Category Archives: Education

Engineer’s Week

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Winter Memories

Winter Memories

This year’s Engineer’s Week has passed with little notice. I’m an engineer, but rather than dwell on the deeds of me and mine, I’d like to take this opportunity to extend the celebration to other members of the STEM community. In particular, I would like to recognize teachers, well really just one, a second grade math teacher, Anne. She is more than halfway through her gig as a long-term substitute, but she has thrown herself into the job as if her life-long career depended upon it. She works late most nights and then brings more work home afterwards. She works weekends and in her none too copious free time has taken up the mantle of campaigning for an upcoming school property tax increase. I’m singing her praises here, because I’m her biggest fan, but I can’t come closer to the truth than Ron D Smith has with his sardonic post, “My wife is a lazy liar”. I’ll just have to contend myself with cooking and cleaning and having dinner ready for whenever she gets home.

Naughty and Nice

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Mark at the Boathouse
Anne at the Boathouse

Anne was telling a joke about an old engineer who was called in to consult and after studying the problem, he tapped the broken machine once with a hammer and it started working again. When he sent in his bill for $5,000 management balked, because he had just tapped the machine once with a hammer. The old engineer explained that it was $5 for the hammer and $4,995 for knowing where to strike. After she told this joke, Dan said that the story sounded just like a true story involving Henry Ford. I googled it and found the following on Wiki:

In the early 20th century Ford’s electrical engineers couldn’t solve problems they were having with an electrical generator and called in Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the Wizard of Schenectady. He was pals with both Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison. After several days of study, Steinmetz climbed up the generator and made a chalk mark on its side. Then he told Ford’s engineers to remove a plate at the mark and replace sixteen windings from the field coil. They did, and the generator performed to perfection. Henry Ford was thrilled until he got an invoice for $10,000. Ford acknowledged Steinmetz’s success but balked at the figure. He asked for an itemized bill. Steinmetz, responded with the following: Making chalk mark on generator = $1; Knowing where to make the mark = $9,999. Ford paid the bill.

Kids, send them off to college and they come back smarter than you!

We did get out on our bicycles today and rode through the park. It was a lot colder than last Sunday. We stopped to warm ourselves at the open-pit fire at the ice rink. I had made it all the way until today, when I heard the Little Drummer Boy (LDB) at Steinberg. I play the LDB Game. See the rules below. This is the furthest that I have ever made it. So close, yet so far. We also stopped off at the boathouse again. This is starting to be habit-forming. We definitely didn’t burn off enough calories riding to offset those that we ingested. Today, was another grey day. All but two days in December have been overcast. Our last sunny day was last Sunday, when the temperature climbed into the seventies. It is unusual for Saint Louis to have so much cloudy weather. Today is the Winter Solstice, both the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Winter starts tonight and with December 25th just days away, it is starting to look a lot like Christmas.

The LDB Game is a game wherein you lose when you realize that you’ve heard the Little Drummer Boy song. Who Plays It? Persons of honor. When Does the Game Start? The Game begins on Thanksgiving. When Does the Game End? Regular Season lasts through Christmas Day. I, like the Saint Louis Rams, never had any pretensions of postseason play. Play it if you dare. See below.

A Muse Amuses Musically

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A muse amuses musically, this is what my muse spoke to me when I invoked her prophetic powers with this question, “What should I blog about today?” “A muse amuses musically, what does that mean? I don’t understand”, I tooted. “Be quiet now and I will explain what it means”, she trumpeted.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice!

One of the classes that Anne participated in on Monday was band. In this class the music teacher was employing a study aide called SmartMusic. This software tool helps students with their practice. It let’s them see how well they are doing; by showing them how well each note was played. It also helps them hear how well they are doing, by playing back what they have played. It also monitors home practice sessions for playback by the teacher.

Big Brother is watching! – George Orwell, 1984

It was this last feature that was used to draw out the object of this day’s lesson. Students were chosen seemingly at random, at least at first, to perform the assignment, The Russian Sailor’s Dance. After a while it became clear that three notes was the best that this chosen lot could do. A little haranguing ensued.

What starts with a P and ends with ice?
Pterodactyl lice!

After the dose of vinegar out came the sugar. The music teacher explained different ways to practice: play each note twice or start from the end and then build from the back. After just five minutes of these exercises there was already a noticeable improvement in the band’s sound. More importantly, the need to practice at home or the consequences from not, were driven home.

A little musicality, please! – from Strictly Ballroom

The final lesson the music teacher had to give his students was derived from the Super Bowl. Singer Christina Aguilera flubbed a line in the National Anthem and the Black Eyed Peas’ music in the halftime show was lackluster. “Those people are entertainers, not musicians. They don’t have to play well to be successful. You students are musicians; you must play well to be successful in this class.”

The bell rang!

Being a public school teacher is a tough job. Being a teacher of the arts in public school is double-down tough, first to be cut, last to be appreciated. Anne and I salute her colleagues for the great work that they do. They hold the future of America in their hands, until three o’clock, and then it is up to the rest of us.

LA Dan and DC Dave and US

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Last month Anne journeyed across this country in order to install LA Dan in what I believe will soon become his natural habitat. On Tuesday, Dave began his analogous journey. Late Tuesday night he landed in Saint Louis. This first step on his journey will be followed next week by another to Washington DC. There he will take up the mantle of DC Dave. Then we will have two coastal sons.  All the while, Anne and I will be left in the middle, here in Saint Louis.

I lifted the following picture off of Dan’s Facebook page.  On Tuesday, a fire fighting helicopter, the skyhook type, was sucking up water from one of the water hazards at the neighboring golf course.  The picture shows the helicopter and the wildfire’s smoke plume in the background.  In California, this year’s fire season seems to be rather benign compared to seasons in the recent past.  The first time that he tried to visit CalArts, he couldn’t get there.  The fires of September had cut it off.  His friend Cat who had valiantly driven him down the state and then back up again was cutoff from her place at the end of her trip.

The final picture with this post shows some new bike parts that just showed up on Wednesday.  These parts are slated for Anne’s bike.  The new flat resistant tubes are intended to replace worn parts, but the rest of this spread is part of a transformation.  Last year in Quebec, I rode a road bike that had a mountain bike rear derailleur and cassette.  I liked it and after last weekend’s rather hilly Tour de Wildwood I suggest the same to Anne.  She agreed to try it and see if she liked it or not.  So, after this year’s MS-150 bike ride, which is coming up quick, I’ll install these parts on her bike.  They should make it much easer to do hill climbing than with a standard road bike’s setup.  If she doesn’t like it then I’ll just use the new parts on my bike and restore her bike to the way it was.

Anne has allowed me to tell this story from her work.  The class was studying a mnemonic.  The intent of the lesson was to teach the class the mnemonic so that they would then be ready to actually use it for some subsequently required memorization.  The class was given an exercise to test their comprehension.  Student A completed this exercise very quickly.  Student B asked how did you finish it so quickly.  Student A responded, I studied.  To which, Student B exclaimed, that’s cheating.