Well, I’m very excited to tell you about this week’s Theme of the Week because we are spending the day today at ROBOTFEST!
Which is to say: this week’s Theme of the Week is: ROBOTS! #bobbledyrobots
Yes, Robotfest is an annual event over at the National Electronics Museum in Linthicum, Maryland. It’s about an hour and a half away from our barn in Chestertown, but we had so much fun there last year, we figure it’s worth the trip.
I know, I know, we probably should have told you about it before, so that those of you who are in the area could plan for a visit. But we didn’t. Sorry about that. If you have the chance and a free schedule today, though, head on over. Wear your sunglasses for $1 off admission (though elementary kids and younger get in for free anyway)!
Anyway. Here’s the deal: robots are cool. Most of the time that we think of robots, we think of robots like this:
(We met R2 at Robotfest last year, before August knew that pushing buttons on a droid is not a good idea).
Or, maybe like this:
(We didn’t meet any Transformers, but we DID make some kind-of-transformers out of cardboard with interchangeable modular parts):
But as much as we’d like our robots to look and behave kind of like people, most of the robots in the world are actually used to do things that we don’t like to do or that we can’t do as efficiently as machines. (The word “robot” actually comes from the Czech word “robotnik” which means “slave” from the word “robotiti” to work, or to drudge, which basically means to do really boring awful things that are no fun at all). Like, take little crackers (or something?) from one conveyor belt and put them neatly onto another:
That would be a really hard job for a human to do without getting super tired (or super bored, or super irritated).
Robots are also used to do more complicated things, like stack pancakes:
You see, if you had a PERSON like ME doing that job, not only would your pancakes have fingerprints all over them, but they would probably have a bunch of bites taken out of them, because I LOVE pancakes! In fact, there’s a funny old TV episode where Lucy and Ethel go to work in a chocolate factory and have to wrap candies (this was back in the old days before they had robots to do this kind of work):
So – it’s a good thing we’ve figured out a way to get robots to help us out. But aside from doing the boring and repetitive jobs, engineers are also developing robots that can do rescue missions that would be too dangerous for humans (like saving people from fires or floods). So robots are definitely going to be around more and more in the future.
So for this week, we’d like you to think about what kind of robot YOU would invent, and what would you invent it to do? Post your ideas and pictures here in the comments or on Instagram using #bobbledyrobots. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
And – we’ll give you the run-down on this year’s RobotFest later in the week. Happy Robot Week!!!
Have you ever seen a comic book? It’s a book where the pages are broken into “panels,” by which I mean little rectangles. Each panel is kind of like its own page.
In comics, the words that characters say appear in speech bubbles coming out of their mouths. Often, comics are about superheroes, but not always.
Here’s a comic about Spider Man.
Comics usually have very exciting covers.
And people in comics say “Pow” a lot.
Don’t ask me why.
The bottom line: comics are awesome. We’re going to spend all week talking about and thinking about comics.
But don’t get too excited. Not yet, anyway. Today’s post will be really short, because today (Saturday, April 5) we are at a comic book show. Which means that we will spend all day in a room full of people who make comic books and people who love comic books. Which means that we will have a chance to take all sorts of pictures of comic books and the people who make them, pictures which we will share with you tomorrow.
The comic book show is called the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts Festival. It’s in New York City. If you and your family happen to live anywhere near New York and enjoy comic books, you might want to consider dropping by. Here is the poster.
And now I am going to sleep, because it is very late at night, and I need to save my energy for tomorrow’s comic book show.
Stay tuned for pictures, stories, and interesting facts and observations about comic books.
If you are looking for something to do in the mean time, may I suggest you make a comic of your own? Making comics gives you a chance to be an author and an illustrator at the same time, which is something we can really get excited about.
Good night! Or good morning. Depending on when you read this.
Hello everyone! We had lots of fun during bicycle week and hope you did too. And now we’re on to something really really REALLY exciting! Apparently, there was recently a discovery made proving that dragons really did exist! Yeah, I know!
