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Berkley's Floating Sensor Network project launched 100 floating robots equipped with GPS-enabled smartphones down the Sacramento River on May 9. The launch was designed to test a new generation of water monitoring technologies. The 12 inch robots, called Drifters, are designed to provide real-time, high-resolution data of hard-to-map waterways. One of many possible uses is locating breeches in levee systems quickly enough to allow repair, before erosion destroys the levee. Other uses include identifying contaminants. Andrew Tinka, lead graduate student on the project notes:

“If something spills in the water, if there’s a contaminant, you need to know where it is now, you need to know where it’s going, you need to know where it will be later on. The Floating Sensor Network project can help by tracking water flow at a level of detail not currently possible.”

Deploying the robots is as simple as throwing them into the water from boats, docks, or helicopters. Each robot has a buoyancy control system, differential drive, GPS, compass, depth sensor, salinity sensor, Zigbee and GSM radios, and 72 hours of power from a lithium battery. The open source control system is written entirely in Python and runs on top of Linux. The project is headed by Alexandre Bayen of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). For more details see the Berkley news release. The project has also released quite a few technical reports and papers describing the developments that went into designing the drifter robots. You can also check several videos of the robots in action.

A female robot store mannequin developed by the Sugiura Machine Design Office (http://www.machinedesign.co.jp), is currently in actual use at the Parco Department store in Ikebukuro. Each of the robots arms features 4 degrees of freedom enabling it to mimic human body language. The robot operates over 10 hours a day, so reliability was a major [...] 0

via Flickr http://flic.kr/p/bYUX5Q 0

This is a prototype of a new kit soon to be released by DAGU. Intended for younger minds who love all things robotic this is a low cost robot claw that is fun to build and a great accessory for any robotic Halloween costume. The clear plastic body makes this kit easy to light up [...] 0

Photo by Alan Light; used under Creative Commons license.

It’s been 22 years since the world lost Jim Henson, and I still can’t think about it without tearing up a bit. His death at age 53 was sudden and catastrophic, like being hit by lightning on a cloudless day. Along with countless others around the world who had never met him, I felt like a close friend was gone.

Five of my fellow GeekDads and I put together this article two years ago as a tribute to his memory on the 20th anniversary of his death. On the following pages are our thoughts on that anniversary of his passing, and at the end are videos from his memorial service in 1990, which are some of the saddest and most wonderful things you are ever likely to see. Please take a few minutes to read and watch, and then add your own tribute in the comments.

Photo by Jonathan Liu

This is my now-six-year-old, back when she was about 2 1/2, at the Children’s Museum in Portland, Oregon. They were having a Sesame Street exhibit, and in one of the stations, kids could dress as a furry Muppet. There was also a bit with a blue screen behind a brick half-wall, so you could appear on the TV with various Muppets, just like other little kids from the show. My daughter at this point hadn’t watched much TV before, but she loved being on TV and it didn’t seem to bother her at all that there wasn’t an actual Muppet next to her.

I remember growing up with two Sesame Street books in particular: The Monster at the End of This Book (starring Grover) and Cookie Monster and the Cookie Tree. I managed to find copies of both books when my daughter was little, and I loved reading it to her and doing the voices. (I can manage a pretty good Grover and Cookie Monster, sometimes Ernie, and I get by on the rest.) More recently, when I was helping with an after-school program and trying to read books to second- and third-graders, I discovered one day that the only thing that got them to sit still and listen was when I read a book as Grover. They were immediately hooked.

— Jonathan Liu

"Two Ball Juggling with High-speed Hand-Arm and High-speed Vision System," by Takahiro Kizaki and Akio Namiki from the Graduate School of Engineering at Chiba University in Japan. Used with permission. Read more at http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/automaton By GerbilGod7 0

Drokk: Music inspired by Mega - City One

If you recognise the word ‘DROKK‘, then you’re already halfway to understanding what this post might be about. For those that don’t, it’s a made up, sci-fi expletive along the lines of BSG’s ‘Frak’ or Red Dwarf’s ‘Smeg’. It’s found in the Earth’s future Mega-Cities, often spoken by perps when they’re apprehended by the mighty Judge Dredd from the 2000AD comic book universe.

