favor because they aren't particularly intuitive.
The authors and illustrator clearly have problems with electronic parts designation. One project specifies the use of a "thermistor" with neither a part number nor suggested source of supply. Since there are an infinite variety of thermistors (or so it seems when one is needed for a particular purpose,) this project will work only if the kid is extraordinarily lucky in his parts selection. The illustrations are very stylized and cartoon-like (the illustrator is clearly a devotee of R. Crumb), which is fun on one level but not very helpful in a technical textbook. Some of the components were very difficult to identify from the illustrations, and no other schematics are included.
LED's are used a good deal, but the authors are unaware that they aren't bilateral devices and won't work if hooked backwards in a circuit. They also don't know how IC's are designated: one parts list specifies "integrated circuit (such as Sylvania ECG-876) available through local TV repair shop." Sylvania dropped the ECG line of semiconductors at least fifteen years ago (it's now Philips) and TV repair shops wouldn't stock a specialized IC like this: it's a dedicated LED flasher, not something more universal like a 555 timer. Something called a "printed circuit mounting board" is also specified in the parts list, but it's not pictured and I kind of wonder what they're talking about.
This book is produced in the USA, which is rare for technical books these days, and I suppose that's just as well. The authors apparently know nothing about electronics construction--the lack of attention to vital details condemns most of the electronics projects--and have only a vague understanding of electricity in general.
26) The Secret Life of Machines, Tim Hunkin and Rex Garrod. A British television series from around 1989.
I don't know why I hadn't included this before. The Secret Life of Machines is, if anything, the inspiration for my program. Hunkin and Garrod are artists and sculptors, and their stuff is far more attractive than mine is ever likely to be. Tapes of the series are, I think, available from PBS or somewhere like that.
27) Airframe, Michael Crichton, Knopf, 1996 ISBN 0-679-44648-6
I was prepared to dislike this book because it seems to have been marketed as something that would scare the heck out of anyone who flies on an airliner--at least that was the impression I got from its displays at airport bookstores. It had to be, I assumed, a condemnation of the way airplanes were designed or something like that. Turns out that _Airframe_ is just the opposite. Very much in the spirit and style of Arthur Hailey's novels, it's the detailed description of the investigation of an airplane accident. It wasn't a crash, but the plane went out of control sufficiently to Cuisinart a few passengers who weren't buckled in properly. The evil forces here are the determinedly non-technical television people who try to make the incident into just the sort of condemnation of aircraft design I was concerned about. I learned a lot about airplanes and how they are built.
The Thomas Edison Book of Easy and Incredible Experiments, T.A. Edison Foundation, Wiley 1988, ISBN 0-471-62090-4
I don't know who the Thomas A. Edison Foundation is, but this is an exceptionally good book. I came across it in a high-school library--nobody seems to know where it came from. The experiments are practical and look like they'd be quite straightforward to perform. There's even a geiger counter in there. It's a book that's somewhat in the hallowed tradition of Alfred P Morgan (cf).
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(I'll work on this list and update it periodically. Suggestions are welcome: see the e-mail device at the end of this Web page.
How Things Work: A fundamental motivation for physical science in the general-science curriculum
Why do we teach science?
The major subjects in the public school curriculum were placed there for sound, practical educational and social reasons. We teach history to help our students avoid the mistakes of the past and to understand why the political world is structured the way it is. We teach mathematics to establish mental discipline and to prevent the student from being deceived in business dealings.
And we teach general science. Two of the disciplines therein are quite well-defined in purpose: biological and earth sciences help students understand how the world works, revealing in an orderly manner the relationships between living things, the structure of the heavens and the earth and the workings of our own bodies.
The third major component of a general science program is physical science--chemistry and physics. It's clear to any educator that these must be included in a general science program. But their practical purpose has been clouded by a number of issues. Can we define precisely why physical science is a good thing to teach?
Physical science in general science curricula:
In today's typical general science curriculum, physical science is a series of parlor tricks: make a volcano, make a battery out of a lemon, see how far a model rocket will go, blow a huge bubble. These alternate with rote memorization of simple machines, electrical demonstrations that start and end with series and parallel circuits and an electromagnet that can pick up paper clips, chemical reactions involving foodstuffs (e.g., iodine turns the starch in a potato blue,) and the inevitable Lives of Famous Scientists. We learn from a NASA video that liquid poured out of a jar in the orbiting Space Shuttle will turn into a floating blob and that the spacecraft gets very hot upon re-entry and are told that this is very important to know.
And so the physical science component lurches from topic to topic, without the centralizing purpose that give the earth sciences, mathematics, and social sciences their perceived legitimacy. I think that, at any point in the course of study, a student is justified in asking (politely, of course,) "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" In other subjects, and in the other sciences, the answer is fairly straightforward, but we currently don't seem to have a good answer in the case of physical science.
