Book Reiew/Summary: White Sands, Red Menace by Ellen Klages

Book Summary

White Sands, Red Menace

By Ellen Klages

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After finishing a session of EPGY, Shreyes went upstairs and started to read "White Sands Red Menace". [3 hours pass]

Then his daddy asked, “Who are the main characters in White Sands, Red Menace?”

“Dewey Kerrigan and Suze Gordon from the Green Glass Sea.” replied Shreyes.

“I didn’t read that one.” said his dad.

“Then check my blog at shreyesnallan.blogspot.com.”

[20 minutes pass]

“I read all your posts including Ellen Klages: Belmont. So let’s continue with our discussion on White Sands, Red Menace. Which place does the story take place in?”

“Alamogordo, New Mexico.”

“Time?”

“1947.”

His dad picked up a paper and wrote:

Main Characters:

Dewey Kerrigan and Suze Gordon

Time:

1947

Place:

Alamogordo, New Mexico

[3 hours pass]

“I did a bit of research with Google and found out that in the White Sands Missile Grounds, also in 1947, a V-2 rocket project was in progress.”

“That’s what White Sands, Red Menace is about. In the first quarter, Dewey lives with Suze and her mom, Terry Gordon (in this quarter of the book, Dewey’s dad was killed in a car crash in the “Green Glass Sea” and her mom had mysteriously gone away somewhere). Once Dewey and Suze get to see a V-2 launch in the White Sands Missile Grounds. Then, Dewey gets a letter from her mom and it was from San Diego. In the third of the quarter of the book, Dewey’s mom comes to Alamogordo on a motorcycle and meets Dewey and tells her story from when she met her husband Jimmy to how she came to Alamogordo on a motorcycle. In the last quarter, Dewey sees a cloud of black smoke from a V-2 launch and talks to her mother who wants to bring Dewey back with her. Dewey tells her mom that she already has the Gordons for her.“

Rating: 99.9725/100.0

Status: Read

Nov 2 - Nov 7, 2009 Activity Summary

Mathematics:
- EPGY: Started week at 4.40 and ended at 4.48 (Geometry: 4.51, Measurement: 4.50, Integers: 4.46)
- Reading the book "Life by the Numbers" by Keith Devlin - read sections about how math is used to solve different problems in life, how skaters perform triple axels and knot theory. Currently reading about how Tom Banchoff used math to construct (using a computer) a hypercube (4 dimensional cube)
Science:
- RockIt Science: Learned about air pressure, built a machine invented by Hero of Alexandria that spouts water up by itself due to air pressure, heard a crazy story about Evil Mr. Fred and Jack and Jill. In the story, Jack and Jill are farmers who, in their field, grow pizzas, nachos, pickles,chocolate ice cream. Evil Mr. Fred, who always wants everyone to be sad, doesn't like Jack and Jill having these nice things. He makes a cloud and puts some rocket engines and burns up some crops each time he comes. Fortunately, Jack and Jill made friends with a flying lake.  So, everytime Evil Mr. Fred comes and burns their crops, the lake puts out the fire. They find a lake near their farm and connect it with pipes to the flying lake and try to spout water at the rocket engines until the fuel is gone. But, their plan does not work out. So, they find a stronger rocket fuel to replace Evil Mr. Fred's old fuel and they offer him some. He burns some pizzas but the new rocket fuel creates a flame so big that it burns Evil Mr. Fred and his cloud.

- Thinkwell Chemistry: Learned the Heisenberg Uncertainity Principle to the characteristics of each family in the periodic table - how they react with water, why the alkali metals have their name (when they react with water, the solution is basic or alkaline), etc.

- Solar Research: Trying to learn about how much time it takes for the sun to provide enough heat to one cup of water from 60° F to 212° F (needs 76 BTUs of heat). Solar panels convert solar energy to electricity actively. I decided to use a lens instead of a solar panel in my solar car design.

- Biology: Dirt to Dinner class (Bugs) - read my post

- Physics: Reading "Conceptual Physics" by Paul G. Hewitt about Galileo's inclined planes.

