The science dilemma in Philippine schools

It is believed that Math and Science are excellent subjects to test children because these subjects are taught and tested devoid of culture and emotion. It is no wonder that, other than Language, Math and Science are part of the three kings of school subjects worldwide.

However, a student’s exam results in these subjects cannot predict his success in life because grades are greatly conditioned by teaching itself.

A person may be labeled as poor in Science not because he is dumb but because of the low quality of science education he has received. This early labeling works against a child as it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy later in life. It will be an injustice to generalize that Filipino children are bad in Science considering that children are naturally inquisitive.

BEWITCHED WORLD OF SCIENCE TEACHING

Under the new Basic Education Curriculum (BEC), we start teaching Science as a subject only in the third grade. Whereas before, we teach Science early in the hope that we could produce students who could excel in this field, teaching Science in Grades 1 and 2 now does not seem to matter because students remain laggards in the said subject.

Lack of training of teachers, overpopulated classrooms, dull curricula, outdated teaching methods, lack of equipment, and books offering Mickey Mouse lessons – these are some of the factors that lead to the poor state of science teaching. This is worsened by the general culture that undermines scientific thinking and technological innovation in favor of “bahala na” (“what will be, will be”) and “puwede na” (‘no need to excel”) in our daily national life.

In the end, the educational system, family and government fail to effectively inculcate scientific thought that is necessary in the development of science and technology. This one whole system must be responsible in the large-scale dumbing down of generations upon generations of Filipinos in the field of Science.

PHILIPPINE PERFORMANCE IN SCIENCE

In the1999 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Philippines ranked 36th in 2nd year high school Science out of 38 countries. By 2003, the country yielded a similar devastating result in the same study, ranking 23rd in Grade 4 Science, among 25 countries. The shock reverberated as the country started talking about a crisis in the Philippine educational system. In the high school level, we ranked 42nd in 2nd year Science, among 45 countries.

The Philippines did not participate anymore in the 2007 TIMSS.

Significantly, Asians are the ones topping the TIMSS. These countries are our East Asian neighbors known for their discipline and ability to unite as a people. These are Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong (China) and Japan.

Filipino students sometimes top international Science competitions, but they usually come from science high schools with special programs.

THE NEED FOR A STRONG SCIENCE PROGRAM 

The country ought to have a strong science education program. Science and technology have propelled the economies of our Asian neighbors, successfully using these two fields in business, crime prevention, transportation, education, art and e-commerce.

If Philippine schools want to be very good in science, they must do that which is difficult and not just what is convenient. They must resist the culture of parents or intermediaries requesting them to just pass the flunked children. Philippine society, unfortunately, remains feudalistic in terms of social relationships where social ties matter more than real merits.

The country has not yet really transcended influence-peddling based on social bonds, to the detriment of the collective system. By allowing this to be practiced in schools, educational institutions become active agents in training the new generation not only in the dirty world of corruption but also in the world where scientific thinking is alien to them.

An alumnus and former faculty member of UP Diliman, the author is president of the Darwin International School System. He studied in Osaka University (Japan), the University of Cambridge (England) and at the University of Leiden (the Netherlands).

By ROLANDO S. DELA CRUZ
mb.com.ph

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The Strange Ingredients in Fireworks

Fireworks for the 4th of July are all about light, color and sound. But inside, there are some bizarre ingredients, from aluminum to Vaseline and even the stuff of rat poison.

An ancient mix of black powder, essentially gunpowder little changed from its invention in China a millennia ago, gets each rocket in the air by creating pressure in gas trapped in a tube, or mortar.

Two fuses are lit at once: one to ignite the black powder, and another that burns slower, creating a well-timed explosion high in the sky.

The shells of commercial fireworks contain a powdery concoction of chemicals that produce the bangs and the whistles, as well as the pretty effects. Tubes, hollow spheres, and paper wrappings work as barriers to compartmentalize the effects. More complicated shells are divided into even more sections to control the timing of secondary explosions.

Big booms and whistles come from flash powder. Once used for flashes in photography, it is a combination of fuel-like metal and a chemical that feeds oxygen to fire up the fuel. Different combinations of metals and oxides produce a whole array of sounds.

While ancient Greeks and Romans used bismuth in their beauty care products and coins, chemists add bismuth trioxide to the flash powder to get that crackling sound, dubbed "dragon eggs." Ear-splitting whistles take four ingredients, including a food preservative and Vaseline.

