Tag Archives: science

Total Rock Star

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People might think rocks are totally boring and just sit there. But this book proves them all wrong! Turns out when it comes to eras, rocks win the time travel marathon, hands down! Why be sedentary when you can be…wait for it…sedimentary?

We read Old Rock (is not boring) by Deb Pilutti (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020). Tall Pine, Spotted Beetle, and Hummingbird are convinced that Old Rock is boring. He doesn’t go anywhere, see anything, or do anything. But Old Rock explains how many millennia ago, he flew from a volcano, gazed at dinosaurs, rode a glacier, tumbled down a ridge, and watched a forest grow around him. It’s all about perspective!

You’ll need:

  • 1 small tissue box
  • 2 foam beads
  • A short piece of bamboo skewer (ours was 5″)
  • A 7″ paper plate
  • One time travel wheel template, printed on 8.5″ x 11″ paper
  • Tin foil
  • 1 rock
  • Box cutter, scissors, glue and tape for construction
  • Markers for decorating

We loved the idea of time passing for Old Rock, so we created this simply time machine project! Begin by placing a small tissue box on its side. Use a box cutter to cut a 1″ wide space in the sides and top of the box (leave the bottom intact):

Next, glue a foam bead to the center top of the box. No foam bead handy? Use a small snippet of drinking straw instead. Repeat with a second bead on the opposite side of the box. The bamboo skewer should thread easily through them, creating an axle for your paper plate:

Now for your spinning time travel wheel! Cut the template from the paper and color. A special shout out summer intern, Malaysia for her volcano, dinosaur, and glacier artwork! You’ll notice the final panel on the template is blank. That’s where kids can draw their own homes.

Use the bamboo skewer to poke a hole through the template and the paper plate. Thread the skewered plate through the foam beads to create your rotating time travel wheel like so:

Decorate the outside of the box with tin foil (we offered embossed foil paper and sparkle stems as well). If you’d like the “Totally Rockin’ Time Machine” sign, here is the template. Make sure not to cover the open mouth of the tissue box open – that’s your time travel machine’s viewfinder. Finally…the rock!

We didn’t have a supply of rocks handy, so we crafted these out of model magic. Just add grey craft paint and wiggle eyes and you have one very charismatic rock. Place the rock inside the time machine, spin the wheel, and watch the millennia fly by!

This book went over SO well at story time! It’s lovely, well-paced, and exciting. It’s no surprise it’s a multiple award-winner. The kids were absolutely riveted. But we were further delighted when, completely randomly, a youngster arrived with a couple rocks of his own! You can see them in the intro image, but we wanted to give his special rocks a portrait of their very own:

 

See SPOT Play

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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:

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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

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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 :)