Unearthing a maths poem By Steve Way

Amongst other things – including writing! – I currently teach Spanish adults English via the internet. When we’ve been talking about their children preparing for university, they have been surprised to learn that the UK children begin to specialise from the age of 16 (indeed in reality often sooner) whereas in Spain all subjects are studied up until they do their entrance exam and then specialise when they get to university.

Given that there isn’t an obvious deficit either way in the end result, with Spanish graduates seemingly doing as well as UK graduates, I wonder whether there would be more options for some UK students to gain an broader rather than a deeper education up until the age of 18? More ‘Jack of All Trades’ than ‘Master of a Few’.

I say this as a bit of a rule breaker myself. Although maths and science subjects seemed the most obvious choice for me at 16, I didn’t want to give up studying English Literature - I dreamed of being a writer after all! – and so ended up doing so alongside maths and two sciences. To their credit the staff at the comprehensive I went to in Swindon tried to partly organise the sixth form timetable around me – as you can imagine science subjects were generally taught at the same time as arts/humanities subjects. They managed it perfectly in the first year but in a fascinating duality – that might have interested both quantum physicists and fantasy writers – I was supposed to be in a physics lesson at the same time as in an English lesson. (What was it that Hermione had in Harry Potter? I could have done with that!)

The rapid switching from studying physics to English was pretty mind-blowing (when this overlap occurred, I was always half way through a physics lesson and figured that zipping over to the English class was the best compromise) and emphasised something I noticed even at that relatively young age. It was the marked degree to which the thinking and outlook of my classmates studying science subjects was rapidly diverging from that of those studying arts subjects. I did often feel that I was existing in parallel worlds – none of my classmates in the English class were the same as those in my science classes.

I experienced a similar pronounced dichotomy in my first year at university. I’d registered to study biology but in our first year we were obliged to study two additional subjects. Whilst most of my fellow biologists studied other science subjects, I think I became the first – and as far as I know un until I left – only student to pick the combination of biology, psychology and theatre studies.

I loved it! Of course, there was a similar challenge with timetabling – after a two-hour theatre studies workshop I had to run down the length of the campus to get to a biology lecture! I was heartbroken that I couldn’t continue with a similar combination in my second and third years. I was forced to specialise.

Not surprisingly in that first year I once again mixed with two completely different groups of students, who thought in completely different ways. I also became aware as I completed my biology degree that if I wanted to continue my studies I would have to become even more of a specialist, which you can probably imagine didn’t appeal, and that there was no room for taking a broad approach and attempting to forge links and connections between the different branches of biology. I’d noticed for example that many of our lecturers – who’s fields differed greatly – often (briefly) noted intriguing effects of particular wavelengths of blue light on the diverse life-forms or functions they studied but there seemed no place for someone who might want to draw these observations together.

The catalyst that let to me wanting to explore my experience of this apparently British focus on specialism was rediscovering some maths-poems I’d written. Just before Covid struck my main computer broke down and I’ve only just been able to get it repaired. When I dug down into my reopened files I discovered ideas, poems and parts of poems that I’d completely forgotten about.

The enforced passage of time in which these pieces were buried enabled me to objectively realise which piece needed to stay buried – but also allowed me to appreciate some others that I’m really pleased with. It’s odd to think that I once had an idea that I now think might have been worth having – and which I might not ever have had again, since I’m so surprised by it now! It’s a bit like reading something you wrote a very long time ago and barely remember and feeling like you didn’t do such a bad a job after all!

I want to share a maths poem that was unearthed along with the others. In this case I knew about the first part of the poem, it’s even been published, but I had totally forgotten that I’d added two extra verses.

Now if you’re reading this on the ABBA blog, I know you’re more like to be in (to have been steered towards at an early age?) the arts/humanities camp but I hope you will enjoy it… could it even be a small rebellious step away from specialism! Even if you don’t it may be useful for any teenagers in your orbit who may be on a trajectory towards maths exams and battling with different graphs and would find an alternative way of considering them useful.

PS knowing that we either have a love or hate relationship with maths*, I’ve come across a few people who’ve found the idea of writing about maths or science creatively surprising. I invite you to consider, given my modest attempt to do so, what you might achieve in bringing these subjects to life in an original way!

