Geometry assignment; May 6

After going over our homework, we spent time working through the next section on solid objects today.  Today's topic was how to calculate the surface area and volume of a sphere.  We went through a few examples together before getting started on the homework.


Assignment:  Section 12-4;  page 500;  #1-16 all   (written exercises)

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Algebra 10-12 assignment; Jan. 31

We continued our work on solving systems by elimination today.  We went over several more sample problems together before starting our homework in class.  We also took a short quiz at the end of the period.

Assignment:  elimination worksheet #2

Morning Thanks--Jumpin' Jehosophat

National Geographic calls it "In(vasice) Vogue"--this woman is wearing museum-quality accessories fashioned exclusively from invasive species: the ring and the earring are from a Burmese python, the cuff is what's left of a cane toad, and that necklace once had a place in the jaw of a wild boar--and all of the above animal species are tempestuously out of control.

No one asked what PETA thought of the new chic', but it's not hard to guess. What "in(vasive) vogue" has going for it is a the sanctified notion of taking ridiculously overpopulated varmints, getting rid of them (thank goodness!), and creating art from whatever's left to piece together. Don't know that my wife would buy the bracelet, but the ring would create some conversation and that necklace is daring. Wonder what they want for it?

All of which prompts me to think about silver carp. In case you're wondering, they're here in Siouxland by the thousands. They swam up the Old Muddy from somewhere down south, then took a sharp left in Sioux City at the mouth of the Big Sioux and now they're going like weeds up here. Seriously. Don't know if I could kick up a few dozen on the Floyd, but I suspect I could. 

The Great Lakes are keeping them out by way of a tottering electric fence of sorts at an Illinois River dam about 50 miles from Chicago, where they get jumping mad (that's a kind of pun) because they can get no further. It must be dangerous to float a boat there because they are.

My grandson and I saw a bunch last week on the Big Sioux, a couple dozen at least, a whole street gang of 'em right beneath the bridge north of Hawarden. Out of nowhere, they just started jumping, like a fish circus. You're canoeing along with nary a care in the world, like Huck and Jim on the Mississip, and just like that a dozen come up from the water, leaping four, five feet in the air before splashing back in. It's a hoot.

Watch a couple minutes of the video these guys made:





Silver carp were, at one time, some guy's bright idea (no woman is capable of such idiocy) to get rid of the algae forming in catfish ponds. And how'd that work for you? Way too well as a matter of fact. 

Suffice it to say those carp had no intention of staying in the cage--shades of Animal Farm. They eat like sumo wrestlers, devouring most of what any other ordinary river fish might call supper.  Around here, the only fish they threaten are bottom-feeders just as ugly as they are--bullheads and their distant cousin carp, maybe a catfish or two.

Some people eat 'em. NPR quotes a guy who stopped fighting 'em and just started filling nets. He gets all of 12 cents a pound for silver carp, but when you bring them in by the tens of thousands--and you can do that just south of that Illinois dam--you can put real food on your table.

Apparently, lots of Asians love 'em, but it'll be a while before I order up silver carp and chips with a side of slaw. I got way too much distaste in me yet from a Wisconsin childhood, where I was taught that there was only one way to eat carp: take the fish, nail it to a board, put it the sun for two weeks, toss the fish, and eat the board.

But they're here, I swear. They'll smack you upside the head if you're not careful, and even if you are. Keep an oar handy. Think seriously about a baseball bat. A tennis racket won't do--asian carp aren't mosquitoes or bats. They'll jump right in the boat, or worse, canoe. And, they're big, waaay big.

Think about wearing a helmet.

But they are fun. Good night, are they fun. If I could wear 'em somehow, I would. Maybe make some kind of jewelry out of their jawbones. But it's really hard to think of them as delicate. They're huge, every one a trophy, but who'd want 'em on your walls? They'd probably take over the house.

It was me and my grandson out in the canoe last week amid that flying circus. Okay, I know it's a stretch for me to say I'm thankful for silver carp, given the mess they've created up and down rivers across the continent; but just between you and me, last weekend my grandson and I had a ball on the wide and slow waters of the Big Sioux River, all around us a wild-eyed carnival of carp.  

And for that good time, this morning, I'm thankful.

Algebra 10-12 assignment; May 8

After going over our entry task and review sheet, we spent the first part of the period taking the test on our radicals unit.  After the test was done, the students then worked on an assignment dealing with simplifying radicals.

Assignment:  simplifying radicals worksheet

Algebra 10-12 assignment; Jan. 14

We spent more time today reviewing in class for our final exam.  The topics that we reviewed today involved equations and inequalities.  The students then started work on a review packet in class.  At the end of the period, the students checked their review packet from yesterday.


Assignment:  Finals review packet #2

Morning Thanks--Pretty rocks

When I went out back with the mason, he took one look at the river stones we had piled up and said that they were going to do just fine. "Yeah," he said, "these are really pretty."

Could have fooled me. That those rocks were dug up out of our own back yard--I liked that; but calling them pretty seemed something akin to saying some corps of linebackers are darling. They were, after all, entirely dirt-coated. "Rain'll wash 'em up nice," he said, "and they'll be really sharp."

Seemed a strange kind of sweet talk to call those massive shotputs "pretty."

But today, lined up like this in our retaining walls, I've become a believer.

How they got here makes them flat-out beautiful. They belonged to the neighbor, who dug them from the river out back. Another neighbor grabbed a bunch with his skid loader and dumped what he hauled here out back. But that's barely an inch of the epic that got 'em here.

Their incredible story begins with a glacier. We're not talking about a massive ice pond here, we're talking about ice so huge it's more like an event, even a place, like Wisconsin. In fact, the glacier we're talking about is sometimes called Wisconsin, which doesn't mean that cheese or Packers had anything to do with it.

Hard as it is to believe, this huge thing, this "event" moved, as all glaciers do, and when it did it wreaked havoc on the land--"the land" as in "God created sea and land." Crushed it, carved it, cut it up, and carried it along, here and there creating valleys, here and there filling other valleys up with what some people call "glacial till," the undigested stuff broken off of mountains or whatever, and then disgorged hither and yon over the land, as in "God created sea and land."

Here's the way I think of it. This behomoth land mass, this entire region of ice, creeps along on its own slippery base, not far and not fast, but powerfully, immensely powerfully, once upon a time (or twice or thrice upon a time). When it crept along, it disgorged some excess baggage, and left tons of rocks and stones behind in what eventually became a river when the ice started to melt. Now this river, the one out back, is not much more than a creek really, a little stream Lewis and Clark kindly decided to name after Sgt. Floyd, the only guy to die on their three-year escapade to the Pacific and back. No matter, it's got tons of glacial till.

Who knows where these very pretty rocks call home? Northern Ontario? Green Bay? Duluth maybe? Niagara Falls? 

And when did this whole operation happen? That's not a tough question if you're a young-earth person--somewhere in the area of 6000 years.  

But those who don't draw those lines--some of whom Christians too--say our lot here north of Alton was covered in ice anywhere between 10 and 85 thousand years ago (which, some say, is a good deal older than Adam, who was only a day older than Eve and no wiser thereby, it seems). 

So the pretty stones stacked neatly in my backyard got here through no doing of my own. One neighbor dug 'em, another delivered 'em, and I just stacked 'em. They're glacial till, and they got here in the neighborhood because that massive, benevolent Wisconsin glacier simply left 'em behind. 

Just thought I'd mention it this Monday morning, because the late Sabbath sun blessed this retaining wall so beautifully last night when I sat outside, all those pretty rocks.

This morning I'm thankful for 'em, thankful, strangely enough, for their beauty and the wild epic that brought 'em here.