Seeker

McDevitt, Jack. Seeker. 2006, New York, Ace.

Chase Kolpath, the narrator of Jack McDevitt’s novel Seeker, is a grave robber. So is her boss, Alex Benedict. They’re good at it, too, but prefer to think of themselves as antiquities dealers.

Alex and Chase have made some significant finds during their careers, and have collected both friends and enemies along the way. Now they are on the trail of the biggest find of their careers and somebody wants to stop them, badly enough to kill them.

Their introduction to the case arrives with an old plastic cup with ancient lettering, brought to their office for appraisal by Amy Kolmer, a woman obviously ignorant of its true value but hoping for a quick sale. Analysis of the cup reveals it to be approximately 9,000 years old. The lettering is in an ancient language known as English, and their AI (artificial intelligence) gives an initial translation of Searcher or Explorer as the name of the ship it must have come from.

Alex Benedict is a very successful antiquities dealer. If there is one 9,000 year-old cup from a ship, there is a chance of more. All he has to do is find the ship.

Alex makes the decisions, but it seems Chase does all the legwork, and there is plenty of legwork involved. How did the cup come into Amy’s hands? What was the real name of the ship? Where did it sail from? Most important of all, where is it now?

An historian is able to tell them the ship’s name — the Seeker, one of two ships belonging to the ancient Margolians. Nine-thousand years before, the Seeker had left an America mired in religious and political oppression for a world where “not even God will be able to find us.” They were never heard from again. Their disappearance became one of the most enduring myths of human colonization, and one cup from that lost colony was sitting in Alex Benedict’s safe. He now had an even greater prize than just a ship full of treasure. He was on the trail of the Margolians, and he intended to be the one to finally answer the question of what had happened to the lost colony.

Eventually they find the ship, and another set of mysteries, and that’s where the science comes in.

Chase spends several chapters hunting down clues as to where the ship currently is. Searching through old ship logs and questioning owners of the cup over the previous 30 years may not seem like science, but it is. A large part of any scientific investigation is the gathering of evidence.

Among the bits and pieces Chase uncovers is evidence that the actual discoverers of the Seeker were killed in an earthquake and resulting avalanche 30 years previous. They had been with Survey, and had spent the twelve years following their retirement from Survey returning to the same location in space again and again, with no record of where they had gone beyond the incomplete memories of their daughter, a young girl at the time of the accident. Was it someplace they had found during their time with Survey? Finding the answer to that requires learning something about how to set up an efficient flight plan, then comparing that plan to possible variations that might account for a shift to study a G-class star at the end of its hydrogen burning cycle, a type that was of particular interest to them. The deviation tells Chase where to look for the Seeker.

The Seeker is found, full of dead colonists, mostly children. Eric theorizes that it appears they were trying to escape some sort of catastrophe. There are no live Margolians, and the only planet that once might have sustained human life now has an extreme orbit creating long winters where humans could not survive. Investigation of the Seeker reveals that many original parts had been replaced with those from its sister ship, the Bremerhaven. An empty space dock is also found, but the Bremerhaven is not. So a new question—what happened to the Bremerhaven?

What if a comet, or some other object, had hit the planet or passed nearby? Could it have caused the changes in the orbit of their suspected colony world? How big would it have to be? When would it have happened? Would the colonists have had enough notice to plan an escape? Could there have been two escape plans, one for the majority of the colonists, with another, less risky, plan to get their precious children back to Earth? If yes, where did they go with the Bremerhaven, when it no longer had star-flight capability? Where were they now? This time a friend, and her knowledge of astrophysics, provides the answers they need. How she does it, and what they find afterwards, you’ll need to read the book to learn. It’s a good read, and you’ll learn a bit about the movement of planetary bodies, too.

One more mystery they solve before the end — they also find out who’s trying to kill them, and why.

[Reviewed by Donna]

Virtual experiments from Kinetic Books

Supplier: Kinetic Books, http://www.kineticbooks.com.

One of the challenges in tackling the declining popularity of science subjects throughout education, or seeking to increase the scientific literacy of those who will not be scientists, is how to make experimental science concepts accessible, fun and relevant. Tapping into the skills and environments which young people already inhabit is one very good way to tackle that challenge.

