Re: [sfx: Discuss] 13 yr-old builds fibonacci tree solar collector

[Victoria Hughes]

Ya  never know. Those people had to start with a predilection for editorial precision.

Question: from what circumstances do youall think invention and innovation arise?

Now that Sas has brought us back into the realms of annotated autobiography 

>> (and this discussion has become very Friamish, so I am redirecting it away from the SFX site)  I want to add

My papa did not have an icy hand. When he helped me build science fair projects his hands were capable and warm, if a bit eager. 

He encouraged me all along, and always made me feel that he delighted in my mind and curiosities, whatever my age. When we made things together, I felt wistfulness from him, that his choice of career moved him away from research into management. 

His faith in my mind, and support for my questions, meant I never felt that since I was a girl, I'd be unable to do things.

I just assumed I'd find or invent a way. That was his most valuable legacy.

Steve, your narrative brought back lovely memories. 

Thanks

Victoria

On Aug 21, 2011, at 10:11 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Steve,

 

It was not the icy hand of the parent I detected, but that of the EDITOR.  Think about those ghost written personal essays that appear in SA “written” by famous scientists describing their breakthroughs.  (Well, unless Aidan’s parent was a SA editor.) 

Yuch!

 

Nick

 

From: Steve Smith [[hidden email]] 
Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2011 12:05 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [sfx: Discuss] 13 yr-old builds fibonacci tree solar collector

 

I raised children (2 daughters, now 30 and 32) up in a drinking town with a small science problem (aka Los Alamos) and enjoyed (or endured) any number of science fairs and the like.   

Almost exclusively, I saw two kinds of science fair projects.  Those thrown together by the kids themselves with varying degrees of interest, acumen, and flair for presentation, and those either done by or carefully supervised by an overzealous parent.  It was not clear that the judges recognized or acted upon the implications of that division.

 I provided my daughters with lots of encouragement, some ideas, and the occasional hard question, but I never did their work for them... and it showed at the science fairs and I was proud of them.  Daughter #1 was type-A and proceeded to excel in spite of the steep uphill climb in this "popular science blood sport" and daughter #2 was quite happy to get a B for her efforts and move on to a project or topic less fraught with false-competition.

The elder is now a PhD researcher in biomedicine (West Nile, Dingue Fever).  She loves her work and hates her job (already).   She is in her second Lab and trying to start her own.  She competes daily with other researchers whose parents probably did their science fair projects for them... and what was quaint when she was growing up (taking second or third place to other kids whose work product was clearly not their own) is career numbing for her.  Now these very types are willing to say or do anything (up to and including very bad science) to either keep their comfortable spot comfortable or to advance their position.  From her point of view, big science (or at least medical science) is a pretty ugly scene.  Many NIH and NSF project reviewers seem to be cut from the same cloth as science fair judges.   

Now, for the subject of the science project.  I don't expect a 13 year old (or the average hockey-parent highly informing the project) to have very tight controls on the experiment (reflective surface nearby? identical, calibrated cells?) or to have a firm handle on the concept which they are supposedly studying.  

There are at least two issues with the "fibonnaci tree solar collector"... one is the distribution of the angles of the solar cells and the other is the potential for shading.  Having done my own relatively ad-hoc work in this area (orientation of windows in a passive solar addition, and the preliminary analysis of holographic optical elements to enhance PVs) I know there are hidden variables that are not being addressed (at least not in the report).

At best, this science project is a demonstration of an already understood principle about the nature of fibonacci distributed solar collection (photosynthetic leaves).   Without looking closely at this young man's (or his parent's) data, I can't tell what all was going on, but I'd suggest that if these cells were wired in series, that the ones oriented toward the eastern horizon had an interesting effect of preconditioning the others oriented otherwise.   On cold mornings in the dead of winter, there are not that many hours in the day where a solar cell gets enough incident light to actually get above the threshold of functioning.   I speculate that by one or more cells getting an "early start" by being oriented toward the rising sun, the current generated may actually begin to warm the other cells enough that they in turn begin to generate electricity significantly earlier than they would otherwise.   How that plays out against the amount of time in the day that these extreme orientations are totally useless (a small resistive loss?) is both a question of geometry and of various thresholds.

All that said, I think the 13 year old (or his parent) did fine and may even grow past his parent's involvement to think independently and do his own work.  He now has an inkling (no matter how he came by it) of the value of optimizing in a multidimensional problem space and looking to biomimicry for ideas in engineering.

- Steve

-- 

Los Alamos Visualization Associates

LAVA-Synergy

4200 W. Jemez rd

Los Alamos, NM 87544

www.lava3d.com

[hidden email]

505-920-0252

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[Steve Smith]

Victoria/Tory -

Thanks for the annotated autobiographical note.  It gives me hope that parents *can* and *do* offer their children something more meaningful and grounded than what I see too often through my cynical eye.  It is easy to be too cynical and I understand the human desire (as with your father's wistfulness) to enjoy things by proxy they might not have enjoyed themselves as children, or nostalgically *since* they were children.

 I admit that while the resulting multi-axis-lathed and hand-laquered pinewood derby racers looked like parents competing with eachother, not 7 and 8 year old cub scouts mumbling "vroom vroom" as they glued the axles onto precut, barely shaped, blocks of wood and enjoying the visceral thrill of transferring their little egos into even littler vehicles to act out "mouse-and-motorcycle" fantasies, that even those kids whose parents (let's face it, almost exclusively fathers) wrested the kit away from the kid before she even got to open it (mumbling "vroom vroom") got to learn something and enjoy a process, even if almost entirely by proxy. (yes, that was a single run-on-sentence-cum-paragraph!)

>> (and this discussion has become very Friamish, so I am redirecting it away from the SFX site)

Yes, SFX_Discuss on this topic did take on the flavor of an overly critical, snarky (and thanks to me, annotated autobiography)... probably because it was primarily FRIAM players chiming in.

I want to add

My papa did not have an icy hand. When he helped me build science fair projects his hands were capable and warm, if a bit eager.

Good antidote to my cynical judgement about "overly" involved parents.

He encouraged me all along, and always made me feel that he delighted in my mind and curiosities, whatever my age. When we made things together, I felt wistfulness from him, that his choice of career moved him away from research into management. 

His faith in my mind, and support for my questions, meant I never felt that since I was a girl, I'd be unable to do things.

I just assumed I'd find or invent a way. That was his most valuable legacy.

Steve, your narrative brought back lovely memories.

Thanks again for the warm and uplifting anecdote.  I hope the parents of young children on these lists are listening.... more to your warm and encouraging note than my cynical negativity.... by all means, jump in and help your kids, just notice where the line between help and hindrance, encouragement and enabling lies!

- Steve


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