And so, this week’s theme of the week is Dragon Discovery!
I was pretty excited about this, because I used to love reading books about fantastical things like fairies and leprechauns and unicorns, and, my favorites of all, DRAGONS! But, of course, I was always told that they weren’t real (this Wikipedia article about dragons is going to have to be updated – the very first line is “a dragon is a legendary creature”!). But it turns out that dragons actually DID exist. Here is a fossil of a dragon they discovered:
They originally thought this was an archaeopteryx, which is a kind of feathered dinosaur. But it turns out it is actually what we would call a dragon. Technically, dragons were reptiles (like lizards) that were related to dinosaurs but only appeared several million years after the dinosaurs died out. AND they existed at the same time as early humans (almost TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS AGO – so we don’t have to worry about any of them showing up today). And this is why we have these old legends about dragons.
This dragon was named Primostultus. It had soft skin with plated scales on it.
What scientists originally thought were featheres were actually the dragon’s wings, which worked like bat wings and were made of loose flaps of skin. AND (this is the coolest!) the Primostultus could actually breathe fire! There’s no fossil proof of that, of course, but apparently they found evidence of a chambered stomach (like cows have). One of the chambers had bacteria in it that created hydrogen (a gas that catches fire really easily) and another chamber held rocks to aid in digestion (some animals still do this – the rocks are called “gastroliths” or “gizzard stones”). Dragons would eat certain types of rock that could create sparks, which would start the fire as the dragon belched hydrogen from its stomach. So, it kind of worked just like a lighter:
Pretty cool, eh?
Okay – get ready, because HERE’S the most exciting thing about everything I just told you: I made it up! Yep!!
This week’s theme is actually APRIL FOOL’S DAY!!! Tuesday is going to be April Fool’s Day, so I thought I’d give it a whirl and see if you were fooled. Were you? I tried to back it all up with science, but maybe you weren’t fooled at all. The name “Primostultus” actually means “First Fool” in Latin, and that picture of the dragon’s skin is actually an armadillo. And the fossil really was of an archaeopteryx. (Just so you know, chambered stomachs and gizzard stones are totally real, though.)
So: Happy April Fool’s Day!
April Fool’s Day happens on April 1st. Here in the US, we celebrate it by trying to trick people. In some European countries—France, Italy, Belgium—and French-speaking Canada, people celebrate by trying to secretly tape a cut-out paper fish onto other people’s backs without them knowing (like I just did to Matthew, ha ha ha!).
When they finally notice, you’re supposed to yell “POISSON D’AVRIL!!!” (which means “Fish of April” in French) or “PESCE D’APRILE!!!” (which means “Fish of April” in Italian). I haven’t had to decide which to yell yet because Matthew still hasn’t noticed, ha ha ha!
One of the most famous April Fool’s pranks was when a very popular British news program reported on the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest.
Of course spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees!! (You make it out of flour and eggs, and I don’t know, some other stuff – check out this awesome video HERE about a pasta factory if you’ve got the time. It’s pretty cool.) But the news station was flooded with phone calls after the report – people wanted to know where they could buy those amazing spaghetti trees! Ha ha ha!
Another good one was when Burger King announced the Left-Handed Whopper. They said they rotated the ingredients to best serve leftys. Some people actually went into Burger Kings that day and tried to order it!
Anyway. There are lots of funny April Fool’s jokes. You can see a list of some of the best HERE.
So for this week, your job is to cut out some paper fish and try to tape them onto your friends’ or parents’ backs without them knowing! Take a photo (or get someone else to take a photo) and add it in the comments or upload it to instagram using #bobbledyaprilfools. Just make sure that whoever is getting “fished” doesn’t mind having their photo online! Alright! Go to it, pranksters! Can’t wait to see who (and how!) you’ve fooled someone!
