The Journey North gang was here today, and we had a blast. This project gets more fun week after week. All the lines on our photoperiod graph are close to converging at the 12-hour mark now, and we are starting to have guesses about the latitude of some of the mystery cities.
With the equinox fast approaching—and falling during Holy Week, when we’re taking a week off from meeting—I wanted to tell the kids today about the Egg Experiment so they could try it during our break. You know, it’s the thing about how on the spring and fall equinoxes, you’re supposed to be able to stand an egg on its end. I got out an egg for us to experiment with…
…and they took turns giving it a try, and I told them all about how the egg will only balance on its end on the equinox, not any other time of the y—
I remember doing that with my son and his best friend one equinox many years ago. They were thrilled to see it worked. Later, someone on my homeschool e-list posted a link to scientist’s page about how you can balance an egg any old time of year. http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/egg_spin.html
We did this in our Journey North class too. But we were very frustrated that we couldn’t get the egg to stand up. Then I read a different JN page that explained why we couldn’t get it up. http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/EgguinoxDiscuss.html
Btw, I love your blog. I really like the way you have it set up!
(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
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“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
I hate it when that happens…
So, were you able to find out what caused the egg to balance?
Posted on March 12th, 2008 at 10:34 pmMust be either a very fresh of old egg. Maybe? I dunno, just trying to give some reasoning to the situation.
Posted on March 13th, 2008 at 5:36 amMy friend Sue passed along this link with an explanation and some fascinating history on egg balancing!
FindArticles – The great egg-balancing mystery – the tricks behind making an egg stand on its broad end
Posted on March 13th, 2008 at 6:49 amSkeptical Inquirer, May-June, 1996, by Martin Gardner
“Sometimes you get the bear, and…”
Posted on March 14th, 2008 at 11:14 pmI remember doing that with my son and his best friend one equinox many years ago. They were thrilled to see it worked. Later, someone on my homeschool e-list posted a link to scientist’s page about how you can balance an egg any old time of year.
Posted on March 18th, 2008 at 2:45 amhttp://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/egg_spin.html
We did this in our Journey North class too. But we were very frustrated that we couldn’t get the egg to stand up. Then I read a different JN page that explained why we couldn’t get it up.
Posted on March 24th, 2008 at 5:11 amhttp://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/EgguinoxDiscuss.html
Btw, I love your blog. I really like the way you have it set up!