GalaxyGoo Blogs

Recently, I spent some time browsing at the MIT Press book store. Well, I couldn't just browse! Here's a list of the books I had them ship home to me. I've got my summer reading covered now....for the next few summers, perhaps.

Design:
Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology

The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)

Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education

Math:
The Pythagorean Theorem: A 4,000-Year History

Four Colors Suffice: How the Map Problem Was Solved

Roses, Origami & Math

Unit Polyhedron Origami

Floral Origami Globes

Comp Sci:
Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics (Artificial Intelligence)

Evolutionary Computation: Toward a New Philosophy of Machine Intelligence, Third Edition (IEEE Press Series on Computational Intelligence)

Cog Sci:
The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius

Models and Cognition (Bradford Books)

Science:
Survival Skills for Scientists

These and other books are listed in the new GalaxyGoo amazon shop, which is still a work-in-progress. While the interface from Amazon is easy for simple collections, it gets a little challenging to create more complex collections. We'll see how it goes, but so far so good.

Posted by Kristin at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was working on a sudoku puzzle for the upcoming GalaxyGoo newsletter, when I realized that GalaxyGoo has nine letters in it. So, just for fun, I converted this original puzzle into a GalaxyGoo sudoku puzzle. Instead of the usual numbers (1-9), the letters in GalaxyGoo are arranged in the rows and columns of the grid. I'm guessing that the repeating letters (G, A, and O) will make the puzzle easier to solve. (update: no it doesn't) So, print it up, give it a try, and have fun.

Update:
Page with puzzle in three versions: numbers, chemistry symbols, and repeating letters.

GalaxyGoo Sudoku

Posted by Kristin at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

GalaxyGoo is a Lego's affiliate! Yeah!

Posted by Kristin at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm excited to announce that Peekabootique is now carrying GalaxyGoo t-shirts. Proceeds will support GalaxyGoo, and our educational projects.

How'd this happen? Our t-shirts were a big hit at the Noe Valley Harvest Festival. This didn't escape the notice of Peekabootique's owners, who were looking for a local artist to work with to develop lines for their store. After a short series of talks, it was aggreed that Peekabootique would carry the currently available t-shirts and that we would work to develop new designs and packaging. While I can't go into any details, all designs will be science and math related.

Peekabootique is located at 1306 Castro Street (at 24th Street), in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco.

Posted by Kristin at 12:26 PM | Permalink

The Mathematics Calendar is back for 2007!

Every day, a new math problem...since the answer is always given, the fun part is figuring out how that could be the answer. If that's not enough to make you want one, hanging one in your work-space is sure to make you look smart!

This fantastic calendar is the work of Theoni Pappas, author of The Joy of Mathematics and many other friendly math books.

Posted by Kristin at 12:40 PM | Permalink

GalaxyGoo will be at the Noe Valley Harvest Festival, on October 21. If you're going to be in the neighborhood, stop by our booth, and say "hi"! It's a great family-focused street fair, here in San Francisco.

There were so many little kids at last year's festival, that we decided to design some cool dinosaur T-shirts for this year. My favorite may be the Plesiosaurs, but I also like the Deinonychus patterns a lot. The fossils look like they're chasing each other around in a circle, and the black-on-white one reminds me of South Western pottery.

Posted by Kristin at 03:17 PM | Permalink

Mindware has added some really great stuff to their catalog, and I've added some of them to the GalaxyGoo Toy List. Here's a sample:

Plant Lab Trio These are really cool! With these kits you grow sprouts in a non-toxic nutrient filled gel, used by NASA astronauts to grow experimental plants in space.

LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Invention System 2.0 What can I say? Other than that I've been waiting for my kids to get old enough to play with these since they were born?

Pixel Blocks If you like creating digital pixel art, you'll love pixel blocks. The blocks connect on the sides as well as when stacked, allowing interesting 3D construction possibilities, pixel by pixel.

Total Sudoku (puzzle book) A whole book of those addictive puzzles.I can't help but wonder if anyone does crossword puzzles anymore ;-)

Pinhole Camera Kit I can't remember when I first discovered pinhole cameras, but i find them fascinating. This one is on my own wish-list.

Posted by Kristin at 03:22 PM | Permalink

Wolfram Research, the company behind Mathematica & webMathematica and the amazing MathWorld resource site, among other things, has given us a new toy to play with.

WolframTones, 'an experiment in applying Wolfram's discoveries to the creation of music'.

From the official announcement:
'WolframTones uses various Mathematica algorithms to create music from cellular automaton patterns. In its simplest form, this works by taking every block of contiguous black cells at a certain height and mapping it to a single note played by the same instrument.'

Posted by Edwin at 01:39 AM | Permalink

We've updated the links on the Toy List page. So, they should all be working now. MindWare had changed their linking system, and we needed to update accordingly.

GalaxyGoo recieves 10% of sales through these links to the MindWare online store, so you can shop for brainy toys and support GalaxyGoo at the same time.

Posted by Kristin at 02:54 PM | Permalink

It's summer, and school's out...so, last week, my family and I had a lot of fun with a 3-D Glow-in-the-Dark Solar System Mobile Kit.

To get the paint to stick nicely to the plastic forms, we had to first prime them with a thin layer of paint and let it dry. Then we could get some nice color effects, adding new layers and colors. The coolest effects came from mixing the glow paint with the pigment paints. We got a really nice tinted glow that way.

If you try this kit, make sure you paint the halves before joining the two hemispheres into a planet. That way, the model won't roll around and smear the paint before it dries.

All in all, it was a lot of fun and we now have this great mobile of the planets.

Posted by Kristin at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some of my childhood was spent in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. I have fond memories of tie-dye parties and playing in the woods--of mist rising from the redwood "fences" in the morning.

But one of my favorite things to do was to make sunprints. Other than my lightbrite, this is toy made the biggest impression on my young mind. They're very simple, really--light sensative paper that fixes with water. You place a leaf, or other object on the paper, cover it with glass, and leave it in the sun for a few minutes. Then you rinse it off with water. I just couldn't get enough of this stuff.

I just found it again! Sunprint® Kits

These were developed by Lawrence Hall of Science, across the Bay from San Francisco.

Posted by Kristin at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

GalaxyGoo just became an affiliate of mindware.com. I love this company, and I'm thrilled that they've begun an affiliate program. They have the best collection of "brainy toys for kids of all ages" I've ever seen in a catalog--both educational and creative.

I was already planning to post about some of my favorite toys in the next couple months. I'll still be doing this, but also with links that could benefit GalaxyGoo.

To kick things off, here's a great calendar by Theoni Pappas, who also wrote Mathematical Scandals, and Mathematical Footprints--both of which are in my personal library.

The Mathematics Calendar 2005

Posted by Kristin at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Flash of Brilliance -- Flash cards for kids

Posted by Kristin at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After just seeing a small 'exhibition' by this wonderful company at a local bookstore, I thought I'd put it up on here since it falls within the GalaxyGoo scope of interest :)

If anybody is ever in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, I can recommend this store called Arabesk (open by appointment only). They sell objects, games & puzzles which have been inspired by physics, mathematics & logic. Some examples are this wooden fractaltree and this puzzle, but there are many more intriguing objects.

They also sell online if you can't make it to Rotterdam.

Posted by Edwin at 07:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's really a simple idea--wax covered yarn. A clean, non-toxic, portable toy. They're sort of like pipecleaners, but without the wire. Wikki Stix

Posted by Kristin at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)