Kinetic Books offer a system of online or CD based textbooks and virtual labs; I was particularly interested in the Virtual Labs, and concentrated mainly on those. The system is explicitly designed for learning across a range of physics topics, but the way they are presented makes it very easy to incorporate selections from the material into other courses too. Mathematics, of course, is an obvious beneficiary, but scientific thinking components can be introduced or strengthened within other areas from social studies through critical thinking and public understanding of science to art history.

There is a core of instructional material, with good use of hypertext sidebars offering expanded information plus frequent check and stimulus questions. There are also links to material elsewhere, and graphically simulated experiments. It could be used as a self study resource pure and simple; there will be contexts in which that is appropriate, but for me the strength lies in the ease with which bite sized parts can be used to enrich other approaches.

The levels of mathematics involved encourage this second view. Learners do not need calculus, but are expected to be comfortable and fluent in manipulation of inverse quadratics. The interactive simulations, on the other hand, could be used alone to develop intuitive understanding at any level from infant school upward. Selecting portions in this way, I’ve experimented successfully with learners aged from 8 to 34. There is also the question of national differences in curriculum; British teachers would find frequent discontinuities between US and UK content if they tried to work exactly to KB’s structure without adaption.

For me, the simulations are the real centre. Using graphics to good effect they provide the opportunity for hands on experiment with a range of models which are difficult or impossible to set up physically, and hard to observe reliably.

The motion of a simple projectile can be modelled easily enough using a bouncing ball, but monitoring the velocity and position of that ball with any precision requires either video recording or specialised equipment and lots of time. Getting access to a helicopter is usually both difficult and expensive. Orbital mechanics are entirely beyond any realistic classroom or lecture theatre environment. Using Kinetic Books’ virtual physics lab, all three become very quick and trivially easy to explore, with unlimited reruns allowing deep exploration in the time needed just to set up a ball bouncing experiment.

The simple projectile is modelled as a cannon ball (one dimensional motion having already been covered beforehand). First it rolls out of the muzzle and falls vertically to ground. Then, by adjusting the muzzle velocity, the learner attempts to drop it into a pile of sand some distance away - unsuccessful attempts remaining on the ground where they land, as markers, while trial and error brings subsequent shots closer and closer until the sand pile is scattered by a direct hit.

The cannon starts in a fairytale Arthurian style castle, then later appears on a globe as Newton’s Cannon for the first introduction to orbital and escape velocities. After that, it is replaced by the moon - which, in a game style setup, must be restored to orbital velocity before it falls and destroys the Earth. Further simulations involve docking of two spacecraft on different orbits, the twin moons of Mars, and so on. The orbits concerned are not simple geocentric circles, either - Deimos, for instance, changes its elliptical motion in relation to both Mars and Phobos, its velocity visibly changing between perigee and apogee.

I’ve concentrated on projectile motion because it is a key part of the freely available trial material, but there are plenty of other topics - waves, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, light and optics - at levels from the concept of measurement to special relativity and quantum or nuclear physics.

Pricing is realistic in comparison to other resources, and can be managed in various ways to suit different usages - even light use will justify the expenditure on perpetual licences, and individual private copies are affordable by any student who already buys course books. The experiments rely on Java, Quicktime and Flash, but those are free downloads. I hit an initial problem with some of them not displaying correctly, but response from Kinetic Books to my call for help was prompt and effective - the solution is a simple tick box in Quicktime’s setup.

Nothing in this world is ever perfect, and a review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning a couple of minor reservations, and the textbook entry on SI units illustrates both.

The importance of “powers of ten” is presented, and 1000 metres in a kilometre is given as an example (though this is an American text, so be prepared for US spellings of “meters” and “kilometers”). The principle of ten to the power three as a standard spacing, however, is not made clear without following further links.

Then there is the embedding within a wider, nonscience cultural context. This is one of the things I really like about Kinetic Books, and a reason why I would recommend them, but it has its tightropes and pitfalls. For instance, while I am very glad to see the origins of the SI set in the larger picture of revolutionary France, I might have preferred students to decide for themselves, rather than be told, that the “revolutionaries were a little extreme (as revolutionaries tend to be)”.

But, I repeat, these are minor details in a well designed and thought out whole which I recommend.

I’m very grateful to Donna (see contributors page) for pointing me towards these resources.

Supplier: Kinetic Books, http://www.kineticbooks.com.

