St Augustine Science Fair

More than two dozen students at St. Augustine School presented projects at a science fair today (Wednesday). I knew about it and attended because I was asked to help judge it.

You might wonder what kinds of science projects grade school kids do. The projects were all supposed to test a hypothesis with some kind of experiment. The students then were to write up the results in a paper and present it with a poster. Examples of the sorts of questions they were asking were:

What cleaners remove stains best?
Do crickets chirp more when they are warm or when they are cold?
How do various liquids degrade egg shells (which are similar to teeth)?
Will mud bricks be stronger if sand, gravel, or hay is added?
How does adrenalin affect the heart rate of water fleas?
What brand of paper towels is more absorbent?
What disinfectant kills bacteria best?
Does matte nail polish last longer than glossy?
What foods mold most quickly?

A lot of the ideas came from the Internet.

 The posters ranged in quality from rudimentary to very elaborate. Some of them were better than the average of those I saw at the SJC Student Colloquium a month or two ago. (I did not post on the Colloquium this year, but I did a few years ago.)

A few of the exhibits even showed what happened in their experiements, such as the one below that was looking at the effects of fabric softener on the flammability of fabrics.

In addition to giving students some understanding of how much of science is done, this project is also trying to develop some skill for giving short explanations or presentations. Here many of the students struggled--they wanted to read the presentation that was on the poster. Those who could speak without the poster stood out. However, they all did a better job than I did. I messed up my evaluation forms so that I doubt if my input helped much. Fortunately, there were four other judges who did not mess up their forms.

Changes 05-07-2013

I noticed that HomeTown Bargains had signs that indicated that the store was closing, so I stopped in to see what was happening. The owners of the building have sold it and will be moving out at the end of the month. (Final papers have not been signed, but everything is approved.) The new business is scheduled to open in November. It will not be retail and will leave a hole in the College Mall. Stop in and check for bargains and find out more of what is happening.

 Dirt is finally being moved at the Farm Credit construction site to the south of Walmart. The official ground breaking was back in February.

 I stopped by SJC and noticed a tent out on the plaza in front of the Core Building. It was part of the Destressfest, an event to help students who are stressed out with final exams. It is final exam week at SJC and graduation will be held on Sunday.

 They had popcorn and maybe some other food for the students, as well as games that looked like they might be found in a grade school.

If I had waited around, I could have told the students stopping by that if they had studied during the semester, they would not be stressing out now. They probably would not have appreciated my words of wisdom.

Also noticeable was a semi-truck trailer parked by Halleck Center. It was there to collect items that the students did not want to take home but were still usable by others. They will be sold at a garage sale in on May 18th from 8:00 to 3:00 at the West Court in the Field House.

Indiana pre-history

On Saturday I had a chance to visit the Prehistoric Indian Artifact Show sponsored by the Indiana Archeological Society held at the Demotte Christian School. (Thanks, David V.)

The event was held in the gymnasium and had rows of exhibits, mostly neatly presented. Some of the material on display was for sale and some of it was only there to be admired.

We live in a region that is rich in Indian artifacts. The Kankakee Marsh to our north and more wetlands to our south provided an abundance of game for hunters. The many sand hills that our region has were ideal for camps, and a good location could be occupied intermittently for thousands of years. Europeans have only been in our area for a few hundred years, but various groups of Indians inhabited and hunted it for about ten thousand years.  Given that very long period of human use in an area that was full of wild game, it should not be a surprise that there were many lost and abandoned stone tools.

People who were displaying tended to display pieces that were in excellent condition and were not the sort of thing a collector would find very often. A display like that below would either represent many years of collecting or, more likely, the purchase of key pieces from several collections.

It does not take a lot of money to collection a few arrowheads. On the table of one of the major dealers at the show, there were containers of arrowheads that cost between $3.00 and $30.00. I asked why some were so much more than others and was told that many factors such as quality, condition, rarity, collector interest, and type of material played a part. That is not too much different from collecting anything else--to be a serious collector requires a lot of study and learning about the field. (One also has to worry about forgeries.)

 The same dealer had some more expensive pieces.

 Actually, most of what are called arrowheads are spear heads. The Indians did not develop or adopt bows and arrows until 1000 or 1500 years ago. (I am not sure how well the dates have been determined by archeologists.) Before then the Indians used spears, which were effective because of the use of the atlatl. (See also here and here.) But because the atlatls were made of wood, they have rotted away.

Some of the points found in our area are knows as Indiana Green. They were made from chert that was found somewhere near Attica.

In addition to spear and arrow heads, there were many other tools on display. Below is a large selection of axes and other implements such as hoes. The notches show that they would be mounted on a handle.

 My guess on seeing pieces like the one below was they they were mortars, used in food preparation, but I was told that they actually were used for some kind of game. They must be quite rare because the one below had a price tag of $1600.

 There are a number of people in Rensselaer who collect or who have collected Indian artifacts. Several decades ago people would search farmer's fields, but now farmers do not want people searching their fields without permission. So unless you have access to a collecting site, it is hard to collect them. I also heard several people complaining that no-till practices rather than plowing have made it harder to find artifacts--the plow dug down and revealed what was beneath the surface, and after a few thousand years, a stone tool would no longer be on the surface.

Shows like this are one of the few places that force you to recognize that what we think of as the history of our region is just a tiny bit of the actual history.

By the way, did you know that arrowheads tessellate?

Gas department open house 2013

The Rensselaer Gas Department held its annual open house today. They served a free lunch and had a variety of exhibits. There were a lot of people there around noon, but the crowd had thinned by the time I was ready to leave.

 I learned from one of the city councilmen that the field to the east of Weston Cemetery is being considered for a plant that will treat storm runoff. The federal government is requiring the city to do something about dumping sewage into the river when heavy rain overwhelms the city sewer system, which handles both sewage and street runoff.

Leaving the gas department building, I went around to the back to see what has happening with depot construction. Can you see anything different in this picture?

You should notice that the old depot building has been moved. Workers were inside and seemed to be taking it apart. (Update: I was wrong--see here.)

I think I have done my last post on Monnett School demolition. On Monday there were machines there and the tank was out of the hole and gone. On Wednesday when I stopped by, the hole was filled and there were no longer any machines on site. Once the grass grows, it will be impossible to tell that there was once a school building there.

May art exhibits

The Fendig Gallery at the Carnegie Center is hosting a show of Historic Painting and Photographs along with a selection of items from their permanent collection. The photographs are from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources-Division of Historic Preservation and Archeology and will be on display through May, which is National Historic Preservation Month, until Jun 14. Rensselaer is one of five cities in Indiana with their photo exhibit.

Below is an item from the permanent collection, a sketch by Lilian Fendig from the 1950 called, "Curtis Creek Lady Golfers.

At SJC the Core Lobby has the annual senior show. Below is piece called the Last Supper by potter Shane Pack. The show will not run much longer because graduation is coming up in a couple of weeks.