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/sci/ - Science & Math

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2238837 No.2238837 [Reply] [Original]

What's some "cool" maths/science to show my 13 year old sister that contrary to her beliefs, being intelligent is actually good.

(pic unrelated)

>> No.2238854

Show her triangles!
not kidding, like the different kind of special right triangles, pythagrean theorem, and super cool algebra that goes into all that stuff.

>> No.2238858

>>2238854

Interesting idea... Any idea where I could find something that's relatively dumbed down so that she can understand it?

>> No.2238863

>13 year old sister

Man, if you asked this on any other board............

>> No.2238859

Tell her that all the buildings around her, the lights, the cars, everything she sees around her is due to something scientific. Then give her a textbook about chemistry and tell her to read it.

>> No.2238865

>>2238854
45, 45, 90 is pretty easy, same with 30, 60, 90 triangles.

>> No.2238866

>>2238837
NOVA/NOVA scienceNOW
I love Scientific American Frontiers
Cosmos, of course
Bill Nye might be a bit to childish, but still a classic

>> No.2238876

>>2238859

I'll try that, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if she told me it's magic or something like that. Also, all she reads is twilight and other vampire bullshit, so I can't see her reading through more than 2 pages of any textbook.

>>2238863
And that's why I like /sci/. Most people have a decent level of maturity :p

>> No.2238877
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2238877

Geology.

>> No.2238883

I completely forgot about science.
You could tell her about social sciences, and how since the populous is currently in love with faggot vampires and the such, it would make "scientific sense" to invest in this area, and how things like this change, make it apply to what she likes. No matter how hard it is :D

>> No.2238884

>>2238866

Coincidentally, I watched some of Cosmos earlier this morning for the first time (someone here was streaming). I thoroughly enjoyed it :p

However, she saw what I was watching and commented on how I was watching something like "those stupid videos they show us in school", which is why I actually posted this thread :p

>> No.2238889

Explain to her how gravity bends light. Learned that when I was thirteen and knew I wanted to study physics. Use the 1919 solar eclipse that Einstein used and some of the simple diagrams from A Brief History of Time.

>> No.2238891

Also show her the universe if you have netflix, shit is so cash, it'll make her love astronomy. They up the theatrics and make everything easy to visualize.

>> No.2238894

When I was taking a physical anthropology class my little brother was flipping through my textbook and saw Gigantopithecus and flipped out. Find something like that, but with chemistry. Maybe throw some sodium in her drinking water?

>> No.2238895

teach her some chemistry.
CH4 + Cl2 → CH3Cl + HCl
CH3Cl + Cl2 → CH2Cl2 + HCl
CH2Cl2 + Cl2 → CHCl3 + HCl

>> No.2238904
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2238904

Connect math with her reality, like predict something using math and then show that it's true, and that it's true in all similar cases, and SINCE it's true in all similar cases you can apply it in ways bounded only by your imagination!

>> No.2238907

Thanks for all the help guys. This is the first thread I've posted on /sci/ that hasn't been met with a metric fucktonne of insults. :)

>> No.2238912

>>2238895
Someone just took an orgo final.

>> No.2238913

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnyBldC4Ra4

Show her how to grow silver crystals

>> No.2238919

4chan should be a blabbering retard. As long as /b/ is here 4chan will never be a gentleman with no face

>> No.2238920

So here's the thing about females and science. I've had three of them explain it to me, independently, so I think there is good cause to believe this. Obviously it's a generalization and doesn't always apply, but stick with me for a moment.

Women don't care about shit unless there's some sort of emotional connection. Guys are content to play games, fiddle around counting sticks and rocks and scribbling shapes on stuff all by themselves. Women, not so much. They need connections to real things. This is why you tend to find many women in biology, where everything is taught hands-on, but few in math, where everything is taught in a more abstract way. (There have been successful attempts to reformulate math classes to better cater to women on this basis, so there's some experimental evidence here too.)

Example: you want to teach your sister about light, and how it comes in quanta that also behave as waves. Awesome. If you were teaching your (hypothetical) 13 year old brother, you'd explain energy, draw some scatter diagrams, maybe write an equation or two, and he'd probably be happy with that. That approach won't work with your sister. Instead, you have to say, "I love that lava lamp in your room. Did you know that you can get different colours of light by changing what the LEDs are made of?" Then you could talk about how colour works and work backward toward the fundamentals. "Notice that rainbow on the edge of the glass there? Watch, we can make it move! Now here's why...."

tl;dr Girls learn backward.

As an aside, this emotional connection thing also works on a meta level. Basically, if you can get her friends interested in something, then she will automatically become interested in it. It's genetically programmed into her or something.

>> No.2238924

double-slit experiment

>> No.2238932

>>2238912
nah finals were last week and i'm not in organic just yet.

>> No.2238946

>>2238920
I can agree because this is true for me. I probably wouldn't find physics as intriguing if the universe weren't so beautiful, astonishing and mysterious.

fancy that.

>> No.2238977

Neil Degrasse Tyson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLvh64sMrWY&feature=related
is just fucking epic

>> No.2238981

Start playing with a lighter, continue to explain some science. Kids like it because it involves fire, and something they're not typically allowed to play with it.

Then let them play with it.

