A few months back, I was asked to provide input in the planning phases for a global survey on the play patterns of kids, funded by the folks at Swedish retailer Ikea. To an extent, Ikea sanctioned the report as a resource for helping them understand how to develop and market their products, but they have also released the results to help inform and enlighten parents and the public at large about what our kids and we are really thinking about what it means to play. The results are surprising, and rather positive when it comes to what kids really want to do.

Five major takeaways from the PlayReport:

Children overwhelmingly prefer playing with their friends and parents over watching TV.
When children across the world were asked to choose between watching TV or playing with friends or parents, they overwhelmingly choose to play with friends (89%) and parents (73%) with TV a very poor substitute for social interaction at only 11%.

Nearly half of the parents think play should be educational. Children disagree.
Nearly half (45%) of all parents think that play is best when it’s educational. This rises to two thirds of parents in China, Slovakia, Czech Rep, Spain, Hungary, Russia, Poland and Portugal. A further minority at 17% (China, Italy, Russia and US) actually prefer their children to learn things rather than to simply play. 27% think play should always have a purpose. As for the children, 51% actually prefer to play rather than learn.

Parents are too stressed to play.
45% of parents surveyed agree that they feel they don’t have enough time to play with their children. Even when parents do find the time to play, a significant minority feel too distracted by other concerns to enjoy it; 26% agree that they are ‘too stressed to enjoy it’.

A majority of parents want more creativity at home for their children. The question is how?
89% of parents agree that play is important to encourage their child’s imagination and creativity. And almost all, 93% agree that it’s an essential part of the way a child develops. And 71% feel that they should ‘encourage more creativity at home’, but that they don’t know how.

Not all parents want their children to be happy.
72% of parents selected happiness as single most important wish for their children. But what about the other 28%? Well, financial success came second and thoughtfulness of
others a close third.

Ikea has set up a Facebook group to help spread the word and continue the discussion around the findings of the report, and if you want to learn more, check it out.

Telfair Museum, Savannah, Georgia. Photo: UGArdener via Flickr

Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”

Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.

Congratulations! Your children are well on their way to believing that <insert your ethnicity here> is better than everybody else.

Surprised? So were authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman when they started researching the issue of kids and race for their book NurtureShock. It turns out that a lot of our assumptions about raising our kids to appreciate diversity are entirely wrong:

It is tempting to believe that because their generation is so diverse, today’s children grow up knowing how to get along with people of every race. But numerous studies suggest that this is more of a fantasy than a fact.

Since it’s Black History Month, I thought it would be a good time to talk about race, particularly some of the startling things I found in this particular chapter of NurtureShock. What Bronson and Merryman discovered, through various studies, was that most white parents don’t ever talk to their kids about race. The attitude (at least of those who think racism is wrong) is generally that because we want our kids to be color-blind, we don’t point out skin color. We’ll say things like “everybody’s equal” but find it hard to be more specific than that. If our kids point out somebody who looks different, we shush them and tell them it’s rude to talk about it. We think that simply putting our kids in a diverse environment will teach them that diversity is natural and good.

And what are they learning? Here are a few depressing facts:

• Only 8% of white American high-schoolers have a best friend of another race. (For blacks, it’s about 15%.)
• The more diverse a school is, the less likely it is that kids will form cross-race friendships.
• 75% of white parents never or almost never talk about race with their kids.
• A child’s attitudes toward race are much harder to alter after third grade, but a lot of parents wait until then (or later) before they feel it’s “safe” to talk frankly about race.

We’re very comfortable now talking to our kids about gender stereotypes: we tell our kids that women can be doctors and lawyers. Heck, Barbie can be a computer engineer! What Bronson and Merryman point out is that we should say the same thing about race: doctors can be any skin color. A (half-)black man can be President. Black people can be very cool geeks.

