Soap - Home education, chemistry and COVID-19

First published on the email group for he-special.org.uk

I thought I would post the soap recipe here as there are now a lot of families doing what we have done for year, educating their children themselves. Making soap is not only a chemistry lesson, but it is usual and necessary in combating the coronavirus.

Have fun and stay safe!

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First let me say something about safety. Caustic soda burns and is not good
if you get it in your eyes, or on your skin. The books I have all say wear
eye protection, and rubber gloves.

I insist that everyone helping wear eye protection when measuring, mixing
and stirring. I don't always wear gloves myself as I know that my hands will
stand a lot of stuff (used to work as a builder with cement!) but I do wear
gloves if I am actually touching the stuff, for instance when I drop the
spoon into the mixture LOL!

So there you are. Wear eye protection and gloves, and don't sue me if you
don't and you burn yourself!

It is also very important to weight out the ingredients very, very
accurately. Right down to the last gram, so the chemical reaction is completed and
you don't end up with soap with too high a pH.

Do not use iron or aluminium as they will react with the caustic soda.

And try not to breath in the fumes when you add the caustic soda to the
water! Do it in a well ventilated place!

Ingredients:

454g lard, beef dripping, or vegetable fat
57g sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) (obtainable from ironmongers)
142g distilled or spring water (the water is to be weighted, not measured by
volume)
1 tbsp or 15g of your favourite essential oil - optional


1: measure out the fat and put in a stainless steel pan to melt. Using a
glass thermometer allow it to cool until it reaches approx. 54C.

2: weight out the caustic soda and water and pour the caustic soda into the
water (never the other way around) and stir until dissolved. Use a glass or
stainless steel container only and a glass not aluminium thermometer (many
preserving thermometers are aluminium).
Leave until the temperature is around 54C.

I find that I start the caustic soda and water when the fat is at about 60C
and they both end up at the same temp around the same time. It isn't so much
what the temp is, it is that they are the same. Anywhere between 40C and
60C will be OK.

3: Add the caustic soda solution to the fat and stir carefully. Leave to
for around 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until 'trace' is reached. Trace
is what they call it when the mixture is thick enough to leave a line on the
surface of the mixture when you drip it off the back of a spoon. It will take
different times depending on which fat you use, vegetable taking the longest
and beef the shortest.

4: Add colouring (a bit of wax crayon) and essential oil if wished once
trace is reached but before it gets too stiff to stir!


5: Pour the mixture into a greased mould. Plastic food trays are very
good.

6: cover the soap with clingfilm and a towel or blanket to retain the heat,
and leave to cure for 24 hours.

7: Cut and turn out the soap, and recover it and leave it to cure for four
weeks.


Note on essential oils. I find that just using one is the best. That way
there is no complicated smell. This is were personal opinion is important.
Some people like lavender, some don't. I like using benzoin, and vanilla,
and cinnamon. I make soap to sell at Christmas coffee mornings that has a
fragrance called Christmas Tree which is made up by an aromatherapies. You can
make soap without anything. Lard will smell a bit, but I find that both
vegetarian fat, and beef fat pleasant enough. The thing is to experiment. The
raw ingredients are very cheep in themselves, it is only the essential oils
that put the price up.

The longer you leave the soap to cue, the harder it gets. I am using a soap
I made 1 1/2 years ago and it is hard enough that is doesn't disintegrate in
water. Commercial soap is made and sold so quickly now that it is really
soft.

Commercial soap also has the glycerine taken out of it to be sold
separately, whereas home made soap has it left in.

This is just the basics of soap. There are lots of books and web sites
about it. You can get really creative and make really complicated soaps or you
can keep it simple. We also like to make floating soap!

There are also lots of sites that talk about the chemistry of soap - the
saponification. In fact, my son calls it The Chemistry Lesson!

The book that I use the most as I feel that it explains it in the best way
is The Handmade Soap Book by Melinda Coss, ISBN 1-85368-807-x.

Happy washing!

'Report Card' - for when you have to convert an autonomous education into LA language

Whether it is the neighbours, your mother-in-law or the Local Authority, someone always seems to be asking home educators about their child's education. When Ram was 6 his grandmother didn't think much of home education, and I realised it was probably because she had no idea what we did. So I decided to write a 'report card' based on the little report cards we had at school back in the 1960s in Canada. It was just a line or two about each subject that was taught.

The amusing thing is the whole exercise made me realise that I was doing more with my son than I realised. Caging it in a language that was understood by LAs and mother-in-laws meant that although we didn't alter our unstructured autonomous education, it was now seen as a 'real' education.

Apparently when my M-I-L got to the bit on tessellation she said, 'I don't even know what tessellation is, and I am 84, so I guess this home education is working after all.' She never bothered us about it again!

Report card for 'Ram' October 5th, 2003 age 6 ¾.

Reading
Reading Beano and Dandy.
Reading up to two sentences from literature books but dyslexia and dyspraxic tendencies are very clear.
Using flash cards
Is able to read nonsense words of up to 3-4 letters
Can do simple anagrams
Can read Pokemon information off the internet
Confidence in reading is behind the actual ability
Goal: To improve confidence in reading ability


Literature
Reading M.E Atkinson, Malcolm Saville, Eleanor Graham, Arthur Ramsone, and other classic authors
Reading poetry and making up nonsense rhymes.

Modern Literature
Reading Caroline Lawrence- covering Roman History, Susan Gates – Schlok Horror, but has generally found that modern books are badly written and prefers older books.


Grammar
Constantly asking for exact definitions for words
Learning alphabetical order
Refer to correct grammar labels and can recognise bad grammar in modern books
Knows nouns, verbs, adverbs and additives, and is aware of other parts of speech.


Maths
Counting by 1,2,3s etc. up to 11s as a way of reinforcing multiplication tables
Adding and subtracting in games as well as on paper. Can add up in columns.
Understands the concept of probability and algebra.
Knows most 2 and 3 dimensional figures, angles and properties of tessellation and circles.


History
Mediaeval history – visited several castles and has reproduce them in the sand pit
Has read about life in the middle ages.
Has had discussions on the negative aspects of inventions which have positively changed the world
Understands the lack of water, electricity and other amenities in this village 60 years ago.

