What Is a Flame?: The First Prize-Winner at Alan Alda’s Science Video Competition

in Animation, Education, K-12, Video - Science | June 8th, 2012

If an eleven year old child asked you to explain what a flame was, what would you say? When Alan Alda was 11 and posed the ques­tion, his teacher replied, “Oxy­da­tion.”

Unsat­is­fied and still curi­ous, Alda went on to help cre­ate the Cen­ter for Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Sci­ence at Stony Brook Uni­ver­si­ty. This year the Cen­ter issued the Flame Chal­lenge, invit­ing all com­ers to take a stab at explain­ing what a flame is. The only require­ment: Make your expla­na­tion clear, and inter­est­ing, to an 11-year-old.

Sci­en­tists from all over the world sent in entries – some were just one sen­tence (one actu­al­ly stat­ed, “A flame is oxi­da­tion.” Come on!). Anoth­er was a 37-page writ­ten expla­na­tion. After judg­ing the entries (all of which were pre-screened by sci­en­tists for accu­ra­cy), class­rooms of 11-year-olds declared a win­ner: an ani­mat­ed video by Ben Ames, a doc­tor­al stu­dent in quan­tum optics.

In the sev­en-and-a-half minute video, the con­ge­nial voice of a sci­en­tist (Ames) explains a flame to a beard­ed man chained in hell.

“See that fire over there?” Ames asks. “Have you ever real­ly won­dered what the flames are from that fire? I mean look at all those col­ors!”

He goes on charm­ing­ly to describe the process, with­out avoid­ing big words that kids actu­al­ly seem to love: when atoms (car­bon and hydro­gen) react to heat and change form, that’s pyrol­y­sis. That chem­i­cal reac­tion radi­ates light: chemi­lu­mi­nes­cence. Then the changed car­bon and hydro­gen inter­act with oxy­gen and that’s—you guessed it—oxi­da­tion.

But 11-year-olds love music too, right? Ames wraps it up with a song:

The fuel los­es mass, it turns to gas

Before the next change through, some atoms shine blue

When the process is com­plete, it gives off heat

Extra car­bon will glow—red, orange, yel­low.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based edu­ca­tion writer.

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“Good Chemistry” Explains Chemical Bonds with Cutout Animation and Teenage Romance

in Chemistry, K-12, Video - Science | May 31st, 2012

Love, or the promise of it, sells clothes, cologne and many a com­pact disc—but who’d think love could sell chem­istry? Six­teen-year-old Eli Ciri­no did, and was he ever right. The tenth grad­er sub­mit­ted an extra cred­it video for his chem­istry class and what he got was prob­a­bly way more than he bar­gained for. Good Chem­istry explains chem­i­cal bonds using con­struc­tion paper ani­ma­tion of pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive ions and cova­lent bonds set against an orig­i­nal song sung by Ciri­no. It’s all edit­ed togeth­er with images of a cute cou­ple reach­ing out and clasp­ing hands. A sam­ple of Cirino’s lyrics: “We always on the look­out for a part­ner­ship, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive you get the drift.” It’s catchy and sweet, to the tune of more than 290,000 views on YouTube by the end of the day Wednes­day. Extra cred­it for Ciri­no for bring­ing the video in at pi-time: three min­utes, four­teen sec­onds.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lancer. Find more of her work at .

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Morgan Freeman Teaches Kids to Read in Vintage Electric Company Footage from 1971

in Education, K-12, Television | May 17th, 2012

Every actor has to start some­where, and Mor­gan Free­man (Dri­ving Miss Daisy, The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion, and Mil­lion Dol­lar Baby) could have done worse than join­ing the cast of The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny, the PBS chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion series that aired from 1971 to 1977. The orig­i­nal cast includ­ed Bill Cos­by and Rita Moreno (not bad com­pa­ny), and the ver­sa­tile Free­man played a series of char­ac­ters: “Mel Mounds,” “Vin­cent the Veg­etable Vam­pire,” and then, of course, Easy Read­er. If you’re of my gen­er­a­tion, you might rec­og­nize his theme song above. Below, we show you Easy Read­er (a pun on the 1969 film Easy Rid­er) in action, teach­ing kids to read in his effort­less­ly cool, hip­ster way. H/T Metafil­ter

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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A Child’s Introduction to Jazz by Cannonball Adderley (with Louis Armstrong & Thelonious Monk)

in K-12, Music | May 16th, 2012

In 1961, Julian “Can­non­ball” Adder­ley, the jazz sax­o­phon­ist best known for his work on Miles Davis’ epic album Kind of Blue, nar­rat­ed a chil­dren’s intro­duc­tion to jazz music. Part of a larg­er series of edu­ca­tion­al albums for chil­dren, this 12-inch LP offered an “easy-going, con­ver­sa­tion­al dis­cus­sion of the high­lights of the jazz sto­ry,” high­light­ing the “major styles and great per­form­ers” that began in New Orleans and spread beyond. Includ­ed on the album are some leg­endary jazz fig­ures — Louis Arm­strong, Fats Waller, Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton, Duke Elling­ton, Cole­man Hawkins, Sid­ney Bechet, Thelo­nious Monk, and, of course, Can­non­ball him­self. The album, A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz, has long been out of cir­cu­la­tion. But you can catch it on YouTube, or above.

