Book Report/Review: Swamp Fox of the Revolution - Landmark Books

The Swamp Fox of the Revolution is about Brig. Gen. Francis Marion and the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution. Even though one of my most favorite topics in history is the Revolutionary War, most of the battles in the book were unknown to me. The only battles I knew were Charleston, South Carolina; Cowpens, South Carolina; Kings Mountain, South Carolina; Guildford Courthouse, North Carolina; Yorktown, Virginia; and Eutaw Springs, South Carolina (no wonder it was called the Southern Campaign!). The book starts when Banastre Tarleton tried to defeat Marion. But he couldn't go past a swamp, and he called Marion the "Swamp Fox" and left. Now Horatio Gates, the hero of the great American victory at Saratoga, came south to defeat Charles Cornwallis, the hero of the great British victory at New York. The result was...

CAMDEN, A BRITISH VICTORY.

Now George Washington sent his most courageous general, Nathaniel Greene, to the South. And with him came Colonel Daniel Morgan. Once they went south, they had two choices:

1. Don't fight in the winter

2. Fight in the winter

"I'd better fight than hole up all winter," said Morgan, and so it was decided. Meanwhile, backwoodsmen from Tennessee and West Virginia attacked British and Tories (Americans supporting the British) under Patrick Ferguson. They killed Ferguson and defeated his force in...

KINGS MOUNTAIN, AN AMERICAN VICTORY. 

Daniel Morgan was getting ready. He had one row of sharpshooters, one row of militias, and one row of Continentals. Banastre Tarleton could come at any moment now. And...
There he came with his British Dragoons! They dissolved the sharpshooter and militia lines, but Morgan knew that they were not ready for the Continentals. The Continentals were pushing the Dragoons back. The Dragoons attacked Colonel William Washington. Washington attacked them with a sword. The Dragoons turned and fled. It was...
COWPENS, AN AMERICAN VICTORY. 

Now Cornwallis caught up with Nathaniel Greene in North Carolina, near Guildford Courthouse, so the battle was called the Battle of Guildford Courthouse. Greene modeled his lines on Morgan's successful Cowpens plan. But something went wrong. The Continentals, seeing the militias fleeing, fled too. Cornwallis won. 

Greene told Marion to capture two British forts, Ft. Watson and Ft. Motte. How could they capture Ft. Watson? It was on a hill! One of them had an idea. Most of Marion's men were once loggers. They felled all the trees that were around until they made a ramp high enough to reach the fort. And then, Marion's men went up the ramp and captured the fort. Now it was time for Ft. Motte. Ft. Motte was on a Native American mound. There was no place to build a ramp. How could they capture Ft. Motte? They had a risky idea. Private Nathan Savage was a bow-and-arrow expert. Marion's men dug a tunnel under the fort. Savage went through and shot at the fort. British soldiers tried to douse the flames. But Marion captured the fort. 

Cornwallis caught up with Greene again at Eutaw Springs.  Marion fought bravely at Eutaw Springs. At first, the Americans were winning. They were almost in the British camp! But the British fought harder and harder. And finally they succeeded in pushing the Americans back and winning at...

EUTAW SPRINGS, A BRITISH VICTORY

Though Cornwallis had won at Guildford Courthouse and Eutaw Springs, he was tired of chasing Greene through the Carolina wilderness. So he went northeast until he reached the coast, on the Chesapeake Bay and York River.

The French admiral Comte de Grasse was leading a fleet from the Caribbean to...

Chesapeake Bay! General George Washington was interested. He knew that Cornwallis was camped on the York River, and that he established a settlement called "Yorktown" where he camped. Washington and Comte de Rochambeau, another French admiral, set out south. De Grasse blockaded Yorktown on sea, while Washington and Rochambeau blockaded by land. Cornwallis sent a message to British headquarters at New York, pleading for supplies. But it was too late. The Americans won at...

YORKTOWN, THE FINAL BATTLE
RATING: 100/100
STATUS: READ
Here is a photo of Marion:

http://teachers.greenville.k12.sc.us/sites/ekrezdor/South%20Carolina/Francis%20Marion-%20Swamp%20Fox.bmp  

(Though it's underlined and blue, you can't click on it)

Activity/Project: Rhyme Maker

Can you make a rhyme about tables?

Words rhyming with table:

stable, label, able, cable, Mabel

 Can you make a rhyme about snakes? Or cakes?

Words rhyming with snake:

 bake, cake, fake, Jake, lake, make, quake, rake, take, wake, (Sir Francis Drake??)

Can you make a rhyme about bays?