So, in honor of Black History Month, talk to your kids about race. Need some help? Parenting.com recently posted 5 Tips for Talking About Racism With Kids. I would argue, though, that “most important” should be say something, because simply “being a role model” is apparently not having the effect we think it does. Oh, and also? Make sure if you use that eggs analogy that your kids don’t think you’re encouraging them to crack people open.

Related links:

Top Ten African American Characters in Science Fiction

Buy NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children on Amazon

NurtureShocked and Awed by a Great Book

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ugardener/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Space Shuttle Endeavour Approaching The ISS (Image:NASA)

Welcome to another edition of the GeekDad Space Report! We have a quiet week coming up with no launches scheduled. The three launches scheduled last week all made it off the pad with a 1 day delay for the SDO launch due to high winds. Lets take a look at what else is going on in space!

Interesting Hubble Observations

In many ways, all of the Hubble observations are interesting, but here is a list of some of the standouts in the coming week. A more complete list can be found at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) This Week On HST Website.

A SNAPSHOT Survey of the Local Interstellar Medium: New NUV Observations of Stars with Archived FUV Observations

How Far Does H2 Go: Constraining FUV Variability in the Gaseous Inner Holes of Protoplanetary Disks

Direct Age Determination of the Local Group dE Galaxies NGC 147 and NGC 185

This is a small list of the overall observations. You may also see some of these observations popping up in other weeks as many observation programs consist of several observations over time.

Manned Spaceflight

It was a fun week for manned spaceflight. The Space Shuttle Endeavour rocketed skyward to the ISS, docking with the orbiting laboratory. The crews of Endeavour and the ISS worked together to install the Tranquility module and start bringing it’s systems online. Tranquility’s famous cupola was moved into position last night and will be opened for amazing views Wednesday or Thursday. Endeavour is scheduled to land Sunday at the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility. To keep up with the latest on STS-130 be sure to check out NASA’s Shuttle Mission page.

An interesting note for the week in manned spaceflight. NASA used the song “The Ballad of Serenity” for a wake-up call to the crew of Endeavour this week for astronaut Bob Behnken. Using a favorite song for different astronauts is a common occurrence but this caught the attention of a lot of folks because of the Serenity link. This got a discussion going among some colleagues that work in the space business with me as well as space enthusiasts about what song they would want for their wake-up call if they were in space. Myself, I would want “Jupiter” from the Planets Symphony. I posed the question to @moonrangerlaura (a great space tweeter if you’re not already following her) and she said she would want either “The Ballad of Serenity” or “Rainbow Connection”. I also had the great fortune of meeting Felicia Day (@feliciaday, as if you weren’t already following her) this weekend. I posed the question to her, a tough question when asked out of the blue, and she said that she could not narrow it down to a particular song but that it would probably be something by Jimmy Hendrix. What song would you want for your wakeup call?

Have a great week everyone!

This truly awesome stop-motion animation was created by a 17-year-old boy named Jamie Bell, who goes by “DispleasedEskimo” on YouTube. He created it, for an art class, over the span of only three weeks, using about 2100 sheets of paper and a number of ballpoint pens. Set to the Galop from Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld — a piece of music better known for its association with can-can dancing — the video displays a very funny history of life on Earth, with a few extraterrestrial bits. Watch carefully for some very geeky bits inserted here and there.

You can use Valentine's Day chocolate and your microwave to perform sophisticated physics calculations! All images: Kathy Ceceri

If you’re a long-time reader, you may remember the great leftover Easter Peeps microwave experiment. Well, today we’re going to be nuking leftover Valentine’s Day chocolate to demonstrate one of the constants of physics, the speed of light. Chocolate makes a very appropriate medium, because the heating property of microwaves was first discovered by a scientist whose candy bar melted in his pocket when he got too close to a microwave device being tested for use in radar.

WARNING: This experiment may take several tries to get right. We are not responsible for any weight gained. To avoid familial strife, be sure to only do this experiment with your own chocolates or with candy which you have been authorized to access. You can probably find some leftover boxes on sale this week.