How we got here:
The situation probably dates back to World War II and the development of rocketry and the atomic bomb. The expansion and transformation of physics and chemistry from an academic and industrial pursuit into a high-priority military enterprise peaked in 1957 with the launch of the Sputnik. Between the end of the war and 1957, great advances had been made in the civilian industrial sector--dyes, plastics, synthetic fabrics, computation, structural engineering, engine design and metal fabrication--developments in aerospace technology largely overshadowed these advances in the public mind.
Thus when the Soviets appeared to have taken a great technological leap ahead of the West by the successful orbiting of Sputnik, tremendous pressure was placed upon schools to improve science and mathematics education. In retrospect, there doesn't seem to be much evidence of any great deficiency, but change of emphasis was made: schools started to teach physics and chemistry with the unstated but understood goal of training weapons scientists and technicians. The Physical Science Study Committee was established, and US science education was given a substantial increase in funding, all in the name of military preparedness.
Ten years later, 1967-1977:
The same students who grew up with Sputnik and PSSC went on to protest the Vietnam War and the "military-industrial complex" that seemed to support it. And when these students became teachers, physical science became politically incorrect for the next twenty years. Physics and chemistry survived as high school courses because they were required by the states, but the physical science component of general science was minimized almost out of recognition in general science programs. Chemistry became a preparatory course for vocational programs in medical technology or as a means to test for industrial pollution. Physics, with its egghead reputation and military connotations, could go nowhere but into space: the Space Shuttle and astronomy predominated along with a few attempts to relate it to sports and amusement park rides.
1980's and 1990's:
There has been some easing of the political pressures that shaped general science curricula in the 1980's, but other factors have intervened. Since 1990, funds that might have supported both physics and chemistry have largely been diverted into computer training. The term "technology" has been co-opted by computers. And the physical sciences continue to find themselves scrambling to find an identity and a reason for being taught.
The situation today:
Thus, as in 1957, we have to ask ourselves precisely what it is that we want to accomplish by teaching science. We clearly do not wish to mint new scientists. There are few jobs in science, either academic or industrial, and despite the fervent wishes of NSF we don't have any great scientific wars to win. Most industrial research and development seems to have gone the software route, and this is undoubtedly the most efficient path for industry. But why should schools teach chemistry, basic mechanics, electricity, and heat transfer?
A proposed solution:
How Things Work is, as much as anything else, an answer to this question. We can teach physical science to understand how the man-made world works. Science is best taught using familiar things, and the familiar things we're surrounded by are, well, industrial. Public utilities, plastics, communications, building materials, cars--all these are products of the industry that we Boomers revolted against.
Moreover, technology--the _true_ technology of transportation, structures, materials, public utilities and computers--has largely gotten away from the average person, even the average engineering graduate. Nothing could have demonstrated the failure of this part of education better than the fear of massive industrial and utility shutdowns at the end of 1999. Virtually all of the concerns were the result of a basic misunderstanding of, well, how things work--how power and water are delivered, how automobiles run, how airplanes fly, and how communications systems are set up.
It's not new
This was not always the case. A good deal of the general science curriculum in past years was of a practical nature. The old texts showed, and students learned, how iron was made, the oxy- acetylene welding process, the fabrication of glass and rubber products, the transmission of electric power and the workings of a telephone exchange. These familiar, practical applications motivated the teaching of physical sciences.
The How Things Work program is a plan to do the same task with modern technologies. We're no longer surrounded and supported by iron, steam and coal, but by plastics and solid-state electronics. Properly taught, these are no more inaccessible to us than were steel and steam to our grandparents.
What I can do:
I have designed an apparatus-driven curriculum for a How Things Work-based science program. Much of the work is already done: about all that remains is to assure school administrators that integration of the program into the existing state science plan won't affect scores on the state proficiency examinations.
None of the demonstrations is particularly complex. Indeed, one of the prime design constraints of my demonstrations is the limitations of my own craftsmanship. None of it has been patented--at least not by me. It is my intention to leave the demonstrations in the public domain.
Neither miraculous, unique, original, nor totally comprehensive:
The greatest strength of How Things Work is, I think, mostly as a philosophy for the design of a physical science curriculum. It defines for teachers and students why physics, chemistry, and related areas are useful and interesting things to know and assures them that even the more mysterious devices and systems that seem to rule our lives are quite accessible at many levels.
Any good science teacher will be able to improve the demonstrations I've built and contribute lessons on the many technologies I've skipped. To encourage this, I've established a How Things Work discussion group via e-mail.