Words rhyming with bay:

May, sundae, sway, away, play, gray, highway, San Jose, Subway, tray, pay, NBA, LA, hay, lay, Chile, way, stay, x-ray, Paraguay, Uruguay, sun ray, quay, stingray, jay, cay, say, whey, (Dr. Tay??) clay, day, hooray, yay, USA

Do you have any more suggestions for rhymes?

Search: Grandster Queen of Bicycling

GRANDSTER
SEARCH/MAIL/MAPS/IMAGES/VIDEOS/MORE

Queen Of Bicycling

Queen of bicycling

A Queen of Bicycling (Maphitea Masturas) is a creature which only eats the haert fruit (Which is only found in Xerkopa, a planet 328 quadrillion light-years from where the Queen of Bicycling lives in Tonga). It lives for 1 nanosecond and doesn’t know what 1+1 is.

Quadrillion - a very large number

Nanosecond - a billionth of a second

Poem: Africa Continent Rhyme

In Africa there were many empires and civilizations,
Like Mali ruled by Mansa Mosa,
Over time they became nations,
With languages like Zulu and Xhosa.

Poems: Country Rhymes

Country Rhymes

1. Bulgaria

He went to Bulgaria
But didn’t like the area

2. Ukraine

He went to Ukraine
But there was too much rain

2. Paraguay
He went to Paraguay
But it was a cloudy day

3. Chad
He settled in Chad
Because there was more money than he ever had

4. Niger
He went to Niger
And became a miser

Poems: Extremes in the U.S.

Extremes in the U.S.

Wet: Mount Waialele, Hawaii

There is a huge amount of rain on Mount Waialele,

Much more than you can imagine there may be.

Not far away it is very dry,

And the amount of rain goes down by two times five.

Dry: Death Valley, California/Nevada

In Death Valley it is very dry,

And the temperature is very high,

It is also very low,

To Death Valley lots of people go.

Hot: Death Valley, California/Nevada

In Death Valley it is very hot,

Unlike Minneapolis where it is not.

It is also very low,

To Death Valley lots of people go.

Cold: Barrow, Alaska

In Barrow it is very cold,

So unless you are Amundsen, Roald,*

Never ever ever go there,

It is probably too cold for a polar bear.

*- Roald Amundsen was the first person to reach the South Pole.

High: Mount McKinley, Alaska

McKinley is the tallest mountain in the USA,

On it, it'll always be a cold day,

Oh, Oh, it is cold and high,

On it your eggs will never fry.

Low: Death Valley, California/Nevada

In Death Valley it is very low,

To Death Valley lots of people go,

It is also very dry,

And the temperature is very high.

MOUNT WAIELELE (OR WAHILILI)

DEATH VALLEY

DEATH VALLEY

BARROW

MOUNT MCKINLEY

DEATH VALLEY

Poem: He kicked the ball away

He kicked the ball away

It was hot May,

He was eating a sundae,

And looking at the trees sway,

He kicked the ball away,

On to parks where children play,

On to roads of gray,

On to a highway,

Into downtown San Jose,

Into a restaurant tray,

In Subway,

And into the chefs’ pay,

Into the office of Dr. Tay,

When she was using a x-ray,

Into the playoffs of the NBA,

Where Boston defeated LA,

Into some yellow hay,

Where a sleeping horse lay,

Into the country of Chile,

Where it was struck by a sun ray,

Then into Paraguay,

And then into Uruguay,

Onto the bay,

Where a potter was baking clay,

And where it was chased by a stingray,

But it bounced on to a quay,

Then to a cay,

Where it was pushed by a blue jay,

Now our song is over - yay!

Have a wonderful day!

Book Report: Our Island Story

Our Island Story: A History of England for Boys and Girls by H.E Marshall(1905)

Book Review/Report

_____________________________________________________________

 Our Island Story is half-fiction and half-true. It starts from the time the Romans invaded Britain, and ends at the time when the U.K annexed New Zealand. The book talks about how Henry V managed to get the throne of France, and the signing of the Magna Charta ("Great Charter") by King John "Lackland" Plantagenet. The author makes the stories interesting by overlapping stories, like "The Siege of Delhi" and "The Pipes at Lucknow"(chapters 106/107). It also talks about the warrior queen Boadicea, who would die rather than submit(chapter 5). The Romans thought that they could defeat Boadicea because she was a woman, but it took a long fight to do so. This book is a very good book.