Hello again, everyone! Now that Spring has officially begun (as of Thursday) it’s seems like it should be time to put away the skis and snowshoes, the wool hats and mittens, and get ourselves outside to actually enjoy it.
And what better way is there to enjoy a nice spring day than on your BICYCLE? So welcome to this week’s Theme of the Week: BICYCLES! #bobbledybicycles
As a kid, I was actually never allowed to have a bicycle. It was in the days before helmets were readily available, and my dad thought they were too dangerous. So I learned to ride on my best friend Gunther’s bike, on a cul-de-sac on a hill with train tracks and weeds at the bottom to stop me. It was my favorite thing to do, and I’m afraid I often visited Gunther just to ride his bike. Sorry, Gun!
So, bicycles have been around for almost 200 years. The first bicycle was invented in Germany and called a Draisienne after its inventor, Baron von Drais, who invented it so he could walk around the royal gardens faster. If any of you have a balance bike, it basically worked the same way – two wheels with a seat between and no pedals, so you can coast along and run with your legs to get it moving. (If any of you don’t have a balance bike and don’t know how to ride a bike yet, I would say RUN OUT AND GET ONE NOW! They are the best, and came in at #2 on my Holiday Gift Guide list)
As you can see, it was also called a “Dandy Horse,” which I think was kind of an insult. Dandies were sort of the old-time version of hipsters. So a Dandy Horse was the kind of horse that a cool-guy-hipster (a dandy) would ride – which was not a horse at all, but a new-fangled invention with wheels. (Based on this definition, I don’t know what a dandeLION would be, though).
Pretty soon, someone figured out that bikes could go a lot faster if they had pedals on them, and the “velocipede” was born. “Velocipede” means “fast foot” (just like “velociraptor” means “fast raptor”). Once they figured the pedal part out, they came up with all different kinds of ideas for bike designs:
Back in the old days, there were a lot of bikes that had a huge front wheel on them. That’s because they used to put the pedals right on the center of the wheel, which meant the wheel had to be about twice as tall as the length of your leg. Once they figured out how to attach that loop of chain to the wheel and have the pedals attached to the chain, then the pedals could go anywhere, and the wheels didn’t need to be quite so big anymore.
Old time bikes were also called “Boneshakers” because the tires were hard and there were no springs on them, so when you rode on those old cobblestone streets, you would get all rattled around.
These days, bikes are quite sophisticated and can do much more than move from one place to another. Check out this video, which is aptly named “The Craziest Downhill Bike Course Ever”:
That ride would NOT have been possible on an old boneshaker!
And here’s another video I like that shows what it looks and feels like to ride a really REALLY GIGANTICALLY tall bike (FYI parents, there’s a tiny barely intelligible s-word at 3:11 when the guy almost gets clotheslined by a kite string):
This looked very scary to me, trying to balance on that very tall bike. But I watched another video about Tall Bike Bobby who explained that actually taller bikes are easier to balance. Surprise! Yes, you can listen to the whole fascinating TEDx talk HERE if you’d like.
It turns out there’s actually a very good and practical reason to LOVE bikes. Aside from being super fun to ride, they’re the most energy efficient vehicle ever made. Apparently, when you look at how many calories (that’s a measurement of energy) it takes to make a bike go one mile, it’s only 35, compared to a car, which takes 1,860 calories. That adds up pretty quickly! Riding bikes is SO energy-efficient – way better than gas or oil or coal or batteries or solar or etc etc etc. I actually have two very dear friends, Andy and Steve, who are spreading the idea that because they are so efficient, bikes should be used to power all kinds of things, from chopping wood to running your computer – check out their Kickstarter campaign HERE (goal already met, so this isn’t even a money grab, it’s just COOL!)
SO – if you could design any kind of bike to do anything, what would it look like and what would you have it do? Post your answers in the comments here, or if you want to draw a picture, post it on the Tuesday Drawing post or on Instagram using #bobbledybicycles.