The name "How Things Work" isn't particularly original, either: it's shared by perhaps five other enterprises, including a physics text used at the University of Virginia. The Web URL howthingswork.com has been purchased by Marshall Brain's "How Stuff Works" project.
Unlike many engineers, I've never been much of a science fiction fan. If you want to find out how things work, which was always my chief concern, science fiction won't tell you. At worst, science fiction may be taken seriously and thus may promote pseudoscience. My particular concern here is for the very popular Star Trek. Apparently some people believe this stuff, and that's disturbing.
Though Star Trek hasn't been kind to either technology or education, it's excellent from an artistic standpoint.
Star Trek's military terminology and traditions are taken directly from any number of British steamship and fighting-sail novels, right down to the fact that the typical chief engineer on a steamship was Scottish. The steam engine was invented by Scots.
All this makes the books and movies excellent entertainment. But one shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of science in Star Trek is bogus. Very few science fiction authors have been able to keep their scientific integrity and still publish popular works. Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke have been the most successful in this regard.
There have been several articles and at least one book about the physics of Star Trek. These are generally marvels of diplomacy, containing as they do discussions of completely spurious notions by physicists who sound distinctly uncomfortable. Generally, the conclusion is that Star Trek is okay because it's good entertainment and might promote an interest in science in some people.
But Star Trek's science doesn't work. The distances and speeds cannot be attained, people can't be beamed up or down, there aren't any tractor beams or shields or photon torpedoes, and "phasor" is Charles Steinmetz' term for the rotating vector used to describe alternating current.
I think it is rather important for teachers to be emphatic on the following points:
1) We have never been visited by people from other planets.
2) Nothing of physical significance, including matter or energy or information, travels faster than the speed of light. Given the dimensions of the universe, this is a severe speed restriction.
3) We cannot move forward or backward in time.
4) You can't transport physical objects by means of radio waves.
5) There are a lot of people who would like to believe otherwise, but wishing does not equal reality.
This attitude can make a teacher a bit of a spoilsport in some contexts, but I think it's more important for the students to have the truth as a reference point as they're barraged by nominally serious claims by UFOlogists, tabloid headlines, the International Tesla Society, and some of the stranger features on The Learning Channel.
As long as I've got all this Web space, I might as well post a resume:
Mark Kinsler
512 E Mulberry St Lancaster, OH 43130
(740)687-6368
mkinsler1@earthlink.net
EDUCATION
Ph.D. (EE) Mississippi State U 1995 (high voltage)
M.S.E.E. U of Pittsburgh, 1988 (communications)
B.S.E.E. U of New Haven, 1980 (power systems, digital design)
EXPERIENCE
Technology interpreter since forever
Instructor or professor in science or engineering at various schools in and near Columbus, Ohio
Power systems editor, CRC Dictionary of Electrical Engineering
1996: instructor, Penn State U--McKeesport campus
1995: technician, Ohio U chemistry department
1994: visiting assistant professor, industrial technology, Ohio U.
1991-1994: graduate research assistant, Mississippi State U.
1989-1991: assistant professor, U of Southern Mississippi
1986-1989: assistant professor, Point Park College
1987-1988: visiting lecturer, U of Pittsburgh
1985-1986: instructor, Gateway Technical Institute (Pittsburgh)
1984-1985: instructor, Norwalk State Technical College,
1981: distribution engineer, Northeast Utilities, Norwalk, CT.
1969-1989: self-employed audio technician
1971: transmitter engineer, WTSO radio, Madison WI
LICENSING: Certified Electronic Technician, FCC First Class
PUBLICATIONS
"Van der Pauuw Contacts Used to Measure Resistivity in Composites", with L. V. Hmurcik, Bulletin of American Physical Society, Vol. 31, No. 6 (1986), p. 1116.
"Determination of Metal Fiber Orientation in Plastic-Metal Composites by Van der Pauuw's Technique", with L.V. Hmurcik, Bulletin of American Physical Society, Vol. 32, No. 3 (1987) p. 639.
"Van der Pauuw Measurement of Metal Fibre Orientation in a Plastic-Metal Composite", with L.V. Hmurcik and J. Patton, Journal of Materials Science, Vol. 23 (1988), pp. 1425-1430.
"Van Der Pauuw Measurements of Resistivity in Plastic/Metal Composites", with L. V. Hmurcik, Journal of Composite Materials, Vol. 22, No. 4, (April, 1988), pp. 360-371.
"The 1938 Los Angeles Clock Changeover Project," IEEE Power Engineering Review, June 1997
"A Damage Mechanism: Lightning-Initiated Fault-Current Arcs" IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, Vol 35, No. 1, Jan/Feb 1999.
