What is science? Looking at ideas, hypotheses and theories.

Posted 22/05/2013 By Ross Mannell and has no comments yet.

Reference: What is Science? from the Teach Them Science Blog

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When looking at a post from a class, a question came to mind. What is science? Here is an attempt to explain…

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Science definition:

The systematic study of man and his environment based on the deductions and inferences which can be made, and the general laws which can be formulated, from reproducible observations and measurements of events and paramenters so obtained.

(The Concise Macquarie Dictionary, Macquarie University, 1982 ISBN:  0 86824 109 1)

The word “science” comes from Latin “scientia” and means knowledge. Scientists search for knowledge so they can better understand and explain the world and universe around us. Their work involves ideas, hypotheses and theories. I think of these as three levels of thinking about science and other subjects.

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What does this mean?

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There seems to be confusion in the general population between “theory” and “idea”. Have you heard someone say “My theory is…” when all they really have is an idea? Many in the general public seem to think a theory is an unproven idea so when they hear scientists discussing theories they believe scientists are discussing ideas.

theories and ideas What is science? Looking at ideas, hypotheses and theories.

Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

I think there are three levels of thought in this process…

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1. Ideas are thoughts, impressions, notions, opinions, beliefs, views or intentions. They don’t need proof nor do they need to be repeatable or testable by others. They are simply what we have in mind.

2. From our ideas, an hypothesis can be born. An hypothesis is an idea, often based on experience or initial results, which might lead a theory. It’s an attempt to explain what is observed but hasn’t yet been repeatedly checked or had additional supporting research.

3. “A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. If enough evidence accumulates to support a hypothesis, it moves to the next step—known as a theory—in the scientific method and becomes accepted as a valid explanation of a phenomenon.” (Source: “What is a scientific theory?“) That is, hypotheses only become theories after they have been tested many times and have supporting evidence.

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There are many examples of ideas or hypotheses masquerading as theories so we must look at what is presented to us and decide whether it is simply an idea or possibly an hypothesis and not a theory.

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Look at the below statements and decide whether each is an idea, hypothesis or theory. Remember, hypotheses try to explain what is seen while theories have been repeatedly tested by scientists.

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1. The different species of life have evolved over a long period of time.

2. If everyone on one side of the Earth were to jump up and down at the same time they can change the orbit of Earth around the sun.

3. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

You can leave your answers in the comments section. As an added challenge, can you tell me why you chose each answer?

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Now for a little fun…

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One skill I have is finding sometimes unusual resources and below is a very unusual resource. The quality of the video clip isn’t very good. It’s in black and white and looks a little rough so it might be a very old video. It shows Professor Flurfflefinger who claims to have developed an anti-gravity ray but I found his ideas a little strange. See what you think…

Schools and students have permission to use this video clip for non-commercial, educational purposes.

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 After making this movie clip, Professor Flurfflefinger disappeared. Some believe he never really existed and the movie clip was a prank. Others believe he accidentally turned his anti-gravity ray on himself and is floating somewhere out in space. Still more believe real scientists laughed at his ideas so he now is in hiding promising to never talk about science again.

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Do you think his demonstrations are real or fake? Why?

Categories: Education, Philosophy for the Young, Science in the Classroom
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Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Posted 16/05/2013 By Ross Mannell and has no comments yet.

In late 2012, I was looking over my blogs. In it were assorted graphics. It can be hard for schools and students to use some graphics. They need to seek permission from the creators to make use of them and give credit and sources. I decided to give permission on the blogs for students and schools to make use of most graphics, photos, video and audio I have made. This is in line with the volunteer and non-profit activities in which I am involved.

Grade 4 Techie Kids asked what program I used to create a simple graphic for a post I wrote for them. Below is a link to the post…

“Don’t Let the Cow Drive the Whippet!”

Photoshop Layers

Photoshop, and many other graphics programs, has something known as layers. You can put one on top of the other or shuffle the layers around. Think of pieces of paper, in the case of this drawing I used six. Each page is on top of another. I can hide or show any layer (page) or change their order. They will help me build up the picture.

Here are the steps I used in preparing the graphic using Photoshop.

 

Don’t Let the Cow Drive the Whippet!

