Days Seventeen and Eighteen - 25 hours on the road in two days

Martinsburg, WV A team

Saturday. I pushed on from Amherst to finally collapse in Woodstock, VA for the night - I left at 10:30 from Amherst after spending about three hours on my blog and bidding a proper farewell and putting my pastoral blessing on everyone in the group, I think. I had a wonderful lunch in an off the road town of Mt. something, NY and took a couple shots.


And supper at Mickey Dees somewhere along the way and my last stop before a 11:45 arrival was Martinsburg, WV whose name had to be repeated twice (I was in a coffee coma) by two very energetic teenage servers at yet another Macs. At another in the day the wireless did not work and they got a frigging F. What do we get they querried enthusiastically, An A. They started telling everyone, “We got an A!”

I could do brain surgery to pay for my trip since I stayed in an overpriced Holiday Inn Express with the worst coffee and breakfast on the planet.

Sunday. After getting up and just pushing myself I had a serendipity by finding Joe, my great longtime friend since seminary days, was still in Abingdon and offered a wonderful lunch of quiche and salad at 1:30 where Betty said we waited on you like one dog waits on another. Bless you. I also got to meet Luke after hearing about him for nine years and see his bride, Rachel, Joe and Betty's number one, who has a really cool blog, Yestertime. And see Noah their son again who got to play with Benita for a bit.

I stopped about an hour after that exhausted and wondering if I could make it to Franklin. I had two cups of coffee and again no Mac wireless and got so juiced I drove for almost five hours straight to make it to Franklin at 8:30 EST (after leaving at 8:50 am). My young friend who likes to text (aggrevated me with culinary cruelty as she texted details of their family cajun potluck fourth party) and a very timely cello piece (a precocious 12 year old on "Over the Top" on NPR)texturing the smokies musically as I passed by lifted me onward to Franklin where my dear sister had ribs which I ordered by text (along with accurate directions) ready and then fireworks and yes bed. As my friend said when I texted, “here!” - wonderful, you need to park your rides (truck and bike) for a very long time. Indeed.

Day Sixteen Summer 2010 - Farewell, Amherst, and Nano Friends

A flower of Amherst in tribute for my time in Amherst.
And now I say farewell to Amherst after a very quiet afternoon with a bike ride to see the Sun Circle at the south end of the football stadium where I met Judy Thomas and she told me about putting the circle together with a small grant from UMass and another from NASA and a bigger one from NSF to total about 30,000. Each of the stones was purchased from a quarry in Otis, MA for about 2 grand each. Three things were quiet different than expected – one, Judy’s picture on the web is from 1996

And here she is 2010
two, I thought it would be on the quad of campus (UMass has a pond with three fountains as the amoebic center of sorts)



and three, the stones were granted (no pun on their granite nature) large but not compared to the vast stadium across the street

and the tallest library in the world as Jenny referred to it. Nevertheless it was impressive and Judy is trying to get one on the National Mall. She was very gracious to return my email and meet me there to discuss her ongoing passion and future book.

And after that I got to go to downtown Amherst at last and had a wonderful light supper with a kim chee wrap and hot green tea at a place called Fresh Air and then some raspberry and vanilla Italian ice cream after seeing the majestic yellow house


and lot of one of my favorite poets, Emily Dickenson, and the majestic church

across the street which was across from Emily’s brother’s house (next door to hers) who was on the building committee in 1868.

We presented our posters about our lesson plans during the morning after an awesome pinch hit lecture by Jonathan on Nano-medicine.

And here are the people and a few posters, Farewell, Nano friends.

And first price to an tall,quiet spoken chemical and biological wiz, Anthony who teaches AP Chemistry in Easthampton, MA and has a company that tinkers with proteins to make them act in the lab like they do in the cell so drugs can be assayed.



And second prize for very innovative idea.


By Laura who teaches astronomy and geology at Ipswich MIddle School in MA and who generously gave me a ride to the Barbecue and who schooled me on my smart mouth.



And second prize for artistic merit


Farewell, grant guru, Antonietta who teaches in the "Fame" High School in NYC.


And pretty darn good from Jessica.



May you and Ben continue to do well in teaching and contracting.

And farewell, Deidre, who commuted on bike from Northampton everyday and made me jealous and who teaches Physics, Technology and English.



And farewell to the two participants who completed online course work while also doing this workshop.

Sharri who is a fireball of a teacher in Mansfield, MA and reminds me I met her husband and dog the first day soon after arrival (and I have no recollection).

Her poster

Mo who teaches after a successful career in industry and sponsors a First Robot team.

And to two other captains of industry before going into teaching

Tom who teaches in Merrifield, VA and cuts right to the point in his skillful analysis and whose picture and poster I have somehow lost.

