Noggin Fodder

NogFod at the Primary Source Holiday Bazaar

2008-12-01T18:47:00.002-05:00

NogFod is proud to be a vendor at the 2008 Primary Source Holiday Bazaar at the Watertown Hellenic Center (25 Bigelow Ave, Watertown, MA). Primary Source is a non-profit that promotes history and humanities education by connecting educators to cultures throughout the world.

The Bazaar runs from 3-7 pm followed by a trivia night from 7-9. Stop by our booth and take a Stroop Test (you can even practice ahead of time here) for your chance to win a free shirt! We will also be raffling 2 free shirts along with great prizes from other vendors.

We hope to see you there.

Erik Berg
Co-founder of NogFod
Education-Promoting Apparel

Central Asia Institute

2008-11-17T10:29:00.003-05:00

In our efforts to find a charity that has the greatest impact, we have decided to change course slightly. From now on, NogFod will donate 50% of our profits to the Central Asia Institute (CAI). The CAI was founded by Greg Mortenson (read "Three Cups of Tea" for a great biography) to build schools and provide for the education of children, especially girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The mission of the CAI fits with NogFod's mission perfectly, and we feel that our donations can have a great impact in that part of the world, and consequently for the entire world.

Read more about the CAI at www.ikat.org

Sincerely,
The NogFod Blog
www.NogFod.com

The World Clock

2008-10-28T14:58:00.000-04:00

It's morbid, but it's mesmerizing. This is a world clock that runs based on statistical data about the rates of various events. No, computer technology has not gotten good enough to register every time a person is actually born... although, I imagine that is not far off. And it is not currently measuring each barrel of oil removed from the ground or the rising temperature of the earth in billionths of a degree. These numbers are based on historical statistics, but the trends are perfectly clear. If any of these numbers concern you, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Educate yourself. Then take action. Herbert Spencer (an English philosopher and coiner of the term "survival of the fittest" to describe Charles Darwin's conception of natural selection) said, "The great aim of education is not knowledge but action." I agree with Spencer wholeheartedly.

World Clock Website

Noggin Fodder is taking action to helping solve the world's problems by providing education so that many more people around the world can take action themselves. Visit Noggin Fodder's website to learn more about the importance of education.

Sincerely,
Erik Berg
Co-founder
Noggin Fodder
Feed Your Mind
Save Your World

Three Cups of Tea

2008-10-02T20:14:00.006-04:00

Upon the suggestion of JJ, I went out and bought Three Cups of Tea, the biography of mountain climber-turned-philanthropist/humanitarian, Greg Mortenson. While I have yet to read further than the cover flap and introduction I have already learned something that, in retrospect, seems incredibly obvious. In my thinking about the importance of education I have looked at the world primarily through a science teacher's eyes. The benefits of education that I tend to focus on - ending global warming, changing world energy use, limiting world population growth - are all related to science. Yet I missed one of the most obvious benefits of providing education to developing countries: Education is the most powerful "weapon" in the war on terror. In the words of Three Cups of Tea author, David Relin, "Mortenson goes to war with the root causes of terror every time he offers a student a chance to receive a balanced education, rather than attend an extremist madrassa."

Sincerely,
Erik Berg
Co-founder
Noggin Fodder
Feed Your Mind
Save Your World

More on World Population

2008-10-02T19:51:00.005-04:00

The other day I posted a video that showed world population growth over the past 2000 years. To make it more clear how important this issue is, here is a graph of world population over the past 250 years. Notice the difference between developed and developing countries. Fortunately, education has been shown to stop population growth and one dollar goes a long way in funding education in developing countries. Please help us fund education charities in developing countries by supporting Noggin Fodder.

Sincerely,
Erik Berg
Co-founder
Noggin Fodder
Feed Your Mind
Save Your World

World Population

2008-10-02T19:33:00.004-04:00

This video is an incredibly powerful demonstration of the growth of the human population from the year 1 AD to 2030 AD.

We obviously can't continue on this path. One way to end this exponential pattern of population growth is through inevitable competition for resources, with the requisite famines, wars, and death. The other, more favorable way is through education. The fastest growing populations on earth right now are in developing countries. It has been shown that the most effective way to curb population growth is access to education, especially for women.

Help us contribute to education and slow human population growth by supporting Noggin Fodder.

