Sketchy Science!

Check out these drawings from the Sketchy Science Contest at the October 20 Secret Science Club . . . robots, future evolution, pair bonding, UFOs, and beer . . .

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A Novel History of Psychology

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BOOK REVIEW: Vanessa L. Ryan, Thinking Without Thinking in the Victorian Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) ——————————————— Science and (the study of) literature are growing closer together. From  Stanford's Literary Lab  and a recent New York Times piece on the Digital Humanities  to reading Austen in an MRI machine  and so-called " Literary Darwinism ," there's both controversy and a certain cache (and maybe even a little cash) in bringing scientific techniques and the study of literature closer together. This is your brain on Austen ( http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/september/images/mri_reading_news.jpg ) So what about the study of science and the study of literature? History of science, say, and literary history? The short answer is that it's happening in English departments, but not so much in History. Why? More on that below. Work on the interplay between science and literature has been dominated by scholars of the Victorian novel. G...
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Scientific Comparison Writing

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My friend, Kip Bisignano, (a Delta/FOSS Sales Rep for Virginia, Maryland and DC) came to play with my class this week. We are presenting together at the Virginia Association of Science Teachers (VAST) in November on reading strategies and science. So yesterday, we used the book and the strategies with the class. The results were amazing! We started the day by having the kids read the book: Blue Whales and Buttercups by Seeds of Science. It is an excellent book that has the students reading about how animals and plants are similar and different. They eventually get to the point that they are all related - due to the fact that all living things are made up of cells. My students loved the book and we had a great discussion! Next we reread page 12 and 13 and brainstormed how the animals fox and wolf are similar and different using a great graphic developed by Kip. You can see how my student Darlene was able to compare two characteristics easily using this forma...
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The Strength of American Materials -- An Environmental History of Engineering Science

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From the Franklin Institute's General Report on the Explosions of Steam-Boilers     One of the many pleasures of writing "Tocqueville's Ghost" for HSNS ( discussed on AmericanScience here ) was revisiting Ann Johnson's  “Material Experiments: Environment and Engineering Institutions in the Early American Republic,” from Osiris  in 2009. It's a fascinating essay and makes a convincing case for rethinking the sort of science and engineering going on at West Point and in the Corps of Engineers in the early nineteenth century. Johnson shows how the West Point/Corps project adapted the French Polytechnique model in research as well as teaching, creating in the process a very productive "research school." She shows how prominent men of science like Alexander Dallas Bache carried on later celebrated work (most prominently his steam-boiler experiments, above) that owed much to their time working with Joseph Totten and the Corps of Engineers at Fort Adams. ...
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