Wherein I Lose an Organ

So it turns out that that crazy "indigestion" problem I was having on Friday morning was my gall bladder freaking out. Ouch.

I woke up feeling a little, just weird, I drove to school and the feeling slowly intensified in the hour before school started. A few minutes into first period I stopped suddenly in the middle of what I was explaining about sciency things, looked down at the floor, then back at my students who are always 10 seconds away from crazy town and I could see that my pause had initiated a countdown, and it occured to me that this could only end badly. I hobbled over to my cabinet and pulled out a Planet Earth DVD (bless you BBC), negotiated with the technology and light switches, and sat down. My students seemed stunned but went with it. So their teacher's a bit weird, tell them something they don't know. I sat down, got back up--too painful, what in the world is wrong with me? Halfway through first period I was staring lovingly at the floor under my desk wondering if I could fit under it--the only thing I could think of is curling into a little ball. So I called the front desk and talked to the secretary:
Me: Somethings's wrong with me, I feel weird and sick all of the sudden.
Voice on the other end of the phone: Do you want me to call a sub?
Me: I just need my Mom or something.
Voice: I'll call the sub office.

I hope to never re-live that experience, which incidentally I guess I won't have to. Late Saturday night, after 36 uncomfortable hours, I finally dragged myself over to the ER and they admitted me and pulled that pesky little gall bladder right out. Ugh. But now I have to recover from the stab wounds.

It makes me miss the little guy.
 

Diagramming Forces

One of the perks of being a middle school teacher is that 7th graders offer no end of humorous anecdotes. I don’t know what class they’re writing all the notes in because I’m not finding very many lately but I did discover a couple of girls playing M.A.S.H. in their science journals on Thursday when they were supposed to be making plans for our lab. Instead they were making plans for their futures. Which, according to M.A.S.H., will be marriage to Henry and driving a green pick-up truck.

Come on kids! Stay on task.

The lab investigation the rest of us were planning was pretty cool though. We built little fan powered cars and had some races. Mostly the cars crashed into each other but the builders of the winning car won a hundred grand candy bar. I did not win.

Then we got down to some science and calculated the cars' speed and acceleration and diagrammed the forces acting on them. Of course you can’t diagram the force of awesome but you can’t ignore it either when it’s running amuck and crashing into everything. Needless to say it was a logistics nightmare. But I tend to enjoy my job in spite of the crazy. Unhappily, there was far too much screaming and not all of it was from delight; getting your fingers caught in a fan car is not pleasant. Teaching middle school is not for the faint of heart…

Please recall this boring teacher training and the awesomeness that ensued. http://quoththewren.blogspot.com/2011/11/fan-car.html

One of my students was complaining the next day that I'd gotten into her head. Apparently she's starting to think about free body diagrams whenever she sees things moving. I make no apologies. Seeing the world through science can save your life.

I avoided killing a dear, myself and my friends because of free body diagrams.

I was driving the stretch of I-5 between Mount Vernon and Camano Island late at night and I saw a huge deer running straight at my car from the right, but due to my vigorous physics training I immediately saw the entire situation with force vectors and velocities. I instantly realized that if I moved one lane to the left and sped up, the deer would hit me instead of me hitting the deer. I was already moving before I fully realized that I was doing a science. Heh. And that deer SMACKED into my car. But so much better than if I had smacked into it. Physics is always the right answer kids.


Watch this to learn more about diagramming forces:

May the force be with you.

Star Gazing

Yesterday I pulled into the parking lot at school and looked up at the moon as I was sprinting into the building (because I was tardy) and stopped suddenly in delight because Jupiter was so bright and beautiful right next to the Moon. 

Since school was starting about 20 minutes later (I can't believe how tardy I was); I thought maybe there was a chance I could take my first period class on a field trip. Yes, a field trip STARGAZING! During school hours. And really, I knew this was my last chance because daylight savings ends this weekend. So it was a race against the sun and the ever cloudy skies over the fair city of Seattle. 

I didn't take this picture, but someone in India did a few hours later and posted it on one of my favorite Astronomy websites. Yeah, I have a favorite Astronomy website, quit acting so surprised. This is pretty much what I saw and what inspired the field trip plans:

And another one UP CLOSE:

So I grabbed the 7th graders in my first period class and we ran out to the soccer field the second after the bell rang and the heavens smiled on us. Most of us anyway. The kids with glasses probably didn't see much because the sky was getting pretty light. Poor blind kids. But the annoying cloud cover was gone and the skies were clear.

Extra bonus, Venus was trying to outshine Jupiter in the East. 

The kids were amazed by both and even more amazed that they were looking at planets, not stars. 

But when some of the kids started running around with the soccer cones on their heads I herded those cats back into the school.

Crack-O-Lantern

It's the end of the quarter and grades are due and so are all my students' projects, which means one thing: grading! Which is not my favorite thing. My favorite thing is procrastinating.

Also, it's Halloween and no one should have to work on a holiday, right? Which is why I’m doing Crack-os instead.

 10-3+1=20-12 

 We can call it a special edition crack-o-lantern!

Existentialism Leads to Extinction

Something to enjoy. A pumpkin comes into existence only to find loneliness. In an effort to make a new friend he creates a nightmare. A scary story just in time for Halloween. (Repost from October 2008)