Rating: 99.732/100 Status: READ

Book Review: The Scarecrow and his Servant

A scarecrow made by Mr. Carlo Pandolfo stood in a muddy field. There was a thunderstorm that night, and the scarecrow came to life. Unfortunately, Mr. Pandolfo's cousins, the Buffalonis, are looking for him. He finds a servant, an orphan named Jack, to help him. He fights robbers, becomes a soldier, and even acts in a play. After facing many dangers, he finally arrives at Spring Valley, the estate Mr. Pandolfo left for him.

The Scarecrow and his Servant is a very good book, telling you the way the scarecrow escaped from every danger that he faced. You will never put this book down without finishing it.

  

Rating: 99.8679 out of 100 (Status: Read)

Nature Outing at Rancho San Antonio, Cupertino

We played duck-duck-goose and chaos tag. In the nature outing, we walked one mile to Deer Hollow Farm. Every farm animal except a horse was there in this farm. I also thought of a song for this farm sung to the tune of "Old McDonald had a farm.."

Old Mcdonald had a farm,
E-I-E-I-O!
And on the farm there was a sow,
Snorting at us now.
With a snort snort here and a snort snort there,
here snort, there snort, everywhere snort, snort || (Old Mcdonald)

And on the farm there was a cow,
Cosy in some hay.
With a snuggle here and a snuggle there,
here snug, there snug, everywhere snug, snug || (Old Mcdonald)

And on the farm there was a lamb,
Resting on some grass.
With a smile smile here and a smile smile there,
here smile, there smile, everywhere smile smile || (Old Mcdonald)

And on the farm there were some geese,
Playing with some rocks.
With a look look here and a look look there
Here look, there look, everywhere look look || (Old Mcdonald)

And on the farm there were some goats
Smiling at us now.
With a smile smile here and a smile smile there
Here smile, there smile, everywhere smile smile || (Old Mcdonald)

Deep Secrets of the Neutrino: Physics Underground: Talk by Dr. Peter Rowson, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

We raced into the Panofsky Auditorium. I won by going through the grass. I wanted to eat some cookies but I couldn't find any. There were only SLAC T-shirts. We ran into the auditorium and found seats really close to the stage. Finally, Dr. Peter Rowson started his lecture.

He first talked about the history of the neutrino. In 1933, Wolfgang Pauli wrote a funny letter to a conference ("Dear Radioactive Ladies and Gentlemen..."). In this letter, he theorized that there was a small particle which had small mass that was taking some energy away during chemical reactions. In 1934, Enrico Fermi from the University of Rome, coined the term neutrino ("little neutral one" in Italian) for the particle.

The problem of detecting neutrinos forced physicsts to the poles or underground. The problem was that they needed only the neutrinos coming into their detectors and not cosmic rays and muons. When you go underground, the soil above filters cosmic rays, but you have to go down a certain depth or below to get rid of muons. All current neutrino experiments are conducted below depths of 1000 ft. Since neutrinos can pass through one light year of lead, they will not be filtered by the soil.

The closest source of neutrinos to the earth is the sun. Every day, millions of neutrios pass through you and you don't even notice them. There are three types of neutrinos: electron-type neutrinos, muon-type neutrinos and tau-type neutrinos. In a star's fusion, there are many reactions which give off electron-type neutrinos. Neutrinos can change form from one type to another. When a neutrino escapes out of the sun, it will be an electron-type neutrino. But, when we detect it, it can be any of three types. The elctron-type neutrino's charged partner is the electron, the muon-type neutrino's charged partner is the muon and the tau-type's charged partner is the tau lepton.

Dr. Rowson is doing his experiment in a mine in Carlsbad, New Mexico which is also used by the U.S. Department of Energy to store nuclear waste. His experiment consists of a tub of Xenon-136. When a neutrino hits water, it emits a particle called a muon. To the human eye, the muon is a tiny spark of blue light. This is how a neutrino is usually detected. This experiement is called EXO200. Sometimes, radioactive materials give off beta particles or just high speed electrons. People now want to detect if a radioactive atom gives off two of these beta particles and two neutrinos.

Questions:
1) What is Dr. Rowson's experiment? Is he trying to determine the mass of a neutrino?
2) What is the purpose of using Xenon-136 in this experiment?
3) How is the double beta decay being used in this experiment?
4) What happens in this experiement after the neutrino hits the xenon?