The demonstration works because microwave ovens produce standing waves — waves that move “up” and “down” in place, instead of rolling forward like waves in the ocean. Microwave radiation falls into the radio section of the electromagnetic spectrum. Most ovens produce waves with a frequency of 2,450 megahertz (millions of cycles per second). The oven is designed to be just the right size to cause the microwaves to reflect off the walls so that the peaks and valleys line up perfectly, creating “hot spots” (actually, lines of heat).

What you do with the candy is to find the hot spots and measure the distance between them. From that information, you can determine the wavelength. And when you multiply the wavelength by the frequency, you get the speed! Here’s what you do:

1. Make sure the candy is in a microwave-proof box. Better yet, take the chocolate out and put in a microwave safe dish.
2. Remove the turntable in your oven. (You want the candy to stay still while you heat it.) Put an upside-down plate over the turning-thingy, and place your dish of candy on top.
3. Heat on high about 20 seconds.
4. Take the chocolate out and look for hot spots. Depending on the candy you use, you may have to feel the candy to see where it has softened. With the cherry cordials we used, we saw several shiny spots and one place where the chocolate shell melted through, releasing the sweet syrup inside.
5. Measure the distance between two adjacent spots. This should be the distance between the peak and the valley (crest and trough) of the wave. Since the wavelength is the distance between two crests, multiply by 2. Finally, multiply that result by the frequency expressed in hertz or 2,450,000,000 (2.45 X 10⁹ for my son who is just learning scientific notation).

In our trial, we measured a distance of roughly 6 centimeters. 6 x 2 x 2,450,000,000 = 29,400,000,000 centimeters per second, or 294,000,000 meters per second. This is awfully close to 299,792,458 meters per second, which is the speed of light. Not bad for some leftover chocolate and a kitchen appliance!

I discovered this experiment at Null Hypothesis, although it can be found all over the Internet, including many versions with fancy charts and animations. By the way, melted chocolate bars are perfect as ice cream topping. Just saying.

Kathy Ceceri also blogs at Home Physics.

Photo of Darwin by J. Cameron, 1869.

As you probably already know, Abraham Lincoln was born on this date in 1809. But that’s not all: also born on that day, in that same year, was the father of evolution himself, Charles Darwin.

In honor of that fact, February 12th is International Darwin Day: a day to celebrate the life and work of one of the most famous geek dads of all time. So take a moment today to reflect on the millions of years of natural selection that made you what you are today. To see if there are any Darwin Day events in your area check The International Darwin Day Foundation.

Artist Concept of SDO (Image: NASA)

Today marks the start of a new era in solar observations with the launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO for short. As mentioned in this week’s GeekDad Space Report, SDO launched today aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral. SDO is the first observatory in NASA’s Living With a Star program. The goal of the Living With a Star program is to better understand how the Sun affects the Earth and near-Earth space. From the mission website:

SDO’s goal is to understand, driving towards a predictive capability, the solar variations that influence life on Earth and humanity’s technological systems by determining

• how the Sun’s magnetic field is generated and structured
• how this stored magnetic energy is converted and released into the heliosphere and geospace in the form of solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in the solar irradiance.

SDO will achieve these goals with three instruments.  The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), the Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) Variability Experiment (EVE) and Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI). The AIA is an array of four telescopes that will observe the surface and atmosphere of the sun. The AIA filters cover 10 different wavelength bands that are selected to reveal key aspects of solar activity. EVE will measure fluctuations in the sun’s ultraviolet output. Extreme ultraviolet radiation from the sun has a direct and powerful effect on Earth’s upper atmosphere; it heats it, inflates it, and inserts enough energy to break apart atoms and molecules. Researchers don’t know how fast the sun can vary at many of these wavelengths, so they expect to make many new discoveries about flare events. Finally, HMI will map solar magnetic fields and peer beneath the sun’s opaque surface using a technique called helioseismology. A key goal of this experiment is to decipher the physics of the sun’s magnetic dynamo.