In this instance it’s the name of the soundtrack collaboration between Geoff Barrow (of Portishead fame) and composer Ben Salisbury. Except that it’s not actually a soundtrack. If, like me, you’re a fan of Joe Dredd, you’ll know that there’s a movie coming out later this year starring Karl ‘Bones McCoy’ Urban as the be-chinned anti-hero of Mega City One, and back in the early stages of the production Barrow and Salisbury were approached to score the film. They started work on a heavily synthesizer-based score, drawing on Barrow’s love of the comics and Salisbury’s knowledge of putting music to film. Then, for reasons that Barrow doesn’t want to go in to at the moment as the movie is still in production, their score was dropped from the film. (He goes to great lengths in this interview with The Skinny to be clear that there are no hard feelings about it, and is still very excited about the film). Undeterred by this, the pair got the blessing of 2000AD to continue their work and have now released “DROKK: Music Inspired By Mega-City One“, a 19-track, dark, moody and electronic tribute to the future dystopia.

Drokk: Music inspired by Mega-City One by Geoff Barrow and Ben SalisburyAnd what a tribute it is. If you’re a fan of the synth-based soundtracks to 80s movies such as Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire by Vangelis or Tangerine Dream’s work on Risky Business or Near Dark, then this is right up your alley. It was created almost entirely using vintage analogue synthesisers – two voices, four oscillators and sequences of eight notes at a time – all looped, tweaked, twiddled, arpeggiated and layered to create immense soundscapes that you can drift away into. You can easily visualise Dredd speeding through the city on his Lawmaster during the opener “Lawmaster / Pursuit”, even without knowing that was the title of the track. The thundering baseline builds ominously until the soaring synth lines come in, punctuated by a minimal beat as the synths wind up and detune into the finale. The arpeggiators get a thorough workout across the whole album, adding a dark, brooding rhythm to the drone of the synths. Percussion, where used, is very minimal and industrial – most of it seems to be made from the synths too, as opposed to actual drums sounds.

As it’s not technically a soundtrack to an actual film, it manages to (partially) avoid one of major problems of the genre – track length. When Daft Punk’s soundtrack to Tron came out, I was desperate for them to release ‘extended’ versions of some of the tracks. All too often they’re just getting going, building up nicely and about to turn into full on techno jams, only to have them fade out and the next mini-tune start up. In addition to the obligatory “End Theme”, Drokk features several tracks that break the three minute mark and one of them, “Inhale”, even manages to clock in at over six. It’s the most song-like track on the whole album, with real drums and even hints of guitars, and wouldn’t be out of place on an early David Holmes album or alongside synth-and-drumkit duo RocketNumberNine. It also reminds me in places of one of my other all time favourite soundtracks – Clint Mansell’s score to the indie hit Moon – which gets around the whole ‘short song’ thing by almost sounding like one continuos piece of music with different elements drifting in and out.

DROKK live at Orbital Comics, London

“Miami Lawgiver” and “Helmet Theme” both bring an 80s stabbing synth sound very similar to Tangerine Dream or even some of Giorgio Moroder’s work, with undulating loops warping away underneath. Other tracks such as 2t(Fru)T go heavy on the detuned experimental weirdness and some of the shorter ones drift away into ethereal soundscapes, but still keep the dark, brooding rhythms bubbling along. You can also hear echoes of Brad Fidel’s excellent Terminator score and John Carpenter’s music for his own films. (If you want to hear some more awesome synth soundtracks, Pulse Radio has a great list).

If you’re lucky enough to be in London tonight (16th May), Barrow and Salisbury with be performing excerpts from the album live at Orbital Comics on Great Newport Street from 6.30pm. I’ve been listening to it on repeat for days now and can already feel a twinge of disappointment that when the new film does come out it won’t be accompanied by this wonderful collection of electronic sounds. I guess I’ll have to wait for some enthusiastic like-minded individual to produce a fan edit that will bring the two together.

