1.30.1 🥶 Hungry Ghosts, STEM Electronic Gifts, Keyboard History, Space Temperatures

Hello! Tomorrow is Halloween, in the US at least. This week I want to explore how different cultures share the ideas behind Halloween. Lots of cultures, for example, mix ghosts with food and sweets. I also researched a rather obvious science question: if stars are so hot, what makes space so cold? There's also the history of keyboards. And another set of possible holiday STEM gifts, electronic kits this time. Plus a fun sandwich cutting prank you might pull on your kids. Hope you find these links interesting and useful. Thank you for reading!

Halloween Around the World, Sort Of

Tomorrow is October 31st, Halloween in the US and elsewhere. In the US, it’s about kids walking door to door to collect candy and have fun. Hopefully not the destructive kind of fun. I find Halloween to be really interesting as a cultural event. It evolved from an ancient Celtic tradition called Samhain, pronounced sow-win. It’s a three day festival that marks the end of summer. And celebrates the start of winter on November 1st every year. Celtic culture divided the year into two halves, light and dark. Samhain marked the beginning of the dark part of a new year. It was a time for reflection.

Other cultures have similar festivals as Halloween. My favorite, having lived in Los Angeles for several years, is El dia de los Muertos. In English, it's called Day of the Dead. Celebrated in Mexico, Central America, and South America, it’s a way to remember people we’ve lost. Like Halloween, there’s sweet treats. Plus colorful costumes and masks. It’s also family oriented. It begins on November 1st every year and lasts for two days. And it evolved from Aztec rituals a thousand or more years ago.

There’s also an annual event called the Hungry Ghost Festival. It’s celebrated in China. Like Halloween, it's intended to honor and appease restless spirits or ghosts. Unlike Halloween, the festival isn’t tied to the end of summer. It happens on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month. That’s July or August in our Western calendars. Chinese culture believes ghosts come back hungry in search of food. Cambodia has a similar longer festival called Pchum Ben for hungry ghosts. In Cambodia, at dawn people toss small rice balls at pagodas. Sounds fun.

So, enjoy tomorrow with Halloween, if you observe. Play nice. :-) And definitely enjoy any candy or sweets you might get.

Festivals of the Dead Around the World
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/festivals-dead-around-world-180953160/

What Is Samhain? What to Know About the Ancient Pagan Festival That Came Before Halloween
https://time.com/5434659/halloween-pagan-origins-in-samhain/

Day of the Dead - National Geographic Kids
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/celebrations/article/day-of-the-dead

Day of the Dead: How Ancient Traditions Grew Into a Global Holiday
https://www.history.com/news/day-dead-dia-de-muertos-origins

17 Hungry Ghost Festival taboos and things to avoid doing
https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/things-to-do/8-things-you-should-never-do-during-hungry-ghost-festival

Cambodian Culture for Kids: Celebrating Pchum Ben
https://ourwholevillage.com/cambodian-culture-for-kids-celebrating-pchum-ben/

Keyboard History

The past few weeks, I've found links for the history of pencils and pens. This week is something equally interesting: the history of keyboards. For example, there is a typing keyboard shaped like a ball. It’s called a Hansen Writing Ball. It’s from Denmark in the 1870s. There’s also projection keyboards. They're a small object that uses light to project a keyboard on any flat surface. You type by pressing down on the surface and break the beam of light at a specific point in space.

Computer keyboards replaced punch cards and paper tape for computing. While they use typewriter keys, computer keyboards actually evolved from teleprinters.

If you think about it, typewriters are a natural extension of the printing press. In 1575, an Italian printmaker Francesco Rampazzetto created a machine to impress letters on paper. In 1714, Henry Mill in Britain patented a machine to type letters on paper. In the early 1800s, several Italian inventors created versions of a typewriter. One inventor, Agostino Fantoni, built his typewriter so his blind sister could write. Modern typewriters were mass produced from the 1860s onwards.

Computer keyboards descend directly from teletypes or teleprinters. These devices send and receive messages from one teleprinter to another. They use dedicated telephone circuits and switched networks like the phone company. They also use radio waves and microwaves. Teleprinters used modems to connect to computers through telephone lines. And they also generated punch cards and paper tape for computers to process.

Teleprinters did much more than typewriters. They also could produce computer codes. And computer codes could control teleprinters.

Today computers and keyboards have replaced teleprinters. In software specifications, you still might see TTY. This is shorthand for teletypewriter, another name for teleprinters.

Typewriter and computer keyboard layouts also have their own history. Most keyboards use QWERTY layout. But there are other layouts, for example, Dvorak and Colemak. And keyboards found in non-English speaking countries use QWERTY as their start point. But with keys to print letters and characters unique to their language.

