"So We Beat On...

...boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" -The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Although I don't approve of many of Mr. Fitzgerald's life choices (the same goes for his wife's. Read A Moveable Feast by Hemingway and you'll see why), he is a brilliant writer and I've often taken stuff from him.

So, 5 days left in this program. A little over a week. And then I'm free. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let us recap.

Tuesday we covered Electicity/Circuits.

Electricity:
Tuesday we did basics of circuit building namely: how do you make a light bulb light up with a bulb, a battery, and a single wire? I realize I'm pushing these kids beyond some of their limits, as I remember doing this experiment in 6th grade myself, though there's no point in teaching if I don't push their limits and expand their comfort circles.

An interesting thing about my day: As the day progresses, the children get progressively younger. I start with the oldest kids right after lunch, and end with the youngest ones. This is slightly problematic in that since I'm teaching the same material for each class, I have to scale the lesson appropriately. Starting with the oldest ones is easy, as I can generally explain the content as I understand it on a basic level. But I have a hard time gauging how much I have to simplify for the younger kids. For the older kids, I made an analogy that a circuit is like going to the market, where the market is the battery and the bulb is your home, and you need a car (electron) to carry the charge (food) along the road (wire) back to your home. To explain why you need to connect a second wire to the negative terminal, I told them it's like a one way street, and you can't just go back along the same wire. I thought this analogy would work well with the little ones, but I failed to take into account a few things. First, some little kids don't know what a battery is. The concept of a one-way street was also lost on them.

But the lesson went well overall. A lot of the kids burned themselves because they don't listen to directions. I spent a good 10 minutes going over what a short circuit was and why you should never make one. I explained that it would burn them. Yet, not 2 minutes after I finish explaining what not to do, I hear a "ouch". Which prompts the other kids to short their circuits just to see what it feels like. At the end, everyone was able to light their bulb, which is all I was looking for.

So I have Zachary Litman to thank for showing me the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. It's called a homopolar motor, and after taking much much physics over the years, I know why it works. But who cares, here's the one I made:

This is one of the few things that truly impressed me. Part of it is its simplicity, and part of it is how well it works. A neodymium magnet (I bought mine at Wal-mart. It was in the crafts section), a AA battery, and a loop of copper wire. I showed this to the kids and it blew their minds. I think one of the coolest details I noticed is that the wire must be copper wire. Why you might ask? Well, copper is diamagnetic (one of the many things I learned from the 2nd semester of PChem Lab. That, and how awesome lasers are), meaning there won't be any drag from its interaction with the magnets. I originally tried it with a paperclip loop, and it did not work at all. These little details fascinate me.

One thing that never fails to amuse me is that the little kids aren't always the ones that are most impressed by the experiments. A lot of the times, its the junior leaders who are the most thrilled to come to my class. All the junior leaders are High School students, but they act like little kids when they see some of the experiments. The homopolar motor was a big hit with a bunch of them. I also know one of the leaders, Jody, was fascinated by my inherited traits lesson. Who said only the little kids were there to learn?

Here's my shirt pocket from that day:

Be not fooled by this simple, unassuming shirt pocket. Like an iceberg, 8/9ths of the stuff is hidden below. In this shirt pocket, should you care to dig, you would have found: 7 AA batteries, 5 2,4V 0.2A light bulbs, a loop of copper wire, a pair of wire stripping pliers, and 8 neodymium button magnets, and a Nature Valley Oat and Honey Granola bar.

A note about the above shirt. This shirt is rather busy. But I don't really have a problem about it, since I don't usually care what I look like (since I can't really see myself unless I look in a mirror). But what is terribly embarrassing is going into Long's Drug Store and discovering that you are wearing the same shirt as the employees. What makes it worse is being asked where the Polydent is by little old ladies.

And the countdown begins.

A Long One, Filled With Much Introspection

After a much needed three day weekend, I'm coming to terms with the fact that there are only 8 more days left in this program. Sorry, scratch that. I'm overjoyed that there are only 8 more days left in this program. Sure I'll miss teaching their sweaty little, tear-streaked faces, but such thoughts are saved for a retrospective evaluation a month down the road. For now, we must continue teaching.

