muse 1

muse 1
Photo by Galushko Sergey/Shutterstock
Hello!!
P
lanning any boat trips across the Arctic? Make sure you
bring plenty of postcards to send to family and friends back
home! (Mailing them, of course, could be difficult.)
text and art © 2010 by Nancy Kangas
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2 muse
i’m tired of calling cactus “cactus”!
it sounds too much like what it is:
all dried out and prickly!
like, suppose I offered you a
glass of cat puke—wouldn’t
you be thrilled to discover that
it was really orange fizz?
I want a less predictable language, a
language full of happy surprises! the
sounds of words shouldn’t tell us
anything about their meanings!
for
instance?
i’m going to start my own
language, kokopish... in kokopish,
cactus will be called sneefle...
unthreatening!
rocks will be flerns, sticks will
be valeens, mountain peaks will
be delaloes, canyons will be
swambs, mush will be plecket,
and hate will be love!
thrilled...
nothing
will sound
like what
it is!
great! to work! or should I
say, to bouncipip? that sounds
like a lot more fun!
ok! all done! my kokopishenglish dictionary is hot
off the boop!
it’s light, I know, which means
“ponderous and smelling of
fermented potato peels,” but at
least you’ll know what I mean
when I say, “I admire you more
than words can express!”
wuff!
go ahead,
open it...
text and art © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company
did I mention that “dictionary”
means “jack-in-the-box”?
groan... I just
love lying in
the sneefle...
too bad!
which means
too good!
Astronauts Lose
Fingernails
enough, this fossil included intact feathers. In the
fossilized feathers, researchers studied microscopic
structures called melanosomes that give feathers
their color.
Based on the shapes of its melanosomes, they
say this penguin wore reddish-brown and gray
feathers instead of black and white. Even in the bird
world, fashions can change from one epoch to the
next.
The biggest annoyance to astronauts on spacewalks
isn’t echoing helmets or sweaty suits—it’s their painful gloves. Sometimes, astronauts complain, their
gloves even make their fingernails fall off.
When outside their spaceships, astronauts wear
gloves that are pressurized to match Earth’s atmosphere. This makes the gloves stiff and difficult to
move. Researchers guessed that astronauts with the
longest fingers might have it the worst, bumping their
fingertips into the hard ends of their gloves over and
over. But, looking at data from 232 astronauts, they
found that the biggest risk factor was hand width.
Astronauts with the biggest paws had almost a 20
percent chance of fingernail injury because the gloves
cut off their circulation. (And in the vacuum of space,
no one can hear you say “Yeeowch!”)
text © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company
Ancient
Penguins Were
Tuxedo Free
Video Games Improve
Decision Making
You make different kinds of decisions while playing a
video game than otherwise. In real life, for example,
you almost never have to react to a heavily armed
alien jumping out at you. But scientists say playing
shoot-’em-up video games can improve your real-life
ability to make quick decisions.
Researchers looked at two groups of men
around 19 or 20 years old. One group played
“action” video games at least five times a week, and
the other group never played them. In a test that
involved making quick decisions about moving dots
on a computer screen, the action-game players did
better than the others. They also did better on a
similar sound-based test.
Though fast-paced video games
may help you make quick decisions,
they won’t help with decisions such
as, “Should I pass this next level or
do my homework?”
Facebook for Real
Most modern penguins look
like miniature orchestra
conductors in tuxedo jackets,
thanks to their white and
black feathers. But this wasn’t
always the case, says
researcher Julia Clarke.
In Peru, Clarke and her
team discovered a fossilized
giant penguin 36 million years
old. As if person-sized
penguins weren’t exciting
Students at Queen Victoria Junior
High in Manitoba, Canada, were
excited when their principal
announced “Facebook for Real.”
For one day, students and teachers
would simulate everything they did
on Facebook—from friending to
Farmville—in real life.
The social experiment started
out enjoyably enough. Teachers
Art from Katie Brown/University of Texas, Austin
the head and torso a lot while dancing was a positive factor. So was “speed of movements of the right
knee.” Keep that in mind at your next school dance.
Hey, You with the Claws.
Don’t I Know You?
To us, all lobsters might look the same. But research
from the University of Florence in Italy suggests that
lobsters can recognize each other by sight.
When two male lobsters meet, they size each
other up and make threatening gestures. Then they
usually fight. Researchers paired off 98 male American
lobsters in tanks, first with a clear or opaque wall
between them, and then with no walls. They found
that lobsters that had already “met” through a clear
wall went straight to fighting once the wall was gone.
Lobsters that were strangers, though, spent more
time threatening each other first.