And Cooper car Robert who got his spot in the sun as an expert on diffusion, who authored the Donelson metaphor of industry cited earlier in the blog.




His poster.

Penney's poster

And to Penney who does not like to be photographed. May you continue to thrive even when you read the directions or especially when you do. Thanks for keeping me on track.

And to Marie whose cool poster about the scale of things from cells to seed to roots and stems and leaves I have managed to delete. May you continue to enjoy life and teaching and family as fully as you do now. Thanks for your well wishes.


And to Stacey even though you are a Yankee fan. I want to learn in your class.May your students realize how lucky they are and may you have many happy cruises through life and your career.


Her Poster.

And farewell, Jared and Ilana who both teach at Framingham High School, MA. May your love continue to nourish you.




Jared's poster

Ilana's poster

And to those friends who escaped my camera

Curriculum Catherine may you find new nano knees soon.

Robert who came in with the big guy (with the number one poster each day) - I kept my promise and did put your poster on the web.

And to Laurie who out clevered me on many cases. May you keep keeping folk inside and outside the classroom on their toes and you made me feel right at home by calling me, Mr. Banks, with sarcasm as rich as mine.

And to Bryna, pronounced like China, who grew up in my favorite city on earth, NYC, and gave me new energy and direction for making kraut and pickled beets and such and a cool cooking tool, a mandolin. May math and life continue to be exuded from your happy self.

And to Paul with the reassuring math Peele principle for your students. May you give them academic and other assurance each day.

And to Bob with helped me process the day walking back to the dorm. May we get to run together sometime afterall, may your young Dominican friend make you forget all about learning communities.

And to those friends whose pictures and bios have already graced this blog

Joanne, may all the math symbols make sense and may the crown you earned for putting up with me as gel lab partner on the Jteam gleam always.

And hubby and wife team, Scott and Anita, may you find that perfect place to retire.

Michael, keep the gentle farm boy spirit and understanding you have so you may share it so gently with others.

Bruce, thanks for the pulled barbecue sandwich and a whole lot of physics insight. Keep sharing it.

Sarah, may you spoon again soon.

Buzz, the other Buzz (Aldrin) has nothing on you. May you and your company flourish.

Rich, you are the consummate gentleman. May your life continue to be as good as the pierogis and ride we shared.


Keep the fire, Nina. She shares her immense talent, energy and life and academic understanding to fortunate inner city kids in Hope Valley, RI.


Take care buddy. Andrew Angle, roomie and excellent physics and chemistry teacher and knowledge ninja and teacher at a fine private school, The Watkinson School, in West Hartford, CT.

And an added treat from my wonderful friend from Ireland who went over the top when I asked her to offer a greeting to my Mississippi friends.


And to Mort who made it all possible and Jonathan and Mark and Rob and Jenny who continued to dazzle us with their understandings and to Holly who kept us all on track.

Day Fifteen Summer 2010 - Which one is the washing machine?

Notice the gray UV beads under flourescent light now colorized by the UVA and UVB from the sun (around my neck).

And now for wrapping up Nano today. Yesterday was a process of collumation as Bruce, the Rhode Island Physics teacher, Clive Kissler reader and to the point guy said.

A physics guy who knows his stuff.

We worked through a jigsaw where four different topic groups gathered to discuss readings and then went back to their original group with representatives from each to share and then back to the full group to share led by Jonathan. A lot of collimation.

Two or three interesting things. One - the fluorescence of tide from the nano particles when exposed to UV light as Buzz suggested and his offer to give anyone a deal on science supplies from his cut out the middle guy company – http://thescienceoutlet.com/. Another was vitamins as encapsulated nano particles that would be released on demand from your body and maybe even tastes nano particles that would be released as you create your own crave satisfaction (http://www.understandingnano.com/food.html)

There was concern about health risks of nanoparticles with only two drops could destroy all microbes – both beneficial and not beneficial ones in an Olympic size swimming pool and how nano particles can attach themselves to cell and break down water. Something to thing about and consider as regulations for material production are considered.

And Robert, educated in a small liberal arts school with an excellent physics degree and in a class six – (and Cooper car driver) gave as good an illustration or metaphor for the evolution of industry as I have heard. In the horse and buggy days the horse would know the way even if the driver dozed at the reins. Then cars were developed and crowns were put in roads for water drainage and the driver had to be more involved to keep from running off the road. As new and more sophisticated technologies have been developed the crown of the road gets steeper and steeper and more and more sophisticated drivers need to navigate the car. And a whole array of technicians and employees help the directing engineer keeps the car running and producing goods, etc. Thanks, Robert.