"The Y1936 Problem" Winter, 2000, American Heritage of Invention and Technology
"Environmental Science: Food, Water, Energy" text/notes for Ohio Dominican University, 2002
Your questions and comments are welcome. The URL of this Web page is http://home.earthlink.net/~kinsler. Send e-mail to Mark Kinsler
More will follow. Deleted through severe misfortune and restored through the kindness of Dave Typinski and the How Things Work discussion group, March 5, 2001. This latest update was done on Aug 6, 2004.
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Never miss a class. Ever.
Do not get sick.
Never fail to do every problem of every assignment.
Organize your stuff as follows: For each course, buy a blank notebook from which pages cannot easily be torn, and resolve that no pages will ever be torn from it. This will contain both your lecture notes and the solutions to problems you do yourself. And buy a divided cardboard or plastic pouch in which you can store class handouts and loose papers like handed-back tests and assignments to be handed in. Dedicate each division to one course. Expect to have to replace the pouch after each term.
If you're required to hand in problem solutions, do the problems twice. The first version should go in your own notebook, along with all the failed attempts. The second should be a copy to hand in.
Never fail to do the reading assignments. Ever.
Write out your work for every problem clearly. Show every step, even if your calculator has 64 Mb of memory.
Use a pen and cross mistakes out with a single line. Don't ever try to erase things.
Always draw a picture for each problem and label it clearly.
Always prepare for each class. That means have a look at what's coming up in the text or notes after you've done the assignments.
To study for tests, do problems. Write down any formulas each time you use them and you'll know them by heart without any further effort.
Always carry: pen, notebook, calculator, watch, floppy disk, pouch for handouts.
If you're falling asleep in class, it generally means that you're scared, not bored. Catch up on your work and stay on top of stuff and you'll stay awake.
Always ask for help, but make sure that you've done your part before you go to the teacher. This means that you must work out the offending problem neatly up to the point where you lose the trail.
There will be times that the professor is unavailable and you're really stuck. In such cases, it's reasonable to look to other sources, as in other physics books or the Web, for answers. Your professor might even suggest some alternate resources if you ask. But it's important not to make a habit of this: you'll very likely spend more time trying to get used to the approach taken in other teaching materials than it would take you to puzzle out your own textbook, and there's a very real danger of getting yourself thoroughly confused. If you're having difficulty in a course--and you will, most assuredly--do _not_ assume that your difficulties will all be resolved by another textbook, a Web page, or a newsgroup. All that really ever works is to review and to practice solving problems.
Co-operative study probably has some advantages, but teamwork in college is highly over-rated unless you're somehow going to cooperate with your friends when you take the tests. In general, do your problems by yourself. If you participate in group study sessions, run these as help sessions where each of you can teach something to the others and thus learn it yourself.
Do not watch television. The re-runs will be available after the term is over. Give your video games to your little brother.
Resign from chat rooms, e-mail lists, on-line gaming, Web surfing, and other massive consumers of time. Use the computer for academic purposes only. Let your long-time e-mail correspondents think you died or something.
Do not try to substitute computer graphics ability or other presentation skills for substance in laboratory reports. If something didn't work, use your discussion to analyze why it did not, what you did wrong, what you should have done, and what you learned as a result. Never fudge data: whatever you read, you record honestly and go with those readings in your report. Some experiments are designed to have non-obvious results.
Learn to draw a good graph, properly labeled and scaled.
Always do your own work, especially in laboratory settings. That means preparing your own report on your own, even if the data was collected by someone else.
Always prepare for a lab: know what you're going to do and how you're going to do it.
Never miss an opportunity to demonstrate your integrity as a student and as a person. A reputation for honesty will serve you far better than any course grade.
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To make a good graph, follow these suggestions:
1) Every graph should have a fairly detailed title. Here's a template:
"(Vertical axis quantity) vs. (horizontal axis quantity) for (experiment)"
for example,
"Flow rate vs temperature for molasses flowing through a 6 millimeter hole in January."
2) Scale the quantities so that the data range takes up most of the available space on the axes. The idea is to make the graph as big as possible, but not too big for your paper.
3) Show the quantity (like flow rate) and the units (like gallons per day) on the appropriate axes.
4) Make a scale for each axis:
Note that you don't have to number each division.
5) Your origin, which is where the axes intersect, doesn't have to be (0,0) unless you're using both positive and negative portions of the axes.
6) For heaven's sake, use pencil and erase well.
7) Assume that the entire curve is smooth. Don't draw straight, jointed line segments between your data points unless you have good reason to believe that other data points could occur on them.
8) Draw your data points a size that reflects the accuracy of your data. If the accuracy was poor, a big data balloon is better than a tiny data point.
9) Don't extrapolate unless there's a good reason to do so. Your curve should be defined by the data points you've measured in the lab. If the curve extends beyond these, you're speculating!