By: Chloe Baldwin,
on 7/13/2015
Post by Chloe
Stefano Colferai is an artist, illustrator and character designer born and based in Milan. His work depicts personality-packed and humorous characters brought to life through plasticine. The traditional media gives his work a quirky, unique edge and adjustments are made using digital software.
If you would like to see more of Stefano Colferai’s work, please view his portfolio.
By: Alex Guyver,
on 12/15/2014
Over the next few weeks, Paul Gluck, co-author of Physics Project Lab, will be describing how to conduct various Physics experiments. In this first post, Paul explains how to investigate motion on a cycloid, the path described by a point on the circumference of a vertical circle rolling on a horizontal plane.
If you are a student or an instructor, whether in a high school or at university, you may want to depart from the routine of lectures, tutorials, and short lab sessions. An extended experimental investigation of some physical phenomenon will provide an exciting channel for that wish. The payoff for the student is a taste of how physics research is done. This holds also for the instructor guiding a project if the guide’s time is completely taken up with teaching. For researchers it seems natural to initiate interested students into research early on in their studies.
You could find something interesting to study about any mundane effect. If students come up with a problem connected with their interests, be it a hobby, some sport, a musical instrument, or a toy, so much the better. The guide can then discuss the project’s feasibility, or suggest an alternative. Unlike in a regular physics lab where all the apparatus is already there, there is an added bonus if the student constructs all or parts of the apparatus needed to explore the physics: a self-planned and built apparatus is one that is well understood.
Here is an example of what can be done with simple instrumentation, requiring no more than some photogates, found in all labs, but needing plenty of building initiative and elbow grease. It has the ingredients of a good project: learning some advanced theory, devising methods of measurements, and planning and building the experimental apparatus. It also provides an opportunity to learn some history of physics.
The challenge is to investigate motion on a cycloid, the path described by a point on the circumference of a vertical circle rolling on a horizontal plane.
This path is relevant to two famous problems. The first is the one posed by Johann Bernoulli: along what path between two points at different heights is the travel time of a particle a minimum? The answer is the brachistochrone, part of a cycloid. Secondly, you can learn about the pendulum clock of Christian Huygens, in which the bob and its suspension were constrained to move along cycloid, so that the period of its swing was constant.
Here is what you have to construct: build a cycloidal track and for comparison purposes also a straight, variable-angle inclined track. To do this, proceed as follows. Mark a point on the circumference of a hoop, lid, or other circular object, whose radius you have measured. Roll it in a vertical plane and trace the locus of the point on a piece of cardboard placed behind the rolling object. Transfer the trace to a 2 cm-thick board and cut out very carefully with a jigsaw along the green-yellow border in the picture. Lay along the profile line a flexible plastic track with a groove, of the same width as the thickness of the board, obtainable from household or electrical supplies stores. Lay the plastic strip also along the inclined plane.
Your cycloid track is ready.
Measure the time taken for a small steel ball to roll along the groove from various release points on the brachistochrone to the bottom of the track. Compare with theory, which predicts that the time is independent of the release height, the tautochrone property. Compare also the times taken to descend the same height on the brachistochrone and on the straight track.
Design a pendulum whose bob is constrained to move along a cycloid, and whose suspension is confined by cycloids on either side of its swing from the equilibrium position. To do this, cut the green part in the above picture exactly into two halves, place them side by side to form a cusp, and suspend the pendulum from the apex of the cusp, as in the second picture. The pendulum string will then be confined along cycloids, and the swing period will be independent of the initial release position of the bob – the isochronous property. Measure its period for various amplitudes and show that it is a constant.
Have you tried this experiment at home? Tell us how it went to get the chance to win a free copy of the Physics Project Lab book. We’ll pick our favourite descriptions on 9th January. Good luck to all entries!
Featured image credit: Advanced Theoretical Physics blackboard, by Marvin PA. CC-BY-NC-2.0 via Flickr.
The post Physics Project Lab: How to build a cycloid tracker appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Carter Higgins,
on 10/7/2014
by Misty Copeland and Christopher Myers (Penguin Young Readers Group, 2014)
When you open a book to sweeping, fiery endpapers, it’s almost as if you can hear the symphony begin. The author, Misty Copeland, is a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater. The illustrator, Christopher Myers, is a Caldecott Honoree for Harlem and the son of the legendary Walter Dean Myers.
We are in stellar storytelling hands.
(image here // Copeland dancing the Firebird)
(image here // Copeland dancing the Firebird)
Christopher Myers’s art captures the lines and shapes of a dancer’s movement. Intricate, suspended, and dizzying.
Misty Copeland’s words are fire and poetry to a timid youngster’s soul.
I adore the anticipation in this spread, the dancer waiting for the curtain to rise, and I imagine a lump in her throat and a belly full of as many swoops as the folds in the curtain.
Each page turn reveals a composition that is even more striking than the last. This is a pairing of musicality, movement, and a jaw-dropping array of colors and feelings. The way her words and his pictures create an animated harmony is exactly how music and movement do the same in the ballerina’s world.