* I used to privately tutor children and adults in maths. Without exception when first arriving to teach an adult they would declare, ‘I can’t do maths’. Two of them were accounts for large companies! (‘Well, what I do doesn’t count’) Another lovely lady became my wife – so I can easily recall her first words when we met!

~~~~~

Y equals mx plus C.

Y equals mx plus C,

How great can an equation be?

 

m is the gradient, you see,

I don’t know why, don’t ask me!

There’s no “m” in gradient I know…

But this was agreed years ago!

(You may think I’m old, grumpy and weak

But this maths was made up by a Greek!)

 

A gradient of one-in-four,

Means one up and four ‘long the floor.

The line rises from the left to the right,

Just as in the direction we write.

Minus gradients fall from the left side,

As downwardly negative they slide.

A gradient of minus three,

Is one along, three down – do you see?

 

The “intercept” it’s known as “C”,

Describing where on the y-axis it be.

So as I hope you will agree,

It’s located at zero, then C.*     

 

Y equals mx plus C,

How great can an equation be?

All straight lines fall into its realm,

So now you can plot all of them!

 

* (0,C)

 

Square graphs are different as you’ll see,

By rising exponentially.

If a number’s squared, (as you may know…)

Its value it does quickly grow.

As x goes up a little bit,

Y shoots up like a rocket!

Since negatives all square as plus,

Symmetrical graphs are made for us.

 

Cube graphs go quickly up and down,

As if wanting to both fly, then drown!

Cubes change much faster than do squares,

Like changing to a lift from stairs!

Three minuses in a cube do give,

A result that comes out negative.

 ~~~~~

‘Y equals mx plus C’ in an earlier form was published in Using stories to teach Maths Ages 9 to 11 (High Achievers Supplement) by Hopscotch Educational publishing ISBN 978-1-909860-00-1

If you enjoyed my poem you might enjoy others that I have recorded on YouTube under the title Steve Way Writer such as my poem about flat shapes.

 

The link is; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Koo5U4eLDss

Non-adventures in non-fiction By Steve Way

 

Do you remember the adverts for Horlicks the night-time drink that claimed to help you to get to sleep more easily? The strapline was ‘no one knows all the secrets of sleep but Horlicks knows more than most’. Frankly, I used to think that the majority of my Biology lecturers at university knew far more secrets than Horlicks. Regularly they induced a form of tiredness that was basically painful. Partly it was because I didn’t want to collapse into a stupor in public and was trying to prop up my head with my arms and was having to really concentrate on not letting my head slip onto the bench in front of me. The only time I experienced the same painful exhaustion was when having to sit through the lessons given by the science lecturer at teacher training college.

The reason these lecturers induced such debilitating exhaustion was because they made the subject they were teaching so astonishingly boring. When I went to university, having been blessed more than I’d realised at the time with great teachers while I was doing my A levels, I couldn’t have been more enthusiastic to learn. By the time I’d dragged myself through the uninspired degree course we were made to endure for three years I loathed the subject for ages – and the aforementioned lecturer at college didn’t help.

It was only when I began teaching science – and then eventually writing about it in fictional and non-fiction form – that I realised and remembered how fascinating it could be. I’ve seen since that virtually any subject can be taught – or written about – in a way the squeezes out every last drop of interest in it… or in a way that inspires and fascinates.

I’d gone to university wanting to be a writer but thought it would be a good idea to get a degree in a ‘serious’ subject as an insurance – it had never occurred to me that I could write about science, particularly after the subject had been transformed into a mind-numbing form of torture. However after writing a mathematical story for a project at teacher training college (it only received an average mark because ‘it was too original’) it slowly dawned on me that I could find creative ways of making the various dimensions of science stimulating and interesting for children.

Having written fictional stories incorporating science I was invited by a publisher to work on a series of non-fiction science books for children – and learned a sobering lesson about the veracity, or otherwise, of the non-fiction that was being produced at the time. The publisher gave me a sample copy from a previous series that they’d produced. Now I can’t remember the exact details but it was a book about scientific inventions. Early in the book there was a brief piece about an invention – let’s say a typewriter. On the facing page was a photograph under which was stated, ‘this is a picture of a typewriter’ despite the fact that the object depicted was plainly not in the least like a typewriter. Towards the end of the book, which wasn’t that long in the first place, there was a piece about another invention – let’s say a radio receiver. On the facing page was exactly the same photograph as that shown earlier, except that underneath it was stated that, ‘this is a picture of a radio receiver’. You may not be surprised to learn that the object also looked nothing like a radio receiver.