This is called 'Classical Conditioning'

>> No.2238991

>>2238977

I really like that, but I don't like the way he uses the term "cosmos". It makes me think too much of new-age hippy beliefs, rather than solid science

>> No.2239052

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EzV4sl0_1w&feature=related

longer version of the same >>2238977


>>223899
it dpes sound hippy stuff, buy just as he says, its what they found by admiring the sky,
its the filosofical view of the precise science

>> No.2239068

So you going with the chloroform idea?

>> No.2239069

Numb3rs, Cosmos and the like.

>> No.2239090

Show her the powers of ten video.

Shit blew my mind when i was a kid.

Also, seeing as this is a how do i teach my sister x thread, i'm gonna ask if you guys have any good ways i can teach my 17 year old sister Chemistry, she just can't seem to get interested enough in it and I sailed through it because i did maths. She dropped maths like a retard backbirth and now wonders why it takes her ten times longer to understand things.

>> No.2239121

>>2238876

>13 year old
>Still believes in magic

If she's retarded, then why bother mate

>> No.2239207

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiWKHsgJ8uw

Cell Biology porn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a45dXztokZM
World of chemistry.

>> No.2241038

Give her the book "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters" by Gary Zukov. It's the most "emotional" book on math and physics I've read. Even if some of it's logic could be considered faulty, it can definitely spark true interest and passion in those who need to believe that mathematics is a divine language, and that the universe is a spiritually rich place.

works for girls, especially if they have any inclination to favor "eastern thought".

>> No.2241064

Chem lessions from Khan Accadamy, I started when I was 14 and it blew my fucking mind, feels good man.

>> No.2241093

Oh also symphony of science and Mc Hawkings, if she likes it then she will likely read more about them and their work, it's what got me into Carl Sagan.

>> No.2241107

Tell her how to make an apple pie from scratch

>> No.2241157

Maybe get a copy of logicomix

>> No.2241162
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2241162

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5122859998068380459#
tell her about anything from this video. different sizing of infinity, godel's incompleteness theorem, turing machines yada yada. shit is so cash.

>> No.2241169

Thirring: Classical Mathematical Physics.

>> No.2241275

>>2238837
>contrary to her beliefs
What beliefs specifically?

For general beliefs held by a large portion of the US and thus probably by your sister.

-there is no evidence for any of the claims religions make (have fun convincing her of that)
-species evolve over time and accumulate changes due to their environment, because of this some populations of the same species get separated and become separate species.
-there are two different kinds of days, one is the commonly thought of Solar Day and the Sidereal Day; the two differ by about 4 minutes.
-about 90% of all matter is made up of empty space
-according to our current understanding of cosmology, all matter present in the universe constitutes about a 1 to 2 % pollution of a universe otherwise made up of energy and possibly dark matter.
-there are about 100 billion stars in a galaxy like our own and about 100 billion galaxies in the portion of universe that we can see.
-all of the heavier elements in your body were once in the inner layers of a high mass start that went supernova. Put simply, the stuff you are made of is as old as the universe and many stars died so that you could live.

Watch this,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

shit bricks.

>> No.2241294

Computers? The fact that, for instance, there is such a thing as a specific circuit for adding numbers together, and that more generally a computer is basically a "calculation simulator", blows my mind still.

>> No.2241315
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2241315

>>2238837
>contrary to her beliefs

Your little sister thinks being intellegent is bad?
WTF? Does she have sort of mental disability? If not.....

YOU SHOULD FUCKING GO KILL YOUR PARENTS NOW! GET THE FUCK OFF THE COMPUTER, CALL THE POLICE, AND THEN MUDER THE SHIT OUT OF THEM FOR SHUCH SHITTY PARENTING! THEN KILL YOURSELF AND YOUR SISTER!...jk

>> No.2241325
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2241325

>>2241315

>> No.2241332
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2241332

>>2241315
nice

>> No.2241361

>>2238863
13 is way too old for pedobear.

>>2238912
Yeah...you never see that stuff in orgo. Stoichiometry is gen chem.

>>2238837
The bad news is that most kids are not interested in science and if your sister is the type of kid who thinks that being intelligent is lame then she's not going to go five seconds into any science show before crying "wow, this guy is such a loser haha! Who the fuck cares about chemicals and light and shit. Let's talk about stuff that actually matters, like celebrity gossip!"

In all seriousness I think your best bet are shows like Breaking Bad, Mythbusters, and Bones/House/CSI/Any forensic or medical show. Basically anything that shows science as a means to commit crimes, solve crimes, blow shit up, or get laid. Yes, it's not at all accurate. No, it won't teach her jack shit about science. It might, however, make her more amiable to the idea that science isn't all about geeky pale virgin nerds looking at test tubes and punching shit into a calculator all day.

You've gotta start somewhere...

>> No.2241410

>>2241361
... this is something I have heard a lot about. Most common folk, the staggering majority, are completely unconcerned about science, regardless of faith or lack of. Most people do not give a damn how their phones works, but it's neat, and that is all they care about.

The ways things are going, humanity might be on its way to another dark age.

>> No.2241496

>>2241410
People have always been like that. The only time when public interest in science was significantly better than it is now was back during the space race when the US government was going far out of its way to get kids interested in science so that they could have a nice pool of engineers and scientists to help them nuke those goddamn commies into glass.

While the general public may not care much about science, there's still enough interest in the places that matter. If anything we have a glut of scientists right now, and the US government still places a large emphasis on scientific research (DARPA, DoD funded projects, CIA and NSA black projects, CDC, NIH, etc).