Seahorse Tour at the Cal Academy of Sciences

I was just sitting there, playing Flood-It. Just then, Talya and Devin came in. The tour started. We walked to a room where we answered very basic questions and asked questions that we had. Seahorses belong to the family Syngnathidae. Other members of this family are the sea dragon, the pipefish, and the pipehorse. There are only 2 species of sea dragons (the leafy sea dragon and the weedy sea dragon) and there are 45 species of seahorses.All seahorses belong to the genus Hippocampus. In Greek, hippo means horse and kampos means sea monster. Here are 5 types of seahorses:
Hippocampus barbouri, Barbour's seahorse
Hippocampus hippocampus, Short-snouted seahorse
Hippocampus kelloggi, Kellogg's seahorse
Hippocampus minotaur, Bullneck seahorse
Hippocampus zebra, Zebra seahorse
Seahorses are very slow swimmers. It could take a seahorse one hour to swim across a swimming pool.


Then we went down to the specimen lab, which had 250,000 (1/4 million) specimens. Dr. Dave Catania showed us some specimens. We first saw an angler fish. The first picture is a picture of the angler fish. Then we saw a stonefish, which is extremely poisonous. According to Wikipedia, the poison can be removed when you apply water that iS at 113 degrees F. Then we saw a specimen of a seahorse. We saw several specimens of sea dragons. Then we went to the molecular lab.


First, the DNA is separated with some chemicals. Then, the DNA goes through a liquid gel. It is illiuminated by UV light and processed through a computer to see the DNA sequence. Then we went back to the small room where we started.


We asked Dr. Healy Hamilton questions about seahorses, pipefish and seadragons. Dr. Hamilton showed us a pipefish fossil from Italy. I asked her why the pipefish didn't have fins. She said that the pipefish was so ancient that it didn't have fins. She asked us what our favorite animals were and I said that I had 8 favorite animals. She told me to name three of them. "Elephants, zebras and giraffes," I said. She said that I will have to work in Africa.


Next, we went to the Steinhart Aquarium. We saw Hippocampus redii eat some shrimp. Seahorses suck their food through their long snout in 7 milliseconds. This was the first time I ever saw a seahorse eat. I watched this in videos before but never live. We also saw some seadragons though not for the first time. The two species of seadragons, the weedy seadragon and the leafy seadragon were in the aquarium. I quickly took seven photos of the leafy and weedy seadragons.
And now, the tour was over. While hurrying up the stairs, I dropped the iPhone. Luckily it didn't fall down the stairs. I picked it up and saw a huge American alligator. We came out and went back home.

Sources/References                                                                        
Specimen Lab:
Anglerfish-Wikipedia
Stonefishes-Wikipedia
Other:
Seahorses and Seadragons by Mary Jo Rhodes

"We first saw an angler fish."

 "We answered some basic questions."

"I quickly took 7 photos of the seadragons."

Antimatter presentation: Talk by Dr. Helen Quinn at Robert C. Smithwick Theater, Foothill College

I raced Daddy up the slope from the parking lot. I was tired half way up the slope and Daddy ran at top speed taking the lead. But, I finally won the race when Daddy was three quarters up the slope. I ran up the stairs into the Smithwick Theater. The lecture didn't start yet.

Dr. Andrew Fraknoi was giving his formal introduction and finally Dr. Helen Quinn, the lecturer came up to the stage and started talking. Her slides were plain white and she said that chemistry doesn't produce nearly as good slides as astronomy does.

She talked about the three mysteries of anti matter and one of them was the mystery of the missing antimatter.

In the beginning of the universe, the amount of matter and anti-matter were equal. But now, there is much more matter than antimatter. How this happened is a mystery that physicists are trying to solve.

Dr. Quinn is working at SLAC so she told us how they make antimatter there. They shoot an electron beam at a block of tungsten (atomic number 74) and the beam gets separated into matter and antimatter. After her talk, I also asked her a question about how they can make antihydrogen.

Antimatter is made out of antiparticles. An example is antihydrogen. Hydrogen is made out of one proton and one electron and antihydrogen is made out of one antiproton and one antielectron.

Doug Osheroff

We went to Doug Osheroff's interview at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, California, USA, North America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, M317594586859 Universe, Universe.

In 1976, Doug Osheroff experimented with superfluidity in Helium. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1996 for his work on superfluidity in Helium 3. We went into the auditorium and got one of the best seats as it was really close to the mike. First, a lady introduced someone who in turn introduced Doug Osheroff. Then, he was interviewed and he told his audience about the Columbia space shuttle accident and said something about how to be a good teacher and climate changes. But, he barely talked three sentences about Helium-3 and superfluidity in this interview. But, he talked about his father and mother who were from Europe and about his wife who said "Don't you do that" for investigating the space shuttle Columbia accident.The piece of foam was going at 877 km/hr and it damaged the left wing. This caused the shuttle to heat up on re-entry killing the seven astronauts inside the shuttle.