Drokk is available now on Barrow’s own Invada Records (with some collector bundles available), and via all your favourite online retailers [Amazon, iTunes, Bleep.com] and you can also preview/buy it via Bandcamp.

Round 6 of Titans of Industry. (Game prototype; not final components.) Photo: Jonathan Liu

Overview: Titans of Industry is another heavy-duty worker placement game set in the 1920s, with players competing to build factories, produce resources, and then sell them at businesses for profit and sweet, sweet victory points. The game is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter; I received a prototype to try out.

Players: 3 to 5

Ages: 12 and up

Playing Time: 90 minutes

Retail: $55 on Kickstarter (or $80 for wooden bits or $10 for print-and-play version); eventually $60 retail

Rating: Titanic! Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Really, though, it’s quite a good game.

Who Will Like It? Gamers who enjoy worker placement games, like Belfort or Lords of Waterdeep. While the gameplay is pretty straightforward, keeping track of all your people and resources and buildings can be daunting, so this game is not for players who shy away from lots of planning. It’s Titans of Industry, not “Dwarves of Industry.” (Come to think of it, maybe that name applies to Belfort.)

Factory cards come in 3 Levels and are used to produce goods.

Theme:

The board is made to look like some sort of big headquarters, with the various spaces for workers made to look like conference rooms, tables, and so on. Players will be producing various types of resources, and then selling them — but they also build buildings (factories and businesses) which are worth points. It’s a somewhat abstracted version of 1920s industry, but the gameplay is solid.

Components:

This game has a LOT of components. I can see why they’re charging extra for the wooden resource bits, because even the cardboard version has a lot of stuff in it:

• 35 Factory Cards
• 35 Business Cards
• 21 Corporate Strategy Cards
• 168 Goods chits (24 each Wood, Brick, Stone, Tar, Concrete, Steel, Glass)
• 14 Research and Development chits
• 2 Custom Warehouse bins for chits
• 30 Workers (6 each in 5 colors)
• 10 Discs (2 each in 5 colors)
• 1 Temporary Worker (gray)
• 1 Turn Indicator
• 1 Game board
• 44 Money coins (20 $1k coins, 12 $3k coins, 12 $5k coins)
• 8 Loan cards
• 5 Player reference cards
• 6 Plastic zip bags

The version I have is a prototype, so I don’t know how much things will change between this and the final version. However, the artwork on the board is well done, with an Art Deco sort of feel to it. The cards are laid out pretty well, with easy-to-read markings for the cards that work in a 3-, 4-, or 5-player game. My only complaint is that the icon for wood looks a lot like a pile of bricks (particularly from across the table), and I often made that mistake while trying to make decisions. It might be nice if they included a thicker color-coded border on the cards (as there were on the resource chits).

One other omission which I hope they’ll fix in the final production version: the Corporate Strategy cards cost a little more each time you buy one: that cost should be printed right on the board, because we had to keep the instructions turned to that page to remind us.

Resource chits. Basic: Brick, Wood, Stone. Intermediate: Tar, Concrete. Advanced: Glass, Steel

Gameplay:

Each player starts with $6k and 4 workers. Each player also gets three Corporate Strategy card, keeps one to pick, and places the rest at the bottom of the deck. Corporate Strategy cards are kept secret from other players. Player order is set randomly, and indicated by the turn order tokens on the board. One of each basic resource and $1k is placed on the Goods area of the board. All the other resources are put into the supply area of the board.

The goal of the game is to amass the most victory points by the end of the 7th round.

Each round has seven phases (some of which are very short):

1. Purchase buildings
2. Place workers
3. Receive resources
4. Use Businesses and Services
5. Resolve Advances
6. Pay Upkeep (during years 1923, 1925, and 1927)
7. Cleanup and Maintenance

Purchase Buildings

Turn over one Factory and one Business card per player: these are the buildings that are available for purchase in the round. Buildings come in three different levels, and cost $1k per level. The deck is arranged with Level 1 on top, Level 2 in the middle, and Level 3 at the bottom. Going in player order, players may choose to purchase buildings or pass. Once all the buildings are purchased or everyone has passed consecutively, the purchasing phase is over and any remaining buildings are discarded.