A perfect pas de deux.
For more on Misty Copeland, take a look at this. She is a lovely storyteller, both in her books and with her body.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
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By: Carter Higgins,
on 6/3/2014
by Arree Chung
published June 2014 by Henry Holt and Company, an imprint of Macmillan.
Friends, I’m so excited to have Arree Chung in this corner of the internet today. I met Arree last summer at SCBWI in Los Angeles, and am humbled every time I think about how we share an agent and a friendship. He’s an expert storyteller with a bright, animated style and a fresh perspective. Ninja! is his debut picture book, and it will be far from his last.
First, you should watch this short film. And here’s my confession. Arree sent this to me a number of weeks ago with the caveat that it was unreleased and not to share. Except: it was too awesome not to. So I showed it to my students, because single-digit-aged kids are pretty good at secrets and don’t have Twitter accounts anyway.
They loved it. And I mean L O V E D I T. Each class, without fail, asked to watch it many, many times in a row. So we did.
Meet Maxwell, and then meet Arree.
What has been the most surprising thing about this whole debut picture book thing?
The most surprising thing about the publishing process is how long it takes to actually bring a book to market (1.5 – 2 years). My background is in games, where companies can publish with the click of a button and make updates via the internet. The process gives me appreciation for the care that goes into the publishing process. It also helps to have a great team of people to work with. Everyone from your agent, publisher, editor and art director in making the book and then there’s publicity, marketing and sales folks that help in getting the book out.
An early cover design.
revision notes.
I’m fortunate to have a supportive publisher in Macmillan. They have a great team of experts. Each one helps you with a specific aspect of the publishing process. I’ve learned so much. I’m so grateful I’ve been in good hands. I’ve worked hard to hold up my end of the deal and make something special. With Ninja it was easy, because I loved it so much.
Who are your creative and/or literary heroes?
Oh, so many!
Authors:
Roald Dahl
E.B. White
Jack Gantos
Judy Blume
Jeff Kinney
Illustrators:
Russell Patterson
Chris Ware
Yuko Shimitzo
Author/Illustrators:
Shel Silverstien
Wolf Erlbruch
William Steig
Mo Willems
Peter Brown
Leo Lionni
Maurice Sendak
Ian Falconer
Jon Klassen
David Shannon
Bill Peet
Calef Brown
Comics:
Jim Lee
Scott McFarlane
Jeffrey Brown
Bill Watterson
Jim Davis
Charles Schulz
Animation/Film:
Brad Bird
John Lassetter
Guillermo Del Toro
Chris Sanders
Danny Boyle
Tim Burton
Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit)
Steven Spielberg
Hayao Miyazaki
Can you talk about the similarities and differences in animation and the picture book form?
I love both mediums for different reasons. Both mediums can transport the reader into new worlds. I love it when a book or movie captures my imagination and I am completely immersed in a world that has been built. The world is invented but it feels familiar and the story resonates with honesty. I hate it when a story is force feeding me a message and it feels like an infomercial or when a story rambles without a focus. Storytelling is magical when it has both the imagination and heart and speaks to you directly and honestly. A great story is so exhilarating. There’s nothing in the world that feels like it. I love both animation and picture books because they have the ability to create magic.
How they are different? Well, I think the main difference is that film tends to be a passive experience. The viewer is in a dream like state that watches the story unfold. It’s like being suspended in a time capsule and you watch everything that happens. You take the story in a more subliminal kind of way.
Books on the other hand I think are active experiences. You as the reader actively interact with the words and pictures. It’s like your brain is the film projector and is working to play the story. Because of this, I think books are much more intimate experiences. You go at your own pace. You stop, question and wonder. Sometimes you’re so engaged, you speed all the way through and sometimes you like to read slowly just because. Readers engage books with their imaginations and a lot of the story is told in-between the words, the page turns and the illustrations whereas films are full experiences that use all the arts of composition, acting, music and visuals to put you in a state of suspension.
Both are magical and I love doing both so much.
Can you give us any behind-the-scenes information on how you created the short film? Did you get to know Maxwell differently in that format?
Yeah! It was so thrilling to bring Maxwell to life. I had a pretty good idea of who he is as a character after creating the book but actually seeing him move and casting Taylor Wong as Maxwell brought another whole dimension.
As for production, here’s a quick behind the scenes look of what it took to make the short film. I plan on doing a much more in-depth look in a separate blog post.
We used 4 software tools: Photoshop, Flash, After Effects and Final Cut Pro. The process was a highly collaborative effort between folks at MacMillan, myself and David Shovlin, the animator. It was a ton of work to do but a ton of fun as well.
In all, it took about 5 weeks of work. David and I worked really hard on it and I’m really proud of what we created in a relatively short period of time.
Where did Ninja! come from?