The variety of color in a fireworks show depends on the mix of metals.

* Copper produces blue sparks.
* A mix of strontium salts, lithium salts and other stuff makes red.
* Aluminum and titanium put the white stars in an aerial flag.
* Barium, also used in rat poison and glass making, makes green.
* Calcium burns orange and sodium, yellow.

In recent years, chemists have worked to develop more environmentally friendly fireworks, in part because one ingredient, perchlorate, was found in higher than normal concentrations in a lake where fireworks were shot off, and the chemical is known to cause thyroid problems in humans.

Meanwhile, to light up a red, white, and blue flag, chemists can lay out the emblem's design on wax paper. The pattern you see up in the air, whether it's a smiley face or a bow tie, mirrors the arrangement of the metals in the shell.

Because the flag, or any other pattern, shoots out from the shell as a two-dimensional image, people watching the show from different angles can't always tell what they're looking at. To make sure everyone has a good view, pyrotechnists tend to send duplicates into the sky at the same time.

You can see fireworks before you hear them because light travels faster than sound.

Source: LiveScience

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Computerized Bike

SAN FRANCISCO engineer Keith Chilcote invented a bike with a computer-controlled automatic transmission. Superficially, Chilcote's 11-speed bicycle doesn't look all that different from most other bikes - except that it has a small computer display on the handlebars. The computer itself, weighing a few ounces, hides beneath the seat. On the hub of the rear wheel is a collection of 64 tiny magnets that are arranged in a ring as big round as a 45-rpm record.

As the wheel turns, the magnets turn with it, passing over a sensor; the rate at which they pass lets the computer determine how fast the wheel is spinning. With so many magnets zipping past, the computer can calculate speed about 120 times a second, allowing the tiniest change to be detected. Comparing this rate with the gear the rider is using, it computes how many revolutions the pedals are making a minute. Human legs pedal most efficiently at 75-rpm; when the computer notices the speed going above or below that, it shifts gears, it slides all the teeth out a little or in a little, forming a new circle with a new circumference. Each tooth can stop at 11 different points along its track.

There are times, however, when a rider wants to pedal faster than 75-rpm - in the final leg of a race, for example. To keep the computer from interfering at such critical moments, Chilcote is developing a pressure sensor for the rear axle. The sensor monitors the force applied to the wear wheel with each pedal push. If the computer detects that the feet are spinning faster than 75-rpm but that pedaling force is nevertheless increasing, it's smart enough to know that the rider probably wants it that way, and it switches to a sprint program. This program allows pedal speed to reach a dervishlike 82 rpm before finally shifting gears.

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Hubble Telescope

Scientists say the Hubble space telescope can see clearly now. Astronauts repaired the space telescope. They also replaced its main camera with a newer one needing less light to take pictures.

One scientist from the American Space Agency, NASA, tried to describe how well the space telescope can see now. He said to imagine that the telescope was in Washington D.C. It would be able to see a very small light in Tokyo and Japan. That is a distance of almost 8,125 miles.

Scientists will use the Hubble space telescope to try to answer several major questions about the universe. These include its size and age. The telescope is named for astronomer Edwin Hubble. his work established that the universe is expanding. By using the Hubble space telescope, scientists hope to learn if the universe will expand forever, or someday fall in on itself.

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Wild Life in the Backyard

To help keep from expanding the list of endangered and extinct species, many nature conservation organizations have focused on creating urban habitats that are inviting to wildlife. "Wildlife shouldn't be treated as if it shouldn't exist in a city," says Peter berg, director of San Francisco's Planet Drum, an ecological education group. "Wildlife is the biological monitor of the health of our cities." Some animals have already successfully made the move into cities across the United States: The endangered peregrine falcon has established itself on high rises and feasts on pigeons; many fish, frogs, and salamanders are quietly flourishing in city ponds; and even deer, raccoons, and coyotes have made a home in local parks. Fostering wildlife is as easy as planting certain flowers in backyards or creating a niche with water and sufficient shelter on front porches. The National Wildlife Institute for Urban Wildlife are also working on the creation booklets with tips for individuals, schools, or other organizations.

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Fast-Moving Star

Scientists say they have measured the speed of a star that is traveling faster than any star ever seen before. The star is traveling at more than 500 miles per second. That is more than 100 times faster than the speed of the sun.

The star is tiny and dense. it is only about 12 miles wide. But it has more mass than the sun. The star is called pulsar. It was formed when a larger star exploded. Pulsars produce no light. But they create radio waves as they rapildy turn.

