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Showing posts from March, 2018

Material Culture items in photos

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The material culture presentations have had to be optional as this is the area of the most cultural loss. kohwa/ngarangara Myra with a kiam Lavonna with a Pohnepian pwaht Keona with Mwoakillese dancing headgear Tedrick Yoma with a Kosraean tah Rosalyn with a Kosraean pahl

Ohigan (Higan) spring 2018

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Higan 2018 in Japan began on Sunday, 18 March and ended on Saturday, 24 March. During this week the students took to cleaning the Haruki cemetery. Rosalyn Lefreeancy Nemely Jay-me and Nemely Yoma and Rodman Rayden and Henry Nemely Rosalyn Nephrolepis Rosalyn Marigold Keona Lefreeancy Caladium bicolor Myra Henry Keona Coffea robusta, the scent is almost that of jasmine flowers Dana

Vegetative morphology walk and identification

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A week of rain was punctuated by a day where the rain fell only between my classes. From 8:00 to 1:00 the rain held off for physical science, then the sky opened up and heavy rain fell. The rain broke off by 2:30 and the 3:30 ethnobotany class walked on wet ground under dry skies. Courses evolve over time. As the final examination plant list grew from an original list of twelve plants to over seventy plants, the load of learning the plants has increased significantly. With this in mind, more activities are oriented towards the theme of learning the names of the plants, Latin, local, and their local use. Add to this the rather phenomenal collapse in plant knowledge among students, just as amazing collapse, such that now the local names are as much a memorization task as the Latin names.  For many years this was a plant leaf walk and talk with roots in the botany class I taught in the late 1990s. Then, for a couple terms vegetative morphology was covered by a leaf hunt. At the end

RipStik waves, Android sound apps, and the speed of sound

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I started the class on Monday on the sidewalk with a RipStik laying down a wave. This term I opted to lay down four sheets of paper which produced roughly three waves in 2.29 seconds across a distance of roughly 334 cm. Actual measurements of the wave came up with roughly a 120 cm midpaper wavelength and an amplitude of about 9 cm, a good amplitude from a historical perspective. The wind was negligible, so only the ends were taped down. A tape rule was used in lieu of a meter stick, although a yard stick was on hand to help with the centerline. On Wednesday I used a rope to again demonstrate wavelength, amplitude, period, and frequency. Then I used a bouncing golf ball to demonstrate frequency and period. I leverage this to show the linkage to sound with meter stick bouncing on the edge of the table. And then I used Android apps running on a ChromeBook and the large screen television to display waveforms for sound. Which led to "seeing" the frequency of