I pointed out this anomaly to the publisher. Her reply was, ‘well we’ve sold 10,000 copies.’ That’s alright then. Although I took on the project for the new series, I assiduously checked every draft in the process – including the photographs! I was briefly cursed by the Gods of Inaccurate Non-fiction when the series was taken on by an American publisher. One of the books had been about space and I had written explaining that, ‘Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars [are solid planets and Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune] are gas planets.’ Due to a whole line being missed out, the section between the bracket marks was missing. To be fair to the publisher they corrected the error soon after I’d sent them a strongly worded email. Perhaps the British publisher wouldn’t have been concerned so long as at least 10,000 copies of the book were sold…

Despite the proof-readers of the book not necessarily being trained in science it still astonishes me that no one noticed the error until I did.

I hadn’t originally realised how interesting it would be to write non-fiction, since I enjoy writing fiction so much, but I soon came to realise that there is always a story and the fascination is in finding a way to tell the story in an interesting way. Naturally a basic lesson is to check the veracity of the sources you use. One piece I worked on was on the first balloon flight of the Montgolfier brothers in which three animals were taken up into the air. Two out of three of the animals cited in Encyclopedia Britanica were different to those from a well-known public encyclopedia at that time. (To be fair that appears to have since been corrected.)

Citing this anomaly reminds me of a biography of JK Rowling that my mother-in-law kindly bought me for Christmas, knowing I’d enjoyed the Harry Potter stories. The American ‘author’ had clearly used a range of popular websites to carry out his ‘research’. Perhaps knowing that a few English place names are hyphenated he clearly didn’t think it odd to keep mentioning that she was born in the county of South Glou-cestershire. Presumably in one of the sources he used the word Gloucestershire ran over the end of a line. The whole book was peppered throughout with errors like this. I still regret a) not throwing the book on the fire (unfortunately we didn’t have an open fire) and b) writing a letter to the publishers suggesting that they and the ‘author’ should be ashamed of themselves.

Perhaps if they sold more than 10 000 copies they felt absolved of all guilt.

What Writers Can Learn From Science - Claire Fayers

I’m excited to be writing my first guest post for ABBA today. Thank you for having me.

I don’t know how many of you saw the recent article by Meg Rosoff in the Guardian. What Richard Dawkins could learn from Goldilocks and the Three Bears in which she laments the division between imagination and science.

I read the article on holiday in France, coincidentally on the same day I visited Leonardo da Vinci’s house in Amboise.

The whole place is quite fascinating to look around, with a reconstruction of da Vinci’s studio and giant models of some of his most famous inventions scattered around the garden to play with.

Leonardo's revolving tank

With Meg Rosoff’s words in my head, I was struck more forcefully than ever that there never used to be a division between science and the arts. On the contrary, the two fed into each other as people pursued knowledge across the disciplines. The astronomer Caroline Herschel studied maths and music. Humphrey Davy, inventor of the safety lamp, wrote poetry.

Maybe it’s not so surprising. After all, science and stories often begin with the same question. What if? What if I could measure the wind? What if people could fly? What if a boy found out he was really a wizard?

Human curiosity is a powerful thing, driving us to build flying machines, to measure the world around us, to paint and write and create music.

Leonardo's flying machine

And if the first germ of an idea starts with ‘what if’, every story begins with Newton’s first law of motion:

An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Or, as I like to put it: A moving object will continue in a straight line until something happens to knock it off its course. Some say this is also true of stories. (The Accidental Pirates, book 1)

Everyone talks about the Inciting Incident, the moment when your character’s life goes dramatically off course. What force are you applying to knock them out of their everyday routine and into the new path of the story?

Then you have the second law of thermodynamics: 

In a closed system disorder (entropy) increases over time. 

I don’t pretend to understand what this means in real terms, but in the closed system of your book does your character face increasing disorder? Do things become progressively worse, the challenges harder, the plot twists more unexpected until you reach the end?

And, finally, Newton’s third law of motion, which, thankfully is much more straightforward: 

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Stories are all about action and reaction. But sometimes I fall into the trap of letting my characters react to everything rather than driving the story by their own actions. It’s helpful to pause every so often and ask whether I’ve got the right balace of action and reaction.

I love how stories follow the laws of physics. It seems to me that there is something logical about the art of storytelling and that the best stories reflect how the world works on many levels.

What’s driving your curiosity at the moment?

Testing Leonardo's helicopter design

Claire Fayers is the author of the Accidental Pirates series, combining science, magic and adventures on the high seas.