Psychology
Discussions on why people make complaints about other people.
Can identify four emotions in himself – happy, content, frustrated, and angry.
Can now recognise that other people may have a different opinion to him, which is equally valid

Politics
Understands the basics of how parliament works. Can discuss why politicians do what they do.
Listened to speeches from the Labour and Conservative Party conferences. Doesn’t like Tony Blair!

Nature
Studying pond life, birds, insects.
Keeps stick insects
Reading Enid Blyton’s Nature book twice monthly


Physics
Using science to explain magic.
Does weekly Kramph experiments.
Has been watching Science Shack and doing their experiments


Sociology
Looking at class and understanding differences
Understanding the power of advertising
Rejected Ribina stickers on the basis that they shouldn’t be used to entice children into having something that is bad for them!


P.E.
Can swim the length of the pool unaided.
Has excellent trampolining skills
Is continuing to do exercises for SID as recommended by optometrist
Is playing racket games and ball games
Is not yet ready to play team sports


R.E.
Celebrates seasonal festivals


Astronomy
Saw Mars through telescope on the night that it was closest to earth and understood that the last time this happened it was cave men looking at it!


Ancient History
Romans- watching Time Commanders and learning about Roman fighting. Also learning about people from reading Caroline Lawrence books.
Watching What The Romans Did For Us
Watching and reading about ancient Greek myths


Engineering
Building with Lego.
Building and destroying sand castles
Helped build the tree house
Built a jelly baby and spaghetti tower of over 1 m, capable of holding an egg.
Watching Seven Wonders of the Industrial World


Art
Designed and coloured in a Halloween costume
Doing large painting on lining paper
Helping with weaving and basket projects
Making seasonal decorations

Biology
Continuing to investigate how the human body works including how it regulates itself and the importance of hunger and going to the toilet.
Taking an interest in the health and wellbeing of insects and the dog.

Life Skills
Learning to cook and clean
Learned to light both an open fire and a woodburning stove
Learning about making clothes and darning socks
Learning about hygiene

Chemistry
Doing weekly Kramph experiments
Making soap
Dyeing wool with natural dyes

Geography
Reading maps in preparation for outings
Monitoring temperature and rainfall
Learning about different cloud formation

Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Spectrum Bias

Pettersson E, Anckarsäter H, Gillberg C, & Lichtenstein P (2013). Different neurodevelopmental symptoms have a common genetic etiology. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 54 (12), 1356-65 PMID: 24127638


Christopher Gillberg: "When children display problems in one area, it might be more important to, as early as possible, set up a strategy for helping with all related symptoms rather than trying to help only with a specific diagnosis (which often will change over time)." Dorothy Bishop: “We may feel comfortable with our domain-specific labels for neurodevelopmental disorders, but they do not capture the clinical reality.”

Did we end up going down this path because of spectrum bias? Most children that are seen in clinics are seen by a single focus practitioner. Even when they are seen by a team for diagnostic purposes, they are still treated individually by practitioners such as OT, PT and educational psychologists. In addition only those with the highest level of behavioural problems get past the GPs who act as gatekeepers. This has been thought to be the reason why more boys than girls are diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders; the boys display more extreme behaviours thereby getting more attention.

As much research goes on in secondary centres, that is within the hospital or with the community consultant, rather than in primary care, those that haven't made it past the GP gatekeepers will not end up being part of the research cohort. This means that the wider population of those with neurodevelopmental disorders will not have been studied, leading to a spectrum bias when formulating the diagnostic criteria and tests.

Additionally, because of spectrum bias, children will have been filtered into specific subgroups resulting in confirmation of domain-specific labels. One of the 'gold standards' for research in autism has been not the diagnosis of autism but whether or not the researchers have administered DISCO, ADOS or similar diagnostic criteria. This immediately excludes any children who do not present with the main core characteristics of autism as observed by the specific diagnostic test. Additionally it has been shown that children who receive a positive diagnosis under one of these tests at a young age, can often fail to meet the threshold at an older age, then again with the passing of time, perhaps to adolescence or young adulthood, with a different diagnosed test, will regain the specific diagnoses. This will result in not just very specific subgroups, but will concentrate the focus of any intervention or further observation into one small black and white clearly defined area.

The experience of families is very different. They 'study' a single subject, N=1. They see the whole child, rather than the subset of clinical features seen by each of the child's practitioners. They come to support groups confused by the long list of individual diagnoses the child has collected over the years, asking just what it is about their child that is making it difficult for them to access education or social situations. Often referral to practitioners is done serially, that is one after the other, not at the same time. There can be practical reasons for this, such as the increased anxiety caused by multiple appointments, as well as logistic concerns, especially if the different practitioners are spread over a wide geographical area. However, it also means that only one aspect of the child is dealt with at once, whereas in reality all aspects of a child's development will be interacting together. For instance speech and language therapy will be affected by visual disturbances, physiotherapy will be affected by receptive speech problems, social skills training will be affected by nociceptive hypersensitivity.

All of these situations will be well known by parents and carers, but because of the way that researchers and practitioners have been approaching neurodevelopmental disorders, the wider picture has not always been appreciated in the clinical setting.

Christopher Gillberg's paper is a welcome change to the way we look at neurodevelopmental disorders, but will that change filter down into the clinical settings that so may parents find counterproductive? Only time will tell.

The paper (behind the pay wall) can be found here
Dorothy Bishop's review can be found here

Should Consultant Appointments be Treated Like Business Meetings?

We recently had an appointment with an consultant orthopaedic surgeon to discuss my son's longstanding (not sure if that pun is intended or not!) foot pain. At least that is what I thought it was for.


He did indeed take a comprehensive series of x-rays, the first Ram has had in his life (he is now 17) which showed no structural abnormality.


The consultant was good in that he showed us the x-rays, explained where all the bones were and said that as there was nothing there that could be causing pain, it is likely that his pain is caused by fat pad atrophy. That bit makes sense, because Ram has so much pain in his feet when he puts pressure on them, it makes sense that the fat pads on his feet are no longer right.


But that was not quite how it came out in the consultant's letter. You have to bare in mind that this letter is sent to our GP who originally referred us, not to us. I have no idea if the consultant even realises that I get a copy of all correspondence. So it is important that the letter reflect what happened in the appointment.


