I am one of the few people in the world who has never read a Harry Potter book or seen a Harry Potter movie, so I wasn't exactly rock solid in what I was doing. Fortunately, I had the Internet and the kids (who have read the first book and are working on the second) as resources.
I guess they were OK because the teacher seemed to like them. :)
GONE FISHING: Earlier in the week we were up at Group Health, and as is the case with so many medical offices, there are fish tanks to be found there.
The kids asked me why this one fish seemed to be hiding its face in the sand.
I told them perhaps it thought it was an ostrich. ...
But upon further examination, as I walked to the other side of the tank, I'm kinda thinking the thing went to the big aquarium in the sky. ...
EAT YOUR VEGGIES: At the store today, the kids were both very taken with the lovely assortment of cauliflower. CJ talked me into buying the purple and gold ones. "They're Husky colored," he reminded me (as if that was necessary). Now, we'll just see if they'll actually eat it.
FOLD IT: We like puzzles and we like science, on Saturday at the Seattle Science Fair Expo, we learned how people can help solve puzzles for science. Cool!
Foldit (http://fold.it/portal/) is a Web-based computer game enabling users to contribute to important scientific research. Created by University of Washington researchers, the puzzle game uses the power of 'crowd sourcing' to help scientists solve the mysteries of protein structure. While scientists know the genetic sequence of proteins and many of their functions, there are many questions about the twisting and turning amino acid chains.
That's where the 'game' comes in. Instead of relying on computer programs to calculate the myriad of protein shapes, UW researchers are hoping humans can figure it out faster. There have been a number of remarkable breakthroughs to date.
The Foldit booth at the expo featured several laptops and several nice young men in UW shirts facilitating. The kids didn't hesitate before settling in to stations and starting to unfold things. (Sorry, I realize 'things' is not a very scientific term.)
Annabelle had shoehorned her way into a station a bit a ways away from us. Before too terribly long, the UW guy manning her station caught our attention to inform us, "She's really good at this."
Christian made his way over to the station to see what was going on and the UW rep told him that one reason Annabelle was so good at the 'game' was because "she reads the directions. No one ever reads the directions."
I'd encourage you to give Foldit a chance yourselves. BoingBoing called it "Wasting Time for a Good Cause."
No comments:
Post a Comment