1.24.1 🗞️ Kaleidoscopes, News Misinformation, Control Flows, Small Planets

Hello and thanks for opening my emails. Today there's a few STEM/STEAM articles to share that might interest you. One is about kaleidoscopes. While it's a kid-friendly topic, actually they were invented by a real scientist in the early 1800s. I also found an interesting group educating kids and adults about how to spot misinformation online. That's important around election time. You can also find weird facts about the smallest planet in our solar system. And information about how control flows are implemented in different programming languages. Hope you enjoy the topics and the links.

A QUICK NOTE: Next Tuesday, September 24th (or 24 September for some!), Teaching London Computing has a really interesting online program called The Ancient History of Computers and Code. It will be on YouTube.

Their description: "What links an ancient shipwreck to the textile mills of Northern England? Both contained forerunners of the computing we use today. In fact, computer language and software have a long history, featuring military research and the repurposing of early programs widely used in manufacturing. This lecture delves into the earliest archives of processing, prediction, difference and analytical engines, to discover who really made them all work.”

If you're interested, definitely check it out and sign up. They're a wonderful resource primarily for British computer science and computing education. But they welcome teachers and parents from all over the world.

The Ancient History of Computers and Code
https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2024/09/17/talk-free-online-or-in-person-the-ancient-history-of-computers-and-code/

Kaleidoscopes

My 20-something daughter wanted to earn $40 to buy a video game. She asked if she could help with this newsletter, to earn the money. I asked her to pick a STEM topic that she finds interesting that kids might find fun. So you’re about to learn what’s up with kaleidoscopes. :-)

In its simplest form, a kaleidoscope is a tube with mirrors and loose pieces of colored glass at one end. You look through an eye hole down the tube and turn it. The rotation creates beautiful patterns and reflections.

Sir David Brewster, a Scottish scientist created the first kaleidoscope in 1816. He had noticed how light refracted and reflected off small pieces of mirrors and glass. But it wasn’t until he investigated these effects that he invented an object that creates patterns. The invention became very popular and still is today. As a scientist, however, optics and cameras interested Brewster more.

Brewster also wrote a book to show how his invention could produce patterns for stained glass windows, quilts, and other uses. Kaleidoscopes have had a huge impact on decorative arts in the past two hundred years. And you can find software like Pixlr that includes filters to create kaleidoscopic images.

Also, while there's at least two DIY kaleidoscope projects in the links below, the kit from the NY Books publication looks like an easy way out. Use their parts to build your own. Plus they appear to have a few other kid-friendly kits.

(If you enjoy this topic, look for an upcoming article about recipes used by ancient cultures. It’s the other topic my daughter chose to earn her video game money. My daughter is a wonderful chef. And no worries: you won’t be asked to find and eat dormice like the ancient Romans ate.)

DIY-Kaleidoscope Project
https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Kaleidoscope-1/

Creating a Kaleidoscope - Changing the Equation: Art Math
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlsuLFAS708

Build-Your-Own Kaleidoscope
https://shop.nybooks.com/products/diy-kaleidsoscope-and-light-show-kit

Kaleidoscope
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brewster

The Brewster Kaleidoscope Society
https://brewstersociety.com/
https://brewstersociety.com/kaleidoscope-university/cozy-baker/

Classic Tin Kaleidoscope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXW-n0FQeZc
https://www.youtube.com/@KaleidoscopesToYou

How a Scottish scientist's invention influenced 19th-century American decorative art
https://huntington.org/frontiers/2020-spring-summer/kaleidoscope

A Treatise on the Kaleidoscope (1819)
https://books.google.com/books/about/A\_Treatise\_on\_the\_Kaleidoscope.html?id=76xjAAAAcAAJ

The News Literacy Project

It’s mid-September and US voters are starting to vote absentee for the November elections. Or tuning into the elections by listening to news. The News Literacy Project is a nonprofit that helps teachers and students identify misinformation from news sources. Election or not, the ability to find accurate information in the media is a critical skill. They have resources for schools and teachers, as well as students and anyone interested to learn.