Scientist Puts Socks over
Shoes, Wins Prize
Scientifically Proven
Dance Moves
What makes a guy a “good” or a “bad” dancer? To find
out, a team of British researchers recruited 19 men and
recorded them with cameras while they danced. T
hen
they transformed each recording into a computerized
avatar and had a group of women rate the digital dancers. (They used avatars so women wouldn’t be biased by
how attractive or unattractive the real men were.)
Which dances got the highest ratings? Moving
Not everyone can win a Nobel Prize. For scientists
whose research is on the sillier side, there are the Ig
Nobels. T
he 2010 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics went to
New Zealand researcher Lianne Parkin, who showed
that wearing socks outside your shoes can keep you
from slipping on winter ice.
At the University of Otago, Parkin’s group
recruited students and others who were on their
way down a steep and icy hill. They gave half the
recruits acrylic-blend socks to put over their shoes,
then sent them on their way. At the bottom of the
hill, participants rated the slipperiness of their trip.
Those with socks over their shoes did, in fact, find
the hill less slippery. (Observers confirmed that the
sock-wearing group was less likely to cling to fence
posts on the way down.)
The only downside to this technique, Parkin
observed, was “short periods of indignity.”
The false story is “Facebook for Real.”
Photo from Northumbria University
passed out thumbs-up stickers, representing
Facebook’s “Like” button, which students could give
to classmates who shared good ideas in class. And a
local farm lent the school three goats and a pig for
the day so students could play “Farmville” on the
practice field. But manure from the animals accumulated rapidly, since students refused to clean it up.
“Like” stickers became a straightforward popularity
contest, hurting many students’ feelings. And poking
battles broke out in some classrooms.
Did the experiment have any lasting effect?
Eighth-grader Marcia Zimmerman says Facebook
“doesn’t seem as cool anymore.” School administrators won’t say whether that was the whole point.
I
n the fall of 2008, the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago began
renovating its Oceanarium, a big indoor pool that houses seven beluga
whales and four Pacific white-sided dolphins. When humans renovate
their own homes, they might stay in a hotel or with relatives to avoid all the
hammering and paint fumes. Large marine mammals, though, are a little
trickier to relocate.
With a lot of teamwork and just a few forklifts, the Shedd staff managed
to FedEx their animals across the country and back. If you ever need to plan
a vacation for any of your own dolphins or whales, their story will certainly
be of help to you.
Step 1: Plan Ahead.
Moving 11 dolphins and whales is, as you might guess, not
easy. Ken Ramirez, the aquarium’s senior vice president of
animal collections and training, says it took more than five
years for aquarium staff to plan the renovation and marine
mammal “vacation.” Their biggest task wasn’t figuring out
how to mail a whale, though, but where to mail one. In their
search for an institution that could take good care of all their
whales and dolphins, they thought they’d have to split up the
group between three different temporary homes. But finally,
they discovered that the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for
Exploration, in Connecticut, would be happy to take all 11
animals.
Once they’d chosen their destination, the Shedd staff
worked with FedEx to plan the move. To carry all their
animals almost 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) to Connecticut would take two separate planes. The team had experience with transporting these animals, though they’d never organized such a large move before. Ramirez says the animals weren’t rookies, either:
“Many of our whales are experienced travelers, and our younger whales [were] prepared for the transport through practice sessions
prior to leaving.”
24
text ©muse
2010 by Carus Publishing Company
Photos by Brenna Hernandez//© John G. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago
Step 2: Lift from
Your Knees.
Being practiced travelers, the whales and
dolphins helped their transport team by
swimming into the hammocks that would
carry them. Once in their hammocks, the
smaller dolphins (the smallest weighs
about 200 pounds, or 90 kilograms) could
be lifted and carried by staff members. The
larger animals (the largest beluga weighs
2,000 pounds, or about 900 kilograms)
and their hammocks had to be hoisted with
special carts, forklifts, and cranes. (One
can only imagine what goes through the
head of a one-ton whale that suddenly finds itself airborne.)
The whole group of animals was moved in two batches, over the course of two weeks. It was a team effort,
Ramirez says: “Between the staff at Shedd Aquarium, the truckers who assisted us in moving from Shedd to O’Hare
Airport, the airport staff, the FedEx staff, the airport staff in Connecticut, trucking staff on that end, and the staff at
Mystic Aquarium, we required over 200 people for each move.”
Step 3: Find a Really Big
Box.
The whales and dolphins skipped the security line and
boarded the airplanes in specially designed “cradles.”
From the outside, these looked like giant boxes with
no tops. Inside, each cradle held two feet of water. The
animals’ hammocks rested inside so that the water
supported their weight and kept them cool, but they
could also breathe comfortably. (Remember, even though
whales and dolphins live in the water, they
breathe air just like any other mammal.)
