Minutes a Day—Mastery for a Lifetime!
On October 24th, 2016, Google honored Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s 384th birthday with the daily Google Doodle. Leeuwenhoek (Lee vǝn hook), a Dutch cloth merchant by trade, is known as the Father of Microbiology. He may have used magnification to determine the density of a fabric’s thread count. With no formal university training, he designed and […]
Food. It’s something that many of us take for granted. Most of us are fortunate enough to eat two to three meals a day. If we skip a meal, it’s usually because we are too busy, and not because we don’t have access to food. But, that is not the case for all. In fact, […]
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October Global Big Day Is Coming: Your Students Can Take Part The Audubon Society, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Geographic, Bird Life International and others declared 2018 as the Year of the Bird. It is an important year for birds, as it marks the centennial of what National Geographic believes to be the single most […]
The Old Farmer’s Almanac tells us the “dog days” begin around July 3 and end August 11 this year. The “dog” they refer to is the dog star, Sirius, the brightest star in the sky after the sun. The ancient Greeks thought the star Sirius looked like the nose of the dog in the constellation […]
I write a blog every month about a scientist worth knowing. For June’s scientist, I have chosen a rather obscure botanist (obscure by American standards), Joseph Dalton Hooker. He meets my criterion of being born in June—June 30, 1817—to be precise. And, a happy coincidence, the first full week in June is National Garden Week. […]
April’s highlighted scientist is naturalist, John Muir. Muir was born on April 21, 1838, in the small coastal town of Dunbar, Scotland. His family emigrated to Wisconsin when he was 11, eventually settling on Hickory Hill farm. Muir’s father, a strict taskmaster, allowed little free time for his two sons, but enough for John to […]
Too often, women scientists labored under the shadow of men, but that was only partially true in the case of Caroline Lucretia Hershel, our Women’s History Month spotlighted scientist. Caroline was born on March 16, 1750 in Hanover, Germany. Her father, a talented musician, encouraged all his children to study music, as well as math […]
Galileo Happy 454th Birthday! I had such fun writing the Ben Franklin birthday blog, I thought I’d write about another scientist. I stumbled upon Galileo’s name in a novel I was reading, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, in which two characters briefly discuss one of Galileo’s discoveries. “What I recall about this Galileo […]
Not every part of the country gets to celebrate snow with sledding, snowman building, and other outdoor activities, but everyone can catch the winter spirit with stories, lessons, and crafts. The possibilities are endless. Here, if you will, is the tip of the, uh-hem, iceberg. SNOW GLOBE CRAFT You may not know just how affordable […]