The News Literacy Project
https://newslit.org/
https://newslit.org/educators/
https://newslit.org/for-everyone/

Elements of Coding: Control Flows

This is the fifth in a series about common elements across programming languages. Once you learn one language, identifying these elements is a way to learn new languages quickly. Plus, you'll get a deeper understanding about the problems languages have to solve. And the trade offs languages make. Last week explored the way programming languages store data. This week is about how languages control the flow of statements, instructions, and function calls. Computers read code the way kayakers paddle down rivers and streams.

Probably you know about IF/ELSE structures in programming languages. It’s maybe the most common way a language controls how data is processed. IF a condition is true, do something ELSE do something different. For example, if a web page form is submitted without data, the IF statement might look for data that’s submitted while the ELSE case displays an error message asking the person to resubmit the form with data.

But that’s boring. And obvious. :-) Much more interesting are loops and more flexible versions of IF/ELSE conditional statements.

Imagine you want to display the four latest news stories in an app. You would grab all news stories and then loop through the first four. Your loop would include a counter that would count from 0 to 3. Or test the counter and stop when it reaches 4. (BTW, if you don’t know, computers start counting at 0 not 1.) Loops also can be set up for early exit. For example, if a condition must be met before the loop is triggered.

If you’ve done much coding, probably you’ve encountered a situation where more than three IF/ELSE statements are needed. For example, IF/ELSEIF/ELSE. Or IF/ELSEIF/ELSEIF/ELSE. In my experience, this is a sign of failure. What’s needed is a flexible way to evaluate more than two possible values. With each value triggering different results.

A Switch statement solves the problem of too many IF/ELSE statements. You start the Switch statement and then code for each possible case. And you end with a default case for when data doesn’t match any of your cases. While most languages call this feature a switch statement, Python appears to use the word match instead of switch. Both Switch and Match use the word case to specify the criteria to evaluate data.

When you learn a new language, pay attention to this problem of how to control data flow. And to nuances like the problem of evaluating many possible conditions. Every language has documentation. And it’s fairly easy to find these details.

The links below give you an idea of the differences between a few languages. The Wikipedia article, in particular, gives an idea how control flow relates to computer science and programming. There's a lot of information online. But the best way to learn is to work on a project and then investigate how to do things, in this case, control the flow of data in your code.

Control Flow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_flow

Control Flows
https://kidscodecs.com/programming-control-flows/

Switch Examples
https://www.w3schools.com/go/go_switch.php
https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_switch.asp

Python: PEP 636 – Structural Pattern Matching: Tutorial
https://peps.python.org/pep-0636/

Selecting code to run using branching statements - learning control flow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBj2nJup8xU

Which planet is closest to the Sun?

That would be the planet Mercury. Named for the Roman god of messengers (and trickery), the planet has lots of interesting details. Yes, it is the closest planet. It's also the smallest. But its orbit around the Sun is egg-shaped. The sunny side of Mercury is about 800 degrees Fahrenheit while the cold side is -300 degrees Fahrenheit. The NASA MESSENGER mission data shows Mercury may have 10 miles of diamonds underneath its carbon crust.

What Is the Planet Mercury?(Grades 5-8)
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/for-kids-and-students/what-is-the-planet-mercury-grades-5-8/

What Is the Planet Mercury? (Grades K-4)
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/for-kids-and-students/what-is-the-planet-mercury-grades-k-4/

Mercury Facts
https://science.nasa.gov/mercury/facts/

NASA Space Place: All About Mercury
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/all-about-mercury/en/

NASA MESSENGER Mission
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/messenger/

A diamond-bearing core-mantle boundary on Mercury
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49305-x

About the Planets
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/planets/

This Week

Our Sunday email this week will have fun often offbeat links about making butter from CO2. That's odd. Finding computation all around us also could be fun. And learning that not everyone has inner voices streaming through their heads might make you feel less lonely. There's also links about what causes Greenland sharks to live for centuries, a cave found on the moon that could be used by humans for shelter, and more. Look for the email this Sunday.