Though these whales and dolphins
normally live in salt water, their cradles
were filled with fresh water—salt water,
which can leave behind a corrosive buildup,
would have been dangerous to the airplane’s wires and electronics. Filled with water and whale, the
largest cradle weighed 18,000 pounds (about 800 kilograms). Good thing they didn’t take it to the post
office—that would have been a lot of stamps for someone to lick.
muse 25
Step 4: Make Sure Contents
Are Packed Securely.
Each animal was accompanied by a trainer who knew it well.
Although they knew the animals would be safe,
the trainers sat inside their cradles to keep
them company. Ramirez says that
having a familiar adult nearby keeps
the animals calm and comfortable,
making traveling with a whale “very
much like traveling with children.”
Except the whales and dolphins
don’t bicker with each other in the
back seat.
Step 5: Go Sightseeing.
Twelve Shedd staff members moved to Mystic to stay with the animals
for their eight-month visit. Ramirez says that for the animals, life at
Mystic was a lot like life in Chicago: “We continued to play with and interact with them every day, as we always did at Shedd. We fed them the
same type of fish, we brought their favorite toys.” And obviously a whale
can’t really get out and see the sights.
Still, the animals were used to their indoor habitat in Chicago, so
the outdoor pool at Mystic brought many new experiences. Ramirez
says they “had to learn about seagulls, rain, snow, wind, and bright
sunshine.” But with their trainers keeping them company, the animals
easily adjusted to all these changes.
Step 6: Welcome Your Whales
Home.
After eight months of vacation at Mystic, the whales and
dolphins (and their trainers) made a return journey to
Chicago. “The homecoming was wonderful!” Ramirez says.
Although the Oceanarium had been renovated, its basic
layout remained the same. Ramirez says, “There was no
question that they knew they were back. We could tell by their
swimming patterns and familiarity with everything that they
were very pleased to be home.” The staff could also tell that
the animals noticed the changes that had been made while
they were away.
Staff members who had stayed behind were thrilled to
be reunited with the travelers. And visitors to the aquarium, of
course, were happy to have everyone home again.
Virginia Edwards is a writer living in Chicago. Her favorite animal
at Shedd Aquarium is the sawfish, which has a head shaped like
a guitar. She wouldn’t necessarily want to accompany it on a
cross-country flight, though.
by Robert J. Coontz
and Rebecca Lasley
art by Slug Signorino
Q:
Why does watching a 3D
movie with glasses make your
eyes hurt after a while?
A:
Q:
Do crocodiles have tear ducts?
What are “crocodile tears”?
text © 2010 by Robert J. Coontz and Rebecca Lasley
art © 2010 by Slug Signorino
A:
—Tzipporah K.
The popular meaning of “crocodile
tears”—a fake display of sadness—dates
back at least to the Middle Ages, when people
believed crocodiles cried over their victims. “If the
crocodile findeth a man by the brim of the water,
or by the cliff, he slayeth him if he may, and then
he weepeth upon him, and swalloweth him at the
last,” Bartholomew Anglicus wrote in his
13th-century forerunner to the encyclopedia. No
one seems to have thought the crocodile might
weep out of genuine remorse! Some people also
believed that crocodiles cried to lure victims to
their doom. Shakespeare imagined how “the
mournful crocodile with sorrow snares relenting
passengers.”
Crocodiles do cry, and their tears, like ours,
spill out through tear ducts. Crocodiles don’t cry
out of sadness, though—genuine or phony. They
tear up as a purely practical matter, to keep their
eyes moist. “Tears are normally only noticeable if
the crocodile has been out of the water for a long
time and the eyes begin to dry out,” says zoologist
Adam Britton. Crocodiles have three sets of eyelids,
and they need the moisture to keep everything
working smoothly.
—Rebecca
—Courtenay, age 12
Some scientists think it’s the movies’ fault.
Nick Holliman, head of the Innovative
Computing Group at Durham University in
England, researches ways to make them easier to
watch. When you look at the real world, he tells
me, each of your eyes sees a slightly different
picture. Your brain uses those to calculate depth,
the third dimension in “3D.”
A 3D movie fools your brain by artificially
making two images and sending one to each eye.
(That’s what the special glasses are for.) Those images,
Holliman says, are calculated for an average viewer
with eyes an average distance apart. If you’re not
average, they can make you uncomfortable.
Showing a movie on the wrong-sized screen can
also exaggerate the 3D effects enough to cause pain.
