Day Thirteen Summer 2010 - Who is more amped?

Robert, the tall guy with a Cooper car, and local physics and earth science teacher who loves to travel.

A great night after the so called Barbecue which was hotdogs and chicken on the grill (I need to have these folks down home for some real pulled pork) – but great pasta, potato and lettuce salads and Sam Adams Cherry Wheat. And a good conversation with Rob who suggested I start putting myself out there to universities and getting my foot in the door with little gigs that lead to bigger ones. He also suggested looking at the Climate Change Education Centers that are being set up around the country and other projects on the NSF web site. Exciting stuff and it was good to have his input and see his Better Homes and Gardens House with a long den/dining room with Japanese style windows looking over woods that went all the way to whatever the next state south is.

I got to ride in a Cooper car back to the dorms with the tallest guy in the group, Robert. Now the last Cooper car I saw I chased across Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont on my motorcycle. He split off in New Hampshire and when I boarded the ferry to cross Lake Champlain their was he and his Cooper bound for Ontario right in front of me. It was like riding in an airplane wiht all the cool gauges and it tops out at 140 (we did not quite make that). After a lengthy conversation with Mo and Andrew about First Robot and Dean Kamien who started the company and competition and is quite the inventive entrepreneur who I first learned about in the nighties when a colleague told me to read an article about him because he reminded him of me. I got treated to pool at the ABC (Amherst Brewery Company) by Andrew and than a slice at Antonio’s that was awesome (except I did not get the ones with chicken – whoever heard of putting chicken on pizza) and the free bus back to the dorm.

By day, the workshop had two knockout labs – in one we designed a mock Atomic Force Microscope after seeing a very cool virtual pod cast of the real thing that explores surfaces of materials on the nano scale by moving a tetrahedral tip attached to a “diving board” that flexes up and down as the needle moves over the material and a laser reflects at the different angles to get a profile of the material. We used a meter stick levered on a stand with a mirror on it and a laser on a stand that reflected to a distance wall paper screen where calibration marks could be made for thickness of materials – 0. 0.05, 0.1, 0.25, 0.75.


Nina (who has jostled through 33 countries while teaching physics, forensics, chemistry and biology on the side) helps set up MAFM.
When we tested the unknowns after our first POC (piece of crap) failure – we had zero percent error on one of ours! Nina who has almost as much energy and vitality as me will bump things and so will I on occasion so we called that error factor – Jonina.

Calculation sheet and scale drawing of MAFM


Wall calibration sheet

Materials whose thickness we measured.

In the afternoon we heard a cool lecture about the four factors that had to be considered and overcome to make an effective solar cell. He was a very smart yet lucid guy with a long Indian name so everyone calls him DV. Then we made a solar cell with very basic materials. Filter paper cut in a half moon shape and aluminum foil to cover it. Then we mixed salt, copper sulfate, and water to make a reddish cupric something or another mix to touch with the copper wires we had wound around the half moon. We then placed it in a CD case and made a bridge from one lead to another with a gauze material and the same blue copper sulfate and water. Oh yeah to limit the reaction on the solar cell we used glucose and could have used honey. What a cool mix.


The coolest or should I say hottest (because the mix was exothermic and put up little clouds of smoke initially) thing was it conducted a current. Ours was 65 or as Nina reminded – 0.065 mA. I was just glad to see some numbers and did not worry about the order of magnitude. Her group of course was 0.250. Yes there is competition even among enlightened, trying to be laid back summer teachers.

And, of course, the cool haircut award goes to Sarah.

She works for a tech company that assists teachers in technology integration in private and charter schools in NYC

And early in the day we got to play with blocks.


My lab group, Rich who grew up on a farm in Goshen, NY and teaches in Long Island of Polish descent and Maria who teaches locally with maybe the second coolest hair of Italian descent and me of Martian descent.