First off the actual wording of the letter is “Diagnosis: Pain in both feet, probably due to fat pad atrophy secondary to long standing disuse.” Then he goes on to say, “The history is somewhat unusual in that his parents report that from a very young age (around the age of 3) he appeared to not like walking and therefore took to putting him in a buggy out of doors.” Nope. We didn't even own a buggy! Living in the countryside with no pavements there wasn't much use for one. Once Ram grew out of the backpack he had no choice but to walk everywhere. We didn't start using a buggy until he was 8, and even then Ram was very active swimming, climbing, trampolining and tricycling after that. It was only when he hit puberty that the fatigue set in and he slowly lost all his fitness.


But secondly, and perhaps more bizarrely, he said, “He is currently understood by his parents to be on the autistic spectrum disorder. In clinic today I found him to be articulate and did not obviously fall on the autistic spectrum disorder although I will admit that I am not expert in such matters.”


Hmmmm...we were not seeking an opinion on whether or not our son is on the Autistic Spectrum and if we were, we wouldn't have gone to an orthopaedic surgeon! By his own admission he is not an expert, so why even mention it when it wasn't on the agenda.


Oh. Agenda? But there wasn't one! At least not a written one. I suspect there is possibly a hidden one, perhaps our GP made some comment in his referral letter that lead the consultant to think that the parents have made up all this stuff about their son. Or maybe the GP just mentioned it as a way of warning the consultant that this young man will show up wearing a strange hat and have a stim that involves spinning the cord of his hoodie.


And the report? Serious inaccuracies which have already be distributed to the GP and physiotherapist. How does this leave us as parents feeling? We feel that we have not been listened to, that the judgements were made before we even got to the appointment or at the very least within the first few minutes, and that we are not partners in our son's health matters.


So how can this be avoided? I got to thinking about various business meetings that I have been involved with. There seems to be two types, those that have someone taking the minutes; they are typed up, distributed for comment, then officially agreed at or before the next meeting. The other type is where the minutes are prepared as the meeting happens, being agreed on the spot.


If I had produced minutes that were that wrong, or if I was charing a meeting that strayed from the agenda, I wouldn't last as a chair for very long. So why should consultants get away with it?


Maybe it is time for appointments with consultants to become more like business meetings where there is an agenda, where people's contributions are valued, where minutes are agreed before they are distributed, and where people feel listened to.


As for our situation just now, our consultant will have a two page letter hitting his desk next week copied in to our GP and physio, telling him just what he got wrong in his letter, explaining a little more about ASD, and containing some of the history that he didn't bother to take in the appointment. Maybe next time he will be more careful and treat the parents of his patients more like business partners and less like bystanders.

Io Saturnalia!

This is an article I originally wrote for Education Otherwise but I decided it should get a wider audience here.



Back in December 2003 we were reading Caroline Lawrence's The Twelve Tasks of Flavia, on of the books in her Roman Mysteries series. In it the Roman festival of Saturnalia is described.

So we decided that we would have a Saturnalia day on December 21st that year. Io Saturnalia!

We researched into it by checking out various websites as well as reading the book. Then we invited another home educating family for a Sunday lunch with a difference. In Roman times the festival would run for several days but we decided that one day would suffice, especially as we still had Christmas to come and so many of the Christmas traditions were originally based on Saturnalia. In fact it is said that the Christians stole Saturnalia from the Pagans, then commercialism stole it from the Christians, and now the Pagans are trying to take it back again!

We dispensed with the usual sacrifice at the temple, but we did choose a Lord of Misrule for the day. Actually, we chose a Lord and a Lady, the two seven year olds! The idea of this is that the servants and children become the rulers for the day. In Roman times it was all part of the fun, so they weren't really rulers for the day, but the citizens of Rome played the part of the servants and the servants and children were waited on for the day. So for that day we let the children play at being in charge. Unfortunately I am also the regular servant in the house so I was still in charge of serving the food!

We decorated the house with greenery from the garden, just as the Romans would have. Although the Christmas tree didn't come into play until much later, the Romans would have had garlands similar to the ivy ones we put up that day.

Dolls and hats featured in Roman Saturnalia. Dolls were traditionally given to the children, and dolls featured in the plot of Caroline Lawrence's book so we sat down to make some clothes-peg dolls to give to each other. We also had a bag of scraps with which we made silly hats for each other. This tradition lives on today in the form of the paper hats that come out of the Christmas crackers.

No festival is complete without a feast, so we had a Roman feast while reclining on cushions on the floor. Unfortunately we couldn't come up with authentic couches! We used earthenware to serve the food on, ate off of platters, and used our fingers. We stuck to food available in Roman times: olives; roast chicken with a modern version of garam; green beans, olives and salad; home made bread made with grape juice; and for dessert dates and almonds roasted with honey and black pepper. The children even bravely tried the warm drink that Flavia has for breakfast: half milk, half spiced wine with a little grated cheese over the top.

The two families had a wonderful day that day, but unfortunately we have never again been in the same place at the same time to recreate Saturnalia. But we still decorate the house for Christmas on the Solstice with greenery, and say 'Io Saturnalia' to each other.

The Optimism Bias

Our second talk was The Optimism Bias given by Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist from UCL.

The basis of the optimism bias is that people overestimate the positive and underestimate the negative. We think that we will win the lottery, and not not get cancer, that our children will be especially talented, but we won't be in a car accident. The bias is the difference between what we expect and what actually happens. It was coined by Weinstein in 1980.

Tali gave some good examples such as marriage and divorce. When we get married we think that we will definitely not get divorced, and yet the statistics show that almost half of all couples getting married today will not have lasting marriages. Even with experience, people will think it will get better next week and some just keep getting married time after time.

We are more optimistic about ourselves, but less optimistic about others and our country. We also think that we are better than we really are, for example more than 50% of people think they are better than average drivers.

Although most people (80%) have some degree of optimism bias, some people don't, and they tend to be depressed. Those that are more realistic have less of an optimisim bias and are mildly depressed, those that have no optimism bias are very depressed think that all things will turn out bad.

But it isn't only humans that show this bias. They found that some animals such as mice and birds have it, and if they are kept in a cage with no comfort or toys, they get depressed like humans do and stop showing optimistic behaviours.

Interestingly, it is an illusion, because normally when things go wrong we would evaluate and make adjustments with the new information, but somehow we seem to be able to see things as being better than they really were. We pay more attention to the good stuff, and less to the negative.

