Math Conversations - 8/8/11

Midday in the kitchen, 16 yo son walks into the room.  He says:  I wonder how much 16 to the 16th power is?

Me:  rather startled, 16 to the 16th power?  What made you think of that?

Him:  I dunno.  I just wondered.

(perhaps his age?)

Me, spotting a little calculator on the lazy susan (where it most certainly shouldn't be):  There's a calculator.  Why don't you use it and figure it out?

Him, trying not to be too condescending:  Mom, there isn't enough space on that calculator to write out that big of a number.

Me:  oh.

Him:  I'll use the computer.

Son goes to  the computer, does something, announces that 16 to the 16th power is 1.84467441 × 10¹⁹  (I just copied this from the internet)

12 yo son who's been playing on his gameboywhachamacallit on the couch, looks up idly.  Hey, what comes after a  trillion?

Quadrillion, 16 yo answers.  

After that?  asks 12 yo.  Quintillion? I guessed.  We agree that sounds right.  

After that?  12 yo wants to see how far we can go.

Sextillion, Septillion, Octillion. . . 

We get stuck at nine.  Nontillion?  Maybe?

16 yo says - isn't it funny that we used to say billions of stars to mean some amount we could hardly imagine?  Now we should just say "as big as our national debt.  That's in the trillions!"  ( He might have read that somewhere.  He tends to quote cartoons a lot.)

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19 yo son gave his old ipod to 10 yo sister.  10 yo sister is thrilled.  He downloaded lots of music he deemed suitable for her (he's a good big brother that way, very careful of protecting her innocence).

10 yo comes marching into the room.  She marches around the coffee table and then around the kitchen table. 


 Look mom, I'm measuring my steps.  I just figured out the pedometer function on Will's old ipod!


Me:  Really?  I had no idea ipods had pedometers in them.


Her:  Well, this one does and I'm measuring my steps.  


She continues to march around.  Then she stops and inspects the ipod.


142!  She announces.  I've taken 142 steps!


Then she gets a puzzled expression her face.  


Her:  How can a pedometer tell you how far you've gone.  It can only tell you the number of steps.  What if you want to know miles?

Me:  Well, you probably have to measure your step and then calibrate the pedometer so that it can calculate how many feet, yards or miles you've walked.  But, I have no idea how to do that!


Her:  Hmm.  But what if I'm just walking around the coffee table. I'm not really traveling miles, am I?  I'm just staying in one place.


Me:  Well, it would measure how far you would have gone if you had been covering ground instead of walking in circles.


Her:  Oh.


Pause.  Then:  Okay!


Then she's back to marching through the house.


To see other Math Monday entries, please go to this link

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Book 37

After reading three non-fiction books, I decided to try a novel.  Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson tells the story of retired and widowed Major Pettigrew, who lives in a small seaside village in England and who finds himself falling for Mrs. Ali, the lovely, intelligent and free spirited Pakistani widow who runs the local village shop.

There are all kinds of complications;  Major Pettigrew's family, his little circle of friends at the golf club and the cultural differences between Major Pettigrew's very British outlook on life and Mrs. Ali's traditional Muslim family.

I saw in a review that Simonson's writing was compared to Jane Austen's.  This is a bit of a stretch.   I guess people think that any quiet romantic novel set in England is Austenesque?  This book reminded me a bit of Barbara Pym, though I haven't read any of her novels for at least a couple of decades.  But anyway, I enjoyed this book greatly.  I liked the Major very much.  He is a throw back to a genteel, noble, principled worldview and he's at odds with his materialistic, socially grasping son, his narrow-minded compatriots at the golf club and even his own selfish, less than noble character flaws.  He is wonderfully drawn.  Unfortunately, the other characters are not so well crafted.  Unlike Austen, who was pretty good at defining characters, I never really got a good hold on a lot of the other characters and what made them tick.  I was especially frustrated with Mrs. Ali, who just didn't quite work for me.  I found the character of the son frustrating as well.  I kept waiting for something cathartic to happen to make him more likable and less wimpy, or at least give me a clue into why he turned out so badly, but even though things kept happening, you never get the sense that he ever grew up in any way.

I read most of the novel really quickly, highly enjoying the Major's character and wit.  There are some very funny lines in the book. But at the very end, just when the climax of the book should be so satisfying, I found it too contrived.  It rankled me and I wound up putting it aside for a couple of days before I finished it out of a sense of duty.

For more book reviews see Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Win a free book!

It happens to be the book to which I contributed a chapter!

Go here to find out more!  http://benmakesten.blogspot.com/2011/08/win-free-book.html

Blogging Plans

I love blogging but I am very inconsistent about it, I find.  So in order to be more consistent, I think it would help me if I had a blogging plan for each day.  So here's what I've been thinking:

Sunday - Book review for the 52 Books in 52 Weeks.  I love doing this!

