SJSU Master's Program

I have unofficially started my master's in science education at SJSU. I figured I would probably want to get another degree some day and SJSU is nice enough to let me transfer a bunch of credits from my credential program, so although I wouldn't have minded a little time away from school, I jumped right back into the pool this fall and took another class.

Lest you think it is all sunshine and roses here at the tommenkate household, it basically took all my willpower to make it through this course. The professor was incredibly confrontational - it seemed like she took every opportunity to antagonize each of the four students (myself included). She routinely wrote comments on our papers along the lines of "No one cares what you think", and "why bother?" One of the women in the class broke down crying a couple of times.

At any rate, it's over now and I passed the class, which is a relief. I did learn a few things along the way, and picked up a bunch of pointers about how not to teach. And all four of us provided plenty of constructive feedback on the evaluation forms, so hopefully this class will improve in future semesters...

SDO has a launch date!

  Old news for those that follow this sort of thing, but it's exciting that the Solar Dynamics Observatory (the satellite that holds the instruments I worked on) has a "definite" launch date now after a year-plus of delays and schedule shuffling!  It's supposed to blast off on Feb. 3rd from Florida.  Hopefully I will get to go see it in person.

There's a neat video of the project with sound bytes from a lot of the NASA people I worked with over the last couple years on the SDO website.  Look at the right under "SDO Engineers Create What Never Was" because I guess that's what we do. (?)  The video direct link is here.  Bonus points for anyone who can spot the 2-3 occurrences of yours truly in the video.  I think I'm pretty obscured in a couple of them (ie @ 0:53 I'm behind the red metal piece).

Here's a cool picture of SDO's ride (an Atlas-V) arriving at the launch pad for vertical integration.  I'm just keeping my fingers crossed the thing doesn't blow up while getting the thing up to 7,000 mph...

New Party Games

We learned a few fun new party games. You all probably know that we play a lot of board games, but every now and again we like to shake it up by playing something a little less competitive. Thanks to Cara and Alex for these two suggestions…

1) The Telephone-Meets-Pictionary Game

Everyone sits around in a circle and gets a blank piece of paper and a pen. Each person writes a sentence on the top of their paper, and then passes it to the person on their left. The new person “illustrates” this sentence, then folds the paper so the original sentence can’t be seen and passes it on. The third person writes a new sentence based on what they see in the drawing, folds the paper again, and passes it on. This continues until the paper gets back to where it started, by which point it is probably unrecognizeable. Much laughter ensues when the paper are unfolded.

2) “Babbies” 

This game is kind of like a group-think version of Taboo. Before the game starts, each person writes 5 objects on small slips of paper and puts them in a hat. Then, people divide into two teams. On each turn, one team nominates a “guesser” who will have 2 minutes to guess as many of the clues as possible. The rest of the team collaborates to give a clue. This is the tricky part - each person on the team can only say one word at a time, and the team must create a complete, gramatically-correct question for which the answer is the object on the slip. So one person will start with "What", the next person will say "animal", then the next person says "smells", then "the", then "worst", then "Question Mark" to end the sentence. After the sentence has ended, the guesser can guess "skunk", of course. The challenging part of this game is coming up with a cohesive sentence - usually different group members will have different ideas of how the clue should go, so it gets derailed several times.

Anyway, we've had a great time playing these games in the last couple of months and thought we would share them in case anyone is looking for a fun evening activity with a large group!

Birthday Photo Scavenger Hunt Redux

Last year was the first annual Tom's Birthday Photo Scavenger Hunt. It was so successful that we expanded this year and made it the 1st annual Tom and Dustin and Adam and Mikey's Birthday Photo Scavenger Hunt, since all four of those guys have birthdays within a couple of weeks of each other. The rules are simple - each group has 3 hours to come up with a photo entry for each of 15 open-ended categories. This year we had four groups competing, and each group submitted some gems. Without further ado, the winners* in each category were as follows:
1) Best interpretation of a song title
2) Best Oxymoron
3) Most unusual Perspective
4) Do something naughty
5) Best use of a balloon animal
6) A wild critter
7) Spell something (and no, we don't have any announcements... we just thought this photo would terrify our respective spouses)
8) I can't believe we all fit in here
9) Most likely to be picked up hitchiking
10) Can you find us (and no, the person in the middle isn't the one hiding...)
11) Best use of a beer
12) Best re-creation of an Olympic sport
13) Friendliest stranger (I believe some monetary funds were involved in this transaction)
14) Most Holiday Spirit

15) Freestyle!And so, a good time was had by all! Looking forward to round 3 next year!