Is There More Science in Fantasy than Real Life? Thinking About Science in Children's Books - by Emma Barnes

This week is British Science Week, when events up and down the country will be celebrating maths, science, technology and engineering. Many of these events will be directed at children and happening in schools. It's one of only many initiatives aimed at interesting children and teenagers in science. But while there may be plenty of workshops and demonstrations, what about the role of children's fiction?

Fiction, after all, is where children see themselves reflected.  It is also where they explore possibilities.  When I longed to be a ballet dancer, if was because I had read Ballet Shoes.  If I thought about becoming a vet it was because I was neck deep in James Herriot.  When I decided to study history, my interest had first been fired by Jean Plaidy's Young Elizabeth and Barbara Willard's Mantlemass books.

Where are the stories that excite children about science?

As I said in this post, scientists, when they do appear in children's books at all, are often of a type – bad, mad and dangerous to know. If you are trying to interest a young person in science, or maybe find fiction books that a science-mad kid might adore, you're likely to have a tough time.  Children's books in which science plays any role in the plot, or is portrayed realistically, are few and far between.

(This is true of adult fiction, too.  In fact this site, Lablit, is an attempt to address the problem.)

Even where science seems to be to the forefront, it often isn't.  In the classic A Wrinkle In Time, heroine Meg's parents are scientists.  But it is the power of love that enables Meg to save her brother, not scientific discovery.  It's really a spiritual message that L'Engle is interested in, more than the scientific principles of time travel.  In another classic, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, the scientists have created the immensely intelligent rats, but are too stupid to understand their own creation, while the rats' task is to escape and try and create a better way of life.  

In fact the theme of both books - scientists messing up, and more humane types dealing with the consequences - is probably a perennial in children's books.

Even the recent emergence of geek cool, epitomised by those nerdy, scientific genii of the Big Bang Theory, while making it easier for any kid that likes to hang out in a physic lab, or spend his or her time coding, hasn't done much to alter the content of children's fiction.  At least, not on the shelves of the bookshops I know.

I have no science background, but twice I have used science in my books, and in a positive way.  Even more unusually, I've done so within the form of funny, middle grade fiction.  In Jessica Haggerthwaite, Witch Dispatcher Jessica (who wants to be a Famous Scientist one day) designs her own experiment to test and evaluate the results of her mother's magical potions on the tomato plants. The result is surprising for everyone – but as a good scientist Jessica soon works out all the implications. It is actually the only piece of children's fiction I know in which a child conducts a serious scientific experiment.

In Wolfie, the heroine, Lucie, is given a pet dog – which just happens to be a talking wolf. At the climax of the story it becomes very important indeed whether Wolfie is a dog or a wolf, and luckily it so happens that Lucie's neighbour is a distinguished Professor of Zoology and expert on Canid and Lupine Studies. (I say luckily - in fact, this is something that Lucie has to uncover with some difficulty.) The Professor's judgement is rigorously scientific – but there's a twist...

These are the only two of my books with a scientific element, and the interesting thing is that they both feature a strong magical element. Jessica Haggerthwaite is not actually a fantasy, but her mother, Mrs Haggerthwaite, is of the firm opinion that she is a professional witch and acts accordingly. Wolfie – complete with wolves that talk and fly – is definitely fantasy.  And yet, science and fantasy are opposites - aren't they?

Or perhaps not.  If science rarely crops up among "real life" children's books, then maybe there is a reason.  For science is an activity sealed off from the everyday lives of children - and indeed, of most non-scientists. Amateur scientists rarely ascend the rooftops these days to observe the stars through their telescopes, or gather fossils for museums to display.  Science goes on in dedicated laboratories barred to children, and wrapped around with Health and Safety regulations.  Its practitioners are almost always paid, professional experts.

So perhaps the practice of science, the devising of theorems, the following of formula, the investigations of nature and the attempts to understand and control it, are better represented in fantasy, than everyday life? Professor Snape with his Potions laboratory, and Professor Sprout with her careful Herbology experiments at Hogwarts may be the best representations of a scientific laboratory (minus the Health and Safety regulations) available to children. Diana Wynne Jones's Ogre Downstairs, with the chemistry set that goes drastically wrong, or her  Charmed Life with the dangerous, illicit dragonsblood, conveys the perilous nature of certain substances better than any real life scenario. (Charmed Life also features linked worlds – an idea taken from modern physics.)  And then there is Philip Pullman's Northern Lights with its mysterious Dust...

A recent report into What Kids Are Reading suggests that children's choices of books tends to be evenly divided between funny real-life stories, and fantasy. Is it actually in the fantasy section of their bookshelves that children get the greatest chance to think about what is such an important part of real life -  science?