Scientists discovered the star by observing a giant cloud of gas that is following the pulsar. The cloud is shaped like the musical instrument, the guitar. Scientists say the unusual shape may have resuldted from the movement of the stars as it traveled through different levels of as in the universe.

Scientists say the discovery of a pulsar is common. But they say it is unusual to find such a fast-and-forward-moving one. They say it probably will leave our galaxy in about 100 million years.

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Visible Hearts, Brains and Knees

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) ferrets out previously hidden disorders. The $1.5 million device can pinpoint areas in the brain causing the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, as well as damaged tissues causing epileptic seizures and damage to the heart after an attack.

For a heftier outlay of $2 million, hospitals can install a device called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) imaging that is said by some to be the greatest advance in diagnostics since the X-rays. Superior to the X-ray Computed Tomography (CT scan), it is better for producing images of the back of the brain, the brain stem and the upper spine. It is also useful for diagnosing knee problems.

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World's Biggest Bacterium

The special English Word Book says bacteria are small forms of life that can be seen only through a microscope. But that is no longer true. Researchers recently discovered what appears to be the biggest bacterium on earth. The simple, one-celled organism is so big, it can be seen without a microscope. It was first found in a common surgeonfish caught in the Red Sea. Researchers call the bacterium epulopiscium fishelsoni or E. fishelsoni.

Israeli scientists first discovered the organism in 1985. But they believed that what they had found was not a bacterium. They thought that something so big must be an organism containing more than one structure. But Australian scientists recently proved them wrong. They studied the organism's genes to confirm that E. fishelsoni is a one-celled bacterium.

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How Muscles Move

The scientists say they have found the design of a protein molecule that acts as a motor inside each muscle cell, burning chemical enerygy to produce force. The protein is called myosin.

Myosin creates force when it acts together with another protein, actin. The energy nedded for this is produced when myosin burns the chemical fuel adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. ATP is produced from the food we eat.

The chemical enrgy produced by the ATP then moves the myosin along the actin line. The myosin then attaches to another nearby line of actin. This pulling action causes the sarcomere, and the muscle, to become shorter. The motion of the actin and myosin proteins in a muscle creates force that produces motion and strenght. Studies show that problems with actin and myosin can kill animals.

Scientists think this is also true for people. They know that myosin problems cause some rare diseases. One is a generic heart condition called familial hypertrophic cardiomyophaty. It has killed many young athletes. The new research already has been able to show the real problem in this condition: the myosin cannot link strongly enough to the actin.

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The Fist Computer

No machine, with perhaps the exception of the space station and space shuttle, typifiles our age more than the computer. Although the idea of a computer was conceived about 150 years ago by British scientist Charles Babbage, the construction of one did not become possible until electronics had been developed. The first computer was called "colossus" and was built in total secrecy in Britain in 1943 to crack enemy code messages. Since then, the arrival of the transistor and the increasing miniaturization of this and other electronic components, resulting in today's microchips, have resulted in ever smaller and more powerful computers.

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Uneducated Scientist

During the last 400 years, most inventions and discoveries have been made by scientist using mathematics or applying scientific laws. However, one great British scientist, Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867) did not make use of mathematics. Faraday was the son of a poor blacksmith and received no education beyond reading and writing. Fortunately, Faraday was very inquisitive and taught himself all about science. He was also imaginative. His inquisitiveness led him to investigate electric current which was new to science in the early 1800s. Although unable to express his work in mathematical terms, Faraday used his imagination to picture how electricity works. He visualized that a wire carrying an electric current is surrounded by lines of magnetic forve produced by the flow of the current. He used this idea to find out how electricity and magnetism are linked. This lead him to build the first working model of an electric generator. He then went on to show how electricity affects chemical substances. These discoveries enables us to generate and use electric currents, and are among the most important ever made. Yet they were made bya man who today would bot be able to pass science examinations.

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Heaviest Metal

The heaviest metal in the world is iridium. It was discovered in 1804 by Smithson Tennant of the United Kingdom. Iridium, which is a silvery-white metal of the platinum group, weighs 1,414 pounds a cubic foot or roughly two-thirds of a ton. Lithium, the lightest metal, weighs 33 pounds per cubic foot.

If you could stand an elephant weighing nearly six tons at one end of a seesaw, you would need only a two-foot cube of iridium at the other end to lift the animal. Such a cube would cost nearly 15,000,000 pounds.

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