Inventions

No, I didn't make my solar car yet. But I made an invention today.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I invented... The TELEGRAPH!

The electric telegraph [was first] invented in 1832...

-Wikipedia 

Okay, I didn't invent it before anybody else did, but I invented it.  

 Let's take a closer look at it.

---------------------------------------

A diagram of an electromagnet.

 That thing that looks like a red tube is just a 16-inch nail with a magnetic wire twirled around it one hundred times. We stuck it on packing foam and left some wire at either end dangling to complete a circuit with a battery. 

That made it  AN ELECTROMAGNET.

                                                    (not a telegraph)  

--------------------------------------------------------

  To make it from an electromagnet into a telegraph I had to make it like 

<------------this.

After sandpapering the wires, looking for the "true connector wire," twisting paperclips, and making a key, the telegraph was ready.

I pressed the key down.

That would complete an electromagnetic circuit which would make the nail magnetic. The clicker would be attracted towards the nail, and that would make a sound.

 Click!

 

What in the World is a Perfidious Person?

As some of you already know, I've published a story on Amazon.com recently. If you haven't seen it yet, I included a link on this page. 

Also, I'm in an online grammar class called MLWWW1AF11T (Magic Lens/Word Within the Word 1A Fall 2011 Tuesday).

When do the above two things unite (unite is from unus, Latin for one)? I'll tell you when: when, for homework, we all had to write a story containing at least 4 words which have the prefix "per-." Per- means "through" in most cases. 

We all wrote many stories. They ranged from people robbing banks to evil kings on gold thrones to Calvin and Hobbes (for readers in India, Calvin and Hobbes are two American comic characters.)  I wrote the longest story. Here it is, in flashing colors:

Once upon a time, a perfidious person came to the peroration of his persuasive speech. In it, he said that no person had any perquisites, and the peremptory aristocrats were all pernicious.

Afterwards, the perfidious person perambulated home. Meanwhile, the people who had attended the persuasive peroration perpended about it. The peroration was perspicacious, but if they voted for a permutation of power, the perfidious person would get all the perquisites!

The peremptory aristocrats perpended about the peroration, too. At dawn, they perambulated to the perfidious person's house. The perfidious person, in his pertinacity, refused to let them come in without his permission. The aristocrats gave the National Guard permission to perambulate to the perfidious person's house.

A few minutes later, the perimeter of the perfidious person's house was surrounded by the peremptory aristocrats' soldiers. The perfidious person had only one weapon - persuasive perorations. But that wasn't a match for sword and gun. The perfidious person perambulated to Persia disguised as a pervasive prophet.

The people who realized the truth about the persuasive peroration persuaded all other people around that the persuasive peroration was just for getting the perquisites. They made a peroration saying that the aristocrats were extremely pernicious and peremptory, and they didn't need to have any perquisites in the country. The other people agreed. Suddenly the peremptory aristocrats and the Guard arrived.

A few people escaped. They sent a transcript of the peroration that had just been made, and a postscript.

Six months later, the once perfidious - now patriotic - person was made the new President. His influence was pervasive to the new country. He was made a general 5 months before, and his persistence had united all the people into an army that caused the aristocrats to, perforce, flee. His name will always be remembered.

A few words may be unfamiliar to you. My textbook for the class has all those words on page 9. So I included a list of definitions of the words I used here:

peremptory - dictator-like.

perambulate - walk.

perfidious - treacherous.

pernicious - destructive.

peroration - conclusion of a speech.

perspicacious - insightful. 

pertinacity - stubbornness.  

perforce - by force.

permutation - rearrangement.

perpend - think.

perquisite - privilege.

pervasive - spread throughout. 

____________________

 http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Woods-Challenger-ebook/dp/B0056ICDXS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309109594&sr=1-1

 

Making our own Paints?

The yellow and red paints.

It's Sunday. August 14, 2011. Outside it's blazing hot, but we're inside. What are we doing?

HOW IT ALL STARTED

 It all started on the way back home from art class. I asked, "How do you make paint?"
 Mummy replied, "I don't know."
 ___________________________
Plan for the upcoming year
by Mummy

9. How do you get colors, dye, and chemicals? Permanent/temp., shades/ paint v light?
___________________________

Note by Shreyes: We can make our own paint!

And so we did. 

It was Monday, and I was looking forward to a "Bird Banding" Activity by the Audubon Society (John James Audubon was an artist who went out west and drew pictures of birds, some of which are extinct today.) on Saturday. After that activity, I planned to make our own paint, but my timing was wrong: it would be 12:30 - lunchtime - by the time we got home. Anyway, Daddy and I went to the Bird Banding activity. I didn't like it, and I also didn't like the fact that after lunch, we were going for tennis practice until 7:00.
 ___________________________________________________

The next day was the perfect time for painting.
Daddy asked me, "What's the recipe?"
I wrote down the recipe on the easel.