Sincerely,
Erik Berg
Co-founder
Noggin Fodder
Feed Your Mind
Save Your World

Resonance and old age

2008-04-13T14:00:00.004-04:00

I love YouTube. Being a science nerd and teacher I can find tons of videos to demonstrate various topics that I'm interested in or that I teach in class. But it bugs me that there are no explanations of what's going on in the videos. This video, for example:

It would be great is the half million people who have watched this could get more out of it than, "Wicked cool!" So here I'll take a stab at it:
The hand sprinkles tiny plastic beads on a metal plate attached to a speaker. A sine wave generator is playing through the speaker to generate pure tones of various frequencies/pitches (starting low and getting higher). At certain frequecies standing waves a created in the plate that have nodes (places with no shaking) and antinodes (places with lots of shaking). In a guitar string the nodes are the ends and the antinode is the middle. But more complicated patterns can be created. The patterns get really crazy when you chenge from a 1-dimensional string to a 2-dimensional plate. The beads pile up at the nodes and are bounced off of the antinodes, creating the cool patterns.

Here are some neat things to look for as you watch:

The patterns only become visible at certain pitches when the lenghts of the waves being produced are evenly divisible into dimensions of the plate.
When the patterns pop out the volume also gets louder since the plate is resonating (for a great example of resonance, check out a video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse).
The patterns become more and more intricate at the pitch goes up. The higher frequency means shorter waves, so more wavelengths fit within the size of the plate.
You can use this as a hearing test to see how old you are. As people age they lose their high frequency hearing. If you thought that the sound cut out before the video ended then you're old!

Noggin Fodder
www.nogfod.com
Feed your head.

What we can learn from ants.

2008-04-06T21:17:00.008-04:00

The other night my family and I were talking about the problems our society faces in the future: global warming, diminishing natural resources, general destruction of the environment.... all that good uplifting stuff you hear so much about lately. And the questions was raised, "But what can I, as an individual, actually do?" By now you've heard that if we each just did a little bit it would add up to a lot. But, for me, and I think most people, that's a generally tough idea to grasp. First of all there are nearly 7 billion people, so my contribution is 0.00000001% of the whole. What the use? Secondly, if I actually do something, what's to say everyone else will do it as well? As I mulled these questions over in my mind I remembered this clip about an ant colony my dad had showed me a few months ago. Each ant does its small part and the net result is something truly mind-boggling (If you don't have 6 minutes, skip ahead to the middle to see the really cool stuff in the second half). Enjoy....

Noggin Fodder

www.nogfod.com

Feed your head.

The earth is really very small...

2008-02-07T20:51:00.000-05:00

Have you ever sat and thought about how big the earth really is? Maybe not, but it's a worthwhile activity sometimes. When you hear about all the bad stuff humans are doing to the earth it's easy to convince yourself that the earth is too big for us insignificant humans to really affect things. Admit it, you don't really believe we could produce enough carbon dioxide to change the climate of the entire world. And how could that little can of hairspray possibly destroy the ozone layer? When I'm having trouble agreeing with all the evidence that says we are indeed changing the world environment... and not in a good way... I find it helpful to look up at the sky at night to put things in perspective.

As planets go, the earth is really small! Sure we're way bigger than Pluto, but that's not even a planet any more.

When you add Jupiter to the picture the earth begins to look very small.... but at least we can claim to be the biggest planet that's not just a big ball of gas.

The sun contains 98% of the mass of the entire solar system! Next to the sun, Jupiter is insignificant. The earth?... barely noticeable now.

Astronomers apparently aren't all that creative. They call stars like the sun "dwarfs" and stars like Arcturus "giants."

Apparently in awe of what they were finding astronomers were unable to muster a creative word in naming these types of stars. Rigel is a "blue giant," Aldebaran is a "red giant." Betelgeuse (pronounced: beetle juice) and Antares are "red super-giants."

Astronomers lack of creative naming aside, where is the earth in the last picture? The sun, 1 million times larger than the earth, is a single pixel.

So next time you start thinking the earth is too big for us humans to mess it up, look up at the sky and realize that we are all stuck here on an insignificant speck that is the only insignificant speck we have. "But we'll just find another planet to go to when we ruin earth," you say. Don't count on it. These pictures don't take into account the even more ridiculous distances between all these planets and stars.

My advice: The earth is really very small.... Don't mess it up!

Noggin Fodder

www.nogfod.com

Feed your head.

Punctuate.