Even when a movie “fits” your eyes, it still
makes them do strange things. Martin Banks, a
professor of vision science at the University of
California, Berkeley, has studied some of them. To
watch an object in real life, he explains, your eyes
have to do two things at once: stay pointed at it,
and stay focused on it. Normally, the pointing and
focusing distances are the same. At a 3D movie,
though, they’re different: Your eyes point at whatever
you think you’re seeing in the movie, but they have
to focus on the screen. Your eye muscles aren’t used
to doing that trick, and it makes them tired. Result:
eye aches.
—Robert
Have any questions you want answered?
Send them to MUSE Q&A, 70 E. Lake St., Suite 300, Chicago, IL 60601,
or send them by e-mail to [email protected]. You can also find us at www.musefanpage.com.
muse 9
A
muse Mini-Myth
by Virginia Edwards • illustrations by Kali Ciesemier
He was so strong because his dad was Zeus, the
king of the gods. But his mom was a regular,
mortal woman.
nce there was a very,
O
very strong Greek guy
named Hercules.
“This is my only
appearance in
the story!”
“Actually, it’s
Heracles.”
Hera, the
queen of the
gods and
Zeus’s wife,
was not
thrilled with
Zeus’s fooling
around.
OK, it’s Heracles, but the Romans changed
it to Hercules, so we’re going with that.
Hera even tried to kill off baby Hercules
by sending some snakes after him.
Despite Hera’s efforts, Hercules survived to adulthood,
married a woman named Megara, and had a bunch
of kids.
“We’re going to have
a long and happy life
together!
Don’t count
on it, honey.
text © 2009 by Carus Publishing Company; art © 2009 by Kali Ciesemier
””
Hera hatched a new plot to
ruin Hercules’s life. She made
him lose his mind . . .
TEM
P
INSA ORAR
N IT Y
Y.”
. . . and when he came
to his senses, his wife and
kids were all dead.
Eurystheus spent those 12 years coming up
with seemingly impossible tasks for his new
slave. First, Hercules had to kill the Nemean
lion, whose hide was so sturdy it couldn’t
be penetrated with arrows or swords.
I am your slave.
Woohoo!”
“Woohoo!!”
What have
I done?”
As punishment for killing his family,
Hercules was sentenced to serve a king
named Eurystheus for 12 years.
Eurystheus was pretty scared of his extremely
strong, family-murdering slave, so he preferred
to address Hercules from inside a big jar.
No problem.”
The hydra was a nasty, swamp-dwelling
monster with nine heads. Or 10,000
heads, depending who you ask.
Yo, I killed that big cat and
made a handy impenetrable
cloak out of its skin.
You mean you
still haven’t killed
the hydra?”
Hercules defeated the hydra by
burning its head stumps before
they could grow back.
At the same time, he killed a
big assassin crab sent by—guess
who?—Hera.
Oh, and whenever Hercules cut off one
of the hydra’s heads, two new heads
grew in its place.
Next, our hero had to capture a one-of-a-kind deer
with golden horns and bronze hooves. This was a little
tricky because the golden deer
belonged to the
goddess Artemis.
Hey!”
muse 11
The Erymanthean boar, a giant wild pig that
enjoyed goring people with its tusks, didn’t
give Hercules much trouble.
King Augeas had thousands of cattle, sheep,
and horses in his stables. Unfortunately for the
animals, he was too lazy to clean up after them.
“Well, don’t give him to me! Go
clean out the Augean stables!”
Hercules didn’t want to spend the next 10 years
shoveling poop, so he moved a couple rivers to
do the dirty work for him.
“I’m strong AND clever!”
Hercules killed some birds that were
terrorizing the town of Stymphalos . . .
“Birds? Really?”
They EAT PEOPLE!!”
Eurystheus still had plenty of tasks
left for Hercules.
. . . and stole some horses from a
king named Diomedes.
“Horses? . . . Really??”
. . . captured a crazy bull that
was bullying Crete . . .
Stealing a fancy belt that belonged to Hippolyte,
the queen of the Amazons,* gave him a little
more trouble.
Get ’’im, ladies!”
They EAT PEOPLE!!”
*The Amazons were warrior women who had nothing to do with the Amazon River.
Geryon had three heads and six legs.
Eurystheus must
have been
running out of
ideas at this point:
for his tenth labor,
he told Hercules
to steal even more
cattle. These ones
were giant and
red, and belonged
to the monster
Geryon.
“Let’s go.”
!
ρκ
βά
. . . And a two-headed dog!”
In the home stretch, things got more complicated. Hercules
needed to acquire some golden apples. Unfortunately, the
apples belonged to Hercules’s old enemy, Hera.
Hercules enlisted help from Atlas, a guy whose job was
to hold up the earth.