Monday - for a very short time I was doing Math Mondays where they linked up at someone's blog.  I'd love to get back to that and remember the dear person who was hosting that particular meme (or whatever you call it!).  The good thing about Math Mondays is that it makes me think about math.  Something I don't particularly care to think about much.  Most of the Math Monday folks (or is it Monday Math??) have very little children and they post about fun little games or activities they do.  It is wonderful, but my youngest child is 10 now so a lot of it just doesn't work for us.  So I'll be blogging about anything mathy:  lessons we've done during the week, stuff the kids have said, any math strewing going on, interesting math ideas or books, etc.

Tuesday - I think I'll start my own Tuesday meme.  Tuesday is Strewsday.  Nah, that's really awful!  LOL!  But then maybe it is so awful, it's memorable!   Anyway, on that day I'll really focus on any strewing, successful or not, and conscious or not, that is going on around here.

Wednesday - I'll stick with Wordless Wednesday.  That's quick and fun.

Thursday - I know I've seen a Thankful Thursday theme on other blogs.  I like that.  It puts me in a thoughtful frame of mind and makes me appreciate my blessings.

Friday - I like doing the week in review thing.  I keep changing what I call it though.  I think I will stick with the latest title for it, What We've Been Up To.

Saturday - is blogging free day!  Though I'll probably spend some time reading other people's blogs!

So that's the plan.  Let's see how well I stick to it!

What We've Been Up To - 8/5/11

I'm scared!

• The kids (mostly Josh and Will) are STILL painting Josh and Sean's bedroom.  The walls are done, the color is beautiful.  However, we are trying to paint the trim too.  I think we are possibly the slowest family on earth.  We just can't focus on a job like this for more than a couple of hours a day!  LOL!  So Josh painted the trim of 1 window yesterday.  Two more windows, closet doors, bedroom door and the baseboard that runs around the bottom of the walls.  We can't figure out how to paint that because of the carpeting.  The carpeting that I want so, so much to be rid of!
• One day, Becky painted her face like The Joker which was really terrifying.  She has a future as a make up artist, I think!
• We saw a rainbow out our front door.
• I forced, er, encouraged Sean to read a book.  He hasn't picked one up in two months.  After a bit of trouble choosing, he finally settled on Beorn the Proud.  We read a chapter a day for three days but of course there's that attention span issue again.  Mine I mean.  Because I completely forgot about it yesterday.
• Sean's brain is busy bubbling with script ideas, which made me second guess my idea of having him do a full Language Arts program.  I mean he already likes to write and think about writing.  I think if I do the time but not content thing, where he'll have a specific time to write anything he wants, that should serve him.  I might do the grammar book, Magic Lens, with him too.  We'll see.  I'm waffling again!
• Will and Sean, enamored with all the famous voice actors in the new Winnie the Pooh movie, went to see it.  They couldn't persuade Becky to go with them, to make them look legitimate, but they are so into animation and voice acting that they braved any possible jeers aimed at 19 and 12 yo boys and went to see it.
• I read David Copperfield out loud for a hour on Sunday (or was it Monday?) about 20 minutes on Tuesday.  Thursday night I got in another ten minutes.  We are about 3/4's of the way through, maybe slightly more.  It is a race to the finish.  HA!
• Becky finishes her music camp today.  She said this has been her favorite year.  That is saying something since she has loved it every year, but she loves playing the trumpet.  The music school is starting up a beginning concert band and I've enrolled her in that.  She's very excited!  It'll mean more driving next year.  But then, I'll already be living in my car anyway.......... 
• On Wednesday night we invited friends over to watch Hamlet with us.  Josh had read Hamlet together with one of the kids and we had planned to watch it together a couple months ago.  Better late than never!  We only got through half of it though. We stopped when Hamlet (Derek Jacobi who is INCREDIBLE!) was telling Ophelia to get herself to a nunnery.  Long play!  So they are coming back over again tonight to finish it.
• Will has been doing his regular stuff:  mowing the lawn, helping to drive Becky and other kids places, practicing lots of music, hanging out with Sean, finishing up stuff for Berklee.  He's also dealing with the car.  The one that Hannah is going to drive to TX in a couple of weeks.  The one we just spent so much money on getting it a new engine!  Seems Will ran over something that somehow damage the oil pan (???) and that made the oil leak.  So it is back in the shop!!!
• Hannah is really talking about plans for law school.  She wants to work at NRLC next summer because it'll be election year stuff.  She's also getting ready to back to school.  She's going to be an orientation leader and she got her assignments, etc.  She's also in charge of the Faculty Talent Show which is something they do during. . . can't remember the name of what they call the week that everybody does crazy stuff to raise money for charity.  Hmm, might be called Charity Week!

The rainbow came out very faint in this picture, but you can still sort of see it.

Still Painting!

I love the color the boys selected!

Painting

I am forcing the boys to repaint Josh and Sean's room.  We've actually been talking about doing this for a couple years, but somehow this summer I had the energy to focus on it.  I decided that it was a very good experience for them all.

One day I'll learn to take pictures and account for lighting or lack thereof!

Sean's friend was over and helped some too.

Gee, I'm a terrible photographer!

Hannah wasn't in on the bedroom painting.  She experimented with newspaper print painted nails instead.  Actually, she painted her own bedroom last summer and Becky's the summer before, so she gets this summer off!