[Contributed by AbsentCat]

Sunstorm

Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter. Sunstorm. 2005, London, Gollancz. ISBN 9780575078017

This isn’t a book about computing or computers, but computers and computing are behind everything that happens in it. It’s a really cool book, even though my English teacher lent it to me. In fact, it’s the second book in a series (the first one, Time’s Eye, is cool too, but doesn’t belong in this review).

The sun is going to flare out and destroy everything on the Earth - not just humans but all life, even bacteria. Mostly, the book is about how this happened and how people try to prevent it. You don’t have to know anything about the science or the computing to enjoy it, but you pick them up along the way without realising you’re learning them.

There’s this weird genius on the moon who uses computers to do a load of maths to let everyone know that the sun is going to flare. That’s one of the ways computing comes into it, because he builds something called a computer model which lets him visualise what’s going to happen to the sun. I didn’t know about computer models before, and you don’t have to know about them, but I got really interested and read about them. His model doesn’t only tell him what’s going to happen though - he runs it backwards, as well, and figures out why it’s going to happen. Then you get a different sort of computer model, and that shows how a huge planet like Jupiter was catapaulted across billions of kilometres of space using gravity wells (I didn’t know what gravity wells were either - that’s another cool idea I learned from this book and then looked up afterwards).

But there’s other sorts of computing, too, not just maths and stuff. The internet has sort of grown up, and become an artificial intelligence, and been recognised as a legal person called Aristotle after an ancient Greek bloke. Then there’s another internet on the moon, and that’s not so big or complicated but it’s intelligent too and it’s called Thales. And finally there’s the huge sunshade they build to protect the earth and it has to be run by a big intelligent computer as well, so that becomes a person called Athena.

I don’t think I’m ever going to be an astronomer, or a physicist, or an army officer or a weird genius, or a mathematician. But this book made me realise that you don’t have to be a scientist to learn science and find it exciting, and that maths isn’t just boring numbers it can be used to do and understand all sort of exciting stuff. I can be someone who understands what those people are talking about. For instance, I stopped ignoring my maths teacher, and started talking to him, and he explained several things in the book using a computer. I was able to watch the big planet being catapaulted across space, and I could change things to see how they affected where the planet went. And my physics teacher used a computer to show me what Lagrange points are. (The big intelligent sunshade had to be on a Lagrange Point, where there is no gravity - there are five Lagrange Points round every planet or moon, and they’re an amazing idea, you can hover on them with almost no fuel, and I understand three of them now even if I couldn’t do the maths myself yet). You can find out about Lagrange points at Wikipedia

Because of this book I’ve started paying attention in maths, physics and biology, and found that they are exciting if you listen to what they are about instead of just assuming that they are boring. And I’ve started learning about computers, and what they can do, and the science programs that help me to learn about how the universe works.

One of the things I like is that several of the important characters are women, not just men like most books: the American president, the European prime minister, the British Astronomer Royal. So if you’re a girl you can see a future in this sort of exciting science for yourself even if the world doesn’t end! One of the women, an army officer called Bisesa Dutt who is the main person in book one and then helps to save the world in book two, is also British Asian like me which is better still.

There’s one slightly gross bit, in the middle, giving too much information about how you have sex in orbit, but it’s only one page and you can skip over it without missing anything.

[Reviewed by Lakshmi]

Kaylie & Matt investigate latent heat of fusion

At the time of this story, in 2001, I was a propationary year teacher. Encouraged to use open-ended experiment as a teaching method, I asked my class of ten year old year-5 pupils to investigate what happens over time to water placed in the freezer compartment of a refrigerator.

Each was given a spike-and-dial thermometer, and there were also five Xemplar PocketBooks (small, relatively inexpensive, rebadged Psion handheld computers; many similar machines are available now) available on a first-come, first served basis.

The PocketBook offer was taken up on only one machine - by Kaylie and Matt, a friendship-pair living in the same street. Assessed as being close to the bottom of the class ability range, their motivation for volunteering seemed a mixture of laziness and novelty interest. Accustomed to paper and coloured pens myself, I paid little attention to the low IT take-up.

Observation sheets were prepared in class, the plotting of results on graph paper discussed and practised. Matt and Kaylie sought help with design of a spreadsheet and, by the end of the lesson, had a computerised record form with automatic, auto-scaled plotting. Most of the pupils were, at this stage, interested in the experiment and eager to get started. I advised thermometer readings at roughly 15 minute intervals, then sent them home to experiment.