And our group - particularly Rich (me not at first which made me step back and reflect again about how different teachers light up different students and how important diversity of all kinds is in the profession) dazzled by a very entertaining PhD in biophysics, Jenny - http://www.people.umass.edu/rossj/Ross_Lab.html - who has developed and built a highly sophisticated microscope to look at motor proteins “walking” along microfilaments in cells. The coolest idea from that was about melanin exposed to sun in melanocytes below the epidermal layer and the motor proteins carrying them to epidermal cells and then moving them to form a “parosol” to protect the nucleus of surface epidermal cells. How they know to do this and other hows are really amazing self-assembly questions. As Buzz and I reflected in one of the small groups with questions of self-assembly of life from original pools of amino acid.

To top the day Rich and I took a bike ride to Northampton – 19.96. It was a beautiful day and trail. The coolest part was only a few miles in and seeing Sofia’s. I just had to stop for a bathroom break and to our surprise it was a Polish shop that Kristina the proprietor named after her mother and is trying to preserve Polish heritage by serving excellent pierogis and offering great hospitality. Rich saw the pictures of festivals on the wall and recalled a happy childhood of participation in them. It was so refreshing to see this totally serendipitous connection.


Another amazing thing was the very kind driver who had about ten cars behind her including a lady in sunglasses and talking on his cell phone and making anger finger gestures as she abruptly stopped her car anyway to let us go by. In that brief moment she helped settle some of the chaos in this world and usher in wonder and well being across the landscape. Rich is that kind of person too.

On the way back he said he was jealous because I got all the attention as we went by (because of Red the recumbent).I told him it was my legs.

Don't you know it is the legs.

Another night with my new friends at ABC where I sampled locally made sausage that was excellent and got to ride home college style with four people in a small backseat.

Another good day at Amherst and Dr. Judy Young (http://www.astronomyandspirituality.com/contact.html), the Circle of Sun (like Stonehenge) designer at Amherst that I had heard on the 365 Days of Astronomy pod casts (http://365daysofastronomy.org/category/podcast/) last year responded to my email with a call and she is going to give me a tour after the nano workshop concludes today.

All of this is a very good day after a rough start where I put my laundry in the dryer and started up the washer (which reminded me of the early days of marriage when I was asked to put something in the washer out in the laundry room and came back asking my wife which one it was –which I should have known since I hooked it up – I guess a friend is right when she says I need to be more aware) and could not open it to cancel my stupidity – six quarters wasted but a very clean washing machine. I had everyone scrambling for two more quarters that I needed after the snack machine reset nickels and dimes instead of quarters – I am warming up to this place.

Thanks to the MIT graduate who generously gave me some calibrated plastic shims for the AFM experiment so I would not have to pay 30 dollars for sheets and sheets of them that I would never use.

Thanks to the lady who stopped for us and overcame immense social pressure and did a reset on kindness in the world.

Thanks to Penney who sat beside me and forced me to rise to at least the minimum standard on my lesson plan poster.

Thanks to Holly who greets us each day with a smile and News of the Day.



And here is Jennifer one of our fearless leaders (and pretty darn good Middle School teacher locally) just so I can say she made the blog.

Day Fourteen Summer 2010 - Is your room clean?

Sarah tried to give me a style but my hair did not cooperate fully.

I walked out of my room to get quarters for laundry and there was Ilana and Jared and Sarah asking me if I wanted to join them for dinner in Northampton at Spolleti’s. The next thing I new laundry was postponed and I was riding with the Yankee fan and marine biology major (with a tattoo of a dolphin)

Stacey who teaches physics and chemistry to seventh graders in Albany, NY

and cool hair Sarah and my pool(that's billiard) buddy, Andrew. Ben, a contractor who works with other sole proprietors in the area and is very happy to have work in this bad economy and also a connoisseur of hop concoctions and coffee, joined us with his wife Jessica who is in nano institute. Both are UMass grads. Ben got a philosophy major and chose the hands on rather than the surreal.

Dinner was good and we visited another place and home late again so laundry had to wait until morning. Suffice it to say I learned my life situation is not the only interesting one.

Yesterday was a no hands on day – everything was virtual including the tour of the Clean Room and the quite good instructional videos being developed by CHM (Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing) which we got to critique – some were quite good at this – especially Catherine from Ireland.

Now a Clean Room has never been my classroom and I was interested to learn about a Clean Room in science. Andrew used to work in one and had to roll the ceiling, walls and floors with an adhesive roller to collect all the particles and wash with an acid solution one week and a basic solution another. His brother has 100 rated Clean Room that is portable. The number represents how many particles in a cubic meter of air. I guess my room is a 10 million Room. The one at UMass is rated 1000 and the ones used for chip production in industry by robots where we humans that constantly fluff off dead skin and thousands of particles are not allowed is rated 0.