RED -> TOMATO PUREE, STRAWBERRY PUREE
ORANGE -> ORANGE PUREE, BANANA
YELLOW -> APPLES, BANANA
GREEN -> LEAVES, GRASS
BLUE ->
PURPLE ->
BROWN -> SOIL
BLACK ->
WHITE -> MILK, BANANA


And we started to make the paint.

The red paint.

RED
For red, I suggested tomato puree, and I only added on the strawberry puree because Sugi suggested it.  

I went to look for tomatoes in the fridge, but unluckily, we were all out of vegetables. However, I saw a packet of strawberries. They were rotting, but still good enough for paint. While I put them in the grinder, Mummy went to find paintbrushes. 
When Mummy came back with the brushes, the paint was ready. I tested it out on a paper, and it was pink!


Daddy suggested to try putting in some kumkuma (saffron powder). On Friday, we did the Vara Lakshmi Pooja and had some kumkuma left over. I put half of the cup in and the paint became redder, but not fully red. I tilted the kumkuma cup, but, since the kumkuma cup was attached to the pasupu (turmeric) cup, the turmeric tilted over. The bowl had orange paint in it.

The yellow paint.

Fortunately, some strawberry puree was still in the blender. I took it out, put it in a cup, and added kumkuma by spoon. Finally, it was red.


YELLOW

Because pasupu is yellow, I decided to try and make yellow paint with it. But all the pasupu was dwarfed by a tiny bit of water, and the paint became a liquid. 
There were no bananas in the house, and the insides of apples and pears (the only fruits we had) are white.

Daddy suggested putting in egg yolks. I fetched an egg from the fridge and broke the shell with a spoon and mixed the yolk with the turmeric water. The yellow paint was ready.

ALAN ALEXANDER MILNE

Alan Alexander Milne? After the subtitles "How it all Started", "Red", and "Yellow", why would I put the name of a random person as a subtitle? Because Alan A. Milne was no random person. He was the author of all the Winnie-the-Pooh books.

 For green, my recipe was "LEAVES, GRASS." So Sugi and I went out to chip some leaves. When we came back with a bowl full of leaves, Mummy told us that the leaves might be poisonous and she didn't want the poison to get mixed with the dosa (crispy crepe) batter.
All the green vegetables were over. There was no methi (fenugreek) or coriander/cilantro. I never got around to making green paint.


Even less successful was our quest to make black paint. I reasoned that since black = red + yellow + blue, to make black you need to make blue. To make blue, I could only think of morning-glories and blueberries. We had no blueberries in the fridge, and the morning-glories, once bright blue, had faded to a dull lilac. I never made black or blue paint.
_________________________________________________
Without blue, black, green, brown, or white paints I couldn't make any other paints. So I tried painting something with the paints I had already made.

What's red, orange, and/or yellow? Well, that's easy: Winnie-the-Pooh!
And Tigger too, of course.

I took a pen and went out to the hall. Why? Because there was a box with pictures of (the Disney) Winnie-the-Pooh on it in the hall. I drew two drawings of Pooh and Tigger and took them to the kitchen to be painted. I painted them with the orange, red, and yellow paints. Mummy and Daddy both said it was beautiful.

Our Recent Activities/Projects

OM Competition

I was in a team coached by Ms. Mamtha for the Odyssey of the Mind competition (a creativity contest) at the K-2 level. In our category, we had to create a play which features a Money Maker, encouraging friend, customer, and commercial. I was the Money Maker.

CREDITS:

Mr Lightning Bolt (Money Maker) - Shreyes

Encouraging Friend (does not have a particular name) - Julian

Mr Wire - Elia

The customer (does not have a name mentioned) - Nathan

The narrator (does not have a name mentioned) - Sebastian

Commercial Boy1 (does not have a name mentioned) - Ilan

PLOT:

Mr. Wire works to invent a spark, and then makes Mr. Lightning Bolt. Mr Lightning Bolt tries out his first (planting a money seed), 2nd (digging for gold), and 3rd (composting money) wacky ideas, but each of them fail. He tries sliding down the Golden Cliff, and gets very rich.

In the competition, I could only find one little hitch - everyone was too close to the Backdrop. 

But to understand our competition, we need to go back one week before it.

 Monday -   

 5:15 PM

Our dress rehearsal. 

About 5:45 PM

The adults decide my paper costume is inflexible, so they say that we have to replace it with a foam-cloth type of material.

Tuesday -

About 4:45

We visit Michael's. It only has yellow felt.

About 6:00

Mummy gets lots of yellow felt from Joann Fabrics.

Wednesday -

I make my costume and try it out. It works!

Thursday  -

Ilan has a high fever, and won't be coming to the play.

                                                                                                            

Competition

 Before the play, we had even more dress rehearsals. 