* Note that some of the winning pictures cannot be shown on this 'family' blog... although they may make an appearance as blackmail at some point in the future

Fizziks Projects

I let my Physics students design their own final semester projects. It was a pretty open ended assignment, which meant I got a wide variety of products. Some memorable ones included a discussion of how medieval armor was designed to absorb impact, an analysis of a Korean badminton player fracturing a watermelon with a 300 km/hr birdie, a video of two kids towing a truck (in park) with a rope, a "rap-off" between five kids (with the whole class joining in on the refrains), an amazing yoyo demonstration, and a trebuchet (although not this one).

Several groups made some pretty amazing/hysterical videos for their projects, as well. It really makes me feel old when I see how adroit they are at manipulating digital media - I shudder to think how long these videos would have taken me to make. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

The Giant Orange



The Physics Rappers

Happy Christmakah

Four of the greatest Judeo-Christian themed holiday traditions are celebrated each year at Dustin, Cara, and Karen's annual Christmakah party: gingerbread houses, potato latkes, garish displays of Christmas lights, and the game of dreidel.  This year we had a big group and made 5 houses, with only one burn from the scalding molten sugar used to structurally bond the house pieces together (ask Kate to show you her blister).

After building the houses and attaching them to boxes, we spread out about 90,000,000 calories worth of candy on the table and started to decorate.  The 5 boxes took different themes: a gingerbread dog-house, a fashion show runway complete with gingerbread models, a holiday horror-show, a ramp for santa on his sled, and ours, which was a farmhouse theme.  Here's some pictures from the action.

The candy carnage during mid-decoration.  You'll also notice people wearing the festive"yarmuclaus."  And Banjo, who was ever searching for dropped bits.  I think he gained 2 lbs that night.

 

Our house!  Check out Kate's farmer and tractor, and the rooster on the roof!  I also liked Mikey's hay bales.

 Some of Bailey's particularly morbid handiwork, part of the "garden of mutilated gingerbread men."

 The finished products.

The dreidel action, and...

The two winners with their prizes.

Catching up on Thanksgiving

Yes, it's almost Christmas and everyone is busy hanging their stockings by the chimney with care, but I never posted about the nice visit we had with my parents over Thanksgiving.  So, before it officially loses its status as most recent holiday, let's get caught up.

Banjo celebrates Thanksgiving too!  He even ate his green bean this year.

Since we are only going to be attending the Denver family gathering over Christmas, my parents were nice enough to come out for a Thanksgiving visit.  We had a great time, great weather, great food, and some good laughs.  I think mom checked off nearly of all the activities on her "to-do" list, which took up most of a sheet of paper!  Aside from having a standardly delicous and plentiful Thanksgiving feast, we:

• Went on a good long hike in with Banjo, followed by a period of tick removal (despite the preventative medicine he gets)
• Played lots of frisbee in the field
• Mass-produced some delicious biscotti and homemade granola - yum!
  

• Took a rain-soaked day-after-Thanksgiving trip to get our traditional, misshapen discounted Christmas tree, followed by some festive decorating (we like to get our tree early so we can enjoy it all month before we go away for the holidays

• Went up to San Francisco where we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and along Crissy Beach, then North Beach for some yummy Italian lunch, and finally a stop atop Twin Peaks to take advantage of the clear skies for the sweeping city views.

• Played a variety of board games, always a Nichols favorite
• Went to the Stanford Art Museum and especially enjoyed the piece there by Duane Hanson
  
• Had some quality time with Banjo on the sofa

We were all sad when they finally had to go!  Thanks for the visit!

On the first day of Tomandkatemakus

We made a resolution to get somewhat caught up on this blog. Stay tuned for some major blogging action over the next 11 days!

Perhaps the dorkiest costume of all time

I really can't (or won't) claim that too much thought went into it, beyond finding my old graduation cap and gown in a trunk and thinking that was too boring to wear alone and pondering how I could spruce it up a bit for a few minutes.  I'll let those of you who don't already know what I was guess in the comments.  Keep in mind I'm married to a science teacher...

