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Material culture

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Jeanelle Ardos presented the coconut frond product known locally as a pwaht. Pwaht derives from the English word plate and was thus a post-contact invention. Where a kiam feeds a family, a pwaht feeds one. Where a kiam is not individually owned, a pwaht is. A pwaht embodies the western concept of personal ownership rather than collective sharing. Vincent Chaem presented a Yapese basket appropriate to a young adult male from Yap. The baskets sits upright unlike the basket they is the Hallmark of a Yapese elder male. Kerry KC Hawley presented the Pohnpeian pounding stone, a moahl. The moahl is actually a stone, perhaps ethnogeology, and is not an intentionally shaped and formed object. The moahl is a basalt rock, often from a river. During sukusuk (sakau pounding) the sakau root is pounded with moahl. Traditionally there are four pounder per stone. Each moahl has a name based, as far as I know, on the physical position of the one who is pounding. At th
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Sound speed with resonance tubes

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Invest 90w brought heavy rain along with thunder and lightning to the morning skies. I opted to run the inside version of the sound speed lab using graduated cylinders as resonance tubes.  Prior runs of the resonance tubes laboratory found that using a second graduated cylinder to pour the water resulted in spurious resonances. Erlenmeyer flasks were too narrow for the pouring back and forth procedure now used to offset large errors in the first run of the lab. This time I remembered to bring the meter sticks. Early set up ensured that there was enough water to in the tubes to run the lab.  1000 ml beakers worked well today, but many groups needed two 1000 ml beakers to handle the water. 256 Hz has a roughly 32 cm quarter wavelength. In these tubes that requires pouring off more than 1000 ml of water.  Springs were used with limited success to demonstrate standing waves. A steel pipe was used to demonstrate that tones are quantized in a p
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Waves

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Waves Wednesday set up includes tape measure, timer, and rope.  This term I used push pins to mount the Monday RipStik run on the board.  Rope wave calculations. I did only a brief handwaving demonstration using a golf ball that frequency and wavelength are inversely related: I feigned that the drop and bounce of the ball were akin to the wavelength. Higher drop and bounce, longer wavelength, lower frequency. Lower drop and bounce, shorter wavelength, higher frequency. The SMARTboard at class start set up with the sound section. I used a tidal chart to demonstrate that the tide was a wave with a long period, low frequency.  I also pointed out the wave form of the interference pattern that can be just made out above - the beat frequency between the moon and sun that generates neap and spring tides.  Then I moved into sound. Once I remembered how to get the tone generator to work I discovered that the on screen oscilloscope woul
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Thatching

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A light rain opened the class along with a low rainbow. The rain was just enough to cool the cement without wetting the cement. The class spread out in the parking lot, which was fortuitously empty for the class. I began early in the afternoon this term, getting on campus ahead of 1:00 PM to collect the materials. I had printed the receipt the day before. I picked up the petty cash and collected the machetes and twine.  By 1:30 I was at maintenance. I collected the thatch supplies using the Nissan and then went back to the business office to clear the petty cash, something I had not done on a same day basis before. I drove up to the store and picked up two bottles of water and two Kool-Aid Jammers.  By 2:00 I was at the Jasminum sambac clearing kohlo and cleaning up. I then went across to the cemetery and cut a bamboo, which I hauled out. Before three I was overheating and had the bamboo out in the parking lot. Next term: ketieu mukena. I then set about sewing thatch.  I ha
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