Thanks to James for telling us about this album on our Face­book page. Feel free to mes­sage us good ideas for posts at Face­book or cc: us on Twit­ter (cc: @openculture). And then there’s always old-fash­ioned email.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Thelo­nious Monk, Bill Evans and More on the Clas­sic Jazz 625 Show

1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

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Watch the Animation of Maurice Sendak’s Surreal and Controversial Story, In the Night Kitchen

in Animation, Books, Film, K-12 | May 9th, 2012

By now you’ve heard the sad news. The beloved chil­dren’s author Mau­rice Sendak died yes­ter­day at the age of 83. Of course, he’s best remem­bered for his clas­sic tale, Where the Wild Things Are (1963). But some read­ers may hold a spe­cial place in their hearts for his 1970 pic­ture book, In the Night Kitchen. It’s a sur­re­al sto­ry that was named one of the Out­stand­ing Chil­dren’s Books of 1970 by The New York Times. It’s also a sto­ry that stirred up some con­tro­ver­sy. At points in the illus­trat­ed book, the three year old pro­tag­o­nist appears naked, shock­ing some crit­ics and read­ers. These days, you’ll find the book rank­ing 25th on the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion’s list of the 100 Most Fre­quent­ly Chal­lenged Books of 1990–2000.

In 1980, illus­tra­tor Gene Deitch got beyond the con­tro­ver­sy and pro­duced a five minute, faith­ful adap­ta­tion of In the Night Kitchen. It appears above, and it’s now right­ful­ly added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of 475 Free Movies Online.

Bonus Mate­r­i­al:

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Crowdsourcing Free Educational Resources for Kids: We Want Your Help

in K-12 | May 8th, 2012

Note: Since this post was writ­ten, we have cre­at­ed a big list of resources called 200 Free K‑12 Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Mobile Apps, Web Sites, Free Books & More. Please check it out.

Call­ing all teach­ers, par­ents, home school­ers, and beyond. We’re going to enter some new ter­ri­to­ry today and start cre­at­ing a big meta col­lec­tion of free edu­ca­tion­al resources for younger stu­dents — for any­one in the K‑12 range. Of course, we all know about the Khan Acad­e­my, and they’ll be includ­ed on the list. But what oth­er great resources would you like to see men­tioned here? For exam­ple, we recent­ly point­ed you to Lit2Go’s col­lec­tion of audio­books for young­sters. In times past, we’ve told you about CK-12 and their free text­books for high school stu­dents; the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion’s Christ­mas Lec­tures for Chil­dren; and these great ani­mat­ed ver­sions of Shake­speare’s plays. If it’s an open edu­ca­tion­al resource geared toward chil­dren, we want to know about it. And we’ll pull them all togeth­er in a nice­ly orga­nized list and share them with you and oth­ers. You can tell us your favorites in the com­ments sec­tion below. Or sim­ply email us your faves here. We thank you in advance for your con­tri­bu­tions!

Image pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of Big­Stock­Pho­to

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MIT & Khan Academy Team Up to Develop Science Videos for Kids. Includes The Physics of Unicycling

in K-12, MIT, Video - Science | May 3rd, 2012

Of course, the big news this week is that MIT and Har­vard announced that they’re join­ing forces to offer free online cours­es start­ing next fall. We gave you the scoop on that yes­ter­day. Now we give you anoth­er MIT announce­ment that has large­ly flown beneath the radar.

MIT is team­ing up with Khan Acad­e­my (whose founder went to MIT and will deliv­er MIT’s com­mence­ment speech this spring), and togeth­er they will pro­duce “short videos teach­ing basic con­cepts in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing” for K‑12 stu­dents. The videos will be pro­duced by MIT’s ever-so-cre­ative stu­dents them­selves and then be made avail­able through a ded­i­cat­ed MIT web­site and YouTube chan­nel. You can click the links to start watch­ing the first batch of videos, or watch an exam­ple above, The Physics of Uni­cy­cling. H/T @HKPerkinson

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Lit2Go’s 200 Free (and Teacher-Friendly) Audio Books: Ready for Downloads

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature | May 3rd, 2012

A num­ber of sites offer free Mp3s of pub­lic domain books—Lib­rivox and Podi­o­books, for instance. What sets apart Lit2Go, the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Florida’s exten­sive col­lec­tion of free audio books (Web — iTunes), are the mate­ri­als to help K‑12 teach­ers present lit­er­a­ture in the class­room.

From fairy tales to The Ili­ad (Web — iTunes), Lit2Go orga­nizes more than 200 titles by author and genre (adven­ture, goth­ic, his­to­ry, sci­ence fic­tion) with clear genre descrip­tions and plot sum­maries for young read­ers. The look and feel of the site’s beta ver­sion is user-friend­ly and library-like, with type­writer fonts and illus­tra­tions mak­ing it a plea­sure to browse. There are a few small kinks to be worked out how­ev­er, so teach­ers inter­est­ed in down­load­ing sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als should opt for the orig­i­nal site.

Lit2Go mar­ries the old school library form (each novel’s year of pub­li­ca­tion and orig­i­nal pub­lish­er is includ­ed) with the capac­i­ty of the web (a link takes read­ers direct­ly to the iTunes store, where Lit2Go has its own sec­tion of free down­loads).

Many titles include sup­port mate­r­i­al to kick off class­room dis­cus­sion or to coach stu­dents through devel­op­ing their own char­ac­ter dia­grams. One of the site’s real assets is the way it curates titles into col­lec­tions, includ­ing African-Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture, Amer­i­can Founders and the intrigu­ing Hap­pi­ness Col­lec­tion where read­ers find Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “The Swing” and Shakespeare’s heart-stop­ping scene in which Fri­ar Lau­rence mar­ries Romeo to Juli­et (Web — iTunes).

Anoth­er cura­to­r­i­al bonus: Mate­ri­als are also orga­nized by grade lev­el, using the Flesch-Kin­caid Grade Lev­el index. Teach­ers and stu­dents can also down­load each title’s full text as a PDF, to read along to the audio.

Mean­while, your can find hun­dreds of down­load­able works of lit­er­a­ture in our own meta col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed. 

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