Groton's Future

Mr. Wiech, ever the cool one, has introduced me to Twitter. I've been tweeting from time to time, and watching the amazing interactions of everyone else. There have been some fascinating conversations and some wonderful points made. I'd like to take a moment and expand on two of them in more than the 140 characters of a tweet.

POINT NUMBER ONE -- Spanish at Groton: I've seen a tremendous amount of resistance to the elimination of our Spanish program from students. I've been presented with a petition, heard and had conversations, and seen all the great tweets. Teachers, in addition to being vast repositories of knowledge, must also be advocates for students regardless of their personal feelings.

My personal feeling is that eliminating Spanish in this day and age doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I took French in middle school, high school, and even completed a minor in it in college, but I know that Spanish, in America in 2009, is something important to know. Studies project that the percentage of spanish-speaking people in the US is going to expand exponentially, so a functional knowledge of the language will become increasingly important.

Setting that aside, though, many students still want the choice to study Spanish. And shouldn't we give them more than that? What about Japanese, or Latin, or German? Students at Groton deserve the best education possible, and I encourage students to come forward and have more good, RESPECTFUL conversations with each other and with teachers, principals, and superintendants about their feelings on the matter. Your voices can have the power to shape the future of Groton.

POINT NUMBER 2 -- Internet Filters and Cell Phones. With all the emerging technologies that are available, what are we to do about having them all in school? All you twitter-ers out there have shown that Twitter can be used productively and with respect. Can we trust the entire population of the school to do that? Sadly, I don't think we can. What if we were allowed to use cell phones during the day? What about facebook? Can we fit those into our academic goals? Again, talk about this with teachers and other students in a respectful and productive way.

CAVEAT EMPTOR -- (a Latin phrase, meaning "buyer beware" -- in this case, it means if you read this article you have to THINK about it, too!) I don't have the answers to these problems, and I don't pretend to. But many people working together as a community can come up with answers, and I challenge you to do so. If you want Groton to be a certain way, then get up off your couch and do something about it! GO! Stop reading this and GO!!!

Mr. Syracuse's New Toy!

So I don't know if you know this or not, but I've taken up the pipe organ! I've been taking lessons since last summer, and I'm slowly getting better. It's pretty difficult to play two different things with your hands and sometimes something different with each foot! Well, I got tired of driving into downtown Ithaca to the church where I take my lessons to practice, so I searched around on eBay for a pipe organ of my own. I found one (it's electric -- no pipes!) in Owego, and I picked it up on Monday. I'm sure my neighbors are going to hate me because it's so loud! I'll try and get a recording up on here so you can hear its magisterial beauty. And yes, I have a candelabra on it, just for dramatic affect. Good times.

Wilson Synchrotron Lab!

Because he's a huge dork, Mr. Syracuse spent Tuesday morning of February break about 15 m underground in the Wilson Synchrotron Lab. The lab contains a particle accelerator, an electron/positron storage ring, X-ray creation equipment, and much more. The lab can accelerate and smash electrons to create X-rays which can be used to perform X-ray crystallography. This process can help determine the structure of proteins and other molecules. There were lots of shiny buttons and things that I really REALLY wanted to play with, but knew they would probably kill me, so I didn't. Ah well. Check out the pictures, and contact Mr. Syracuse if you'd like a tour -- they're available at no charge!

I'm Dorkin' Out...

Hey! Have you seen the ginormous Periododic Table-o-the Elements that Mrs. Hume's classes have compiled? It's got snazzy information about each element, including cool facts, history, and chemical properties. If you haven't seen it, it's next to the middle school office. If you're not often down there, though, you can take a gander at the pictures here. This looks like a really big version of my shower curtain...

Welcome Back!

I hope that you all had a good break. We're into our unit on bacteria, and we'll be collecting various samples from around the school to grow. If you've got a suggestion as to what you'd like to see sampled, just leave a comment! When we're all done, we'll post pictures of the bacteria on the plates, as well as magnified 1,000x with our snazzy oil-immersion lenses on our new 'scopes. Fun times!

How old is the earth?

Births are usually happy events -- attended by families and doctors and accompanied by baby showers and the like. For the Earth, however, it must have been rather lonely. We humans don't really know, however, because there were none of us around when the Earth was born. Scientists all over the world have data that indicates that the approximate age of the Earth is 4.5 billion years. That's 4,500,000,000 years! Considering her age, she's looking pretty good (aside from a few wrinkles the size of the Grand Canyon....ha....haha....).

Scientists have divided up this time into eras and epochs and periods to make studying such a vast time more manageable. The group of scientists who are responsible for setting up this time scale are called the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is the study of the layers of rock on the earth, and how they can tell us about the past. Information is gained through the study of fossils, when and where they appear, the types of rocks found, and many other factors.

Here is a link to their current version, although a new one is due out soon:

Geologic Time Scale

If you like, you can also check your Earth Science Reference Tables for a great view of the history of the Earth. In the event that you have misplaced yours or don't keep them with you at all times (like you should!), here's a link where you can get your very own copy.

Earth Science Reference Tables

I keep a very small version in my wallet (with one of those little magnifying glasses) at all times...just in case. They're great at parties.

Diffuse-a-riffic!

We just finished up a rather spiffy lab in which we discovered exactly why cells can't get very big. We used blocks of agar with phenolphthalein (a pH indicator) in them to see how far a liquid (NaOH solution) could diffuse in 10 minutes. Turns out that if you're a sizable cell, it's not far enough. Check out the pictures, though!