Kate went as an astronaut, and even Banjo got a last minute cape to transform him into Underdog!

Did anyone else have a good costume?

Beach Birthdays

We're a little behind the times on the blogging - oh well.  But we have had some fun times recently!  Two weekends ago we took a trip up to Dillon Beach, north of San Francisco on Tomales Bay, with our good friends Dustin and Cara to celebrate Dustin's 30th birthday (and mine too, coming up).  Cara has relative who let us stay in his house right on the beach (read: rocky cliff) there, which was really quite nice.  We had a relaxing weekend of walking on the beach, cooking and eating delicious food (Kate and I made Coq au Vin for the first time ever, Cara and Dustin made German Chocolate cake), playing games, and hiking along the rugged coast while soaking in the scenic surroundings all the while.  Here's a few pictures of the weekend, which you may have already seen on Picasa:

Look who's turning 3 - 0!

Tom n' Kate

The view from our temporary residence - amazing!

Kate is king of the mountain so ppbbbblttttphff!

Looking back towards Dillon Beach and Tomales Bay

It was fun to take a trip to the coast, as we often end up heading East into the mountains for our CA vacations.  The weather sure agreed with us, and a weekend spent with friends in a beautiful setting like this was a welcome escape from our busy lives.  Happy Birthday, Dustin!

Glacier Point Hike

Last weekend I went up to Yosemite with an assortment of work friends (Kate was busy and sadly couldn't join us), and since we've all done Half Dome more than necessary, we opted to hike up to Glacier Point and continue down to the valley via the Panorama trail, mostly to do something different.

After arriving and spending Friday night in a crowded but still spacious Upper Pines campground, we set out on the Four Mile Trail up to Glacier Point, which was surprisingly consistently graded despite the numerous switchbacks and 3,500 feet of elevation gained in 4 miles or so. Here's some pictures of this part of the hike - the trail offered great views of the valley and distant domes throughout the hike.

Dave, Mikey, and Cathy heading up the Four Mile Trail


Looking West back out the valley towards El Cap


Climbing the valley walls


Almost to Glacier Point (it's the outcrop at the right)


Half Dome vista from Glacier Point, with the recent rockslides (whitish patch) visible

After lunch on top with a couple hundred of our closest friends, we continued on the Panorama Trail, which offered amazing views of Half Dome, Tenaya Canyon, the Panorama Cliff, and the almost-dry Nevada and Vernal Falls. One particularly neat aspect of this hike was how the trail provided nearly continuous, but still always changing, views of some of Yosemite's more prominent features. For example, we got to see Half Dome from so many angles, I almost think you see it better on this hike than you do when actually scaling the giant dome itself.

Heading down the scenic Panorama Trail


Half Dome - dead-on


Panorama Trail view


On the JMT above Nevada Falls


Nevada Falls, a little drier than last time we discussed it...


Mmmm... dinner.

HSB9, continued

As promised, I have some additional videos and pictures from this year's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in SF. Enjoy! Who wants to come out for it next year?

Workers Comp

It turns out being a Physics teacher is not safe.

Today I dropped a 2 kg mass on my middle finger from about 3 feet up trying to demonstrate potential energy. It worked - my jumping and hollering definitely convinced my students that the mass had gained some energy. I also accidentally hit a kid in the face with a (flat) basketball and got a rubberband lodged in the ceiling.

So, although this isn't quite as painful as the time I ripped my lips off with duct tape last year, and it didn't leave as much of a mark as stabbing myself with a fork earlier this year, it is going to be a challenge learning how to type with nine fingers.

Tomorrow is the famous "bowling ball pendulum" day, so keep your fingers crossed that I don't have any major mishaps...

Teaching Milestone

A big moment in my life as a teacher today - I have been teaching for an entire year (counting my student teaching). This is a BIG DEAL because I am now getting to teach lessons for the second time around. I'm proud that I have managed to force myself to keep digital lesson plans this whole time - often the last thing I wanted to do was type up the material I taught after a long day. But now I'm getting to reap the rewards - I just opened up a file and had Monday's lesson basically all planned out for me, which was a great feeling!

So now, it is mostly a matter of making changes and edits to improve myself and my lessons, but that should be a lot less time consuming than generating the first drafts has been. Yay!

