OBJECT #20: Giant “Thumb Guys”

 (as some people in my household call them)

 

    

    These are huge versions of those little fingerprint people that show up in my science books.  I made these large fingerprint people to take along to a curriculum fair a few years ago.  I thought two of these guys perched on my table would be eye-catching.  They don’t usually sit on top of my cabinet doors.  I just propped them there for the photo.  They usually lie flat somewhere.  (Though they did sit on my mantel for a year.)

    I’ve never had names for these things. “Thumb print people” is usually my default term, but to be more accurate they are prints of my index finger, not my thumb.  So why do I call them thumb print people?  I don’t know.  (But talk about leaving your fingerprints all over your work...)

    They were originally invented during my teen years, and I think my sister gets credit for making the very first one.  She’s a writer now, not an artist, so this could be her biggest contribution to the world of visual arts.  I picked up on the idea right away--so quickly that we remember it as always being something we did together.  About the time I went off to college, I tucked those early cartoons into a drawer and didn’t think about them for a number of years.

    When I began to write “The Elements” I knew I had to make the subject of chemistry seem friendly, and maybe even silly, to prevent kids from being afraid of it.  I decided that I needed some silly cartoon people to sit in the margins and say funny things.  I also knew I didn’t want to draw complicated cartoon people over and over again.  What could I use that was ridiculously simple, yet very effective?  I immediately thought about those old fingerprint cartoons I used to make.  They turned out to be perfect.  Once I started using them I couldn’t stop.

    I’ve had lots of feedback from parents about how much their kids love these fingerprint characters.  In fact, some parents have told me that their kids will go through and read all the cartoons first, before they even read the lessons.  (Bet they peek at their Christmas presents, too. ;)  I decided not use the fingerprint people in the “Mapping the World with Art” curriculum because I wanted to pitch it to older students.  However, my friends in France (who translate my curricula into French and sell it to francophone homeschoolers) decided that even “Mapping the World with Art” had to have the fingerprint people, so they borrowed pictures from other curricula and created captions for their French version.  (I studied enough French in college that I can basically read the French curricula (with a little help now and then from online translation programs) and I love to read how they translate the many idiomatic phrases used by the “bonhommes.”)

    They’ve never had names and I’ve tried to avoid thinking of them as two separate characters with different personalities.  I’d like them to stay similar enough that they are both equally capable of being intellectual or silly. In the “Cells” curriculum I did make one of them the official complainer, however.  That’s the only book where there is a basic scenario that is consistent all the way through (one of them has a remote control and can pause the book).  When just one thumb guy shows up on a page, you are never sure which one it is.  That’s because I don’t know which one it is!  But that’s intentional.  I like to keep myself guessing, too.

OBJECT #19: Paper Models

    This is the paper ship model that comes with the “Mapping the World with Art” curriculum.  I found it as a free download from an obscure online source.  I printed the pattern on white card stock and used toothpicks for the masts.  It measures only about 4 inches high (10 cm).
    I tried doing this project last fall with a group of students ages 11-14.  It was a bit tedious for most of them.  I think I was the only one who ended up actually finishing my ship.  Part of the problem may have been that they were doing it while in a group situation.  It they had been doing it as an at-home project they might have been less distracted.
    I have a love/hate relationship with paper models.  I am childishly mesmerized by the fact that mere paper can be shaped and glued into incredible 3D shapes.  Paper models can become an addiction.   The Canon company has a website with amazing downloadable patterns.  They have buildings, animals, vehicles, famous statues, cartoon characters, dioramas, and much more.  What has stopped me from downloading and assembling dozens of them is that “hate” part.  My first experience with the downside of paper models occurred years ago when I built Dover’s cut-and-assemble carousel model.  My daughter was in love with carousel horses.  I made a large wooden cut-out for her wall (sensibly durable for a 5-year old), then felt compelled to make the paper carousel (stupidly delicate for a 5-year old).  I can’t remember how it met its final end.  What I do remember is how hard I had to work to delay that ultimate demise.  The most amazing part of its survival is that I don’t think it was eaten by the guinea pigs.