“I’ll take that off your hands
for a minute if you’ll go grab
a few golden apples
for me.”
Atlas got the golden apples, and then proved
not to be very smart.
“Say, it feels pretty nice not
to be holding up the earth
anymore. How ’bout you
stay there forever?”
“Sure, no problem. Can you
just take this for two seconds
while I, um, scratch an itch?”
For his final task,
Hercules simply had
to borrow a dog
named Cerberus.
Of course, Cerberus’s
owner was Pluto,
the god of the
underworld. So
Hercules had to take
a little trip.
Don’t worry, he returned the dog later.
All right, Hercules, it’s been 12
years, so I guess you’re free.
“Woohoo!”
What do you
people feed your
dogs??
He EATS PEOPLE!!”
Once Hercules had completed his 12 labors in 12 years, he
was free to live out his life. In the end, what killed the brave
hero was not a fearsome, multiheaded creature, but a simple
cloak that had
been poisoned with—
No! No. That story’s too
embarrassing.
The end. The end!”
. . . Fine. THE END.
A Mathematical
by Cynthia Graber
The Makings of a
Mathematician
When Annalisa Crannell was a young girl, her family’s dinner conversation focused on math and science.
Her dad was a nuclear physicist who studied the size
of protons (one of the parts of an atom). Her mom
was a solar astrophysicist who worked at the Goddard
Space Flight Center near Washington, D.C. “She
really was a rocket scientist!” Crannell says.
Crannell couldn’t help picking up the language
her scientist parents used and their casual way of
bringing math into their everyday lives. One time,
walking home from school with a friend, she said, “If
we go to your house instead of mine, we’ll get more
work done per unit time.” She laughs at this memory:
“I realized other kids didn’t say ‘per unit time.’”
Math wasn’t always easy for her, though. When
she took algebra, she felt overwhelmed by word
problems and the need to think through the steps
to solve them. Her dad intervened and helped her
out. He said, she recalls, “You hate word problems? I
love word problems. If you just keep going, you can
get them done.” He wouldn’t let her give up, and he
Even though it’s math, Annalisa Crannell’s class is not all
serious. (Except for the noses. Those are serious.)
text © 2011 by Cynthia Graber
S
tare through a window at the buildings and trees
outside. How would you draw these so that they
look realistic? It may surprise you to learn that
mathematics can help.
To Annalisa Crannell, a professor of math at Franklin
and Marshall University in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, math
and art make a perfect couple. Math can help explain why
great art looks so realistic, and understanding math can
help artists learn how to draw buildings and plants.
Crannell’s own research focuses on chaos theory,
which is the idea that one very small change in a system
can have a big, unexpected impact. But she has also
become famous for joining mathematics and art through
classes she teaches at the university. In fact, she worked
with a colleague to write a textbook about perspective and
geometry in art, which will be published this year.
Math, she says, can help explain how to draw and
paint images from the real world, transforming what we
see in the three-dimensional scenes around us onto the
two-dimensional surface of a piece of paper or an artist’s
canvas.
Perspective
wouldn’t let her say that she hated math. He helped her
gain confidence to face difficult problems and figure out
the answers.
When Crannell started attending Bryn Mawr
College, near Philadelphia, she didn’t immediately
gravitate toward math. Instead, she thought she wanted
to study foreign languages and become a tour guide
in her hometown of Washington, D.C. But her father
convinced her to at least try one math class, because she
had been good at math in high school.
Luckily, she had a great professor named Mario
Martelli. She did so well in his class her freshman year
of college that Martelli took her aside after the semester was over and suggested she take another class with
him that same year. But that class was primarily geared
toward seniors, who were three years ahead of her in
school. Her professor had such confidence in her abilities that she dove in, and she strove to live up to his
expectations. She thrived in the class and continued on
with math, eventually earning her PhD.
Crannell is still in touch with Martelli, her first
college math teacher, and they’ve even published math
research papers together. “He was a huge influence on
my life,” she says. “I’m lucky I got into his class.”
Making Math Visible
Annalisa Crannell was originally inspired to teach
a class on math and art as a way to make math less,
well, scary. She knew that some students, particularly
girls, believe that math is beyond their abilities. But
when students can see how math connects to their own
interests and experiences, the subject becomes significantly less intimidating. She thought she could make
math tangible, and visible, by showing her students the
geometry in the world around them—in neighborhood
buildings, for example, or in plants.
A piece of paper, she says, is like a window onto the
world. Turning the three-dimensional world of buildings, streets, and trees into a two-dimensional picture,
or window, involves the field of geometry. For instance,
the sides of a street in real life are parallel. But if you
stare at them out a window, they might look as if they’re
coming to a point in the distance. That’s called the
“vanishing point.”
