International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science. In celebration, let's look at set 21312, Women of NASA.

Margaret Hamilton is a computer scientist who directed the Software Engineering program at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, where she and her team developed the flight software for the Apollo program.


Nancy Roman was an astronomer and NASA executive who was instrumental in the development of the Hubble Telescope.


Mae Jeminson and Sally Ride were both Space Shuttle astronauts. Jeminson was the first black woman in space as a mission specialist focusing on some of the experiments being done in orbit. After retiring from NASA she has focused on promoting science eduction. Ride was the first American woman and still the youngest American in space. After retiring from NASA she was a professor of physics at UC San Diego.


As this set came out in 2017, I was surprised it didn't also feature Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the three mathematicians who were featured in the book and movie Hidden Figures, which came out in 2016. Maybe there was concern over licensing rights with the movie company.

Happy Pi Day 3.1416

I know, it's been ages since I've blogged, but today is a two-fer. It's Pi Day!!!! 3.1416!!!! Go eat some pie to celebrate. It's also Albert Einstein's birthday, so put 137 candles on that pie. Here are some appropriate LEGO images for the day:

Joeledition


Sswoss


Lesgo LEGO Movie

Eppur si muove

The conflict between Galileo and the Catholic church has been a constant topic in discussions of the relationship between science and faith. One extreme characterization is that scientists held that the earth orbited the sun, but the church denied this based solely on interpretations of the Bible. At the other end, some would say that there was a long dispute among scientists/philosophers about the best model of the universe, and in his defense of a heliocentric system Galileo went out of his way to antagonize and ridicule the pope, who held the opposite view. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but in 1633 Galileo was called before the Inquisition to defend his views. Popular legend holds that after renouncing the Copernican model that the earth goes around the sun, Galileo muttered "eppur si muove" (but it still moves) under his breath - here in LEGO form by Jimmy Clinch.

Albert Einstein

In addition to being Pi Day, March 14 is also Albert Einstein's birthday. Einstein is easily the most recognizable scientist of the 20th century. His theory of relativity helped move us from Newtonian physics into the modern era. He received the 1921 Nobel in physics for his work on the photoelectric effect, but more broadly on all of his work in physics. He helped start the Manhattan Project by signing a letter to President Roosevelt about the potentially devastating nature of atomic bombs. Since he is such a key figure, and also so recognizable, he has been the inspiration for a great number of LEGO renditions. Here are just a handful of ones I found.

This mosaic (by who?) was on display at BrickWorld this past weekend.


Arthur and Laura Sigg built this mosaic.


Here's a miniland version by Annie1.


This huge sculpture is found in Legoland Florida (and there are similar sculptures at other Legolands as well).


There are tons of other LEGO Einsteins out there, but I'll save them for another time. Maybe next year's birthday.

Mary Anning

I've been slacking off in blogging, but today's Google doodle is a good prompt for me. Today is the 215th anniversary of Mary Anning's birth. Anning was a fossil collector and paleontologist in Britain in the early 19th century, and her finds helped shape an understanding of prehistoric creatures. Her interest in fossils began very early, when she and her brother Joseph found fossils in the cliffs along the English Channel, as shown here in LEGO form by Fossil Friends. One of their important finds was an ichthyosaur. This LEGO ichthyosaur was built by Bright-Bricks as part of an event this past weekend at the Lyme Regis Museum in Dorset, England. Kids who attended the event could even build their own LEGO ichthyosaurs.

Benjamin Franklin

In addition to being a politician and diplomat in the early days of the United States, Benjamin Franklin (here by Tormentalous) was also a scientist and inventor. One of his most famous experiments was the kite experiment depicted here. Contrary to popular belief (and my own belief until a few minutes ago when I looked this up), his kite was not struck by lightning. Instead he flew his kite up into storm clouds and found that static electricity built up on the kite (and traveled down the wet string to the key), and he got a static shock from touching the key. From this he deduced that lighting bolts were an electric discharge, and subsequently he invented the lightning rod to protect tall buildings.

Ben Franklin lived in Philadelphia, and this weekend is Philly Brick Fest, a LEGO gathering here in Philly. I hope to be at the public exhibition with my son, so maybe I'll see you there.

Newton's apple

I was told once in a class that the whole story of Newton and the apple was a myth invented many years later, but some quick Googling found this memoir by William Stukeley, a friend and biographer of Newton, who recounts the story. The apple didn't hit him on the head, as sometimes shown in cartoons, but Newton was walking in the garden thinking about why apples always fall straight down, rather than at some angle, and he came up with his first formulation of the law of gravity. Here is Chris Maddison's LEGO rendition.

Happy birthday, Classic-Castle!

In addition to maintaining my little family of LEGO blogs, I'm also actively involved in Classic-Castle.com, the source for all your LEGO Castle needs. Classic-Castle just turned ten years old! In recognition of that, let's feature something appropriately themed. Here is Vitruvian Man, as drawn by Kevin Hinkle. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519, was an artist, inventor, mathematician, philosopher and scientist. He took over 13,000 pages of notes, describing his inventions, his observations of nature and anatomy, and writings on natural philosophy. The Vitruvian Man is his study on the proportions of the human body, in connection to geometry.

