Wednesday, March 15, 2006

The Backyard Still

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(or, What I Don’t Want My Son To Call It At Preschool Tomorrow)

We watch TV here. That’s a shocking statement in some circles, but I’ll confess. Without cable and with discretion, but we do. One we love is the PBS show Zoom.

Today we replicated the the solar distillation experiment outside. It worked! The website has an incredible page of science experiments you can do at home.

Another show we’ll be tuning into tomorrow night is ABC’s American Inventor, produced by the “love him or hate him” Idol Simon Cowell. I’m thinking it could be just the problem-solving program we’d enjoy (and there are very few of those on free tv!) The series premieres Thursday, March 16th with potential applicants auditioning their inventions.

Also, if your family watches the CBS drama Numb3rs, you’ll be excited to learn that the math utilized in each episode comes from actual FBI cases. The website has a page of free “We All Use Math Every Day” activities to demonstrate these concepts.

Not that the math is reason alone to watch the show, but it's nice to ingest a little learning while you're "tuning out".

1 comment:

Mom2fur said...

I love the show "Numb3rs." I read somewhere that there is a consultant on hand to make sure they get the math right. Not only that, but when you only see Charlie's hand writing...it's a real mathmetician (sp?) doing that. Makes it look more real.
We have cable here and there are many great shows on it. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of junk, but that's what the remote is for. I'm pretty much into the Food Channel, HGTV and anything creative or scientific.
The inventor show sounds interesting, but I sure hope it isn't one of those shows where they call people on a carpet and ridicule them. There are just too many of those!