Each player has 5 slots for buildings. You can build on top of existing buildings as long as the newer building is of a higher level, so buildings can be up to three stories tall. Whatever is on top is active, and replaces the Factory or Building it covers. R&D chits automatically transfer to the new card.

Businesses come in 3 Levels, and are used to sell goods for cash or victory points.

Place Workers

This is the real meat of the game: deciding where to put your workers. Most locations (besides Businesses and the Train Workers space) can only be taken by one worker at a time. A worker on a Factory will produce each of the resources shown on the card. (Some give you a choice of a type of good, e.g. “any basic good.”) A worker on a Business can sell the depicted goods for cash or, in some cases, victory points.

There are a lot of spaces on the board as well: Corporate Strategy lets you purchase additional cards (up to three purchased cards, one per round, at increasing costs each time). The Goods area will let you take some basic goods or money, whatever has accumulated in each space. Buy Goods lets you purchase any two resources for $3k. Status bumps you up to first player for the next round. Union Bribe lets you place a worker on a Factory that is already occupied by an opponent (but it costs you the extra worker who goes on the Bribe spot). Temp Worker gives you an extra worker for the next round. Two R&D spaces let you add an R&D chit to either a Factory or a Business you own. Finally, Train Workers lets you get new workers (up to 2 additional), but it ties up your trainer for 2 rounds and then costs $2k as well.

One more thing: each time an opponent places a worker on one of your buildings, you immediately get a victory point.

Receive Resources

Everyone collects resources from the Goods area and any Factories they occupy. Factories that have R&D chits will produce one extra good.

Use Businesses and Services

You can sell goods at a Business if you have a worker on it: you can sell a complete set of whatever is shown on the card, and you get money or victory points. You are allowed to sell one set of goods for each worker on the card (even if it’s not yours). So if you and an opponent both have one person on the same Business, you can both sell two sets of whatever goods that Business purchases. R&D chits increase the reward by $1k or 1VP.

This is also when you can purchase Corporate Strategy cards ($2k for the first, $4k and 1 good for the second, and $6k and 2 goods for the third), or use the Buy Goods space.

Loans will cost you extra. Corporate Strategy cards give you bonus victory points for meeting certain conditions.

Resolve Advances

The “Advances” part of the board has the Status, Temp Worker, and R&D spaces. The player with Temp Worker claims the extra grey pawn and puts it in their area for use in the next round. Players on the R&D spaces each take a chit that goes on a Factory or Business (corresponding to the space they’re on). The Status actually takes place during Cleanup.

Pay Upkeep

Three times during the game, you’ll have to pay upkeep on your buildings. Total up the upkeep cost shown on all the top cards of your buildings, and pay that amount to the bank. If you don’t have enough, you can always take out a loan for $3k— but it takes $5k to pay it back, or you lose 5VP at the end of the game.

Cleanup and Maintenance

Everyone retrieves their workers, except for those in the Train Workers space. After one round in the Train Worker space, an additional worker is placed in the spot. After the second round, both workers are retrieved and the player pays $2k to the bank.

The Turn Order tokens are rotated: first player goes to the back, and everyone else shifts up. Then, if any player took the Status space, they move to first place and move everyone back.

One more of each basic good and $1k is added to the Goods area.

Move the Turn Indicator one more space.

Game End

The game ends after the 7th round. Once everyone has paid their upkeep, total up the victory points on the buildings each player owns (including those that have been built over). Each R&D chit is worth a point, and any points earned by fulfilling Corporate Strategy cards are added.

Loans can be paid back a this time — unpaid loans cost 5 points each.

Extra goods are worth a point for every 3 goods.

Money is worth a point for every $5k.

In case of a tie, the player with most money wins.

Conclusion:

Gozer Games is also the company behind Zombie Ninja Pirates and the sequel Vampire Werewolf Fairies. I thought they were cute card games but not particularly deep or strategic. Titans of Industry is something completely different, and can be quite a brain-burner. I really like it, though, and I wish I’d gotten to try it out a little earlier in their fundraising process. They’ve only got a few days left (it ends on Sunday, May 20) to raise 45% of their goal, and I’m hoping they reach it. (I know, I’m totally playing off your Kickstarter FOMO here.)