SDO Atop The Atlas V (Image: NASA)

The observatory is going to sit in an inclined geosynchronous orbit which will allow continuous data coverage. The continuous coverage is very important as the observatory is going to capture more data than can be captured and stored for long periods. The SDO continuous data stream has a bandwidth of 130 Megabits per second. All of this data will generate amazing images of the sun at a resolution that is ten times greater than high definition television. The SDO command center is located at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD which is also where the observatory integration and testing occurred.

Be sure to check out the mission homepage for a great deal more information and some education outreach information. Also, be sure to check out this great video about the mission over at the NASA Living With a Star page. If you are a twitter user you can follow @nasa_sdo and @nasa_sdo_edu. Congratulations to the entire SDO team!

Twin Cities Maker is going to have a Mini Maker Faire at the Hack Factory on February 13th, 2010! Come one, come all! We’re planning to have the fun start at 2 PM with local makers exhibiting and playing in the newly acquired space. We will also have an Art Show and Party later that night for people to come and experience the space and have some refreshments.

The lineup of makers includes a demonstration by Bill Gurstelle, the music of Tim Kaiser, air cannons, replica movie props, an arduino demonstration, a display by the local Tripoli rocketry club, art cars, a life-sized Operation Game as well as flamethrowers and pulse jets by local engineering firm CazTek.

Interested in attending? The Hack Factory’s address is 3119 E 26th St Minneapolis, MN 55406.

I’m talking about vaccinating your kids, of course.

You’ve heard most of this before, from Amy Wallace’s Wired cover story in November to Matt Blum’s piece about the H1N1 vaccine in October. But last week there was one more piece of news: The Lancet, the medical journal that broke the news about the autism-vaccination link, publicly retracted the study due to ethical misconduct and conflicts of interest on the part of the leading researcher.

That bears repeating. The study that sparked twelve years of debate about the dangers of vaccines? It’s bunk.

It turns out that Andrew Wakefield, the main author of the study, did things like taking blood samples at his son’s birthday party and falsifying data. He also was developing a vaccine that could have done quite well if the MMR vaccine was discredited.

But what I found particularly significant was part of Wakefield’s response to the retraction: “In fact, the Lancet paper does not claim to confirm a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Research into that possible connection is still ongoing.” The paper that sparked all this debate doesn’t even claim a link between vaccines and autism according to its own author, but that’s what was picked up by the media, and twelve years later this combination of misinformation and misreading has cost us a fortune (not to mention deaths due to illnesses that could easily have prevented). Salon.com had an interesting article commenting on the media’s responsibility in the whole thing.

Of course, maybe you still want to side with Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, who say that it’s all a big conspiracy by vaccine manufacturers who want to poison your children. Clearly this deserves another twelve years of consideration. I mean, research is still ongoing, right? And the rise of autism coincides with the increase in vaccinations in the late 1970s, right? Hmmm, but what about the sudden rise of high-fructose corn syrup at about the same time? That coincides as well.

And you know what else appeared in 1977?

Star Wars.

Think about it.

Original photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/captaincinema/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Image: MultiEducator, Inc.

Are you an engineer who wishes they had access to some work-related calculations out in the field? A series of handy new apps may offer what you need. The Formulator Series by MultiEducator, Inc. is a series of iPhone/iPod Touch apps designed and packaged for a variety of engineering and other professionals. Depending on the application you choose, there are many formulas, calculations, regulatory codes and industrial code requirements included.

I volunteered to review a free copy of the Civil Engineer app, since my husband has been a registered professional civil engineer for 8 1/2 years. I knew he could give me some great expert input. I looked around the app first, and noticed many things I learned in high school math classes, but most of the rest was industry specific calculations with which I had no experience.