    I have several paper automata (little gizmos that move when you turn a crank).  Two of them are silly pirates, one of whom wobbles back and forth on paper crutches.  Behind the pirates lurks a paper Egyptian tomb with a mummy who pops out of a sarcophagus, making the attending priest shiver with fear.  I was so taken with this one that I tried to make a larger wooden version.  I discovered how tricky it is to scale up a design, adding not just size but weight to the pieces.  I had to make many modifications.  The end result was okay, but didn’t run quite as smoothly as the paper model.

         The biggest paper automata I have is a cartoon version of St. George and his dragon.  (He has to share the mantel with part of my skull collection.)  The motion is quite complex.  The horse rears, the knight raises and lowers his sword, and the dragon snaps his jaws.  I believe this one is still in print, but I think is only available from UK sites.  I am tempted to upscale this, but I think I’ll wait until I get some of my other automata ideas done first. 

    If you like paper models and have not yet discovered paper automata, go to Amazon.com and type in “paper automata.” 

OBJECT #18: Brain book ends

    Brain anatomy seems to be a theme I can’t get away from.  The download-able brain hemisphere hat on my website has become the most popular free download item on my site.  It’s been used at science fairs from San Diego, CA, to Cambridge, England.  School teachers have used it in their classrooms then posted the pictures on their blogs.  An international publishing company discovered it and asked me to design a hat that was half brain/half elephant, for one of their advertising campaigns.  A neuroscientist emailed me about getting some printed to use as “microgifts” for his interns.  And, most recently, a brain imaging company in Boston had me do a mouse pad design using a modified version of the brain hat.

    This set of brain book ends was given to me by a former student who is now a young adult.  When she saw this item she said it just screamed my name, so she had to get it for me.  So now I have brain hemispheres between which I can keep all my books about brain hemispheres.  Works out nicely.

    I had to consult one of these books recently to do some fact checking for the left hemisphere brain mouse pad project.   According to this fairly scholarly book, the hemispheres are not quite as dissimilar as most popular science articles would have you believe, although language does seem to be solidly on the left side for about 90 percent of the population.  To date, there are no good theories as to why this should be so.  It just is.  (The same for handedness.  Why most people are right handed is a complete mystery.)  The unlucky 10 percent, whose brains have decided to use the right side for language, will almost certainly have issues with language processing, though in most cases the problems are mild enough that the affected persons can overcome the problems or learn to work around them.  (Many people who have this condition are unaware of it.)

    The left side of the brain has two special areas that the right side does not have--areas devoted to processing words.   Both areas bear the names of the people who discovered their significance.  Broca’s area is where we construct sentences before (or as) we say them.  Wernicke’s area is where we process the language that we hear, turning sounds into meaningful ideas.  These two areas connect to other areas of the brain, also.  No part of the brain functions independently from the others.

    This is the right hemisphere brain mouse pad.  The right hemisphere is usually non-verbal.  It is the center for creativity, music, and art.  It sees relationships between things, and understands “the whole picture.”  It is from the right hemisphere that those “Eureka!” moments come.

OBJECT #17: Little black magnifier

    I actually used this object just two days ago.  I was too lazy to get out my large stereo-microscope (which itself qualifies as junk in my basement because it’s just a secondhand scope from ebay) so I grabbed one of these.  I wanted to look at the tiny flowers on a plantain weed.  The weed has a fuzzy spire that I was pretty sure had to be flower spire in botanical terms.  I reasoned that the flowers must be so small that you could hardly see them without a magnifier.  So I grabbed one of these, switched on the light, and held the plantain under it.  I was amazed to see tiny purple and yellow flowers hanging at the ends of impossibly thin stalks.  One of the many examples of the amazing biology that we take for granted every day, often even unaware of its existence.