These three days has given me time for a rare activity these days: thinking. I'd have never thought I'd have to budget my time for thinking, but such is the case of this modern work-a-day lifestyle. Let us begin.

Throughout my life, noticeably in high school, I've been a dabbler. A Renaissance man. A Jack of all Trades, but a Master of None. The latter part of the final idiom had never really bothered me until I got to college. I had always thought that my versatility, and the breadth of my experiences was what had gotten me into Yale. But as I began to interact with my fellows, and more importantly, take classes and tests, my opinion began to turn. I began to see that my dabbling had denied me extensive depth in any one subject. My first rather rude awakening to this fact was taking Perspectives on Science (and Engineering, since engineers are second class citizens. Freshman Orgo also provided a bit of a shock, but that's a whole 'nother story). I had always enjoyed science, though I had never really pursued it in an extracurricular manner. I went to class, got my A, and that was the extent of my science exposure. Meanwhile, I would fill my time auditioning for plays, playing in bands, reading whatever I could find and MOCK COMBAT! with my Military History Club (Offically called the Reenactors' and Military Historians' Society, or ReMiHS, but it's quite a mouthful):

(I'm the tall white guy in the back).
But it never even crossed my mind to explore science beyond class. I do realize the irony of who I am now and what I'm doing with my life, but there's time to remark on the peculiarity of my life later. Coming into Perspectives on Science (a program I only got in off the waitlist. I was actually deciding between Directed Studies and Perspectives, but after the DS registration passed, I figured the decision was made for me) armed with a motley assortment of AP Chem and Physics knowledge, I was vastly overwhelmed. And it showed in a rather unseemly way.

I came to reflect upon my predicament as I've been fond of doing in such times. I decided that I would commit myself wholly unto Science, as my selection of courses had unwittingly steered myself that way. Music was my one concession, my one exception to this rule, as I don't like quitting things, like Concert Band, and figured I might as well just keep playing.

I bring this up because I recent went back and reread Plato's The Republic, inspired by all this Mr. Devlin talk. One of the big, over arching points Plato/Socrates makes is about specialization. Every man has an arete, sort of like a life purpose, very similar to the concept of dharma in Hinduism. Some people's arete demands they become politicians, others demand they become garbage men. There was no shame in being a garbage man, as long as that's what you were meant to do. But one thing that Plato/Socrates makes clear is that multi-tasking, and despecializing was a bad thing. Would you rather go to the man who is solely committed to being a doctor, or the one who's a doctor half the time, and a used car salesman the other half of the time?

When I first came across this in high school, I found this rather distressing, and a little perplexing. I had devoted my life in a way quite orthogonal to this notion of arete. And upon arriving in college, it appeared that specialization was the way to go.

This 4th of July weekend, I visited the Farmer's Market at Kapiolani Community College, a haven for such specialists. Some stalls only sold jars of honey, others only sold tomatoes. And the food was amazing. Sure they only sold one type of produce, but the tomatoes were some of the best I've ever tasted. I also visited an orchid breeder, and bought a little friend:

His name, I'm told, is "Nobby". The tag reads that it's across between what sounds like racehorses: Be Glad x Mahogany Leopard = P. Nobby's Little Candy. But I digress.

And for a while this specialization in science thing has worked. My grades have been slowly but surely improving, and I've carved a cozy niche amongst my scientist friends, whom I cherish in a way I never thought I would. But since this is a story, there has to be some conflict, rising action and the rest.

I first became acutely aware of it at the end of the summer of 2009, after serving my time in New Haven doing membrane research with an Environmental Engineering lab. In this lab, I spent 9 hour work days reading papers, making, testing and improving membranes for osmotic processes. Very specialized.

But I was understimulated, and deeply dissatisfied with my life. I loved my research, thought it was genuinely exciting and interesting. But it was incessant. My day to day life lacked a natural rhythm to break up the monotony. This atonal existence was not working. I deeply missed doing non-science things. I missed singing and acting. I missed spending hours in the kitchen baking and trying to get out of washing my dishes. I missed watching hours and hours of Band of Brothers, getting lost in the story telling and the drama of WWII.

And now that I'm beginning to ramble (and become self-aware. OOOOHHH.), I'll come to my conclusion. I've realized can't be a specialist. Socrates would hate my existence.

