Greetings!
Here is the link to my final project, "Letting go of the grid in an urban school garden!" I hope you find it inspiring and helpful if you are considering a school garden yourself.
Letting of the grid in an urban school garden!
Please let me know if you have any difficulties with accessing any of the files or the presentation itself.
Courtney L
Hello everyone!
Here is the link to the draft of my final project. I appreciate any and all feedback! I haven't yet completed the audio recording for each slide, and I'm still working on the unit and lesson plans so those will be inserted once they are complete. Please let me know if the link is working or not, I struggle with technology!
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FcqP9zQDxjTX4Zxkrl8-ZeTzs2r8aL_HGOosEp_DSi0/edit?usp=sharing
This week’s article is titled “The ancient art of laying rope” by Bohr and Olsen (2011).
I started this article by reading the abstract, and was immediately intrigued with how ropes are described as helical structures featuring a maximum number of twists. These twists are a geometrical feature as opposed to a material property. When placed under strain, ropes become a zero twist structure and therefore do not rotate in either direction.
STOP - My mind immediately pictured DNA in its helical form. I imagined a side by side comparison of rope and DNA and I wondered if their structures would appear similar to one another. I wondered if DNA would also become a “zero twist structure” when placed under strain. What more can we learn about DNA by studying ropes? How many twists does it take to create a zero twist structure?
It turns out that I’m not the only one to make a connection between ropes and DNA. DNA actually represents an optimal helical structure, in which the twists are as closely packed as can be due to the molecular geometry.
To create the optimal rope structure, a rope layer must consider the following: the number of strands, the rotation of the strands, and tensile stress. To achieve the zero twist configuration, the strands must maximally rotate in one direction, while the rope is maximally twisted in the opposite direction. This also accounts for the rope's ability to maintain a constant length, as it is in essence, in equilibrium.
STOP - There was a lot of math presented within the paper to explain how the author’s arrived at these conclusions. It was way over my head. It seemed to involve a lot of trigonometry which I found interesting. I have very little experience with trigonometry, but it was all in regards to triangles and determining missing angles etc. Ropes are helical, and obviously not triangular, so how are they connected?
Activity
I chose to try the flat braiding activity this week. I attempted to do the activity with 5 pipe cleaners, and it was a bit of a mess. The pattern started out okay, but I struggled to maintain it for more than a few turns. I think part of the issue was that pipe cleaners are essentially just a metal wire encased in fuzz. They don’t lay flat on top of each other in the same way as ribbon or paper. It was fun to create a product again, even if it didn’t turn out pretty. I used to do the odd craft when I had more time, but I stopped when I started this program as I was just way too busy for a hobby. I forgot how much satisfaction there was in watching the end result appear.