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2009

I'll have some more photos and a recap up soon, but here's two videos I took of Natalie MacMaster and husband Donnell Leahy fiddling up a storm on the Porch Stage Saturday. Her performance was my highlight of the weekend, although there were lots of other great acts too.

This was their opening number:


And this was their closer, a rousing fiddle and dance extravaganza.


This song really captured the relaxed and fun-filled atmosphere of their performance. You could really tell that they were genuinely having a grand old time up there on stage. The crowd really enjoyed the girl (just an anonymous concert-goer) that was invited to dance a bit on stage (2:10) after doing her thing in front of the stage. Neat moment among many at HSB 9. Can't wait for next year!

More to come when I have a little more time...

YTVotD

It's been a while since we had one, and I thought this was pretty cool. If you thought the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies were well-choreographed, check this out:



Sure beats the "Wave," homer hankies, or the Tomahawk Chop, huh? I still like the SJ Sharks chompchomp move though.

There's another less professional video here that shows some of the same cool moves.

Also, Happy Birthday Mom, and cousin Margaret! (And Bailey and Jones!)

Phun Physics

Thought I'd share some highlights from my new life as a teacher. I'm still amazingly busy but really enjoying myself and my kids!

My top 10 best stories / anecdotes so far

• Using Physics as an excuse to watch roadrunner cartoons and the Simpsons in class.
• Surprising and startling them with demos like "pound your hand with a hammer". I couldn't find a good video of this but the idea is that you put a large mass on your hand/arm (I used an 18 lb block of aluminum) and hit it with a hammer as hard as you can. It won't hurt... I promise!
• A student showing up for class wearing these. (Make sure you scroll down far enough to see the picture. Creepy, eh?)
• Physics aerobics! Try to stand with your heels against the wall and touch your toes without bending your knees. One of my students can... but it turns out he's a hyper-flexible waterpolo player. Can you?
• Outtakes from our water rocket launching project. Most launches went fine, but 3 rockets did explode on the launch pad and one took off sideways across the campus quad... right at the principal. No injuries, though!
• Stabbing myself with a fork attempting to do this demo.
• Walking around the room while they're problem solving and feeling like almost everyone is getting it!
• Playing with super-sensitive motion sensors. The kids really got a kick out of seeing a graph of their movements on a computer screen. We also talked about how motion sensors worked and I showed an incredible video about a blind boy from Sacramento who can actually echolocate! He's good enough at it to be able to skateboard, ride a bike, and walk without a cane... and he literally has no eyes. If you want to check out the video it is in six parts on youtube here. It's worth watching if you've got an hour (or even 10-20 minutes for the first parts).
• Students giving me links to weird websites/videos, like this one. I'm not sure why they thought I needed to see that, but it looks a lot like Banjo getting a belly rub...
• Lots of kids telling me that they like / love Physics!

Biking to the Beach

Over Labor Day weekend we didn't have any big travel-related plans, but we did head over to a beach near Santa Cruz for an afternoon of fun in the sun and hanging out on the beach. Alex and I decided to take advantage of the free ride home and bike one-way out to meet our friends on the beach. I've been wanting to bike from home to the coast for a while and this was a great day for it! Here's the route we took, which took us up on Route 9 above Saratoga and down the other side through beautiful and redwood-filled Big Basin State Park as well as the lush canyon of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park before we got to Santa Cruz.


Here's a couple pictures from our ride that Alex took. Our favorite part was the windy downhill into Big Basin where the road alternated between open views of the forest-covered hills and nice banked turns snaking through giant redwood groves before bottom out at the park headquarters, where we had a nice snack break.


Fortunately there were friends with a car, grill, burgers, and frosty beverages waiting for us there! Hope you all were able to celebrate the "end" of summer in good fashion as well, although it still feels like summer out here in CA.

P.S. - If you're not easily nauseated and don't mind intense biker-style rock music soundtracks, there are some YouTube videos of motorcyclists riding some of this route. This one is going uphill from Saratoga to the high point at Skyline Blvd (passing lots of tired bikers), this one is cruising through the woods on the western side of Skyline, and this one is good if you like Journey and bad video quality. Maybe I need some speakers on my bike so I can rock some Journey too while pedaling through the hills...