The main calculation categories for the Civil Engineer app are area formulas, beam, bridge, column, conversion, elevator, piles, piping, plates, roads, shear, soil, structural steel and wood. These are listed in the Contents, accessible at the bottom of the screen. Then each of those categories is broken down further, listing many different subcategories. Other options at the bottom of the screen include Recents (for recent calculations), Favorites (which you can set), Saved (where you can access specific number calculations you have saved in the past) and Search (very useful, since there are so many calculations included in the program). In Search, when you start typing in your search term, it immediately starts listing possible calculations to use.

Once you find the calculation you need, input the numbers for the asked-for variables, and it gives you the result with units. Once you have a result, you can see the definition of the formula, add it to favorites, save the calculation or email the entire result.

Image: MultiEducator, Inc.

Both my husband and I found some mistakes in the program. Perusing the area formulas, I noticed that some of the shapes were listed in the singular, and some in the plural. In another area, they talk about Hazen-Williams friction head loss, but they list it as Hazen William friction head loss. They definitely need a proofreader who is an actual engineer to go back through their program. There are so many special terms specific to the industry that a specialist is needed for this task.

The program doesn’t always use standard industry terminology, spelling things out like “cubic feet per second” instead of just saying CFS. This takes up a lot more room on an already very crowded screen. The program also sometimes uses terms like “cubic feet a second” which isn’t the way most people say it. Also, the program says “circular curve” instead of “horizontal curve” and “parabolic curve” instead of “vertical curve.” Some of the options could be a lot more clear. It talks about the area of a pyramid or area of a sphere when they really mean surface area.

There are some sections with plenty of useful formulas, such as the beam section, and some with very few, such as for roads, bridges, soils, drainage and simple things like grade and distance. For horizontal curves and vertical curves, for example, it has about 1/3 of what it needs. My husband said that it looks like it is designed for structural engineers, based on what is included. The app doesn’t have a unit conversion from square feet to acres, which is the single most common conversion that my husband uses. So you’d have to do multiple calculations to make it all work, since there is no apparent way to send the result of one calculation to an input field of another. Also, there are missing conversions: they have a conversion for gallons to cubic feet, but not cubic feet to gallons.

Image: MultiEducator, Inc.

The Civil Engineering app is by no means comprehensive, but it is a handy app that could save some time out in the field. You would have more than a calculator at hand, so you’d be able to do much more complicated calculations. To improve the program, my husband’s suggestion is to get the formulas in the book that is given out at the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) exam (formerly the EIT), and that would be a good start for the formula list.

I asked him if it was a program he would use. His answer, “Probably, but not frequently. Most of the equations I use regularly I know off the top of my head.” He thought it would be helpful for a brand new engineer, or perhaps one in school. Would he pay $4.99 for it? “Yes.”

My husband thought that the big problem with this app is that it is a function solver, not an equation solver. A function will say, “Give me a couple of inputs and I will solve for one particular answer.” An equation allows you to input all but one of the variables and it will solve for the one you’re missing. This is a big difference. Because of what options are available in this app, you often triple your work to get the information you need. If it was an equation solver, you could just plug in what you have and get what you need.

The Formulator Series includes apps for architects, building engineers, builders, carpenters, civil engineers, electricians, environmental engineers, finance and business people, HVAC professionals, hydraulic engineers, mechanical engineers, plumbers and real estate investors. I can only assume that these other apps have similar strengths and weaknesses.

Individual apps are available for $4.99 to $6.99. They have about 100 of what they consider the most commonly used formulas. The professional packages are available for $9.99 to $19.99. These are bundled with the full regulations and also have the formulas from the individual apps.

Wired: It gives a lot of calculations that you might need quickly. Might be great for new engineers or engineering students. Good price.

Tired: It is by no means comprehensive. There are large gaps in what it covers. It seems to need some proofreading and more explanation.

Bottom line: A good start to a program that with a number of updates and enhancements could be a great program.