I’ll admit: the worker-placement genre isn’t for everyone. It’s a combination of predicting what your opponents will do, taking spaces you know other people need, and managing your own resources and money to achieve your goals. For some players, this can be completely overwhelming, but I guess I’m a good micromanager.

One interesting thing about Titans of Industry is the way the buildings change over the different levels: earlier buildings will have more basic goods and only a few intermediate goods. Level 3 buildings will have more advanced goods and fewer basic and intermediates. So as the game progresses, it becomes harder to produce and sell basic goods — but you’ll need some in order to get the really big payouts.

I also really liked the way that you can sell more things depending on the number of workers at a Business, independent of players. What it means is that if you know somebody is likely to use a particular Business, you can try to accumulate more of those goods, join them on the Business, and sell multiple copies. (Even better if they don’t know you’re going to do it, and only have one set of goods to sell.)

So far in the games I’ve played, though, the Corporate Strategy cards seem to be the path to victory. If you max out on your CS cards early in the game, they can direct your actions a bit throughout the rest of the game. In the last game I played, I earned more than half of my total score through CS cards. I think it’ll take some more plays (with experienced players) to see if there’s any way to prevent somebody from getting so many CS cards — one player suggested having two spots to purchase them, since they can be so valuable. With only 7 rounds, not everyone is going to be able to purchase their maximum three extra cards — but maybe that’s the point, and you just can’t let somebody buy so many without getting in to purchase some yourself.

The phase order can be a little confusing, particularly the way things are phrased for the “Advances” section. There are only four spaces on the Advances section of the board, but one of them actually doesn’t apply until the cleanup phase — and even the other three could wait until then without any significant changes. The gameplay is fine, but it might make a nice tweak in the rules that makes things a little more clear.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed Titans of Industry, and I’m looking forward to playing it more. I think there are a few minor improvements that they may be able to make before the final print, but I hope they do hit their goal so the game gets published. $55 sounds like a reasonable price for a game of this type.

They do have a $10 Print-and-Play version: some people have complained about having a cost for print-and-play, particularly for a game that is going to require a significant amount of printing and cutting, but if you’ve got a lot of time and don’t want to shell out for the full game, I think it could still be a pretty good deal.

For more info, visit their Kickstarter page, but hurry! Funding ends on Sunday, May 20.

Wired: Terrific worker-placement game that rewards attention to detail.

Tired: Can be slow with indecisive players.

Disclosure: GeekDad received a prototype copy of this game for review purposes.

Photo by Anton Olsen

My wife laughed nervously when I told her that I’d won a Doomhammer sculpture. She was aware that I had entered the contest at the NY Toy Fair back in February. She even commented on the picture on Facebook, and reposted it to her friends, but I’m sure it never crossed her mind that I could win. She was excited when I got the email in March informing me that I’d won. Her enthusiasm waned a little when I told her it was a life size replica of the Thrall’s Doomhammer made with MEGABlok. Neither of us had any clue exactly what “life size” meant.

In talking with the PR rep it became apparent that the model department was trying to figure out how to ship it to me, and that it weighed 50 pounds. That number surprised me, but I didn’t think much of it. I mean, how big can 50 pounds of bricks be?

The surprise arrived on a DHL truck. The delivery guy knocked on the door and informed my wife that he had two rather large packages to deliver. One was a custom plywood shipping crate for the Doomhammer, and the other was a special wall-mount for the hammer shaped like a matching shield.

I’m just waiting now for our schedule to calm down a bit after Maker Faire to find room on the living room wall for the shield and hammer. Wish me luck with that.

GeekDad HipTrax Logo by Dave Banks

As the weather warms up the new music just comes rolling in! In this episode we spotlight a trio of fantastic new songs from three of our longtime favorites.