Another way to picture this is to think of drawing
a box. The front of the box is a normal square. But to
make the box a cube—in three dimensions—the sides
of the box need to look longer as they stretch toward the
back, or toward the vanishing point. So instead of drawing squares on the sides of the box, you have to draw
trapezoids.
Another important part of perspective is the horizon line, the place where the ground meets the sky.
What’s interesting about both the vanishing point and
the horizon line, Crannell explains, is that they are
determined by the location of the artist. For
instance, if you’re the artist drawing a box, and
you’re above the box, you’ll draw the vanishing
point above the box. If you’re below the box, the
vanishing point goes below. The vanishing point
tells you where the artist stood.
to teach her students to have a greater appreciation of works of art they might see hanging in
homes or museums.
Teaching art has also helped Crannell see
the world through a different lens. “I walk down
a hallway, and I see the vanishing point at the
end of the hallway where I never saw it before.
I can see how a door recedes away from me,”
she describes. She likes to doodle in a sketchbook, drawing the shadows of buildings as the
sun moves across the sky and figuring out what
mathematical equations could predict where
those shadows will fall.
Crannell says, “Really beautiful mathematics allows you to make a really beautiful
picture.”
Cynthia Graber is a journalist living in
Massachusetts. Her greatest artistic achievement
was painting a dolphin and a polka-dot jellyfish on
her old car.
Perspective helps people draw structures
with straight lines, like streets and buildings. A
fractal, on the other hand, is a geometric pattern
in which a tiny piece of the object looks the
same as the whole thing. Fractals describe many
objects in the natural world: trees, clouds, and
broccoli, for example, all tend to be fractals. A
small floret of broccoli looks remarkably like the
entire broccoli head.
A Different Lens
Understanding math helps Crannell’s students
become better artists. It also helps them understand how artists created their paintings.
To get a perfect sense of proportion in a
painting, a viewer should be standing right
where the artist was when he or she painted it.
Crannell points out that some museums in Italy
actually mark a point on the floor in front of a
painting where you should stand to get the best
sense of perspective. (Though it might not work
if the artist was six feet tall and you’re only four
feet: even if you stand in the same place, you
won’t have the exact same view!) She uses math
St. Jerome in His Study, a 1514 engraving by German artist
Albrecht Dürer, has strong perspective lines (which
we’ve highlighted in color). It also has a lion.
From Stick People to
Star Artist
Before.
After.
Carra Kramer, a junior in college, signed up for
Annalisa Crannell’s math and art class in her first
year at Franklin and Marshall University. “I was
really into math, and I also really liked art when I
was in high school. I thought combining the two
could be interesting,” says Carra. But it wasn’t
easy! The first drawings she turned in, as she
describes them, looked like stick figures. (You can
see her first drawing to the left, above.)
Every week, she and her classmates drew
and learned about math. They focused on
perspective and how to measure it, and how
to draw objects so they look realistic. They also
learned to look at art to understand how the
artist used perspective in the drawing or painting.
Carra says she learned how complicated it
was to draw—complicated, but not impossible.
As the class progressed, Carra was able to use
math to replicate real-life objects in her drawings.
Understanding perspective helped her figure
out how lines should be angled. Learning about
fractals helped her draw patterns in plants. In
fact, she and her classmates started seeing math
everywhere they looked. “It got to the point that
I’d walk outside and look at a tree, and all I could
see were fractals! Instead of appreciating the tree,
I was appreciating the math in the tree!” she says,
laughing.
She worried that the class might end up
ruining her experience of trees, but that never
happened. It certainly did help improve her
artwork, though. At the end of the class, Carra
used the geometry of vantage points and the
horizon line to draw her dorm building and the
buildings nearby. You can see that final result to
the left, below.
M
USERology
MUSERology
by Emily Polson
Photo by Ev Cherrington
I am imagining myself lying at home in bed with
a nice, cozy blanket wrapped around me, resting
my head and neck on a wonderfully fluff y pillow.
I am imagining myself sitting in a hot tub, utterly
and blissfully relaxed. I am imagining myself
absolutely anywhere but this dirty, crowded,
smelly bus.
All of a sudden I am pulled from my happy
place by a voice: “OK, you guys can start putting
your sacks on!”
I let out a dramatic sigh and snap back into
reality: I am squished sitting three-to-a-seat on
a school bus on a rainy and hot (and thus very
humid) July day wearing a long-sleeved shirt,
long jeans, and high-top work boots at 5:40 in
the morning, ready to take part in an Iowa tradition for teenagers. I groan as the people on both
sides of me begin attempting to put on their
variously sized garbage bags. I wiggle my arms
out and put on my own 55-gallon trash bag like
a rain poncho. This is it, I think as the bus pulls
down a side road and into the driveway of a
farmhouse. Too late to quit now.