But I can't help being a Jack of all Trades, dabbling a little bit in every creative medium, academic discipline, and hobby circle. I'm still bothered by the Master of None bit, but I'm learning to live with it (in the same way that I've come to accept I actually have to study for tests now that I'm in college, and that even if I work my ass off, I'll still come out slightly below average). And I'm finding others out there like me. Those people who told me that you'd have to pick one thing and stick with it at Yale were wrong. I went to Yale because I couldn't just pick one. And there are hundreds other like me, fellow dabblers.

And as I approach the inevitable end of my run as "Mr. Science", I'm searching for something to fill the rest of my summer with. My first instinct was to find something science-y to do, like breed orchids (which sounds really fun), or learn programming. And I'll probably end up doing something like that either way. But I need to balance it out with something completely unrelated. So far, I've had the wit to balance my science teaching with a late night hobby (not pr0n): music. Composing, playing and recording a crappy collection of things that catch my ear has in part saved my sanity from the horrors of this job. And to those of you who facilitated such a distraction, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

So, my fellow dabblers of the world: I may have strayed from the path, forgotten who I am, and lost my way. I may have forgotten how to keep myself happy. I may have forgotten everything I learned from Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. I may have affected a persona I was never meant to assume. But I'm back. And baby, it's going to be good. Real good.

Hamlet, Act I, Scene iv, 87-91

There was something terribly wrong about today. It started as a trace feeling felt on the fringes of my subconscious and slowly crawled it's way into the forefront of my mind. But still, I could not pinpoint the source of this discomfort, this aberration from the State of Nature. Yes, even the fuzzy woodland creatures that scamper across the telephone lines and glide ever so precariously through the urban canopy could tell something was off kilter. But the source of this abnormality eluded me.

Then I looked down.

And saw these:

Shoes.

Shoes and Socks.

A horrid combination to be sure, the very antithesis of my island lifestyle. So confining, so restrictive. A hot, stuffy prison designed to coddle our once proud, strong, and functional feet, leaving soft, tender, fleshy bags sewn to the bottom of our legs.

But that's not it, my friends. Even with the discovery of this oddity, I could still sense a peculiarity, something that didn't sit right with me.

I felt it in my gut. No, not my gut, that's not quite right. It was more of a burning in my chest. A lingering, wanton fire, smoldering just left of center (where most people mistakenly think their heart is). I'd imagine it's the same feeling that headless chickens, or cockroaches must feel at the moment of decapitation. A distinct sense of loss, longing, and separation.

I looked in the mirror and noticed something terribly wrong:

No shirt pocket. No collar. No lapel. No buttons. A T-shirt.

An explanation to my slovenly, dejected and defeated dress? Field Trip.

The morning teachers arranged for a field trip into Chinatown for a walking tour (quick note. The tour organization, the Chinese Heritage something something, is run by my relatives, a collection of Aunts and Cousins. Considering my entire family is Japanese, this is rather confusing. But, cross-culturalism is always a good thing. But still, really?). And as a good teacher, employee, and son, I volunteered to help chaperon one of the groups, since I was the only one available on the payroll and able to legally be in charge of a group.

I love walking around Chinatown. Sure, it's dirty and kind of dangerous to wander around, but the food is fantastic and dirt cheap. Look fun noodles for less than a dollar a roll. Ma Tai Su, Pork Hash, and Manapua all for a few cents a piece. Needless to say, I had a very good lunch that day.

One of the most interesting things I noted with some delight was the transliteration of Hawaiian street names into Mandarin (which most Chinese in Hawaii don't speak, since most came from Guangdong a generation or two ago, and therefore speak Cantonese).

Here we have North Pauahi Street (named after Bernice Pauahi Bishop, part of the old Hawaiian royalty, and a Philanthropist who threw a lot of money into education.) The transliteration reads: Pu3Wa2Xi1Jie1(Bei3).
Also:

Here we have Mauna Kea St (most likely named after one of the 5 volcanoes that make up the island of Hawaii {the Big Island, as it is called}. The other 4 are: Mauna Loa, Kohala, Hualalai, Kilauea). The translation reads: Mo2Na4Gei1Ya1Jie1.

