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Damping Down Danger

4/30/2020

Sneed B. Collard III

Connecting Science and Kids

Several years ago, I rode the world’s fastest elevator to the top of one of the world’s tallest buildings—Taipei 101. Shaped like an elegant stalk of bamboo, Taipei 101 soars 1670 feet above the island nation of Taiwan. However, the engineers who designed the building faced two monumental challenges. The first is that dozens of earthquakes shake Taiwan each year. The second is that in an average year, Taiwan gets hammered by three or four hurricanes, or typhoons.

            How, engineers wondered, could they keep people comfortable inside Taipei 101 when it swayed back and forth? More important, how could they keep the building from getting damaged or collapsing in a massive earthquake or 100 mile-per-hour winds?

            One solution: a damper ball.

            Damping devices are weighty objects that can reduce the motion of a bridge, building, or other structure. In the case of Taipei 101, engineers placed the damper ball near the top of the building—the part that sways the most. The ball is hung from thick cables inside the building and rests on giant springs or “dampers.”

            One of Isaac Newton’s basic laws of physics is that an object at rest tends to stay at rest—and the damper ball proves it. Every time Taipei 101 starts swaying, the damper ball wants to stay where it is and “pulls back” on the building, reducing how far the building moves. When the building sways in the opposite direction, the process repeats itself—but in the reverse direction. Of course the building also pulls on the damper ball, but the ball’s movements are restricted by the dampers it presses against.

            Does the system work? You bet. The damper ball inside of Taipei 101 reduces the building’s movement by 30 to 40 percent!

            Of course not just any damping device could protect an enormous building like Taipei 101. Taipei’s damper ball weighs 1.5 million pounds—as much as two fully-loaded jumbo jets. It is composed of 41 circular steel plates that stand taller than a one-story house. In 2008, when a giant earthquake hit mainland China, the people of Taiwan could feel it hundreds of miles away. The damper ball did its job, resisting Taipei 101’s movement, keeping the building safe. During Typhoon Soudelor in 2015, the damper again worked like a charm, protecting the building against 100- to 145-mile-per-hour winds.

            Besides protecting Taipei 101, the damper ball has become a major tourist attraction. Each year, thousands of visitors ride to the 89th floor. They take selfies next to the damper ball. They even take “Damper Baby” souvenirs home with them. If you’re ever lucky enough to visit Taiwan, check it out!

Left: Taipei 101 is a landmark skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan. The building was officially classified as the world's tallest in 2004, and remained such until the completion of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in 2010. Alton Thompson, Wikimedia Commons
Above: The damper is a steel sphere 18 feet across. Supported by eight steel cables, it swings like a pendulum. Armand du Plessis, Wikimedia Commons

The damper ball is visible between the 89th and 91st floor of Taipei 101 and has become an attraction for tourists.

Sneed B. Collard III is author of more than eighty award-winning children’s books as well as a new book for educators, Teaching Nonfiction Revision: A Professional Writer Shares Strategies, Tips, and Lessons.
Sneed is a dynamic speaker and offers school and conference programs that combine science, nature, and literacy. To learn more about him and his talks, visit his website,.
To learn more about the damper ball and watch how it performed during Typhoon Soudelor, check out this article and video: http://www.thorntontomasetti.com/taipei-101s-tmd-explained/

MLA 8 Citation
Collard, Sneed B. "Damping Down Danger." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 10
01 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
Damping-Down-Danger.

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I Met a Man About a Parrot

4/28/2020

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Vicki Cobb
The Master Chef of Kids' Hands-on Science

I’m often asked where I get my ideas for books. Let me give you an example:

The other day, when I was walking in a neighborhood park, there was a man doing whole-body lifts on a piece of exercise equipment with a huge, brilliantly–colored parrot on his shoulder. It was so unusual that, without thinking, I called out: “What a beautiful bird! May I take your picture?” I was full of questions so we chatted for a while.

Me: “What kind of bird is that?”

Scotty, the parrot-man: “She’s a green-winged macaw.”

Me: “What’s her name? How old is she?”

Scotty: “Her name is Lucky. She’s 2 ½ years old but she can live more than 60 years. She’s a vegetarian, like me. Her beak is a nut-cracker. ”

Lucky repeatedly kissed Scotty on the lips with her giant hooked beak as he turned to talk to her. She had been an expensive gift to him—they cost about $1500 at Bird Jungle, our local bird store. She couldn’t fly because he kept her wings clipped; it’s dangerous for a 2 ½ pound bird to be able to fly around the house. He had given her a bath that morning. She had communicated that she wanted one by putting her head under the faucet and looking at him.

“Why did she want a bath?” I asked. “Was she dirty?”

Scotty wasn’t sure why, except that it rains every day in her natural habitat—the rain forest. Then he pointed out a new feather on her neck. It was encased in a white sheath. A bath makes the sheath fall off and the feather fluffs up. Maybe that feels like undoing a pony tail

This is often how I get ideas for books. I find something interesting and start asking questions.   Of course, I paid a visit to Bird Jungle. What a noisy store! There I found more people to interview. It’s amazing how much you can learn from people who are experts.