Tali being a neuroscientist, has used fMRI to find some of the areas of the brain involved. The left Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG) responds to good news, and the right IFG to negative things, but the right side shows a weaker response than the left, so people will pay more attention to the positive than the negative.

One of the applications for this is warning signs. People don't take notice of them, they think that it doesn't apply to them. Hence the warning on cigarette packages that “Smoking Kills” probably doesn't work, and would be better if it said something like “80% of people can stopped smoking”

Expectations and anticipation also plays a part. People with high expectations tend to assume that if things go well it was because of something they did, so they will continue to work hard to make things turn out positively. People with low expectations tend to blame themselves and feel worse. This will colour how they see things panning out in the future. We tent to dwell on what is happening now, rather than the future, and the anticipation of something good in the future, like a holiday or a dinner out, might actually be better than the event itself, making us feel happier and more optimistic now.

Optimism can also change both subjective and objective reality. If we expect something to be positive, we will interrupt negative results more positively. But also, if we are expecting something to be positive we may put more effort into making it work out.

Having the optimism bias can be good for our health; optimists think that they have less chance of dying, and are more likely to recover quickly from an illness. They think this is because anxiety and stress are reduced so they can put more effort into recovering.

It can be helpful knowing about the optimism bias, so that we can take precautionary action. It would be wrong to get rid of the bias, it makes more sense to work with it. We can be optimistic that our houses will never burn down, but still take out insurance. We can assume that we will never get divorced, but still sign a pre-nup.

There are wider implications as well, for instance in finance. The reason why the Olympics is not grossly over budget this time is because the Green Book took into account the optimism bias and adjusted the figures accordingly. There is also a believe that the crash of 2008 was caused by the optimism bias.

We all have our own optimism biases. For us I think it was the number of lectures a day that Ram could comfortably handle. He struggled last year, but we still went ahead and booked the same number for this year.

For me, it is this blog. Last year I wanted to blog the festival, and never got as far as writing anything. This year I thought I had learned from that and decided to be strict with myself and write them and blog each day. I still haven't managed it, although I have done better. Will our optimism prevail and result in us booking the same number of talks next year, and will my optimism make me put more effort into keeping this blog up to date? Only time will tell!

For a more detailed look at Tali's work check out this article written by her.

The Re:Generative Power of Sleep

The second talk at the Cheltenham science Festival was on the optimism bias, which I will blog about later. First of all I would like to share with you our third talk called the Regenerative Power of Sleep given by Russell Foster and Till Roenneberg.

As this talk was later in the evening we were a bit worried that we might actually fall asleep but we didn't need to be as it was very exciting. Russell spoke first, initially outlining the different areas of the brain involved in sleep. One of them, suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN),Is what gives rise to a 24-hour cycle. All the different areas and their neurotransmitters feed forward into the cortex to keep us awake. The ventrolateral preoptic nucleus (VLPO) is the sleep switch, which when activated starts the sleep cycle by inhibiting the waking systems.

Because so many brain areas involved, it means that it is highly vulnerable to disruption which can lead to health problems. This is not just mental health problems but sleep deprived people are more likely to put on weight as well. Sleep affects different systems in the body in different ways.

When sleep is disrupted we are more likely to need caffeine (and cigarettes) to wake up in the morning, but coffee interferes with the receptors for the VLPO which helps keep us awake, but then we need to get to sleep so turn to alcohol and sedatives which leads to the wrong kind of sleep which leads to more sleep deprivation which leads to more coffee so we get into a downward spiral.

Russell presented a long list of problems caused by sleep deprivation and they are the same ones as in mental health disorders. This has been known about since the 1880s, but has been ignored. In the 1970s it was thought that sleep deprivation was the by product of antipsychotic drugs so people assumed it was 'normal' and didn't bother with it.

Research has shown that mental illness and sleep deprivation are very commonly found together and lead to poor health, and that sleep deprivation precedes the illness and appears to be a feature of risk for the development of mental illness. With schizophrenia it appears that they have no clock or melatonin routines. Research from Dan Freeman has shown that intervention to improve sleep patterns leads to reduced symptoms or can delay the onset of illness

Russell then handed over to Till to speak about social jet lag. Sleep to disruption has become normal in the modern world during workdays as sleep is defined by our bosses. They have done a huge survey to find out people's chronotype, that is whether they are larks or owls, but mostly people are in the middle.

Our body clocks are not set by social circumstances, it is set by the brain and depends on the age and genes. At puberty young people go to sleep later and later and then they suddenly go onto an adult clock at age 19 ½ for females and 21 in males. The chronotype doesn't dictate how many hours someone sleeps so duration is independent of chronotype, and duration is challenged by social pressures during workdays.

So owls who would normally sleep later have to sleep more on the weekends to catch up which results in a type of jet lag. As they are later to sleep at night but later to wake in the morning for just 2 days, their body clock never gets a chance to adjust to it. Teens suffer the most is their sleep cycle is later than adults but they still have to get up for school. This sleep discrepancy results in the strongest social jet lag. T his could account for the increase in drinking and smoking and young people. There is also relationship between social jet lag and weight gain. Oh, and larks have a similar problem only involving the other end of the day.

Till then went on to discuss the difference between Germans and the British. They did some large-scale studies controlling for age and sex with 75,000 Germans and so far 5,000 British. You can take the survey here. They found that we have an identical distribution of chronotypes, spent the same amount of time outside, have similar sleep duration, with the UK sleeping 8.5 more minutes a day which results in 40 extra minutes a week.

But the UK has less social jet lag because Germans go into work early! This could be because there are more factory jobs in Germany.

At the end several members of the audience had questions. One ask Till to define senile bed flight. It does sound rather worrying but he made it sound quite fun. Older people need less sleep and can get by with a little nap in the day when needed. Evolutionarily this was well suited to grandparents matching the sleep patterns of the babies so that they could take care of the babies at night and early morning while the teen parents got some sleep. So it is a very positive thing to have when looking after grandchildren!

There was a question about the effects of continuous daylight. Constant light means that there is no local body clock. The body clock drifts later and later which results in an internal body systems becoming unsynchronised with brain, gut and muscles all adrift.