Aside from one heat induced bloody nose in one of my kids, the day went rather well. No one got lost, no one got hurt. No broken merchandise had to be paid for. Many samples were had.

I also found a candy I haven't had in a long time. I technically started learning Chinese in 3rd grade, when Mr. Wong (Huang2 Lao3shi1) would come once a week and teach us language and cultural things. He was pretty cheap (pake {pah-KAY), as locals call it), and so would reward us with virtual prizes (pieces of paper with pictures of cake, candy, and cookies on it) I suppose we were meant to collect. But on the rare occasion he would actually give us something material, he would reward us with Haw Flakes:

Not a roll of Haw Flakes, but a single wafer (think Chinese Neco Wafers). Regardless, I used to love them, though people's opinions differ greatly on the matter. The characters read Shan1Zha1Bing3, which translates to Hawthorne Berry Cakes.

This field trip was also one of my proudest moments as a teacher. We were waiting by the canal for the bus to come, and one of my students runs up to me and tells me: "Mr. Sakimoto! Come here! Look! It's a crab and it's camouflaging! Look! It's the same color as the rock, so it's hard to see! Camouflage!" Terribly, terribly proud.

After an amazing lunch back at school (Char Hung Sut, amazing Ma Tai Su, so-so manapua(cha1shao1bao1, for you Mainland types)), I was very full and very sleepy. But I had to actually start teaching, so no time for a nap.

Today we covered inherited traits, through the guise of a bingo game. I gave them a lot, but some of the more interesting ones include:
-Hitchhiker's thumb
-Widow's peak
-When you clasp your hands, which thumb is on top, right or left?
-Same for crossing arms
-Is your 2nd toe longer than your big toe
-Hair color
-Eye color
-Can you do the Vulcan sign?
-Tongue rolling (which I've read actually has no genetic basis. Oh, well)
-Which is taller, your pointer or ring finger?

So here's the thing about the last one on that list. I can easily tell that my ring finger is longer than my pointer finger. And both hands are the same way. But apparently determining such things are not easy for everybody. One of my kids had the pointer longer on one hand, and the ring finger longer on the other hand.

And some people have freakish hands altogether. One of my students, M-----, came up to me, and told me she had both (or neither) taller. I didn't believe her and asked her to show me. If she held her hand with palm away from her, her ring finger was taller:

But if she rotated her palm towards her, it switched:

Her pointer was now longer than her ring finger! This blew my mind. I must have asked her to show me a dozen times. Pretty awesome, as evidenced by the amused looks on my students' faces. But still very perplexing, as evidenced by my sister's confuzzled look in the back. I'd have to guess that it has something to do with how your musculature and tendons are interconnected, and turning your wrist/elbow tugs and pushes your fingers forward and back. Made my day.

Three day weekend, since it would be a shame to waste such a fun holiday as 4th of July on a weekend. I've been tinkering around with an electronics kit I got as a kid, since we'll be covering electricity, circuits, and magnetism next week. This kit is pretty sweet, now that I'm older, have taken physics classes, and know what all these things are. Aside from a motley assortment of capacitors, resistors, LED's, bulbs, transistors, diodes, photovoltaic cells, and transformers, it also comes with a reed switch, which I'm going to have a lot of fun with. After PChem Lab and Physics with Shankar, I think I can make some pretty nifty circuits. Hopefully.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

And we have a winner for Baby Bunsen Burners' 2nd Contest!

Congratulations to recruiter Anthony Hsu, and the recruitee, Andy Tien.

As per the contest, both will receive a special Science related prize, most likely from Think Geek, which has many awesome things.

What I need from the contest winners is for you to email me* your shipping addresses so that I can send you your prize. Since I know people are all over the place this summer, send me whatever address you'll be at for the next two weeks or so, or else you may never get it.

Also, once you get your prize, if you could take a picture of yourself enjoying your prize, I would like to post it on the blog. Thanks.

*There's a Send Message feature through my blogger profile. Try use this.