Jill Tarter & Jocelyn Bell Burnell

I've previously blogged cookies of LEGO Rosalind Franklin and Hedy Lamarr made by Wendy Staples of the Quirky Cookie for a ScienceGrrl event. I really need to feature her versions of Jill Tarter & Jocelyn Bell Burnell as well.

Tarter is an American radio astronomer, who has spent much of her career on the search for extra terrestrial intelligence (SETI), and she did other important work on astronomical bodies such as brown dwarfs. Carl Sagan based the character Ellie Arroway in his novel Contact in part on Tarter. BTW, you should really read that book. The book (NOT the movie) is full of great insights into life as a graduate student, the conduct of international science, thoughts about how information can be transmitted, descriptions of radio telescopes, and even a very thoughtful examination of the interaction of science and faith.

Bell Burnell is another important radio astronomer, from Northern Ireland. She has had a long career in science and academics, but is perhaps best known for her discovery of pulsars as a graduate student. There was a bit of a controversy in that her research adviser, Antony Hewish, was awarded half of the 1974 Nobel, and not Bell Burnell. The question of who gets the true credit for a discovery - student or teacher - has always been a question. For the record, Bell Burnell has said publicly that she did not have problems with the decision as it was in keeping with common practice, and she has received a lot of recognition and awards for her work.



Just for good measure, Wendy also made a bunch of generic scientists as well.

Rosalind Franklin

I'll get back to symmetry tomorrow, but I'll do an aside today, spurred by the Google doodle in honor of what would have been Rosalind Franklin's 93rd birthday. I've peviously noted how important she was in the discovery of the structure of DNA. If she had not sadly passed away at a very young age, she surely should have been considered as part of the 1968 Nobel Prize. Last year Wendy Staples of the Quirky Cookie made a lot of science and women-scientist themed cookies for the launch party of the ScienceGrrl Calendar at the London Science Museum. ScienceGrrl is a British organization to promote science education, particularly to young girls. Anyway, here we see cookies of LEGO versions of Rosalind Franklin and Hedy Lamarr (best known for her movie career, but she also developed a radio frequency hopping technique that formed the basis for much of today's wireless technology). BTW, you really should go see all of the cookies. They're really cool, and I'm sure were perfect for a science themed event.

Leonardo

Leonardo da Vinci (here by Legopard) was the ultimate Renaissance man. Of course he is known for his art, but he was also a scientist. His notebooks are full of his observations of anatomy and botany, his inventions in many areas, and his writings on geometry, the formation of fossils, the flow of rivers and the reflection of light off the moon.

Be relative, my Friend!

GoRiLLaWeR made this awesome Einstein.

Ada Lovelace

As you probably know if you've used Google at all, today is the 197'th anniversary of Ada Lovelace's birth (LEGO Ada by Dunechaser). She is referred to as the world's first computer programmer, since in 1842 she designed an algorithm to use Babbage's analytical engine to compute the Bernoulli numbers.



Babbage's difference engine was a mechanical calculating machine that pre-saged later computers. Due to technical difficulties he never actually built it in his lifetime. Here is a difference engine built in LEGO by Andrew Carol - this was a precursor to the analytical engine.

Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel (here in LEGO form by Michael Jasper) was a chemist who lived from 1833-1896. He invented dynamite, along with other explosives, and this allowed him to amass a great personal fortune. When his brother died, a newspaper erroneously reported it as his death, and they editorialized about how his legacy was this explosive that would kill untold numbers of victims in warfare. He was distressed that he might be remembered as a killer, so he wrote his will to set up a series of annual prizes, now known as the Nobel Prizes, to promote the sciences and the welfare of mankind. It's Nobel week, and I'm a bit behind, but let's take a look at the new Nobel laureates through the lens of LEGO.

Sylvia Earle

Sylvia Earle is one of the world's leading oceanographers, having led more than 60 scientific expeditions with over 7000 hours underwater. Pixbymaia has made a LEGO version of Dr. Earle and even had the opportunity to pose with the original.

Eureka!

Following up on Archimedes from the other day (Pi Day), he is probably most famous for a story involving a bath. As the story goes, he was pondering how to measure the volume of an irregular object and he went to take a bath to relax. When he stepped into the full tub, some water spilled out over the edge. He realized that the amount of water displaced by a submerged object (him, in this case) was equal to the volume of the object. He yelled "Eureka!" (I found it!) and ran from the bath to tell others of his discovery, without even pausing to put on some clothes. Whether or not there is any truth to the story, his method is still used today. I've taught introductory labs in which we determine the density of a metal object by weighing it and then seeing how much water it displaces. The mass divided by volume is the density (along the way, this introductory lab teaches students to use the balance and the graduated cylinder). The perhaps apocryphal bathtub story has been recreated in LEGO form by Spiderpudel, Superdave42 and Lord Pappadhum. (Hmm, two of these were built for the Reasonably Clever Mad Scientist Contest. I've featured a couple of those creations here before, but I have to remember to go back and feature others. It's particularly embarrassing that I haven't already done so, since I was one of the judges for that contest.)

Stephen Hawking

Sorry for the delay in posting. Let's follow up those two different Einstein mosaics with other great scientists. I can't believe I've never post Iain Heath's Stephen Hawking. Raise your hand if you've got A Brief History of Time on your bookshelf.

More Einstein

Arthur Gugick gives us his own version of an Einstein mosaic.

Einstein

Dave Shaddix pays tribute to Albert Einstein.