I felt that this could have an implication for those with SEN and disabled children who have sleep disturbances. Sleep affects all systems. Some people believe the digestive problems on what causes autism in some children. But perhaps it is disruptive sleep and sleep deprivation which is causing both cognitive and the digestive problems. More research needed no doubt!

Russell explained that alcohol and sedatives don't work, you need to make sure that you are exposed to light, especially in the morning, and you need to listen to your body. If you need an alarm clock you are not getting enough sleep. So with teens, let them sleep in the mornings so that they don't get sleep deprived, but make sure that the curtains are opened so that they will get light through their eyelids and their brains will know it is daytime.

They found that in schools, starting classes later resulted in an increase in exam results, a decrease in truancy, depression and self harm, and an increase in sleep and better eating habits.

So, far from falling asleep, we were wide awake for the entirety of the talk, and even afterwards when Till and Russell kindly signed their books for us and gave Ram a little pep talk about not being on the computer too late into the evening! For his part, Ram suggested that maybe Russell shouldn't be drinking that glass of wine either!

Superconductors – The Two Steves and Mark

We were really looking forward to this talk as Ram is really interested in superconductors and we had read Stephen Blundell's book on the subject already. In fact we had make the suggestion of having him do a talk on superconductors last year!

Also on the stage were Steve Cowley and Mark Lythgoe. It is always a pleasure to see Mark in action; I really believe that neuroscientists are the most interesting people there are!

It started off with Stephen explaining what a superconductor (SC) is. Basically, it is something that can carry current with no resistance. They were discovered by accident after Onnes managed to liquify helium. He started measuring electrical conductivity of metals at low temperatures, and other scientists predicted what would happen.

Some thought that resistance would increase, some thought it would decrease, some thought it would stay the same, but it turned out that in some materials resistance disappeared! They tried with gold at first, which didn't work, then they thought that it would take a pure metal, so they purified mercury and found that there was no resistance when it was immersed in liquid helium. Then they decided to try it without purifying the mercury and found it also worked, so all the effort that went into purifying the mercury was a waste of time!

They also found that a SC displayed the Meissner effect. I will let Wikipedia explain that one.

Stephan makes a SC sound poetic. He said they have the “pure unbroken beauty of the atom.” Normally electrons are in a chaotic state, but in a SC electrons are paired in what are known as Cooper pairs, and it is because of this that electrons all end up going in the same direction even if they are not near each other.

It seems that experiment is better at finding SCs than studying theory, and there was a big jump in the number of discoveries in the 1980s with the use of copper oxides. Then they found ceramics and finally in the last few years iron based Scs with molecular layers in them have been found.

Mark then spoke of some of the applications. The main one that people think of is the MRI machines that can see inside things (not just bodies, check out the MRI scanner in the Discover Zone!)

The coil in the scanner creates a magnetic field, but that would always need a battery to keep it going. If they can cool the magnetic field then it can be self sustaining. This is where the Scs come in. They are cooled with helium, but if a wire breaks, it gets hot, and some of the helium can boil off, then it gets hotter, and then, Quench! Make sure you look for the venting pipe on the MRI machine before you get inside it!

Having SCs means that there are 80 million scans a year done. Some of them gives us insights into the brain, such as the work done at UCL on taxi drivers hypocampuses getting larger as they learn 'The Knowledge' Full paper here or BBC news report here.

However, the new machine they have that runs at 9.4 tesla has been able to image a mouse's heart actually beating, which can then be slowed down to the speed that a human heart beats so that they can study it better. Through this they have found new drugs for the heart. They can also use MRIs to target drugs to different areas by infusing them with nanomagenetic material which they can then use the MRI to not only see the drug but control its delivery to the right area.

Steve then talked about another application that many people don't think of immediately , the use of SCs in fusion. Without the SCs to keep the plasma in the tokamaks under control, they wouldn't be able to advance fusion power. More on that in another blog post on fusion.

As ever, the intelligence of the audience came across in the excellent questions asked. Some of the interesting things that came up were that all SCs are solids, and that they don't understand yet how the new types work. Scs are most useful in enclosed spaces and that they are not so useful over long distances such as in power lines, as the cost of refrigeration outweighs the savings in transmission of power.

Some of the higher temperature (we haven't yet found room temperature SCs) are harder to form as they are not a ductile. Niobium-tin is ductile, but ceramics aren't, so we need more innovative developments from the material scientists.

For the future Steve would like to see transmission lines to carry energy from solar instalations in sunny areas to other areas, and Stephen would like to see further development of trains using Scs. My favourite, which I think will be Mark's too, will always be the MRI scanners, and I will leave you with this song about them.

Dark Matters

Tuesday, June 12 was our first talk at the 2012 Cheltenham Science Festival. As usual, especially for talk early in the day, there were plenty of grey heads. There was a lovely couple in front of us; an elderly man, and his 8-year-old son. You could see how proud he was of his grandson and how much they were enjoying both the talk and being with each other. I hope that young lad grows up to understand how lucky he was to have such a wonderful granddad!

This talk will be quite hard to review, because it wasn't actually a talk like so many of the other lectures. It was given by Tom Whyntie and Andrew Pontzen, former Famelab alumni. It was more of comedy sketch show then a lecture!

Perhaps I should review that aspect first. Between the two of them they acted out scenes from the past developments in dark matter.They played the roles of astronomers and physicists both contradicting each other as well as agreeing each other. There were some particularly funny scenes.

For instance they sat facing each other going through all the possibilities of what dark matter could be, and then dismissing them. Gas? It would have to be cool and ionised and there wasn't enough that. Tiny stars? Really tiny? Too small to see? Yes, probably not that either. Black holes! Yes! They are invisible so they could be dark… No wait, they aren't invisible, we can see them through microlensing. Their concluding question was how do you find something that you can't see, touch, smell, taste, or hear!

They illustrated how excited people got about finding dark matter by incorporating the word darks matter into some famous advertising slogans: “I can't believe it's not dark matter!” There was also rather amusing parody of a researcher called Doctor X to protect the identity of the people involved.

Amusingly they played the parts of a scientist being interviewed by the press. All the names of the journalists were rather funny, my favourite being Betty de Kay from Cosmo.

Through their humour they manage to convey a clear understanding of why we think there is dark matter out there, why it is important to find it, and also the question of when do we stop looking.