- Astronomy: See post on Dark Energy talk

Art
- Painting: Completed "My Froggy". Started "My ? animal"
- Clay Class: Working on a scene from "Around the World in 365 days" by Shreyes Nallan

Reading
- Fiction: Reading "White Sands, Red Menace" by Ellen Klages
- Biographies: Read "James Watt, Master of the Steam Engine" by Anna Sproule. Reading "The  Wright Brothers, the Birth of Modern Aviation" by Anna Sproule. Mummy is reading "Never at Rest" by Richard S. Westfall (long version of the "The Life of Isaac Newton")

Sports
-Swim class at Timpany Center: Breaststroke, Freestyle with breathing in water
-Tennis - No class Saturday this week, class on Sunday

Dirt to Dinner: Bugs

November 7, 2009.

We went to the class today at 10:10 am. Mackenzie was back. We started with opening circle. The talking object today in the opening circle was a scarlet bean pod. We had to say what we were thankful for and share a weird bug encounter. I said that that I was thankful for being there and that I didn't have any weird bug encounters.

Next, it was time for the food chain game. Most kids were aphids to start with. Some were ladybugs. Mackenzie spread out bandanas all over a part of the backyard. Only one aphid could stay on a cabbage (bandana). I was an aphid to start with. If another aphid comes on your cabbage, you need to move to an empty cabbage. If you on the grass, you can be tagged by a ladybug and eaten. If you are on the cabbages, you are safe. In the first game, I stayed on grass wanting to be tagged by a ladybug to become a ladybug so there isn't any predators that eat ladybugs. In the second game, we added an owl that can eat the ladybug and the ladybug becomes an aphid again. In the second game, I became an aphid twice, the original state and when I was tagged by the bird to become an aphid again.

Next, the adventure moved to the kitchen. Sidney snapped some green beans for making the potato green bean salad. I helped make the mixture for the dressing with vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, pepper, salt, sugar and olive oil. At this point, Mackenzie called us to the map making adventure so I missed making the whole salad.

Pachie drew an unfinished map of the front yard and we tried to find bugs and plot their location on the map. I started looking out for bugs in the soil and didn't find any. I had an idea to look for bees on flowers and went to the yellow flowers and found a miniature version of a fly on two of them. Meanwhile Mackenzie and Elia were looking for leaf miners on swiss chard leaves. Daddy walked on to join the leaf miner hunt and found one. I plotted their locations on the map. Meanwhile Ry, Mackenzie and Elia were looking for ladybugs and found two. Mackenzie, Kimberly and Olivia found a bee which lives on a pea also in the frontyard. I plotted the bee's location on the map. I picked some carrots from the front yard and ate them. I munched one more and Daddy asked me to go to the backyard to eat the five items we cooked. I did not eat any of them.

We also checked the results of our soil experiment today. The results (if you read Ms. Juli's blog, kids from Halloween dug up some holes and we covered the entire bed with a mesh) were that in the compost side, there were no plants but in the non-compost side, there were some weird looking plants that could be tomatoes.

Then, Mackenzie called us for the closing circle and this time we had to share what we liked the most about the garden. I said that the most interesting part of the garden was when I found the minature version of the fly.

I also had fun with Elia and Ry playing the drums.

Dark Energy talk in Berkeley

October 19, 2009.
Mommy and I rushed through the long line on Addison Street in Berkeley. We arrived in the building, went up the elevator and arrived at the mezzanine EE-FF. We were going to attend a talk about dark energy presented by the Berkeley Lab, in a series of talks called "Science at the Theater". This talk was given by Dr. Saul Perlmutter, Dr. David Schelgel and Dr. Alexie Leauthand. The interviewer was John Fowler.

They started with Dr. Perlmutter talking about dark energy. The theory is that dark energy makes the universe expand. Edwin Hubble looked at distant galaxies and noticed that they were redshifted, which means that they were going farther from us and so the universe is expanding.

Next it was Dr. Schelgel's turn. He was working on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey which was mapping space in 2D and 3D and the spectrum of the sky for a "standard ruler" of history.

Next it was Dr. Leauthand's turn. She first started with telling her audience that Fritz Zwicky calculated the speed of some galaxies, their mass, and did some calculations to find out the distance from Earth to the galaxies. But that did not match the observed distance. Zwicky concluded that there needs to be some mass in addition to the observed mass and called it "dark matter". Currently no probes have been sent to detect dark matter. People think that dark matter is a particle. Dark matter is found in galaxy clusters in clusters. Light curves through dark matter. Dark matter doesn't interact with atomic matter so it is difficult to detect it. Dark matter doesn't have anything to do with dark energy.

We left the mezzanine, went down the elevator to the first floor, crossed the street, entered the parking garage, went to our van and returned home.