After a while I ran out of questions. That’s because I didn’t know enough to keep going. How can I remedy that? Go read a book or two about green-winged macaws and other rain forest birds. It could lead to a book idea about the rain forest like:  This Place Is Wet.

When I write, I don’t write just about content.   I write what interests me about content. There’s a big difference.

A green-winged macaw is the second largest of all the macaws. They migrate between Argentina and the Amazon rain forest

Scotty doing full-body push ups with Lucky on his shoulder.

Does Vicki's story make you want to visit a store like Bird Jungle to meet a green-winged macaw?

Vicki made a trip to the Amazon rain forest with her good friend, Alaskan artist, Barbara Lavallee. You can find out what they learned there by reading This Place Is Wet. For more information about the book, click here.

Vicki Cobb is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through FieldTripZoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Cobb, Vicki. "I Met a Man about a Parrot." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 18 Dec. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
I-Met-a-Man-About-a-Parrot. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

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Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson—Smuggler!

4/27/2020

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Peggy Thomas

Curiosity queen: writing science, history, and everything in between

On April 13, 1787 Thomas Jefferson celebrated his 44th birthday riding a mule over the Alps on his way to Italy. Jefferson’s first official federal position after writing the Declaration of Independence was serving as Minister to France under President George Washington. Jefferson’s job was to grow America’s economy, which he did by forming trade agreements to sell whale oil and tobacco overseas. He also looked for new crops that could be grown in the U.S. and sold in Europe.

One thing he noticed was that the French ate a lot of rice, but they didn’t buy rice grown in America. The French preferred dry or upland rice. American farmers grew “swamp” rice and suffered with mosquitoes and malaria. Jefferson thought that if American farmers switched to upland rice they would not only be able to sell it abroad, they would also be healthier.

Jefferson asked for samples of upland rice from friends, farmers, ship captains who traveled to far off lands, and even the seven-year-old prince of Cochin China. The most prized rice, however, was grown in Italy and banned from export.

Determined to help America, Jefferson rode over the Alps and found the unhusked grain. “I could only bring off as much as my coat and surtout [overcoat] pockets would hold,” he wrote a friend. Under penalty of death, he smuggled it across the border.

Back in France, Jefferson sent rice to farmers in South Carolina and to his farm manager at Monticello, his home in Virginia. He even grew samples of rice in pots on his windowsill when he returned to New York to be Secretary of State.

Unfortunately, the upland rice didn’t grow well in the South and didn’t become a big export for the U.S., but Jefferson was not discouraged. He had already set his sights on another amazing plant that he hoped would be “the source of the greatest wealth and happiness.” Olive trees.

Many years later when Jefferson listed his achievements, along with writing the Declaration of Independence he included his attempts to bring rice and olives to the United States. “The greatest service which can be rendered any country,” he said, “is to add an useful plant to its culture.”

Celebrate his birthday with a salad made from some of the useful plants he brought to our culture— kale, tomatoes, peppers and chickpeas with a splash of olive oil.

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson!

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson while in London in 1786, 15 years before he began his presidency. By Mather Brown. Library of Congress, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

After service as Secretary of State (1790–93), Jefferson began rebuilding his Virginia home, Monticello, based on the ideas he had acquired in Europe. The home is a major tourist attraction today.

Peggy Thomas is the author of Thomas Jefferson Grows a Nation

Among her other books are:
* For the Birds: the life of Roger Tory Peterson
* Snow Dance
* Farmer George Plants A Nation
* Joshua the Giant Frog
* Forensic Anthropology: the Science of Talking Bones

MLA 8 Citation
Thomas, Peggy. "Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson - Smuggler!" Nonfiction Minute,
iNK Think Tank, 13 Apr. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/
the-nonfiction-minute/happy-birthday-thomas-jefferson-smuggler.

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World Penguin Day

4/24/2020

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Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

Who doesn’t like penguins? Their waddling gait is fun to watch. They have little fear of humans so it’s easy to get next to them. Penguin movies such as Happy Feet and The Penguins of Madagascar are box office hits.

World Penguin Day on April 25 focuses attention on these loveable flightless fowl. Some people dress up in black and white clothing. Many read books about penguins or watch penguin movies.

I was fortunate to get up close and personal to thousands of penguins during a trip to Antarctica. As our ship neared the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula—the closest point to the southern tip of South America which had been our departure point—we marveled at how effortlessly they skimmed through the water beside us. Soon we marveled at another characteristic. We were at least two or three miles offshore when the harsh odor of the poop generated by all those penguins wafted over the ship.

We relished the opportunity to go ashore and wander through their rookeries. There were lots of juveniles, covered with gray fuzz that would eventually fall off and be replaced by their characteristic black and white plumage. None of them seemed to mind our presence.

