Tag Archives: science

See SPOT Play

Posted on by

See SPOT walk, see SPOT climb, see SPOT dance! This spring, we had the opportunity to host a very unusual guest at story time!

Meet SPOT, a four-legged robot created by Boston Dynamics. He lives on Princeton University campus and is part of a course titled “Robots in Human Ecology: A Hands-on Course for Anthropologists, Engineers, and Policymakers.” SPOT arrived with an amazing team of undergraduate handlers, plus plenty of plush toys to share.

Vivian Chen, Marisa Hirschfield, Aaron Serianni, Vasumathi Venkat, Zoe Rhodes

We started the program reading Boy + Bot, written by Ame Dyckman and illustrated by Dan Yaccarino (Knopf Books, 2012). The story is about the playful interactions between a boy and a robot, which fit perfectly with SPOT’s dynamic nature. After the book concluded, we had a short, 10 minute design activity in which young future engineers drew their own personal robots, and earned a paw print approval sticker from Team SPOT:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Then it was time for the big show as SPOT entered the gallery!

The students did a fantastic job putting together a demo, answering endless questions from the audience, and just being enthusiastic about sharing what they study. One of my favorite parts was when they demonstrated how SPOT can be programmed to read and follow fiducials, which are basically QR codes representing numbers. SPOT scans the code, finds the number, and then completes a pre-programmed action associated with the number (like moving forward, turning, or extending his arm).

I asked Zoe Rhodes (seen above) what was the best lesson she learned from SPOT this semester. She replied:

“I would say the best lesson I learned from working with SPOT is the importance of making mistakes. We love it when things work out but most of the time we’re dealing with mistakes. But as I’ve worked with SPOT I’ve realized that these mistakes teach us so much more about ourselves and our capabilities than when things go correctly. It sounds a little cliche to say we learn from our mistakes but that’s really what robotics (and most things in life) are about. SPOT may fall down but we pick him right up and try again. In my opinion this makes the end product so much more fulfilling and exciting.”

I posed the same question to Vivian Chen, who added:

“The best lesson I learned from working with SPOT is patience goes a long way when working with robots and new technology!”

It was a truly magical story time, THANK YOU so much to the students and to professors Alexander Glaser and Ryo Morimoto for putting together such a tremendous program!

Ode to the Toad

Posted on by

Last week, we delved into the fascinating world of alchemy at the current , “Through the Glass Darkly: Alchemy and the Ripley Scrolls 1400-1700” exhibit. In our journeys, however, we did notice one thing. Both in history and alchemy, toads get no love.

In alchemy, the toad represents the “prime matter” an alchemist would use at the start of an experiment. Prime matter was the humble, plain, basic, ugly stuff that would eventually transform into greatness. Unfortunately, the toad was chosen to represent this undesirability. As expressed in this natural history book from 1809:

A Natural History of British Quadrupeds, Foreign Quadrupeds, British Birds, Water Birds, Foreign Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, Serpents, & Insects. Alnwick, England. W. Davison. 1809.

Well, this makes us sad. Toads are great! So the Cotsen team dug into the special collections vaults to find some awesome, jolly, and sweet historical representations of toads to share with you today…

Goldsmith’s History of Fishes, Reptiles and Insects & c. Thos. Tegg & Son. ; London. ; Smith, Elder, & Co. 1838.

Sad garden toad : and other stories / by Marion Bullard. New York : E. P. Dutton & Co., c1924.

Toad / by Carol Cunningham. [Mill Valley, Calif.] : Sunflower Press, 1983.

Die Honriche : ein Märchen / von Christian Bärmann. München : Hugo Schmidt, c1923.

Bronze toad coin. Place: Luceria, Apulia, Italy. Earliest date: -300. Latest date: -280

Special thanks to Cotsen intern, August Roberts, for researching this post :)

A Library for the Birds

Posted on by

A heads up for our readers…in addition to eggs and nests, this post contains multiple images of bird taxidermy, which some may find unsettling. If you do, no problem! Skip this particular post, and we’ll see you on the blog next Tuesday!

Deep within Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, there is a plain door with a fairly innocuous sign mounted nearby:

Behind that plain door, however, is an amazing treasure trove of natural history. It’s the Princeton Bird Collection, which contains a taxidermy catalog of over 6,000 bird specimens, some of which are over 150 years old! Many were collected by William Earl Dodge Scott, who was appointed Curator of the Department of Ornithology in 1879.

Princeton’s bird room contains a multitude of hulking gray metal cabinets. While I’m used to our library’s special collections cataloged and ordered on regular bookshelves, the bird room’s cabinets open to reveal horizontal wooden drawers containing various specimens. These collections are available for teaching and research, including the Stoddard Lab’s research on avian coloration and morphology.

The drawers also contain nests and eggs, which are similarly laid out for researchers:

There are larger nests as well, including this amazing one that I’m pretty much ready to curl up and take a nap inside:

Beyond the drawers are a fantastic assortment of standing taxidermy, both large and small. Below are just a few the staff unwrapped for me to photograph…from top left to bottom…an emu, ground hornbill, kiwi, barn owl, macaw, snowy owl, and golden eagle.

And check out this! It’s a quetzal, which hails from Central America. It was was considered sacred by the Ancient Mayas and Aztecs. The photo really doesn’t do it justice. The coloring on the bird is simply exquisite.

The bird collection also contains the documents and journals of Charles Roger, a professor of ornithology at Princeton from 1920-1977. The journals, which he began as an eager boy of eleven and continued until he was eighty-four are a fascinating and informative body of work. You can read more about the digitization of his works, and find some awesome coloring pages from our special collections here (as well as a couple fun bird projects!).

A very special thank you to Cassie Stoddard, Assistant Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, for arranging for me to photograph the bird room, and answering my questions about ducks!