    If you’ve looked at these inexpensive magnifiers in a catalog and wondered if they are worth the 12-15 dollar price tag, the answer is “yes,” they actually give pretty good magnification.  You can get up to 30x magnification with them, which is way beyond your standard hand lens (3x to 8x).  If you can’t afford a large stereo-microscope (even a cheap one is over $100) then this is a great little alternative.  I would not recommend them for kids under 8 or 9, however, because it takes a bit of coordination to get things lined up and in focus.  I had to be a bit patient with my plantain flowers.  The only drawback with these is that the viewing area is pretty small.  But if you want to look at a sand grain or an insect eye or a miniature plantain flower, these will let you see some of the beautiful of creation you would miss otherwise.

Plantain Flower

OBJECT #16: Moiré cards (Mwah-ray)

    These cards have been lurking in various places in my basement for the better part of twenty years.  They’ve moved from drawer to drawer, with cards lost in some inexplicable way during each move.  (Children under the age of 10 might have had something to do with the missing cards, but then again, perhaps not.)  The battered box finally ended up in my big brown curiosity cupboard (which in and of itself is a notable piece of junk in my basement — one of those things you pick up cheap at a garage sale when you are just starting out in life and can’t afford to buy anything decent, and then years later there it is, still with out, such a permanent fixture in the house that it doesn’t even cross your mind to get rid of it.)

    The name moiré  is most recently from French, though the word has a complex etymology and was borrowed back and forth between French and English over several centuries.  Linguists speculate that the word originally came from Arabic, “mukhayyar,” meaning “chosen.”  What was chosen was the very best wool threads from an angora goat.  These hairs were woven and pressed into a fabric that the Europeans later perfected into a textile they called “watered silk.”  The hairs were aligned into a grid, then pressed into place, perhaps something akin to making felt.  The finished effect was a textile that caught the light strangely as it moved, making shimmering patterns.  (I guess if you couldn’t attract the gentlemen’s eyes naturally, you could always wear watered silk and make your yourself visually irresistible!)

    The moiré effect is now considered to be part of the world of physics, not fashion.  The most common place you’ll see this phenomenon is on a tv screen.  If someone is wearing clothing that has a strong grid-like pattern of some kind, the pattern will interact in a strange way with the physics of putting the image onto your screen, causing an effect that can be either fascinating or irksome, depending on how long you have to sit and watch it.  I’ve seen shirts and ties do spectacular moiré performances.  They produce shimmering and shifting patterns that are so eye-catching you can hardly concentrate on anything else on the screen.
    The moiré  effect is extremely simple.  It’s just two patterns, even as simple as two basic grids, laid on top of each other.  The top one must be transparent so the bottom one shows through.  As you slide one of the grids back and forth, you can see the lines of the grids shifting their positions relative to one another.  For a fraction of a second, the grids might be perfectly aligned, then a split second later, some of the lines shift to the right or left or even diagonally.  Your eye records these constant changes, and perceives it as an optical illusion of shimmering movement.

    I have a sheer white curtain on one of my windows that does a moiré  effect once in a while when the folds overlap.  I stumbled across a piece of fabric at a store a few years ago that had such a strong moiré  effect that I decided to turn it into a simple science exhibit for my traveling summer science museum.  I used replacement screen panels and put this fabric into them.  The two moiré  screens hang back to back and the visitor can move them back and forth to create stunning visual effects.

    I hope the little video here can give you an idea of amazing this effect can be when made to be large scale.  Someday when I have a permanent facility, I’ll have a huge moiré  of these that can entertain visitor on a large scale.

OBJECT #15: Hans Christian Andersen scissors

    I call these my “Hans Christian Andersen scissors.”  Everyone knows that Andersen wrote fairy tales.  His complete collection of fairy tales is on my bookshelf, but I have to confess I have not yet read the book from cover to cover.  It’s a huge book and includes many classics such as “The Little Mermaid,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “Thumbelina,” “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” “The Princess and the Pea,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”  What most people don’t know is that Andersen was also a master paper cutter.  Andersen never explained in any of his writings how he became so skilled at paper cutting.  In fact, he rarely mentions his cuttings at all.