Macbeth, Act V, Scene v, 19-28

And as we roll into the first auspicious day of July, we find ourselves beginning to near the end. By my count, there remain 9 more classes left in this program, spanning a short two weeks (hoo-ah). Now that the prospect of not having to create lesson plans every day, and babysit 90 screaming kids, is slowly creeping into that fuzzy corner of my eye (where most ghosts, spectres, and bogeymen are spotted), my mind is reeling with project ideas. So many ideas and inspirations birthed in the twilight hours of all-nighters, late night conversations, and mid-morning brunches deferred to a less hectic time. Well, that less hectic time is perhaps a stone's throw and a half away, and I'm getting excited. But we must see each project through to the end with dignity and poise. So let us recap:

Today we continued fingerprinting with the remaining classes. Luckily, I had most of the older kids, who could work self-guided which made my life easier. I even had time to take pictures:

I had them put their prints on an index card and we played a guessing/matching game.

But what would this summer job be without a little bit of stress and turmoil, eh?

The inspector came today. Let me rephrase that. The inspector who gives us our licensing that allows us to operate came today. I had actually forgotten, which was not a good way to start the day. A few moments before the inspector got to my class, one of the administrators called my class to tell me she was coming, sending an "oh sh*t" shiver (alliteration!) through my spine as I realized that I had the A group, the littlest ones, next. Usually, 50% of this class is spent getting them to sit down and be quite. 10% is relegated to controlling each M----- and A--, which usually involves me assigning them a special chair in the back of the room, and shooting them dirty looks when they start talking. 30% is reserved for bathroom and water breaks, since the junior leader who is supposed to take care of this while I'm teaching is never there, and I'm forced to take the whole class to the bathroom each time, lest one of the kids has and accident. The remaining 10% is left for actual teaching, which is honestly more than I expect with these kids.

Anywho, the inspector had the perfect timing to come visit my class while I had these youngsters. And this progressed as usual, with mayhem and chaos. They were especially rowdy today, forcing me to turn off the lights at one point just so I could get their attention. Those little clapping games other teachers use to get their kids attention? Doesn't work when half those kids are screaming at the top of their lungs about a bird that wandered into the class. More screaming ensued when I told them we were using pencil lead (graphite) to take their fingerprints, as they thought I was trying to poison them. A lot of coaxing and coddling. But everyone got their prints taken. No one was killed (except a little part of me that loved teaching), and I supposed we passed the inspection. I could see the inspector giving me sympathetic looks during her visit. But really, does it even matter? There are only two weeks left in the program, what would taking away our license really do? I've already made a good chunk of change from this job, and I think the kids have learned a lot as it is. But still, it's nice to meet the approval of your somewhat-superiors.

Here's today's shirt pocket:

The inventory: 12 pencils of various lengths and sharpness, a pair of scissors, a pack of 100 index cards, two American flags (which were confiscated after I told them to stop playing with them in class. They were returned. Eventually), 3 dry-erase pens, a rubber band, and a spork.


And since July 1st was apparently a special day (some of my kids were hounding me for not wearing red, white or blue, since it was 3 days before the 4th of July [who knew that three days before a holiday was special?], and decided to pinch me as if it were Saint Patty's day), my loyal readership, I have a two-fer-one deal. Act now, and you get not one overly burdened shirt pocket, but TWO!

This second pocket contained: a pencil, an ipod nano (1st generation), another confiscated American flag (not returned), and a stash of 4 Starlight mints (from a bag which are so old, the hard candies have now become taffy-like. Chewing them relieves some stress, and leaves my breath minty fresh.)

Tomorrow I am going to school to help chaperon a trip to Chinatown with the morning session. I apparently will be chaperoning a mixed group (with kids from each of the 6 groups) of the "good" kids. And E----. I get E----. I'm loosing patience with E----. He's a brat and a bully, and I would have hated him as a kid. But I'm older and slightly more patient now, and hope that this horribleness is a phase he will grow out of. But we'll see. There's much time left for us to see.

Baby Bunsen Burners Contest the Second

I feel like hosting another contest. So here it is:

Ba da da da!

I want more followers. As of now I have seven (7), which is sad. I would like more. The first person to recruit another Follower (I'm like a cult leader. Quick, everyone drink the special punch before the rocket ship moves on from behind the moon) will win the prize. I'll even give a prize to the 8th Follower.