When they returned after the weekend, the difference in educational outcomes between paper and spreadsheet was marked.

Data were patchy, invariably oversampled in the first hour or so but increasingly sparse thereafter. Plotting had generally been abandoned early on. It seemed that my foray into experiential learning was a failure.

Kaylie and Matt, however, had been drawn by the automatic plot into enthusiastic continuous monitoring of the temperature curve. Matt said, in his write up: “we thot the flat bits was weird, so we looked then to see what it looked like. Then we looked again ever time it moved again.”

Conclusions drawn by most of the pupils were limited to a single figure (although it varied considerably from pupil to pupil) for the time taken freeze solid. Kaylie, having watched the data assemble, said that the water “nearly froze in about two hours, but then it stopped and thought about it for a long time.” I prompted with questions about what happened before and after the water froze; most of the class said “nothing” but Matt disagreed, saying that it “jiggled about”; Kaylie added that it “kept stopping and starting.”

The pair asked permission to import their handheld data into a desktop spreadsheet for examination during their lunch hour. Returning later, I was startled to find that these two supposedly low-ability pupils had entered all of the class data on their own initiative, plotting multiple graphs for comparison with their own. In an impromptu presentation to their class mates, they took over my role in the lesson to showed considerable insight into the probable significance of similarities and differences between the graphs. They had also merged the sheets (inventing x-wise data transformation in the process) and were eager to discuss the implications of model which they perceived in the resulting scatter graph. I had learned a lesson of my own; I now start any similar activity from computerised methods, rather than working up to them.

[contributed by Chandra]

Handheld computers in the classroom

Handheld computers don’t replace laptops but they do have several advantages for many classroom and fieldwork applications.

• They are less expensive. A modest model perfectly capable of hosting science software can be bought retail for around £60 or €90, at the time of writing; education and/or bulk discounts pull that down further. This means that more of them can be placed in student of pupil hands for the same investment - roughly ten handhelds for the price of one laptop.
• They are small and light which encourages instant, intuitive their use at the classroom desk, on the lab bench, during field trips, at home, and so on.
• With suitable software they can mimic a range of popular scientific calculators (graphing or otherwise, as preferred). The computer itself is similar in cost to such calculators, the software often free or inexpensive from sources such as PalmGear or Handango. Unlike the hardware calculator, the software is upgradable for little or no cost.
• They can make software such as database managers more manageable and user friendly.
• In some respects they resemble cellphones, which increases accessibility and appeal for young users. They also, for the same reason, encourage exploration of the serious, education relevant potential of newer “smart phones” which often run similar software.
• Some of them have Bluetooth communications which allow them to be instantly networked with each other and with the teacher’s or lecturer’s laptop (or own handheld) for distributed brainstorming and data sharing.

Handheld computers have passed through several development stages. First came the keyboard equipped clamshells such as the Psion or its rebadged Xemplar Pocketbook form. For some time now, though, the dominant format has been the “mini tablet” operated by a stylus and touch screen. Detachable keyboards (or separate wireless keyboards) are available for many models.These mini tablet machines are available in two main competing forms with incompatible operating systems - PalmOS or PocketPC. I personally consider the PalmOS machines to be superior, and to have a better range of software (and they start at lower prices too) but PocketPC has the advantage of resembling Microsoft Windows which helps to make them instantly usable by students used to a PC. Try, if possible, to borrow one of each and talk to users of both - and, of course, find out whether one system or the other is already in use amongst colleagues with whom you can exchange ideas and work.

There is a third option, Symbian, but this is primarily to be found in smart phones - including the popular Nokia models.

[Contributed by AbsentCat]

Tackling the fear of algebra

The move from arithmetic to symbolic algebra is the biggest terror of secondary school mathematics, and many of our future scientists are lost over the edge at this fracture plane. Graphical work is popular but must support symbolic work, not pleasurably obscure it.

In an experimental programme, we encouraged a group of 13-14 year old students to record and express what they were doing in standard symbolic short-hand, and to share summaries of the results on an intranet web site. They were introduced to MathType, which was used not only for preparation of handouts but also for real time classroom explanations of simple, common sense events happening in Autograph.