24 muse
Detasseling is walking through a corn field and
pulling the tassel (the pollinating part at the
top) off of the corn plants. There are machines
that do this, but they miss some tassels due to
the varying heights of the plants. Detasselers
are there to pick up the slack.
We do this because years ago, farmers got
the idea to breed together two different types
of corn to make a hybrid “super-corn.” They
grow one row of “male” corn (corn that keeps
its tassel) for every six rows of “female” corn
(corn that is detasseled). You walk in groups
of six down a panel (that’s the six female rows)
and pull off all of the tassels. You come back
a few days later to check the field and get any
tassels you might have missed. After all of the
tassels from the “female” plants have been
pulled, the corn grows and the “male” corn’s
tassels open up and release pollen to fertilize
the “female” corn. Shazam! You have hybrid
seed corn that gets sold and planted to grow
“super-corn.”
Photo by Emily Polson
MUSERology
Emily Polson is a 15-year-old Muse reader from
Iowa. You can see her at the far left of the photo on
the previous page, demonstrating stylish safety gear
and proper corn-handling technique.
SERology
“Muserology” is a column written by—and about—a Muse
reader. Do you have a story to share? Send it to mail@
musemagkids.com, or go to www.musemagkids.com/
muserology for more details.
I awoke at 5:30 in the morning on August 6.
It feels so good to sleep in until 5:30, I thought.
Because it was our last day, our supervisor let
us start an hour later. My mind wandered back
over the past two and a half weeks. Up at 4:30,
at the bus stop by 5:25; the crowd on the bus
getting progressively smaller as many decided
this was not the work for them; baking two
batches of cookies to bring on my brother’s
birthday; freezing corn plants in the morning,
blazing sun by day; sunburn on the back of my
neck and on my wrists between the gloves and
shirt, the only exposed parts of my body. Last
day. I smiled.
I was delighted when we arrived at a very
small field, meaning a very short day. Everyone
had a panel to themselves. I started singing as
I walked quickly down the panel. I had gotten
much faster and could identify a tassel in a
single glance. After completing the last panel, I
was overjoyed. I’m done!
The bus ride back was the best one ever. I
could hardly wait until the next morning, when
I would sleep as long as I desired. Getting off
the bus, my brother and I headed to our car.
I gave one of my new friends a quick goodbye
hug. “Are you coming back next year?” she
asked.
“Oh yeah!” I said without thinking.
Looking back, I’m sure I will. It may not
have been the most fun, but it’s an Iowa tradition. After all, we are the Corn State.
text © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company
The bus quieted as our supervisor stepped on to
make morning announcements. He then started
reading off names. Hearing mine, I worked my
way to the front of the bus through the mass
of sleep-deprived teenagers. I was given a neon
orange hat with a face net, bright yellow safety
glasses, and a pair of work gloves. This, plus the
garbage bag, is the complete set of safety equipment for detasselers. The garbage bag may not
be fashionable, but it keeps us somewhat dry
from the ever-falling rain or morning dew.
My group assembled and headed toward
the cornfield. We were assigned our panels and
lined up. Our checker (a more experienced
detasseler who walks behind us and picks the
tassels we miss) told us to go, and with a deep
breath I plunged into the leafy green abyss.
Although it was only 6:00 in the morning,
I was wide awake now as the icy-cold leaves
drenched my sleeves, already damp from the
rain. I moved slowly at first. Each time I pulled
a tassel, I heard a satisfying squeak or pop. Hey,
this is actually kind of fun!
The day dragged on without the rain letting
up. $7.75 an hour . . . $7.75 an hour . . . We did
row after row, and the rain began to soak up
our legs and down our arms. Finally, wet and
miserable, we all piled on the bus to head home.
More than 45 rain- and dew-soaked teenagers
were squished together, most telling themselves
they would certainly not be returning the next
day.
This was going to be a long few weeks.
MUSE
muse 19
muse
25
What’s Wordle?
in a
by Elizabeth Preston
L
et’s say you just read a really fascinating magazine
article and you want to tell your friend about
it. You could compose a few sentences that
efficiently summarize the story. You could
perform the story in interpretive dance. Or—if your
feet are tired and your summarizing skills are shaky—
you could turn the article into a cloud of words.
A computer program called Wordle, which you
can try out for yourself at www.wordle.net, lets you do
just that. The program simply asks you to “paste in a
text © 2011 by Carus Publishing Company
bunch of text,” though you can type something instead.