Computer Keyboard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_keyboard
http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/typing-through-time-the-history-of-the-keyboard/

Typewriter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter

Teleprinter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter

QWERTY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY

Non-QWERTY Keyboard Layouts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltron

QWERTY facts for kids
https://kids.kiddle.co/QWERTY

How QWERTY Keyboard was Invented | Story of QWERTY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGPHK_AhAeM

Simplex Typewriter
http://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2012/06/simplex-typewriter-glorious-simplicity.html

Hansen Writing Ball
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansen_Writing_Ball

Malling Hansen Writing Ball Typewriter And Sholes And Glidden Typewriter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZMEiRBdbRY

The Hansen Writing Ball / Malling Hansens Skrivekugle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWP-b4H6AR4

Projection Keyboards
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_keyboard

Holiday Gifts: Electronic Kits

Since the fall of 2014, I've published an annual holiday STEM/STEAM gift guide. This fall, I want to publish items in these Wednesday emails. People shop the holidays at different times. And besides it's never too early.

The past three Wednesday emails have shared holiday STEM gift ideas: books, magazines, secret codes, and robots. Today I want to talk about kits that teach electronics.

Electronic kits these days often don’t need soldering and other fun but maybe dangerous skills. Kids and adults can snap together kits then tinker with hardware and software. It’s a great way to learn more in depth how computers and electronic devices work. Kits range in complexity. Some snap together. Others are basic boards with lots of online tutorials. They make fun holiday gifts for older kids who have patience and persistence. Or any kid who has adults with those skills.

There’s lots of electronic kits sold online. If you search, try the query, “kids electronic project kits”.

CrunchLabs
They sell two monthly subscription boxes, one geared for kids 8-13 and the other kids ages 14+. Appears to have videos and other help to complete projects. You can build then tweak their kits for extra learning and fun.
https://www.crunchlabs.com/

Creation Crate
Their electronic kits are more extensible than other kits like Kiwi Co. But their goal is to create a set of tools kids can use to build and tweak projects. Looks great for motivated tweens. And for teenagers and parents who want to learn alongside their kids.
https://creationcrate.com/pages/engineering-kit

Home Science Tools
Curriculum level kits for a variety of sciences: chemistry, biology, physics, and more. Kits for kids ages 4 to 14+.
https://www.homesciencetools.com/science-kits/electronics-technology-kits/

Snap Circuits
A collection of snap together circuit projects. They teach kids the basics of electronics. Includes a kit with coding projects.
https://www.elenco.com/brand/snap-circuits/
https://elenco.com/store-toys/

Brown Dog Gadgets
This company offers parts to build electronic wearable projects. For example, an ugly Christmas sweater that lights up. They have project guides too. And paper circuit projects.
https://www.browndoggadgets.com/

Adafruit Laboratories
You can find all things electronics on their site, as well as tutorials and fun projects like blinking unicorn horns (who doesn’t need one?).
https://www.adafruit.com/
https://www.adafruit.com/explore/back-to-school-young-engineers

Kiwi Co
Created by a team of educators, makers, engineers, and rocket scientists (yes, for real). They deliver monthly crates (kits) with projects geared towards humans ages 0 to 104. Their goal is to inspire kids interested in science, art, and making things. Each month a STEM project arrives in the mail with materials and blueprints. Plus more ideas to learn and have fun.
https://www.kiwico.com/

Piper
Follow real engineering blueprints to build your own computer. Then use Pipercraft, a Minecraft mod, to configure it. You also can build gadgets with electronic boards.
https://www.playpiper.com/

Why Is Space So Cold?

There’s an uncounted number of stars in the universe. And every star is hot enough to burn anything to a crisp. Healthy stars are 53,000 to 107,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 29,000 to 59,000 degrees Celsius. That is hot.

Yet space is cold. Space actually is freezing: -464 degrees Fahrenheit, -270 degrees Celsius.

Have you ever wondered what makes space so cold when there are so many stars? The short answer is molecules. Earth has a lot of molecules. Sunlight hitting our atmosphere excites molecules. That generates heat. There’s not a lot of molecules in space. Thus, the real oddity isn’t the heat of stars. Or the cold of space. The real oddity is Earth. Its atmosphere balances the heat and cold. It makes life possible.

Most temperature measurements for stars and space are in Kelvin. I’ve included a link to a handy conversion table.

Why Is Space So Cold? It Has To Do With Kinetic Energy
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/why-is-space-so-cold-it-has-to-do-with-kinetic-energy

If The Sun Is Hot, How Is Outer Space Cold?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za-Zf1nB418

You’re Hot Then You’re Cold
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/youre-hot-then-youre-cold/

Space Physics: Heat, Temperature, and the Electromagnetic Spectrum
https://cosmicopia.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_sp_ht.html

What is the thermosphere?
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/thermosphere/en/

Kelvin to Fahrenheit Conversion Table
https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/temperature/kelvin-to-fahrenheit.html

This Week

Our Sunday email this week will have fun often offbeat links about smart crows, plankton and the origins of life, chronic illnesses cause by dishwashers, human aging accelerates at ages 44 and 60, reinventing the wheel for real, and more STEM links. Look for the email this Sunday.