The laughter aside we did manage to learn a lot. They answered questions at the end that filled in any of the gaps during their presentation. They touched on things such as the difficulty in finding funding for anything other than dark matter. Andrew suggested that it was easier to get funding for something mainstream and then do the blue sky thinking and fundamental research on the side in your own time.

They explored the other theories that could explain the missing matter in the universe including the modified Newtonian dynamics theory as betrayed by Doctor X but cracks were found in that theory due to the requirement of a change in scale to measure the gravity. They explained that something was found at Gran Sasso, the lab that found faster than light neutrinos. Although this was found 10 years ago no other lab has been able to replicate it, so people don't believe that this is dark matter. Crest, another lab, has found something recently to but again it contradicts the Italians and also hasn't been replicated.

Tom explained that he felt that rather than try to replicate dark matter at facilities such as CERN, it might be better to try to detect dark matter in the underground labs, which is what he is now doing, despite his former position at CERN and his PhD paper on it.

Tom pointed out That science is done by people and it takes courage to go against the main ideas. At the moment dark matter explains things better than any other theory, so until a new theory comes along its the best we have. Perhaps that young 8-year-old boy sitting in front of me will be the one to come up with a new and different theory if no dark matter is found either at CERN or in the direct detection labs.

One, Two, Three, Four, Five!

Once I caught a fish alive!

Summer is here once again and Ram is really struggling with so many things. He has struggled with the transition from winter hoodie to summer hoodie, and is struggling with footwear. He has worn big heavy police boots with zips up the sides for a few years ago for ankle support (his left ankle is particularly bad) as well as rigid insoles. However as he has pain on standing which means that he is reluctant to do any of his physio exercises which require standing, his orthotist has switched him to softer insoles, which help a little, but make his stability worse.

Around the house he wears big sheepskin slippers which we call bounce boots (we got them to wear on the trampoline in the winter) and he has been putting his insoles in them, but now with the hot weather they are not so comfortable. And they are no good for outside with our grass being liberally fertilised by the chickens. And the orthotist told him not to bother putting his new insoles in them as they wouldn't work.

For summer all they could suggest was trainers, so we bought Converse High Top canvas trainers. The laces defeated him. Not so much tying the knots, the OT has been very useful in getting him to tie knots although he is still slow. No, it is having to undo the laces all the way to get his feet in and out of them. So they have been worn just enough for him to decide that he doesn't want to wear them, but too much to be able to send them back!


So why am I having this moan? To give me the excuse to put some nice photos on the blog!

I was at the pond this afternoon fishing out some blanket weed with the net, when I managed to catch up a fish entangled with it! We have been trying to catch one of our 'wild' gold fish for a couple of years now to have a better look at them. We had three abandoned fish from one of the gardens that our Gardening Boys work in, and have never fed them or anything, but this year we have 8 fully grown and rather large fish. Six gold ones, and two white ones.

So, I catch a fish, but how to get hold of Ram. I yelled, but of course he can't hear me while wearing his noise cancelling head phones, so I ended up taking the fish in the net into the house with me to get him! Poor fish!

Ram came out, bounce boots and all, and held the net while I took some photos. So if you are hot and bothered this afternoon, and feeling miserable that you are stuck at home with your SEN or disabled child, or not able to have a holiday this year, just have a look at some lovely gold fish and that might cheer you up - I hope! It did me!

It was a feisty one

We were surprised at how deep it was, as we only usually see them from the top so can only see their length and width.

But don't worry, we let it have its freedom again and it swam happily off into the deep.




And if that doesn't cheer you up, how about the damsel fly orgy we witnessed yesterday!

Summer is Finally Here!

Finally after such a dismal summer we have some good weather. Good weather always seems to make home education easier, especially for natural sciences.




Although I do pine for those early days of HE where Ram was so eager and excited to get outside. Today he is not only displaying the usual grumpiness of being a teen, but he has the aches and pains and lack of energy of the hypermobility syndrome , so it is much harder to get him outside.




However yesterday our ivy which covers most of one side of our house was in bloom and we had an assortment of various bugs, flies, bees and wasps, not to mention a few butterflies. It was noisy and interesting enough to get him out there. We took some photos so that we could identify the different species later.














Then of course we had to observe the chickens. Sometimes you can get more out of just sitting and observing than you can get out of a text book.






Last night was also the first warm night with a clear sky since we bought the telescope so we managed to see Vega. That was exciting as Vega is the star that Ellie from the film Contact was sent to by the aliens.

We have just finished reading Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku and he mentions Contact and Carl Sagan who wrote the book that Contact was based on, so it was a good way of tying in physics, astronomy, and fiction, all in one fell swoop.

Today I suggested that we go out for a walk or a wheel I should say. Ram begrudgingly agreed. I am sure he would much rather stay by the computer but pushing his wheelchair gives me some needed exercise. However once we were out we managed to not only have a look at the ducks in on the village pond (the two females seem to have turned into males!) and a chat with a neighbour, but we also walked down to the old badger set where I hadn't been since I used to walk the dogs there 10 years ago.

Again, watching things on TV or reading them in a book is one thing, but actually seeing a whole set, looking at the different bits of it to see if it is active, and seeing it in the context of the wider countryside is very valuable. Ram suggested that if they wanted to get rid of these badgers all they would have to do is get the Autumn Watch http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/uk/ people out there to film them!





On the way back we saw some sheep and again watched them for a while. We managed to get a couple of the beauties to pose for us which was lucky. They were still a bit flighty as they had only just been put in that field.










So all in all we have had two good days of learning. It might not be as intense as it was when Ram was younger, but at least he is still learning in informal ways.

Minecraft Meets Fibre Craft

I needed something to do while watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (complete DVD set, series one to seven as Ram wasn't old enough to watch it when it first came out) and decided to weave a tapestry of a Minecraft Creeper.

Then we realised that it was just the right size to replace the broken fabric on our book chair. I just hope it doesn't blow up our books!




Book rest Creeper: That's a very nice book rest you have there. It would be a shame if anything should happen to it!



Detail of the weaving, done with offcuts of rug wool from a carpet factory, on an old Spear's number 3 loom. All mistakes credited to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Joss Whedon.

The Code: BBC Does it Again

I have written before about how the hype surrounding science programmes on the BBC and beyond, are actually putting young people off science, and we have yet another example.