Get your geek on with:

“Mountain Fortress Delta VII” by The OneUps

The newly released Nerdapalooza 2011 Recordings album contains no fewer than three dozen amazing live performance tracks from last year’s festival. Of course you can keep up with all the earth-shattering developments concerning this year’s event over at the official site.

“Never Fall (feat. Kirby Krackle)” by Sci-Fried

That rowdy geek rock crew Sci-Fried is currently finishing up a new album. Co-Op Mode is a collaborative effort featuring special guests like Warp 11, Insane Ian and Kirby Krackle’s Kyle Stevens. And congratulations to Sci-Fried guitarist Chuck Silver, who just participated in an epic team-up of his own. In the form of marriage!

“Let Your Geek Flag Fly” by John Anealio

What started out as a fun word game within the hallowed halls of the new GeekDad Community became the latest single from geek rock troubadour John Anealio. John will be sharing a stage with fellow musical dorks of note Paul & Storm at next month’s Nerdtacular event in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Want to hear more? Subscribe to the GeekDad podcast in iTunes (see the button on the sidebar), or directly through the RSS feed. You can also download GeekDad HipTrax #88 via this link.

The HipTrax theme song was created by Snake Eyes. In the event of a robot uprising, I’m pretty sure he’s got my back.

True Dungeon recently announced a massive expansion to the the live-action D&D-style adventure that it has run at Gen Con for the past nine years. To celebrate its tenth year, the wildly popular event is moving from its old home in a 20,000-square-foot ballroom in the Marriott to the 45,000-square-foot Exhibit Hall D in the Indiana Convention Center.

In a True Dungeon event, each player takes on a traditional RPG role — fighter, wizard, rogue, etc. — and a game master escorts the party through a series of rooms constructed inside in a large hall. You get a limited amount of time to solve the puzzle or defeat the monster in each room, and then you move on to the next. Puzzles can involve physical trials or tests of dexterity, while combat runs on a modified shuffleboard table onto which you slide pucks based on your class and weapon. You can also use collectible tokens that represent weapons, magic items, and so on, to tip things in your favor. An entire game takes two hours and fifteen minutes.

Tickets for this year’s events go on sale on this Sunday, May 20. To grab one, you’ll need to have at least a one-day badge for Gen Con as well. There are about 6,000 tickets available at $38 each, and they often sell out fast.

There are three new adventures for this year, plus a new Storyscape staging area that features concessions and a cash bar. While inside the Storyscape, you can also try out a new series of mini-games called Truecraft. This costs $12 for eight tokens you can use to play the three games and — if you’re good — win prizes to help you in your adventures.

My eldest son Marty and I played in a VIP True Dungeon session at last year’s Gen Con, along with a killer lineup of geeks, including Monte Cook, Colin McComb, Ray Vallese, Eric Harshbarger, and Wired’s own puzzle master, Mike Selinker. Even with such an illustrious group of gamers by our side, we got slaughtered by a red dragon in the end, but we had a ball every minute.

Disclaimer: I’ve known Jeff Martin, the creator of True Dungeon, for years, and he comped our tickets for last summer’s event. 

Innocent but esoteric questions from children can be hard to answer. When a child asks “How do birds fly?” “Who invented the alphabet?” or “Why is the sky blue?” sometimes the answer is difficult to distill enough for young minds. For the intrepid, this is a matter of breaking down complex ideas to very basic concepts, but for others, it can be too much of a challenge. Fortunately, author John Fox is dauntless. Playing catch with his seven-year-old son in the backyard, Fox was asked “Dad, why do we play ball, anyway?”

This simple question sent the trained anthropologist off on a global search to uncover the origins of our love affair with games and our inexplicably imperative tactile connections to small spheres. Why is it, that when we see a ball, we are compelled to pick it up and play with it? Fox was determined to find out.

Fox’s travels and research are detailed in his new book, The Ball. From the games the ancient Egyptians and Greeks played to the birth of basketball, Fox covers a lot of ground. However, the book focuses on many lesser known games and, for the most part, avoids modern sport.

Among his many stops, in Scotland, he witnesses a medieval version of football called ‘ba, the origins of which are as brutal and bloody as you might expect from those tough times. In France, Fox learns about jeu de paume, a predecessor to tennis. And not far from the beaches of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, he ventures into the jungle to play ulama on an ancient Mayan court.