The cool idea for the week is Self-Assembly. Now this does not have to do with do-it-yourselfers. It has to do with an organism (in nature) or two polymers (in the lab) developing a structure without ongoing manipulation – it just happens after the genes trigger or the fluids are mixed. The wonders of nature continue to dazzle me on micro and macro scale. The cool structures in the lab are interesting also but no comparison. When hearing all this in a variety of ways, I had a brainstorm – during Toyota Tapestry MIC Project where we will collect and rear out all kinds of caterpillars, we can look at self-assembly in caterpillars and all the immense variety of caterpillars, cocoons, and butterflies to include the blue morpho that Mark cited in my animated discussion with him and I remembered getting one from a student when we discussed diffraction in physics. He is going to send me journal articles and lead researchers names in the field – a great connection with biology and physics two of my loves in science.

And as we got a tour of the nano facility and saw how resists were put on chips by spinning at 4500 rpm

Graduate student shows surface after spinning.

and how a PPMS Dewar


The grey one cylinder on the left.

like a big carafe with a vacuum layer a smaller carafe inserted with a liquid nitrogen layer and another carafe inserted with a Helium bath layer and then the internal carafe (housing the tested sample) could lower temperatures to 4 K (that is -269 C or in the -400s F) and then not only temperature could be manipulated but current as well. But the coolest part was a fill-in since the other part of the lab was under construction. Stefan from Germany and PhD student did the classic liquid nitrogen demo with the balloon where it shrunk as the temperature was lowered and then expanded back to shape without bursting when removed from the liquid nitrogen. However, I had never seen the process in reverse. He poured liquid nitrogen in a water bottle, capped it tightly and placed it in a garbage can. As the temperature rises as the nitrogen goes from liquid to gas it needs more room and . . . you can guess the rest. It took quite some time but the shot was heard round the room (don’t try this at home).

Be patient or rewind toward the end.

The pretty girl award goes to Ilana.

She teaches something interesting at Framingham High School I am sure. Ask her friend boy, Jared in an earlier blog if you like.

And finally Jonathan dazzled with two nano impact technologies in his lab. One will coat the surface of ships with nanoparticles that are hydrophobic and "push" away the water. This particles can put "painted" on at the same cost and will save $5000 dollars per day/ per ship in fuel costs. This research is funded by the US Navy and another project is like the non-newtonian fluids such as corn starch and water where someone can walk across in a kitty pool filled with such. The rapid stretch caused by your weight and running through makes the fluid rigid. The same thing happens with a kevlar vest interspersed with nano layers - the rapid "stretch" of the material caused by the bullet causes it to firm up and say no to death or injury - and the vests are lighter as well.

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.

Day Twelve Summer 2010 - It's a small world afterall

My lab team - what are the odds that 33 people can number to eleven and team seven all have Js for the first name?

On the austere Amherst campus I enjoyed to very modern integrated science building with lots of glass and metal work and wood.
The hands on activities and the lectures that I could download online and follow along and make notes on the slides as they went was very cool. And matter of factly in his summer lecture shorts, Mark, showed a slide where he was testifying before Congress on the impact of Nanotechnology for the future and importance of supporting research.

Mark and Buzz, my new physics teacher buddy, from Uttica, NY, who GPS-ed us on his Garmin to our first gathering

And young PhD Jonathan lectured and got queried by me about a diagram with a QCM (Quartz Crystal Monitor) - it vibrates at a certain frequency when the vapors hit it and let the lab technicians know when enough mass is coated on the surface (by the way his doctorate is from MIT).

All of that was cool and being the lone person below Kentucky was fun. I am the token Southerner. The farthest south anyone was from beside me was Michael from Cincinnati, Ohio - who shared his analysis of why it was not a great city yet - too many provincial factions of very small neighborhoods that claimed their identity and did not cross over or collaborate much.

But the coolest thing was getting in the elevator after a long run and after a refreshing shower and donning my last clean shirt that had Velma Jackson on it (I went to Target and bought a few more so I would not have to do laundry). The young African American coed asked if Velma Jackson was in Mississippi. Yes. I asked her where she lived and she said Jackson which is where I live. How wild is that? She graduated from Lanier High School and Jackson State University. (I told her to give me some dap and how I was so tired of these d--- yankees (not really) and she affirmed, "tell me about it.") It gets more interesting. In texting with one of my young Jackson friends later, she inquired about what was her name. When I said Darla, she knew her right way and texted that is Darla K--- who is super smart.

It is a small world after all - how appropriate in a workshop where I am studying things very small at a billionth of a meter (a billionth of the diameter of the earth would be the diameter of a nickel).