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Emma's series for 8+ Wild Thing about the naughtiest little sister ever is published by Scholastic. 
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is published by Strident.  It is a story of wolves, magic and snowy woods...
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps

Emma's Website
Emma’s Facebook Fanpage
Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Unusual Uses for a Brick - Joan Lennon

Daydream equals Eureka

It's happened again - one of those satisfying moments of Hey! I knew that! But now it's official! which sometimes follow reading articles in New Scientist. 

Listen to this, from Richard Risher, about the Wandering Mind:

"The experiment took place in three stages.  First, the volunteers spent 2 minutes dreaming up unusual uses for a brick.  Next, some were given a mindless task to complete, such as watching for letters on a screen.  Others were given a much trickier test that required their full attention.  As you might expect, subsequent questionnaires revealed that people drifted off significantly more in the mindless task.  Finally, unexpectedly, all participants were asked to take another crack at the unusual uses task.  This time, those whose minds had been wandering came up with, on average, 40 per cent more answers than on their first go.  Those who'd had to concentrate on their task barely improved at all ...

... when questioned, the mind wanderers did not report that they had been thinking explicitly about the brick during their mindless task ... the message is that as you drift off into memories, thoughts of food or plans for your holiday, your brain is busily mulling over potential solutions for whatever problem you are trying to solve."  (June 16 2012)

Hey!  I knew that!  It's happened to all of us, and what a relief it is, when the answer to a problem drops into our heads, out of the blue, when we've stopped obviously thinking about it ...

Now all I have to do is remind myself, next time I'm banging on uselessly, elbows to the grindstone, determined to resolve that hole in the plot - or even find a new use for bricks - by sheer, raw, rugged, relentless, hard graft.  If I want my Eureka moment, I need to Daydream.

It's official.

Visit Joan's website.
Visit Joan's blog.

Boffins In Books: Why No Science In Children’s Fiction? by Emma Barnes

Science is not “sexy”. At least that it is the strong message you get on scanning the children’s fiction shelves. Fairies abound, as do spies, wizards, pirates and ballerinas, but scientists? Either absent – or the villains of the piece!

Ever since Enid Blyton bestowed “Uncle Quentin” upon her Famous Five, children’s authors (seldom scientific themselves) have taken for granted the archetype of the bad-tempered, impractical boffin, locked away in his study or laboratory (it’s nearly always a him, of course). This stereotype probably arrived in children’s fiction straight from Dr Frankenstein, and even such marvellous books as The Strange Affair of the Dog In the Night Time have tended to reinforce the notion that brilliance in abstract thought must mean personal strangeness and zero social skills.



Of course, there are excellent non-fiction books about science for young people. But with a very few exceptions – Russell Stannard’s Uncle Albert or Malcolm Rose’s scientific thrillers – science as a theme is either absent or else – in teenage books – portrayed as evil, with techniques like cloning bringing about terrible dystopian futures.




When I wrote Jessica Haggerthwaite: Witch Dispatcher it did not occur to me that an eleven year old girl who wanted to be a scientist, was unusual in fiction. I like humour, and I like exploring ideas, and when I devised the story I loved the possibilities of a scientific daughter (rational, enquiring, persistent) ranged up against a mother (vague and mystical) who is convinced she has magic powers. Jessica's heroine is Marie Curie - but her mother thinks a test tube is only useful for storing love potions.




Jessica’s scientific interests have their quirky side. Would an eleven year old really be reading a book called Astrophysics Made Simple? But they are not just for effect either. To achieve her ends Jessica conducts a scientific experiment – a serious experiment, with a hypothesis and a properly demonstrated conclusion. The whole plot depends upon it. Only after the book was published did several readers – teachers in particular – point out how unusual this was.

When I visit schools, I rarely get asked to focus on this element of the book, however. Perhaps this is because teachers, like writers, too often place “science” and “fiction” in different compartments. And for too many children, the “science” compartment can become the “bad” compartment. When I’ve asked children or adults to describe scientists as characters, “dangerous”, “mad” and “nerdy” are some of the words they have come up with.

It’s a shame. Science is exciting. And fiction is an important way for children to explore the world – the whole world - that lies beyond their own immediate surroundings and understanding. So why exclude such a vital perspective on it?

Which books would you recommend that include scientific themes or characters?

Emma's latest book is How (Not) to Make Bad Children Good and she also has a web-site.