MathType appealed to these teenagers. Its quality of output built their pride in their work; it was used to prepare their worksheets, and they had the experience of feeding back work of equivalent production values. Its ability to produce high quality web material gave them a high-status platform for displaying their achievements.

[Contributed by AbsentCat]

Graph magic!

Magic is a stage in the developmental history of science — a history which each of us retraces as we grow to intellectual maturity. Its study as such by eight-year olds was designed to meet criteria in cultural history and imaginative creation, but also as a context for strengthening critical faculties. The ability to rationally assess likely and implausible explanations of phenomena makes great strides at this age; separation of reality from model is central.

A link between mathematical models and spells, illustrated by Omnigraph, was well received and opened up a riot of speculative theorising. It also offered a new stage on which to parade the key concept of the algebraic “placeholder”.

Omnigraph is a graph processor, with facilities for investigating a number of mathematical areas up to very basic calculus. Equations or Cartesian coordinates, entered from keyboard or menus, are instantly reflected in curves, lines, points and shapes drawn in the graph window. Or, looked at another way, “spells” in the lower window produce magical results in the upper one - but rules can be deduced, even at this age, to predict the result of any given spell.

The mouse changes scaling, draws tangents, normals, areas, and the rest; curve drawing can be paused or abandoned, and in many cases the equation/spell is displayed as the mouse passes over a line.

A quadratic spell produces a passable model of the path followed by Harry Potter’s broomstick as he swoops to aid a Quidditch team-mate before returning to his normal altitude position. We can also play the part of the villainous Quirrel, interfering with the spell to alter Harry’s flight: alter one part of the spell (the m coefficient) to induce suicidal recklessness; change another (the constant c) to pull him out of the dive earlier - or cause him to crash!

If it looks like I’m getting carried away - well, perhaps I am. There is nothing more inspiring than watching young minds leap over their fears and years to grasp an idea. By the end of the morning, any member of the class could evaluate the value of y for any x, plotting the results on a graph paper Quidditch field. They could also deal implicitly with negative values for m and c, expressed as subtractions in a modified “spell”.

We assembled a tolerable Cartesian cartoon representation of Nearly Headless Nick, behind a transparent acetate screen overlay carrying a Hogwarts map. The pupils derived great amusement and insight from altering transformation matrix-spells to move Nick about the castle, expand him, shrink him, distort him in various ways…

Omnigraph is a simple, no frills program in its interaction with the user, which makes it very transparent in use. It is also well known; all the teachers involved had encountered it, if not used it, before. For more advanced work it could be replaced by Autograph; this would sacrifice instant usability in favour of added options. Both programs work well in conjunction with graphical calculators, for teaching at the levels where those are appropriate. Autograph offers stronger tools (eigenvalues, for instance), enhanced display options and statistical data plotting.

[Contributed by AbsentCat]

Active geometry

Formalised geometry can seem a meaningless set of hurdles. “To do geom” observes Geoffrey Willans’ schoolboy antihero, Nigel Molesworth (Down With Skool, 1958), “you hav to make a lot of things equal to each other when you can see perfectly well that they don’t”. Dynamic geometry software such as Cabrie-Géomètre II (CG2), a program developed in France and powered by the backing of calculator manufacturer Texas Instruments, offers the solution. It is an excellent platform for investigating detailed aspects of the Autograph models — as preliminary learning in advance, as subsequent consideration of observed phenomena, or as both in a refinement loop.

CG2 is a geometry processor adding to axiomatic Euclidean geometry the active, participatory element of transformational or analytic geometry. Here is an opportunity to discover for oneself, in a hands-on way, where the axioms came from. It allows fundamental components (points, lines, shapes) to be combined and moved in ways which obey geometric definitions. If a line is defined as a tangent to a circle at a particular point, for example, then the circle, line and point can all be freely moved around, the circle resized, and so on, but the line will remain tangential to the circle at that point. Additional constraints can be used for particular purposes, as can slider controls. A number of ready-made examples are provided, ready for instant classroom use. During our trial a physics teacher borrowed it and used two lines, a circle and an ellipse to demonstrate both the inverse square law and the cause of eclipses in a single pass.

At every stage, the software encouraged rapid explorative investigation whilst also pegging the mathematical representation back to a concrete reality comprehensible to the pupils.

[Contributed by AbsentCat]