When preparing a graphic, my first step is normally to make a pencil drawing on paper. This allows me to make changes if necessary.

Once roughly drawn, I outline the drawing in black pen then scan it into Photoshop. It looked like this…

Layer 1

Cow and Whippet1 Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

 

Layer 2

To keep the original scan in case I need to make changes, I select all of the picture then COPY and PASTE. This also allows me to move a layer under the copy. This means I now have two layers with just the black outline.

Layer 3

Layer 3 is the fun part where I get to colour in the main drawing. I select the colour I want for each section then use the paint can tool to fill each coloured part. Sometimes I have to fix small gaps. If I fill a section but the colour also goes in other places, there is a gap in the black lines allowing the colour to run through. It’s like a bucket with a hole in it. The colour runs out until the hole is filled.

Cow and Whippet2 Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop
Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

Layer 4

 With Layer 4, I use the paintbrush tool to add the sky, road and grass. As I do this, Layer 3 is covered.

Cow and Whippet3a Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

With the sky, road and grass coloured, the layer has to be moved under the coloured car in Layer 3. I now go back to Layer 3. I use the magic wand tool to select the white areas and delete them so the background colours can be seen.

Cow and Whippet3b Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

Layer 5

I now add another layer on top. I use the paint brush tool and make the colour almost see through and paint in the dust near the car tyres. Once done, this layer is now moved under the car.

Cow and Whippet4 Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

Layer 6

Another layer is added on top. This time I draw in some grass. I could add trees or any other background items. Layer 6 is then moved under the car. Some graphics I prepare can use even more layers depending on how complex they are.

Cow and Whippet5 Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

 

Some other graphics prepared for blog posts using Photoshop and layers…

I don’t have a photo of a platypus in my collection at this time so I prepared this graphic for a post. It had about 8 layers.

platypus Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Platypus
Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

Like the platypus, I didn’t have a photo of a tiger quoll. For the tiger quoll, instead of drawing a background, I made one layer a photo and placed it underneath the quoll drawing.

Tiger Quoll Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Tiger Quoll
Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) again uses a photo background. Because they were mostly nocturnal (night hunters), the top layer was an opaque (almost see through) blue layer to make the picture look as though it was night.

Thylacine Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger)
Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

“Jason’s Light” was created for a story on my Writing Blog and is not a drawing. I used Photoshop to edit out the background in a photo then selected the person. Adjusting contrast (amount of light and dark) made him a silhouette. I then added a colour background.

Jasons light Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Jason’s Light
Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

“Fingers Entwined” was also created for a story and has four layers. The hands were taken from a photo. A new, blue background layer was added and then another opaque (see through) layer to make the star burst. Finally a fourth layer added colour over the hands.

fingers entwined Preparing simple drawings for blogs using Photoshop

Fingers Entwined
Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

 

Categories: Arts, Crafts and Hobbies
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Aligning Video Clips

Posted 14/04/2013 By Ross Mannell and has no comments yet.

This post was prompted by a kind gift sent by the Battalion Hawk Bloggers. Knowing I have been clapping my hands together in order to mark video from three cameras, they thought they would send me a movie clapper board.

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Here is some information on how it was used.

Clapper Board 300x291 Aligning Video Clips

Making a video…

 

Using one camera for each clip.

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If we only use one camera, you don’t need to worry about aligning  video clips. You simply edit the video clips but how would you know which clip to use if your movie wasn’t shot in the order you wanted? This is where the information under the clapper board comes into play.

 

PRODUCTION: The name of the movie.

REGIE: While it means “rule”, this is where I would write the scene number.

CAMERA: If using more than one camera to record scenes, I would add the camera number.

OTHER: There is an information box where I can write other information.

 

Using more than one camera.

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When I film, I often use up to three cameras to take a performance. Two are fixed to record  parts of the show and the third I call “MAIN” is controlled by me so I can zoom in on performers. The problem can be aligning the video from each camera. I need to have some way of seeing and hearing a point on each camera.

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This is when I need to  clap the clapper together. All three cameras are pointing in my direction so all three will record me clapping the clapper board. When editing the clips from the cameras, I look for the spot on each camera’s recording where I hear and see the clapper come together. I then mark the position on each clip.