Here's the rules:
-The new recruit must be a real person, not an additional account you create. I'm smart, I can tell if you're doing this.
-You must provide proof that you're responsible for the recruitment, such as an email transcription, a recorded phone call, etc.
-In the event of a tie (such that I cannot tell who recruited a new Follower first), I will give the prize to whomever recruits more people.

Again, the prize for the winner is negotiable, and will be discussed upon completion of the task, but I think some sort of science toy (like magnetic Buckyballs) would be appropriate.

Have at it people. Father Sakimoto will be pleased.

Catechism: Catholics Are Funny

The week thus far has been a very teacher-y week. Allow me to catechize you:

What do you mean by this?
I mean that I've had to do a lot of teacher related things, rather than educator things.

Aren't they are the same thing?
No. As an educator, I'm responsible for teaching them science, and making sure they're learning the material. As a teacher, I have to break up fights, put people in time out, and hound people about doing homework.

Why haven't you been doing teacher-y things thus far?
Well, I've been trying to avoid them. I've come to realize I don't want to be a teacher (particularly an elementary school teacher). I love talking science, and showing kids why I love science, but I hate having to discipline and yell. I'm a kind-hearted, gentle giant. Plus, some of these kids are brats, and I've been trying to not get worked up over these little pills.

What have you had to do today, Mr. Sakimoto?
Well, as always, N---- and E---- got in a fight. I've come to realize that as smart and brilliant as E---- is, he's a bully. And I told him so. He did not like this. I think his opinion of me is starting to turn, because I made him sit on the side and write for half the class for bullying N----. He did not like this either. I don't think I'm his favorite person in the world. Good. I have no tolerance for the cruel-hearted.

What else have you had to face, Mr. Science?
Well, aside from the usual yelling and scolding, we had a practice fire drill. Not a fire drill, but a practice for the practice fire evacuation exercise. Yup. I had the youngest group, which includes young A--, form whom I had to confiscate a number of things to make sure he listened. I also made him my special friend, which mandated that he stand next to me during the fire drill, and sit in a special chair during class, pretending he's a statue (meaning he can't talk and can't move).
I also had to crack down on this one kid D----, who refuses to write in his journal, as everyone is supposed to. When he does write, he copies what someone else write. But he copies it wrong. I asked him to write something about the difference between animal cells and plant cells. He wrote that animal cells have cell walls while plants don't, which is downright wrong. After arguing with him for 10 minutes, he ran out of the class to cry. It felt good.

As an educator, I did fingerprinting with the kids. Using graphite from a pencil, we transferred their thumb prints to a piece of tape and identified the salient features, like the major patterns: whorl, arch, and loop. Thankfully, it was rather clean, and the mess was isolated to their smudgy papers.

So here's something that blew my mind. I suppose I had never really looked at my fingerprints, had never really studied them. But here's what surprised me: my thumbs have two different patterns on them. My right thumb is a whorl, and my left is a loop. I naturally assumed that my thumb prints were more or less identical, but apparently that is not the case. I'm interested to see if anyone else has heterogeneous thumb prints.

I'm somewhat happy to be finishing up biology, since it's rather unfamiliar territory. Next week we'll be heading back to physics to talk about circuits, harmonics, and optics, three topics I'm rather fond of.

Here's today's shirt pocket:

The inventory: Four pencils, two pairs of scissors, A--'s spoon and hair tie contraption he was playing with, a fork, a handout about the three types of fingerprint patterns, and my ID. This is also my only silk shirt. I've discovered I'm not a fan of silk. I'm a simple, poly-cotton blend person. No frills. It was also missing a button and I used a safety pin to close my shirt. The kids made fun of me.

And it was recently pointed out to me that I should post a happier picture from my childhood. We'll step it up in increments:

I used to be deathly afraid of fire crackers. As you can see from the picture, I had to be decked out and covered head to toe. I used an oven mitt to hold the morning glory sparkler, because I was afraid to get burned. The situation wasn't helped by my dad, intending to cure me of my fright, threw a bunch of those ground blooming flower ones at me. Not funny. Made it worse. Now I'm fine with fireworks. This is from New Year's. Me and my sis. Good times.

And so, as I once again find myself with half formed lesson plans that will have to be finalized in the morning, I bid you all adieu.