It’s been my dream to make my own picture books for a long time. The first conception of Ninja came when I was in art school. I jotted down “A boy goes creeping around the house dressed as a Ninja and causes trouble.” That was probably in 2007 or so.
Early Ninja! thumbnails and character sketches.
In 2012, I decided to do the Illustrator Intensive at the SCBWI Summer Conference. We were given an assignment to submit a story along with a manuscript, thumbnails, character sketches, and a finished illustration. Up to that point, I had been writing stories for years but was stuck on many of them. For the workshop we had to write down answers to the following questions:
WHO
WHAT is the dilemma?
WHERE does it take place?
HOW is the problem solved?
This really helped me a lot. Previous to this, many of my stories didn’t have focus and wandered a lot. Ninja was a big break through for me as a storyteller and I had lots of people who helped guide me through it. I’m so thankful for Rubin, my agent, and Kate, my editor. The more I worked on it, the more the world and character took shape and gained depth. It was so much fun to make.
Do you remember any art you made as a kid? What was it?!
Yeah, I made a lot of ninja stars and origami. I was also obsessed with Legos. I loved to build cruiser space ships and large fortresses armed to the teeth. Whenever my uncle bought us Legos, we would make the thing we were supposed to make and then tear it apart and then make what we wanted to make. Making your own thing was much more fun.
I was a huge comic book reader and collector as well. I bought all of the X-men, Spiderman, Spider-ham, Batman and Spawn comics. I still buy comics.
I also really love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I used to record all of the episodes. In fact, I used to press pause on the VCR and trace drawings of the Ninja Turtles by overlaying paper onto the TV. At school, everyone thought I was the best drawer, but I never told anyone my technique til now! Eventually I copied so many drawings I could draw it out of memory. I tried to do the same technique with Transformers but that wasn’t nearly as successful because I didn’t understand perspective as at 12 year old.
And now what’s next for you?
I’ve got a lot of things I’m working on. I have lots of Ninja stories to tell with Maxwell. (I’m so excited about all of them!) One of them involves an old Chinese folktale involving ghosts!
I’m also illustrating two Potty Training books for kids that are hilarious.
illustrations from How to Pee
I have lots of picture book stories I’m developing and I’m also writing a middle grade novel titled Ming Lee, All American. Ming Lee chronicles my experiences growing up as an ABC (American Born Chinese). It’s deeply personal and is funny in that Louis CK, embarrassing but honest kind of way. I would describe it as Judy Blume meets Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Of course, it is its own thing that I am figuring out. I have a sense of what I want it to be but you never know what it will be until you get there.
A huge thanks to Arree for this peek into the mind of a master craftsman. Be sure to get your hands on Ninja! this week!
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By: Kirsty,
on 8/8/2011
By Ian Stewart Falling cats can turn over in mid-air. Well, most cats can. Our first cat, Seamus, didn’t have a clue. My wife, worried he might fall off a fence and hurt himself, tried to train him by holding him over a cushion and letting go. He enjoyed the game, but he never learned how to flip himself over.
The world itself has become hectic and life a fast-forward motion picture. Wherever one goes, everything must be done speedily. This is because nowadays, almost in all families, both parents go to work, departing early and arriving late. The indoors work is thus kept pending. Beforehand, the speed of life was not so emphasized upon. Only the husband was the bread-winner and so the housewife had all the time to cook, clean and complete the household chores. Today, the parents, after a hard day’s work, must speed up and prepare something to eat for their children. People, therefore, have to follow the new trend and adjust to a new lifestyle.
Image via Wikipedia
The on-the-move lifestyle includes the eating of fast food among others. But even if “fast food” as we call it, people do not have time to eat a rounder properly; they either gulp it behind the driving wheel or eat it watching the television at the same time. To speed themselves up and save time, people make use of sophisticated machines such as microwaves to cook food quickly, portable computers to complete office work…. After a speedy week, to supposedly relax themselves, people listen to music now – quick, hasty music. It is the hard rock and technos. This music is a great contrast to the old ones that were the real relaxing music.
These small factors contribute to big inventions, speeding the transport rate. Long ago, there were ox carts and slow trains as means of transport. With the evolution of science and technology and due to the speed revolution, buses, cars, motorcycles, aeroplanes as well as super-jet trains travelling at two hundred kilometres per hour were introduced. Their need of fast transport then was satisfied. As their burden of work grew heavier, the need of a quick means of communication was also felt.
Scientists and inventors put their heads together. To support the level of speed of life and promote development, they abolished the hand-over of letters on horse-backs and established the links between one place and the whole world. Speed developed the fax, email methods. Through speed, the distance between the countries of the world is now lessened and so this helps the economic development of countries.
Speed may prove to be dangerous also. The speed of a car, an aeroplane, a ship can endanger the lives of many people, if not properly controlled. Cases of accidents where people had died are numerous. For instance, the well-known ship “Titanic” sank as a result of sailing at full speed and thus inevitably crash into an iceberg. How rightly has one stated that “haste makes waste”.
Image via Wikipedia
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