    Andersen grew up as the only son of a poor shoemaker.  He lived in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Denmark in the early 1800s.  His father was intelligent and imaginative, however, and provided Hans a childhood full of folk tales and paper puppets.  A few times they saved enough money to be able to take Hans to a theatre to see a play.  Hans and his father would then come home and make a paper stage, paper puppets and a paper costume wardrobe.  Making this paper puppets was Andersen’s first experience with paper cutting art.

    After a trying to become an actor during his early teen years, he was told he did not have enough talent to make it in show business and he should be a writer instead.  A very generous patron volunteered to provide funds to further his education, and at age 17 he went back to school.  He went on to college, and during that time began his writing career. He began by writing plays and poetry.  Then he tried his hand at re-writing some traditional folks tales and had enough success to make him brave enough to try writing some of this own tales.

    One of the first tales we wrote was called “Little Ida’s Flowers.” A little girl named Ida had asked him what had happened to her bouquet of flowers overnight.  They had been so beautiful the day before and now they were wilted.  So Andersen make up a story about the flowers had been out dancing all night and tired themselves out.  In this story, one of the characters makes a paper cutting to amuse the little girl.

    Though Andersen’s dream of being a professional actor never came true, he found an even better outlet for his creative entertaining talent.  He would give private performances for small audiences, and would make a paper cutting while he told a tale.  He would chop away at a folded piece of paper using an enormous pair of scissors the entire time he was telling the story.  Then, at the end of the story, he would open the paper and show his audience the design he had created.  A Danish woman wrote this of her childhood memory of Andersend doing his paper cutting:  “He would always cut with an enormous pair of scissors.  It was a mystery to me how he could cut out such dainty things with his big hands and those enormous scissors!”

    Andersen’s reputation as an amazing entertainer reached the ears of those in high society.  Soon he was getting invitations to the homes of barons and dukes.  Eventually there was hardly a night when he didn’t have an invitation somewhere.  This was fortunate because though Andersen loved children, he never married and therefore never had any children of his own.  He would sit for hours telling stories and cutting paper designs for the children of his well-born friends.  (He even stayed with Charles Dickens in England for five weeks.  The language barrier was a problem, but Andersen used his paper cuttings as a bridge that didn’t need words.)  Some  guests’ homes made Andersen feel especially comfortable and he always referred to these homes as “good cutting-out places.”

    Andersen never sketched out his figures first.  He would just fold the paper and start cutting.  Most of his works are simple pieces of symmetry, where he folded the paper just once.  Occasionally he would fold the paper twice and make a four-fold pattern.

    I got my Andersen scissors at a garage sale quite a few years ago.  I believe them to be a relic from the days of cut-and-paste editing.  If you’ve got a job that requires a lot of cutting, you can’t waste time with a medium-sized pair of scissors.  These blades let you slice a sheet of paper in half almost in one snip.  Though old, these scissors qualify under the category of “they don’t make them like they used to,” and, accordingly, they have not become dull as quickly as the other scissors I own.  (Hmm... I’ll have to try making a paper cutting with them some time.)

OBJECT #14: Potato Animal Head

   

    This piece of junk wasn’t in my basement very long, for obvious reasons.  It sat on display for a few days, then I snapped a picture before returning it to the pantry.

     I’m a big fan of the book “Play With Your Food” by Joost Elffers.  The book consists of whimsical photos of food items posed to look like animals.  There’s a banana octopus, a mad-face orange, a yam mole, a confused pumpkin face, and garlic clove ducks.  My potato deer isn’t quite up to Elffers quality, but it made me laugh when I pulled it out of the bag.  I just couldn’t bring myself to ignore the deer/bear/whatever, and just toss the potato into the pot.  It needed to receive its due and be admired for a few days.