2008-01-14T15:05:00.001-05:00

I don't recall the last time punctuation was brought up as a topic of conversation at a party. And I'm fairly certain "You know what this world needs?... Better punctuation!" is a pick up line destined for failure. Yet Lynne Truss has sold millions of copies of her book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves." The title is based on a panda bear joke that is bound to make at least every English teacher I know laugh. From www.eatsshootsandleaves.com:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

This is an admittedly bad English-grammar-nerd joke. So if that didn't entertain you, here is a real panda that eats shoots and leaves.

There are, in fact, a lot of entertaining examples of how punctuation can affect the meaning of a sentence. My favorite:

A woman without her man is nothing.

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

Which do you like better?

I hope my punctuation has been correct....

Noggin Fodder
www.nogfod.com
Feed your head.

Entertaining Gas: Sulfur Hexaflouride

2008-01-07T19:54:00.000-05:00

In this YouTube video, an unknown hand demonstrates the density of an invisible gas, sulfur hexaflouride. The gas is so dense that an aluminum foil boat floats on it, like water. The boat is sunk when the dense gas is scooped out of the tank and into the boat.

Everyone, at some point, has given themselves a Chipmunks voice by inhaling helium. Helium is much less dense than air and when it passes through your vocal cords they vibrate at a higher frequency giving your voice a higher pitch. Sulfur hexaflouride passing over your vocal cords makes them vibrate much more slowly, giving you a deep voice. In this video, some guy in a white lab coat demonstrates the effects of sulfur hexaflouride on your voice. He knows his science, but get a tad nervous. As he trips on his words he inhales a little too much gas and nearly vomits. The gas also sinks to the bottom of your lungs and would stay there unless you turn upside down to let it fall out (also an entertaining part of the video).

Enjoy,
berg

Noggin Fodder
www.nogfod.com
Feed your head.

An interesting take on "going green"

2007-12-15T22:59:00.000-05:00

Here's a transcript from an NPR segment on Weekend America by Bill Radke, aired on WBUR back in September or October. He has an interesting point of view on the whole "Go Green" craze that is currently gripping the nation. I tend to agree with him... mostly. You can calculate your own ecological footprint by going to:

http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp

This website uses your answers to a few questions, and a few assumptions, to calculate your individual impact on the environment in terms of how many hectares (one hectare is 2.5 acres) of land are needed to support just you. It's an eye-openning experience.

berg

Here is the transcript, taken from www.wbur.org:

Of all the American Public Media hosts who took the "Consumer Consequences" test -- our online calculator that measures a person's environmental footprint -- Weekend America's Bill Radke scored the greenest. But he doesn't consider himself an environmentalist. Radke explores what does and does not motivate people to change the world.
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I don't consider myself an environmentalist.
I do walk to the bus stop. My wife drives a hybrid, we're doing a green remodel and shopping for solar roof panels. But here's the thing, messages that berate us for not caring about things like global warming don't work for me.
In a Greenpeace video a boy in grey hood says, "You adults have known about this for years and though you could've done something about it, you haven't. Starting today, the lines are drawn. Either you're for my future or against it."
There are a lot of environmental messages like that, telling us that global warming is immoral and you should feel horrible about it.
NASA administrator Michael Griffin thinks differently: "I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.” In an NPR interview this spring, Griffin took a lot of flak for saying that people are not obligated to stop climate change.
"Which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings?" he asked.
I don't agree with Griffin about what to do about global warming. But I'm with him on this one point. I don't know what's best for the planet. For all I know, humans will deal with climate change by cooperating across the world. We'll become closer than ever. Or maybe Homo sapiens will die off and we'll mutate into a species that doesn't choke itself to death.
Believe me; I want my baby daughter to thrive in this world. But I'm saying that's not noble of me, it's just tribal. I am not righteously outraged about the environment.
So here's my question: If you don't feel outrage, fear or guilt, then what motivates you? Here I turn to an unlikely muse: my governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"For too long, the environmental movement had been powered by guilt. Guilt is passive, guilt is inhibiting, and guilt is defensive. Successful movements are built on passion not guilt," he said.
Interesting. So what if you didn't feel you knew you what was best for the earth, but you were passionate about the elegance of renewable energy (the way I love sailing across the water using only the wind)?
Could you appreciate the brilliance of hybrid and solar technology and green home design, without resenting the SUV driver or regretting your own impact on the Earth?
Well, I've found that I can. And so, this green radio host offers you an environmental message:
Did you know you could be reducing your carbon emissions and still polluting the planet with anxiety? Remember: passion burns clean. So save the guilt. And save the world.