Wordle then combs through your text and counts how
many times each word appears. The more frequently a
word is used, the larger it will appear in the resulting
cloud. The world cloud below was made from the article
“From Six Degrees to Facebook” on page 6 of this issue.
Creator Jonathan Feinberg says he designed Wordle
more for fun than for function—the point isn’t to get
a lot of information across. But the image can certainly
give you a feel for the text. In this cloud, the article’s
most important themes (people, friends, degrees of
influence) jump to the forefront. The details of the
article (Facebook, Friendster, links, sites, students) hover
in the background.
You can adjust the colors, font, and layout of
your Wordle to your heart’s content. You may notice
something missing, though. The program removes
“stop words,” the short, ordinary words such as
prepositions and conjunctions that glue together the
more interesting words. A cloud that displayed the,
and, and of as its biggest words wouldn’t be very fun
or functional.
Savvy readers may be able to guess where the
Wordle above came from: it uses every Muse Mail
letter published so far in 2011. (Talk about a “bunch
of text.”) It’s no surprise to see words such as Dear,
Muse, and magazine featured prominently. Kokopelli is
the most-mentioned Muse—a piece of news that will
surely go to his head.
A few of readers’ favorite subjects—pie, hot-pink
bunnies, science, animals—lurk in smaller type.
Among the Muses, poor Bo is somewhat neglected.
Among states, a lot of readers seem to come from
California. Why age? It’s a part of every letter’s
signature.
You might deduce from this Wordle that Muse
readers always have one more thing to say. Also
appears in both its capitalized and lowercased form,
since the program counts them separately. If the two
Make your own at
www.wordle.net.
forms were counted together, also would be an even
bigger word in the cloud. (Also! Don’t forget P.S.)
Jonathan Feinberg was inspired to create Wordle
in 2004 by looking at so-called tag clouds online. A
“tag” is a label such as sports or humor added to a blog
post or other online article. Tag clouds display all of
a site’s possible tags at once in a straightforward blob
shape. Feinberg wanted to create a new kind of cloud
that would be attractive as well as informative.
Since then, people have found all kinds of
creative uses for the program. “My wife has made
some beautiful [art] prints from Wordles,” Feinberg
says. “I’ve been happy to see Wordles used very
artfully in newspapers, magazines, and blog posts.
I’ve also seen Wordles used by some people to express
thoughts or feelings that they’d otherwise find too
painful or embarrassing to share directly.” He thinks
the “easy creativity” of Wordle is what draws people
in—anyone can be an artist, and any piece of text can
become art.
Plenty of people have been drawn in, and they’ve
saved more than three million Wordles to an online
gallery. Feinberg says that these days, he doesn’t
create very many Wordles himself, though he did use
Wordle to create an illustration for a book chapter he
wrote. “When I do want it, I’m very glad it’s there,”
he says.
MINDING OUR BEESWAX
To see more photos and learn more about Rooftop
Honey, visit www.musemagkids.com/explorations.
1st printing Worldcolor Midland, Michigan July 2010
text and photos © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company
T
o see them hurrying through
the downtown streets with their
briefcases and iced lattes, you
might think the businesspeople
are the busiest workers in Chicago. But
hidden high above their heads, another
workforce is buzzing away: hundreds of
thousands of honeybees, hard at work
making Chicago Rooftop Honey.
The rooftop workers live in eight
hives on top of three downtown buildings, including City Hall. The hives are
maintained by a group called the Chicago
Honey Co-op, which also runs a bee
farm and community garden on the city’s
west side. Here, you can see co-op director Michael Thompson checking on a
hive in the spring. As the weather warms,
the hives will quickly fill with bees—a
queen can lay as many as 2,000 eggs a
day! Thompson will gradually stack more
compartments on the hives to encourage
the bees to store extra honey.
In July and August, co-op workers
will haul away the “ripe” honeycombs that
bees have capped with wax. Then they’ll
remove the wax, spin the combs to drain
out the honey, and sell it downtown.
Proceeds from Rooftop Honey benefit the
city’s cultural programs, such as theater
and concerts.
Mayor Richard Daley started the
program in 2003. All three of his beehive
buildings also have “green roofs,” rooftop
gardens planted over a waterproof layer.
Chicago has more than 400 of these roofs,
which save energy by keeping buildings
warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. The plants also remove carbon dioxide and pollution from the air,
and provide an urban oasis for birds and butterflies.
Why urban bees? “Raising honeybees can be more successful in cities than in rural areas because of the variety
and density of flora in urban areas,” Thompson says. “It connects people to nature. And it teaches all of us that it’s
safe to have dangerous insects downtown, where there are millions of people.” (He admits, though, that he’s been
stung a few times.)