We walked into the door of Room D1. We setup our props on the wrong side...

"Could you  please turn your props..."

We turned our props.

"Hello, I am Mr. Lightning Bolt..."

"I am always your encouraging friend. Come on... show us your first idea!"

...

  

"Go on! Go on!"

[laughter]

"I am rich! Rich! Rich!"

...

"The End!"

"The End!"

"The End!"

The judges proceeded to ask us questions. Elia brought up the fact that since Ilan was sick, he took over Ilan's role.

Awards Ceremony

"This team is Bay Area Homeschoolers! Bay Area Homeschoolers..."

We marched around the auditorium and sat down. We impatiently waited for the primary category.

"We never had this before... It's a 29-way tie!" 

"First: Bay Area Homeschoolers."

They gave medals to all of us (including me).

"Now, the 'Ranatra Fusca' award goes to... this team made a rock into a rock-king chair, and then into a rock-et.  They made a Donald Trump-et... this team is The Bay Area Homeschoolers!" 

The award, the highest in the OM (this level) was given to the older group. 

______________________________________________________________

1 Ilan had a high fever and couldn't come to the show, so Elia took over his part.

National History Day

I also participated in the National History Day (a history competition), forming a team with my new friend Vishnu. For the Elementary Division, you have to make a 2D poster summarizing a Debate or Diplomacy in history.


We tried to decide on the topic. I picked the XYZ Affair, and Vishnu picked the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were disagreeing so much that we were asked to pick second topics.
 "I would pick the... Pearl Harbor Diplomacy," said Vishnu.
 "And I would pick the Lincoln-Douglas Debates."
We finally decided on a coin toss.
"I would pick... heads," I said. 


"Tails!"
"That was because my hand touched it."
"Heads!"
"That was because my foot touched it."
"Let's ask Suraga."
"Tails!"

Our topic was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Later, we decided that the title would be "The Terrifying Thirteen - The Cuban Missile Crisis."


We started gathering images for the poster and voting them in. We got the following sequence:


Map - Missile Discovery - Pre-Quarantine (includes EX-COMM & Speech) - Quarantine - Post Resolution (includes Adlai Stevenson) - Resolution - Aftermath


One rule of NHD is that all words (including title, subtitle, and photo captions, but not including quotes) have to be less than 350 words. We got to work on the captions.


My list of captions had 199 words, but we shortened it and also shortened Vishnu's list. The total word count came to 184 words. 


We agreed on a set of quotes. Among them were:


"If there ever was a time I want to be right in my life, this is it."
"...clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace..."
"We were eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fella just blinked."


The next big fight was for color coding. Vishnu thought that all captions and quotes should be color coded by a colored construction paper behind it, and thought that people would be attracted to the poster by this. I thought that only quotes should be color coded by highlighting the text (in Word), and I did not want anyone to get attracted by any color coding scheme. We agreed that Vishnu could use his scheme on the captions, and I could use my scheme on the quotes. 


We started gluing down pictures. We first put the title and subtitle on the top center, the map directly below it, and around the map, the discovery photos. The pictures resumed in a "timeline" format (we made a timeline on both sides of the poster) from EX-COMM to Removal of Missiles. We then made another section which had Resolution, Aftermath, and Consequences. Vishnu prepared a conclusion, which we shortened 2 days before the competition (actually, we had only one month to make our poster, since we started late). 


Only one thing was missing in the poster: a color coding legend. We made it 2 days before the competition. 

The judges could ask us to explain about our poster and give us 15 minutes to answer. We practiced taking turns and explaining about our poster. The average time we took was 12 minutes. We were ready.
______________________________________________________________

Competition

Our team ("Gnana Academy") was the first team to present, at 9:00 am. 


At 8:30 am, they asked us to "setup" our poster. We came in and set up our poster. We then left. 


At 8:45 am, we started our "game-fight," and played until 8:55 am.



"Shreyes Nallan and Vishnu Tejus?" they asked.
We entered the room. There were three judges awaiting us.
"Explain," said one in a soft voice. 


"And my name is Shreyes. Our topic is: The Terrifying Thirteen - The Cuban Missile Crisis..."
...
"As Vishnu mentioned, Kennedy signed the blockade proclamation on the 23rd..."
...
The judges were amazed.
"You told me more about the Cuban Missile Crisis than I ever knew..."
"You mean that you lived during -"
"Yes, I was in college at that time."


"I wish my elementary students were like you."


The judges could only find one problem: say com-yoo-nist instead of cum-yoo-nist. 
___________________________________________________________


Awards Ceremony


They started with explaining some rules, and quickly moved on.
"First, we have our Elementary 2D Display [our category]. Our winner is... Shreyes Nallan and Vishnu Tejus!"
We paraded on to the stage. They gave us a certificate and said that we would move on into the State Level. We paraded back, proudly. 


_______________________________________________________________