National Honor Society Induction Speech

2007-12-08T22:16:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to the newest members of the Belmont High School National Honor Society. You’ve truly worked hard to earn this distinction. Tonight is an opportunity to relax, reflect on your successes, and feel proud of yourselves and your accomplishments. Congratulations are also in order for you families, friends, and teachers without whom, many of those accomplishments may not have been possible.

I am honored to be asked to speak to you all tonight. Mr. Loosmann informed me that I am supposed to talk to you about the four pillars of the National Honor Society: Scholarship, Character, Leadership, and Service. But having been witness to the selection process, I know you all are here because you have accomplished something in each of these areas already. You already understand what it takes to be recognized by the National Honor Society.

Instead, I want you to think for a moment about what has motivated you to lead a life based on scholarship, character, leadership, and service. Is it your family? Your friends? The prospect of making gobs of money after graduating from a prestigious university? Hold that thought, while I go off on a science digression for a moment. I promise, I’ll come back. As most of you know, I teach Astronomy, so I thought that would be an appropriate topic for my speech….

Let’s talk for a minute about our place in the universe. Astronomers discovered an interesting thing: each one of you can correctly say that you are the center of the universe. So next time your parents ask if you think the world revolves around you, you can safely answer, “No, the entire universe does!” But how big is this universe that revolves around you? The universe is very big and very empty. It’s so big that it takes light, traveling at 186,000 miles every second about 14 billion years to reach us from the edge. To understand such large sizes, it’s best to use a model. If we shrink the earth down to the size of this tennis ball, then our closest neighbor, the moon, would be the size of this quarter and it would be 10 feet away. Between them? Nothing. The biggest thing in our solar system, the sun, is really big. It loses 5 million tons of matter every second! Lost, gone, never to return. It’s so big that in doing that every second of every day for the past 5 billion years it has lost less than 1/10 of 1% of its total mass so far. In our model the sun would be 33 feet across, (roughly the volume of this stage I’m standing on). But it would have to be placed almost 1 mile away! And between the earth and the sun? Nothing. To take a wider view we have to shrink the model even further. Let’s make the entire sun the size of a grain of sand. At this scale the earth essentially disappears: a tiny speck. The nearest star, Proxima centauri, would be another grain of sand 2 miles away. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, which contains hundreds of billions of stars like our sun would, on this scale stretch a fifth of the way to the moon. And this is just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies spread throughout our universe, a universe that, on this scale, would extend beyond the orbit of Pluto, 4 billions miles away! Like I said, the universe is a very big place.
Now let’s look at our place in time. Evidence suggests that life began on earth about 4 billion years ago. If we squash that 4 billion years down into a 24 hour day, starting at midnight, then the dinosaurs didn’t come to the party until 20 hours had passed, some time around 10 pm. Mammals showed up at around 11 pm, after the dinosaurs left. Humans got there at 11:59:58 and didn’t start writing things down about it until ¼ of a second before midnight. In the 24 hour existence of life, humans have only been around for 2 seconds!

So back to my original question: What motivates you to achieve? Your family, your peers, and all that money you could earn are external sources of motivation. These external motivators may be fine in the short term. But to live an entire life based on scholarship, character, leadership, and service requires that your motivations come from within. So I’d like to share this advice on how to continue to live up to the 4 pillars of NHS.

First, be a SCHOLAR for the sheer joy of learning. Be in awe of the fact the human brain can figure out and can even contemplate the size of the universe. Take advantage of that ¼ second of the written language. Read voraciously. Don’t think for a second that you can sit back because humans have it all figured out. Take a lesson from my 3-year-old daughter. She learns something new every day and is constantly amazed as she continually discovers how the world works. Maintain that child’s sense of wonder as you move through life. Let the size of our world inspire you to dig deeper, look farther, and learn more than your predecessors.

Next, have the CHARACTER to use our ¼ second-old ability to write to send thank you notes to your parents, friends, and teachers for the help they’ve given you along the way.

Third, instead of being overwhelmed by the scale of the universe and earth’s apparent insignificance, be a LEADER in preserving this tiny, watery, rock for future generations to enjoy, as you have. It may be a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the only tiny speck we have.

And lastly, spend your time figuring out what you are good at. Then use your skills to SERVE your community and make our small world a better place.

In conclusion, I’m asking you to think about your place in space and time. Let that perspective motivate you to be a scholar and leader, and to live a life of high character and service. When that motivation comes from within, you will be able to sustain those activities that got you to this point for the rest of your lives.

Thank you for listening, and congratulations again.