But we had several harsh reminders that we weren’t in a zoo. Several century-old stone huts provided shelter for explorers who slaughtered hundreds of penguins to eat during the long, harsh Antarctic winters. Skuas, nasty predatory birds, routinely feed on penguin chicks. We saw the discarded remains of several skua meals. Danger can also come from the depths. A couple of times we observed large seals relaxing on ice floes with bright red stains next to them.

The saddest sight came one afternoon when we took a Zodiac inflatable boat to shore. A penguin stood forlornly on top of a small ice floe, a leopard seal thrashing the water next to it. We asked our guide if we could rescue the doomed bird. He shook his head. “The water is too rough,” he said. “Too much chance of falling in if anyone tried to step out onto the floe. And you don’t want to be anywhere near an angry half-ton leopard seal that feels his dinner is being taken away from him.”

On our way back to the ship, there was no sign of the lone penguin. We had to accept that we couldn’t interfere in the natural course of things.

Although all penguin species are native to the Southern Hemisphere, they are not found only in cold climates, such as Antarctica. In fact, only a few species of penguin live so far south.

An Adélie penguin feeding its young

Greenpeace invites you to celebrate World Penguin Day and also to join the campaign towards its protection. You can learn more by visiting this website: ttp://act.gp/wpd2013.

Jim Whiting has written more than 100 titles and edited another 150 or so, with subjects ranging from authors to zoologists and including classical musicians and contemporary pop icons, saints and scientists, emperors and explorers. Many of his books have received glowing reviews.
He's also ventured into a number of classrooms and served as a presenter at writers' conferences, conveying the enthusiasm for writing and for a good story that still animates him. Check out his work here.

MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "World Penguin Day." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 25 Apr.
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/World-Penguin-Day.

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Luke Skywatcher

4/23/2020

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Alexandra Siy
Science through the lens

A long time ago in a land far, far away…

The climate suddenly changes. It’s May, and a “Great Fog” appears in the sky. During the day it blocks out the sun and acts like a blanket trapping heat near the ground. A ten-year old boy notices that temperatures spike and sunsets are a spectacular display of colors. He doesn’t know that volcanoes in the “Ring of Fire” are spewing ash into the atmosphere creating massive clouds and causing the strange weather. All he knows is that he can’t take his eyes off the sky. The boy’s name is Luke Howard. The year is 1783, and his location is the English countryside. Luke records his observations in a journal. Although he doesn’t know it yet, he is on his way to becoming the “Father of Meteorology.”

Flash forward twenty years. It’s 1803, and Luke Howard is a successful businessman. But in his spare time, ever since the summer of 1873, he’s been watching the clouds and thinking up new ideas about the weather. He writes and publishes a scientific paper and presents his ideas to a group of fellow amateur scientists. His article, “On the modification of clouds, and on the principles of their production, suspension and destruction,” classifies clouds into groups using Latin words: heaped (cumulus), layered (stratus), fibrous (cirrus), and rain (nimbus). By combining terms into names such as Cirro-cumulus, which he describes as "small, well-defined roundish masses, in close horizontal arrangement," Luke identifies many kinds of clouds.

Luke’s passion for clouds inspires him to make watercolor sketches and write a book called The Climate of London, which introduces new ideas about lightening and the causes of rain. In 1864, Luke Howard dies at the age of ninety-two, leaving behind a cloud naming system that is still used today.

A long time ago in a land far, far away, Luke Howard names the clouds—and in our imagination we see him turning to a friend and saying, “May the clouds be with you.”

This photo taken over Cape Cod bay shows several cloud types: cumulus are the puffy clouds close to the water; behind those are a thick layer of stratus; above them in the middle of the frame are altostratus; high in the sky are cirrus; and a contrail (condensation trail) from an airplane makes a diagonal line. (©Alexandra Siy)

he sun shines through a layer of cirrostratus above an old grain elevator in Utah. Cirrocumulus clouds are in the lower left of the picture.(©Alexandra Siy)

A towering cumulus cloud is illuminated by the setting sun over Long Lake in New York's Adirondack Mountains. Nimbostratus rain clouds hover over the mountain. (©Alexandra Siy)

A whimsical Luke Howard painting shows a cloud made to look like an anvil.

To see photos of many kinds of clouds go to NOAA Sky Watcher Chart

Spidermania: Friends on the Web debunks myths about spiders and takes an extremely close look at creatures that have both fascinated and terrified humans. An introduction explains what makes spiders unique. Then ten species are highlighted with incredible electron micro-graph images and surprising facts. From diving bell spiders that live in bubbles underwater, to spitting spiders that shoot sticky streams of spit at their prey, to black widows and wolf spiders, this unusual book will intrigue readers and help cure arachnophobia. For more information, click here.

MLA 8 Citation
Siy, Alexandra. "Luke Skywatcher." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 27 Apr.
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/Luke-Skywatcher.

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Damping Down Danger

I Met a Man About a Parrot

Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson—Smuggler!

World Penguin Day

Luke Skywatcher

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