When the uninteresting interview was over, I went to Dr. Osheroff and when I was about to ask my question, Daddy asked it instead. The question that he asked was on a NOVA program that said that you can cool atoms using lasers. How can do that since lasers are usually used to heat things and not to cool them? He said, "If you tune the frequency of the laser to be a little higher than the atom's frequency, you can slow the atom down."

We came back home.
THE END

"How Mathematics Changed Us" Talk by Keith Devlin

This time, in January, we went to Keith Devlin's talk at Cubberly Auditorium at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, M3 universe, Universe. We were so late that out of the four revolutions he was going to talk about, we missed one revolution already.

He talked about Fibonacci who was the son of an Italian merchant who sometimes traveled to Asia and told Fibonacci about the new Hindu-Arabic number system which used the base 10 system (it was still the 12th century, when people in Europe commonly used the base 5 Roman system). In 1202, Fibonacci wrote Liber Abacci (book of calculations). He said, "Fibonacci uses two or three pages to explain what would be explained to a kid in kindergarden in one sentence." He talked about Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat as they tried different approaches to solve the problem of the points.  The problem of points is: Two players are playing a game which has 5 rounds. When one player is leading 2 to 1 then the game has to stop. How will the pot (the prize for the winner) be divided? Read "The Unfinished Game" by Keith Devlin to find out! This problem was one of the early problems of probability.

Keith Devlin said, "Until now mathematics was developed by physics. Now, we expect it to be developed by biology." After the lecture was over, I put on my rain boots and splashed through the watery parts of the road we had to go on. Just as we were leaving, I called Mummy and I stayed on the phone until we came home.

Dirt to Dinner: The evil squirrels are not so evil anymore

Jan 23, 2010.

I looked towards the front yard, disappointed that all there was near the pea bed was a bundle of bamboo sticks wrapped in grower's cloth. I went inside the house and asked Juli why my greenhouse was dismantled.


Juli said that the wind was so strong that it pushed all the bamboo sticks and growers cloth over the fence and into the sidewalk. She picked them up from the street and put them back in front of the pea bed.


Everyone was drawing something for Mackenzie because this was the last class for Dirt to Dinner. But I drew for just 5 minutes and went out into the front yard to work on my greenhouse.
This time, Daddy suggested that we should first tie the greenhouse to poles that we could stick deep into the ground. We found two metal poles which were exactly the same size we needed. But, we needed two more poles. I found a gigantic metal pole which was 8 feet long. I picked up a large shovel and tried to cut it in half. But, I couldn't cut it. Then, Daddy suggested that we could use blocks of wood for the two additional poles. When we tested the wood block, the results were that the wind could move the wood block. Because the wind could move the wood block, Daddy suggested a different idea. He said that we could use bamboo sticks for the two additional poles. I got two bamboo poles and we stuck them deep in the ground so that the greenhouse will be secure. Then, we asked Juli for some cord. With the cord, we tied the greenhouse to the poles. We wrapped the greenhouse with grower's cloth and secured it with binder clips and clothespins.

Now, the squirrels cannot eat our peas and destroy our soil experiment anymore. Just before we finished building the greenhouse, I realized that the bed wasn't for the soil experiment but it was for the greenhouse. The fertile soil mixed with the non-fertile soil, so the soil experiment couldn't answer the original question it was designed to answer.

Also, in the class, I made fruit leather. I ground apples and pears and added some pieces of pineapples, 2 raspberries and 2 strawberries to give it some flavor. I was forced to put my mixture in a food dehydrator.
It did not make sense to me because it takes two days to make fruit leather with the food dehydrator!

In her blog, Juli wrote, "... and Shreyes kept the evil squirrels from eating the peas." Goodbye, Dirt to Dinner!

Dirt to Dinner: The Greenhouse is built

Daddy said that we can go to The Home Depot at 8:00 am and pick up the materials we needed to build the  greenhouse that we would use to keep the squirrels away from the bed where we planted peas for the soil experiment (wood, 2 plastic pipes, 1 tarp, and plastic). But the plan did not work out well. Daddy forgot to wake me up at 7:30 am and woke me up at 9:30 am instead. We were 11 minutes late for the class and when we arrived, everyone was inside. We did not bring our materials with us so Daddy thought that the fastest time we could finish the greenhouse was 3 days from now. But Juli had 2 bamboo "tepees" that we used to make our greenhouse. But the tepees had holes in them so we covered them with cloth. Then I ran to the kitchen to make crackers. Then we had crakers at the kitchen.