In the weeks before The Code was broadcast the BBC and Marcus Du Sautoy started Tweeting and referring to the website. It sounded fun and intriguing, so I applied for the postcard. It actually arrived while friends, including Ram's best friend, were staying and with a lot of effort I managed to get them interested in decoding the card.

What I couldn't do was get Ram interested. It was hard enough getting the other young people intersted, but Ram was impossible. I would tell him what was being tweeted, tried to show him the photos on the Facebook page, but to no avail. He wasn't just not interested, he actually started getting hostile. Eventually I had to back off a bit.

Never mind, I thought that maybe when the programmes were broadcast he would be more interested.

That was not to be either. I mean, he did watch them, but he refused to look for clues or go to the website and play the games. And I had to endure a high level of sarcastic comments throughout, far more than usual.

Eventually after the second programme, the truth finally came out. “It's the hype. I hate all the hype and it makes me want to have nothing to do with it.”

So there we are. Once again what was meant to get young people like Ram excited about maths and science is actually putting him off. Luckily he is actually watching the programme so hopefully something will be learned, but I am wondering how much longer it will be until he refuses to even watch science programmes on the BBC.

Who Said Computer Games Aren't Educational

Well, not a home educator, that's for sure! The current fascination is Minecraft.

I was a little dubious at first but another home educator told me it was definitely educational. Apparently it has something called red stone that makes use of logical components such as capacitors and logic gates as used in electronics. That sounded good as Dxh had been teaching Ram about logic gates.

We paid our money and off Ram went. Very quickly I realised that he was going to get a lot more out of it than just game play. Basically, it is a sandbox building game, where you can build a world, eat, sleep and get blown up! In no time he was building amazing castles with great detail. He even made guest bedrooms with chests (containing cake and explosives) for his friends. He has also built a library to die for, complete with three galleried floors, lighting and books.




The Minecraft world is based on cubes, which fascinated Ram, but it also means that he has to have a good understanding of how cubes work, as any other shape you want has to be made up from cubes.

Time management also has a part to play, which is something that doesn't come naturally to Ram. If you are not in a safe place by the time night falls, then bad things can happen!

But the biggest thing is the development of social skills, something that Ram needs a lot of work on. How? He joined up with two other home educated friends, and the Dxh set up a server for them so that they could all play in the same world together. This meant he had to communicate, and the easiest way to do that is via Skype.

My boy, the one who once, a long time ago, attacked someone with a Stanley knife because I was talking on the telephone, has started communicating via phone! Mind you, it isn't a phone call as most of us would recognise. They sit there for hours not talking to each other, and forget to say goodbye! But we are working on it.

The funniest thing though is when the monsters, called creepers, explode. He always uses noise cancelling headphones when on the computer so I can't hear what is going on. The first time he was playing he suddenly jumped a mile. I looked over at him and he had a look of shock on his face. A creeper had snuck up behind him and exploded, startling
him! Because he is so immersed in the world with his headphones on, it was a whole body experience!



There is more to playing a computer game than just the game itself. One lad (not home educated) has even written a song so that allowed us to talk about music. We have discussed architecture, geography (yes, water does flow to the lowest point!) electronics, and how to retrieve a deleted home directory! That actually happened when Ram was installing a mod in the terminal window, and accidentally deleted his home directory. He now knows what cd .. rm -rf means!

Ramism

As Ram is now bigger than me, I have started wearing his old hoodies that he has grown out of. I hadn't said anything but suddenly today he noticed and said:

"I guess you are wearing a hand me up instead of a hand me down"

More Dyeing with Woad

While looking for something else, I came across two skeins of wool that were treated and packed away in the aftermath of The Moths and The Move. As I had also spotted some more woad in the garden, and Easter Sunday was such a lovely sunny day, I decided to do some more dyeing.



I did the same basic recipe as I had done two days before But as you can see it has come out slightly different again.




I also tried to get pink again but ended up with a very pale blue. I have no idea why that isn't working, perhaps not enough alum, but too much alum gives the wool a slightly harsh feeling.


It doesn't really matter what colour it comes out as, because we can always use small amounts of different coloured wools to make interesting things. Now all I have to do is find my carders and oil up the spinning wheel!

Dyeing with Woad and Stale Urine

Our terrible experience with moths last year resulted in having to track down every single bit of wool fibre in the house, and either boiling it, freezing it, treating it with chemicals, throwing it out, or in some cases doing all four. After treatment I had to put all wool in sealed bags with moth killing papers inside. This as you can imagine has put my spinning and weaving on the back burner for now, not just because I am trying to protect what is left, or that I had no time to spin while dealing with the moths, but also because after we had dealt with the moths we had to move out of the house to have the underfloor heating replaced! We had quite a traumatic year last year!



Rather than put everything in storage and live in rented accommodation which would have been very expensive, and we only just had enough money to replace the heating pipes, we decide to hire a portacabin to live in, and a shipping container to put all our belongings in. Ram and I had no problem fitting all that we needed to live for three months in the portacabin. All Ram needs is his computer, the TV and hard disk recorder, and someone to put a bit of food on his plate. A bed is helpful, and that fitted in perfectly to the cabin, but the one thing that it didn't have was a toilet.




Luckily I had an old commode chair that I rescued from someone who was about to take it to the tip, and we had a potty that fitted the hole perfectly. Although we could use the toilets in the house as we had given instructions to the builder and plumber that one toilet had to be working at all times, when it was raining, or at night, or even indeed when the men were working in the bathroom area, it was easier to pee in the potty, and dump it in a bucket outside.

Then came the question, what do we do with a bucket of wee! The first thing that came to mind was the compost bin. Lots of people urinate in their compost heaps, not because they have come back from the pub drunk and their wives won't let them in the house, but because it helps make better compost.


However, we also knew from watching Tony Robinson in The Worst Jobs in History that urine was used in the dye industry. Unfortunately I had foolishly packed away my favourite dyeing book, A Dyer's Manual by Jill Goodwin. Luckily I was able to get hold of her daughter and she told me what we needed to do. It is very similar to the way we did things with the chemical method, but instead of using sodium hydrosulphite we added bran and stale fermented urine to a bucket along with the water containing the woad and washing soda.