The Ball has a full side of history and colorful stories that bring these old sports to life. In his investigations, he discovered that, aside from the obvious physical benefits, there are psychological and cognitive benefits as well — Fox says that playing ball games help us think better and faster. It’s an interesting observation, especially since when he does draw back to modern sport, it is to draw comparisons between the brutal sports of a more primitive age and the “concussion crisis” of the NFL.

At full time, The Ball is a fascinating read that – like a good ball game – is both compelling and fun. While Fox doesn’t come up with a simple answer to his son’s question, he does come up with many observations that help define our basic human need to play. Getting to the root of games and understanding why we love ball games, well, that might just be enough to answer a young boy’s question.

Disclosure: GeekDad received a review copy of this book. 

Fresh off of watching the season finale of “Fringe” last Friday, I happened upon an amazing discovery: FOX and the Science Olympiad have teamed up to create lesson plans to help students explore the real science behind some of the show’s plot devices. Magnetism, combustion, electromagnetism, protein modeling, and more are covered using incidents investigated by the Fringe Division in seasons 2-4.

The lesson plans are geared toward students in grades 9-12 and only use the show as a starting point — the real learning takes place with hands-on activities and discussions. Relevant Science Olympiad competitions are also referenced to give teachers a clear path to include more project-based learning in their curriculum.

Sadly, there are no instruction sheets for building portals to alternate universes, no recipe for cooking up your own batch of stasis-inducing “amber,” or brain scanning of any sort in these lessons. There is a chance, however, for a few cunning teachers and parents to slip some science fiction into the classroom and snag some new fans for the genre. Maybe you’ll even get to re-watch a few episodes with your kids to “help” with homework.

The Science of Fringe on FOX’s website (cool videos, & graphics).

The Science of Fringe on Science Olympiad website (just the facts, ma’am).

Image: Screencap of a clip on FOX’s The Science of Fringe website.

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle, and the previous day’s answer (in invisitext) posted here.

.answer {color:#fff;} .answer:hover {color:#333;}

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

You’re playing the character who speaks first in Shakespeare’s longest play. What’s your opening line?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER (mouseover to see):

Search [star collapses] to find that massive stars become black holes at the end of their life. Search [black hole point zero volume] to learn at the center of a black hole is a point of zero volume. This is known as a singularity and its density is infinite.

Homepage image: Wikimedia

Over 5,000 teams with more than 10,000 members, primarily from middle schools, high schools, and universities competed in the 2012 VEX Robotics World Championship in Sterling Heights, Michigan this April. Paul Copioli -the president of VEX Robotics, and Jonathan Chang - a VEX Competition participant from Bellamine College Prep, were kind enough to answer our [...] 0

Robolution Dance Contest Entrance commercial By ElasticIllusion 0

Zachary Thomason, a 12 year old student with X-linked myotubular myopathy, a rare illness that has left him effectively a prisoner in his own body unable to attend school or engage in normal activities for a boy his age, will be attending school using a remote telepresence robot developed by VGO.   Via: WEB EXCLUSIVE: Student [...] 0

We usually forget that apart from an exciting research field, robotics is also a huge industry. Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher of The Robot Report describe the robotics stock exchange map from an investor’s perspective. There are numerous companies that are currently active on robotics but only a fraction of them rely heavily on that sector, most of these stocks are influenced by other trends. There are also newly formed companies that aspire to cash in on the hype that surrounds robotics as an exotic and innovative sector without providing evidence that they are a viable and healthy investment. You can read more about robotics stocks in the article from everything-robotic.com and also in the Robot Report.

Robothon, the annual robotics competition and exhibition staged by the Seattle Robotics Society, has a FaceBook page you're going to want to "like". Robothon 2012 is scheduled for Saturday, June 2nd at the Armory Center House in Seattle. A full day of exciting events are scheduled starting at 10 am. Attendance, and participation, is totally [...] 0

Dork Tower #1070 by John Kovalic

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