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Look at the image below. The three blue rows are the video parts of the camera recordings whereas the green are the audio recording made by the camera. On each line you will see I have left a red marker. This is where I first hear and see the clap of the clapper board. I then slide each to line up the markers as you can see in the image.

 

video editor Aligning Video Clips

Do you notice the start of each camera recording is in a different place?

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This happens because I start each in turn. In this case, I started the RIGHT camera then the LEFT camera and finally the MAIN camera.  I then walked in front of the cameras and clapped the board.

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Now the three camera recordings are aligned. I can trim off the unwanted parts at the beginning and start the main edit.

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Below is the first time I used the clapper board. The same day I received the gift I had a call and was asked if I would film a music festival. The above video alignments are from this show. The clip will show me use the clapper board then I have added 15 seconds of one performance. The people’s faces have been deliberately blurred for privacy reasons. I will be starting to edit the performance soon but I took time out to write this post.

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Categories: Cinema, Theatre and Animation, Technology
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Writing – For Sasha, Mia, Sammy and Parsa,

Posted 29/03/2012 By Ross Mannell and has no comments yet.

Dear Sasha, Mia, Sammy and Parsa,

Your post was wonderful. While I have never written a cartoon book, your guidelines would help me. I do like cartooning and often draw cartoons for children when I help our school holiday playgroup. My favourite characters to draw are animal characters. Here is one of my oldest characters if you are interested…

DOG RM 180x300 Writing For Sasha, Mia, Sammy and Parsa,

Have you ever written a book? Tell us about it.

I have written some books but none have ever been published. The last story I had time to write was over 48,000 words and was entitled, “Samuel Samantha”. It was about a boy called Samuel, although he preferred to be called, Sam. When his parents witness a crime, he has to pretend to be a girl in this story. He doesn’t face any real danger but he found some of his ideas about girls change. He realised a girl can also be a best friend. icon smile Writing For Sasha, Mia, Sammy and Parsa,

What steps did I take?

Perhaps I am a little different in that I don’t always write down ideas for a story first. I often develop the ideas in my imagination then start to write out the story. When I start typing, I can often write a few thousands words within a day. It’s as though I am seeing the story in my mind and type what I see.

“Samuel Samantha” was just like that. I wondered what would happen if a boy about eight had to pretend to be a girl. The first step was to decide why this would happen then what events would happen as he took on the role. As I like a story with some sort of message, the story had to end with Sam learning something.

No matter what I have written, the next steps take longest, even longer than the writing itself. I have to edit the story by…

1. Checking for spelling or punctuation errors. It’s so easy to make them when you are typing quickly.

2. Checking to make sure characters are the same throughout the story. Imagine if a boy named John is a man in the next chapter even though only a day has passed.

3. Checking for tense errors. If I am recalling a story from the past, it shouldn’t suddenly be the future.

4. Reading and rereading the story just in case there are errors in consistency of the storyline. I need to know each chapter follows on from the one before so the whole story makes sense.

5. Rereading again. It’s strange but I am never completely happy with a story I’ve written.

6. Finally, deciding it’s time to stop working on a story. That can be as hard as all of the editing but a writer must stop at some time.

I’ve probably left some things out but I think you get the idea. My problem is, when I decided “Samuel Samantha” was done, I was sad because Sam and his friends had become important to me and I knew my adventure with them was over.

Writing is a great hobby.

Click on this sentence if you want to see my story blog. It contains mostly very short stories I write for two writing challenges normally requiring only about 100 words (100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups and Saturday Centus). There are also some longer stories but novels like “Samuel Samantha” aren’t included.

Categories: Writing

A necessary addition to explain a simple way of writing a googol

Posted 02/03/2012 By Ross Mannell and has no comments yet.

A googol is one followed by 100 zeroes. Wikipedia provides three alternate names but a googol is much easier to deal with than, for example, ten duotrigintillion.

Writing a googol in full…

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000

A shortened form is…
Screen shot 2012 03 02 at 7.22.01 PM 300x45 A necessary addition to explain a simple way of writing a googol

(This really means one followed by 100 zeroes.)

Categories: Maths