We then put the lid on and left it in the sun to ferment. After a few weeks, we decided to check on it and see if it worked:





We aired it that day, and found out just how pungent the smell really was! We had to stuff paper up our noses, and stand up wind. Strangely, the chickens seemed attracted to it though, and every time we opened the bucket they were there trying to stick their heads in! I had to wear my old lab coat and nose plugs as the smell even penetrated clothing.

After the initial few times, we had a spell of very wet and windy weather, and then we had the move back into the house. It bucket got left at the bottom of the garden, as no one really wanted to air the wool again. Eventually I took it out and left it in the rain and sun for a couple of weeks until the smell subsided enough that I could bring it inside to wash it properly. Although it started out being quite blue, because it got soaked for a long time in the bucket without airing it, it lost its colour.


The results were spectacular, not in colour, but as a learning experience, it is one that no one will forget in a hurry!

Dyeing with Woad

Natural dyeing was something that came out of combining my interest in spinning and weaving and home education. There is nothing like a little magical dyeing to teach chemistry!

I have been growing woad for several years now. It is classed as an invasive weed in some countries, and I was hoping that it would give that other invasive weed in my garden, stinging nettles, a run for its money, but so far it hasn't worked; we still have far more stinging nettles than woad, and the dye from stinging nettles is not nearly so spectacular! Woad also has medicinal properties, and our chickens have been self medicating by stripped off the leaves on the woad plants on the patio. Luckily they can't get into the veggie patch where I most of my woad growing.

Woad is a member of the brassica family which includes cabbages and mustard. I haven't dyeing with cabbage, but mustard does give a wonderful yellow. Woad though, when it comes to dyeing, is in a whole different class.

Ok, here is the science bit! Woad has molecules that absorb light because it has lots of double bonds. This means that some of the the electrons can effectively spread across the whole length of the molecule in a strange quantum mechanical process. The significance of this is that if the incoming light (the photon) has a wavelength similar to the length of this double bonded chain then the photon can be absorbed and in the case of woad this is very easy - so pretty well every photon of red light hitting the molecule is absorbed giving you the intense blue colour.  

Unfortunately the woad molecule is a lousy dye in itself because it is not very soluble. However, if you raise the pH and either give it a reducing agent, or alternatively raise the pH and let some bacteria at it, then the molecule can be reduced - electrons are added to it - and it loses its colour and becomes very soluble at the same time. The reason it loses its colour is essentially that the double bond in the middle is broken and this means the molecule has two much smaller regions of double bonds - this means that only ultraviolet photons now match the length and the absorption shifts away into that part of the spectrum. This reduced form is a white form of woad. It is the perfect dye precursor because you can easily saturate your cloth with this material as it's so soluble, and when it's exposed to air and dries out, the oxygen in the air plucks off the electrons, oxidizing it back to the blue form. Since this is not soluble in water, the indigo is now entombed in the fabric, and unlike many natural dyes, it is “permanent”.

Now, to the practical bit. We used the reducing agent way this time. Last year we tried the bacteria method by using stale urine, but we didn't fancy doing that again. However, I will post up that story another day!

We picked the leaves, tore the ones the chickens didn't eat into shreds, and poured on boiling water (woad is temperature sensitive and you don't get good results if the temperature gets too high) to scald the leaves. We let that sit for a while, then strained the liquid and squeezed out all the juice. We added washing soda (alters the pH) and with an rotary hand wisk set about beating the water until it no longer had blue bubbles.







The temperature is supposed to be about 50 degrees Celsius and because it was a hot day we barely had to reheat it before adding some sodium hydrosulphite (the reducing agent) and leaving it to sit for a while. This resulted in a yellowish green clear liquid.






We then added the wetted wool (I haven't got round to spinning it yet so it was in the form of raw fleece) trying not to disturb the dye too much, let it sit for a while longer, and then the magic began!














After washing the wool, we set it out to dry, and I embarked on a second batch (I don't have pans big enough to do it all at once), and then decided to try to revitalise the vat, but in a way that is supposed to give a pink. I thought it was by raising the temperature, but while I had the pan on the heat I reread the book and it was not temperature but alum, a common mordant used in dyeing, that had to be added! So with a quick dig in the larder, alum was added and the result is the batch on the right:




It looks grey when on its own, but beside the blue of the woad it does have a pink tinge. But then this is the excitment of natural dyeing, you never know how things are going to turn out!




This page on woad has more details on how to dye with woad as well as how to grow it.


I found some spun fleece on Easter Sunday, and some more woad in the garden that the chickens didn't get, so I will post up some more photos of that later.

Ramism

Collective Nouns:

An enquiry of scientists
A wow of cosmologists
A spurious of string theorists (he used to like string theory, but now he would rather make fun of them!)
A collision of particle physicists
A test tube of chemists
A geek of Spring Watch presenters

And finally:

A million billion of Brian Coxes!

Woad-es Me!

I have been complaining that I haven't been able to get out in the sun very much in these last few days. I can't stray too far until Ram wakes up, which has been at 11 o'clock recently, and then by the time I have read aloud to him for an hour or more, fed both of us and do a few chores, it is about 2. We have managed a few minutes outside, but usually he wants to go back inside and for the last couple of days we have been catching up on recorded TV.

Someone asked if I couldn't just leave him to watch on his own and go out into the veggie patch on my own. There are two problems with this.

First of all, I like to watch these programmes together so that we can discuss them afterwards. Purposive conversation is a very powerful tool for home educators. I also like to watch many of these programmes too, especially the science ones. We very rarely watch drama.

Secondly, Ram like to be around someone. He doesn't have to be interacting with them, in fact often we sit at our computers not speaking a word to each other, but he does like to have someone close by. Luckily in an open plan house that isn't too hard as I can be 'in the kitchen' while he is 'in the sitting room'.

But today I wanted to pick the woad for the annual woad dye. Ram was playing Minecraft and was happy to stay inside, so I took my bucket down to the bottom of the garden followed by the chickens. Five minutes later there was Ram, wondering down the garden looking for me!

It worked out well with him chatting and keeping the chickens out of the beds with plants in them, while I stripped the leaves off the woad.

So he proved my theory. He does need to be close to me. But I also managed to get outside in the sun, so I guess that is a win win situation!

More on our woad dyeing another day. I still have one batch in the pot!