And if you can, get outside this weekend and ride your bike! And be glad it’s not a Dandy Horse or a Boneshaker or a super tall bike or a giant-wheeled bike! Thank goodness for progress and invention! Hooray!
(Also, ps don’t forget you have till the end of today (Saturday, 3/22/14) to enter our first International Interwebs Welly Wanging competition! Winner gets a trophy, and first two runners-up get an archival print of ANY ILLUSTRATION OF MINE you want! I even souped up the trophy a little bit last night, with some Bobbledy donkeys!)
Hello Everyone! Today is Saturday so officially our week of castles is now in the past! And it’s time to move on to the future:
Yes, that’s right. Because Spring is almost here – it technically arrives on Thursday, the 20th of March.
{Although, to be fair, for those of you living in the Southern Hemisphere, Spring is just about as far away as it can possibly be. The explanation for this is quite complicated and has to do with the way that the Earth moves around the Sun (I know! I thought the Earth stayed still and the Sun moved!) and if you’re really curious, here’s a good video to watch:}
If you don’t feel like watching the video, the idea is that seasons are switched between the top part of the Earth (the Northern Hemisphere) and the bottom part of Earth (the Southern Hemisphere) – so when it’s Spring here (where I live, in North America, in the Northern Hemisphere) it’s Fall down there (where, I don’t know, a bunch of Australians and penguins and stuff live). And when it’s Summer here, it’s Winter there. Wacky!
But we, those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, WE will be celebrating Spring this week. And for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, well, join on in. Some of the best times to celebrate something is when you miss them the most! Like missing Spring on the first day of Fall!
Anyway. Happy Spring, everyone!
Spring is all about things waking up from the cold and gloomy winter. It’s called “Spring” because it’s a time when things come “springing” up out of the ground.
(But don’t be fooled by this video – things don’t come springing THAT fast! They sped up the video so we wouldn’t have to stay awake for two weeks watching things grow.)
It’s also called “mud season” up north, because the snow starts to melt but the ground is still very cold underneath, so the water just sits on top of the ground and makes mud everywhere:
LOTS of mud!
It’s the time when birds start building nests to lay their eggs in (this video is kind of long but you can fast forward to see the nest getting built and the eggs getting laid – super cool):
And it’s the time that it’s finally warm enough to spend more time outside again, enjoying the sun and fresh air.
Some people celebrate spring by planting seeds for their gardens (we planted peas and basil for starters):
Other people celebrate by Welly Wanging, which is apparently a very serious sort of sport in England where you try to throw your wellies (that’s what they call rubber rain boots in England) as far as you can. Should you be interested in doing some welly wanging yourselves, I’ve included the rules below:
1. Welly wanging is a sport open to all people irrespective of age, sex, race, creed, religion, nationality and colour.
2. The sport shall be a civilised affair. Fair play, good humour and good manners shall be exhibited at all times.
3. No umpire shall be needed. A player’s word and their honour shall be sufficient.
4. Distances shall be measured in yards, feet and inches. None of this European nonsense.
5. The standard welly shall be the Dunlop green, size 9, non steel toe-cap. Competitors shall select whether they use left or right welly.
6. No tampering with the welly shall be allowed. Factory finish only. No silicone polish is to be applied.
7. A maximum run-up of 42 paces shall be allowed. This distance was chosen in memory of Douglas Adams, himself a proponent of the sport.
8. The run-up shall end with a straight line of 10 feet in length, that being the width of a standard Yorkshire gate.
9. The welly shall land within the area defined by the straight lines between the Upperthong Gala field and Holme Moss television mast on one side, and on the other by the line between the field and Longley Farm windmill. This playing area is known as the ‘Thong’.
10. There shall be four categories: Men’s and Women’s, and Boys and Girls (u-14’s)
11. The welly shall be projected using any action of the arm or foot for the respective categories.
12. The use of wind assistance is allowed and, indeed, encouraged. Waiting for a suitable gust, however, is limited to one minute. No artificial or man-made wind is to be used.
13. The winners of the two adult categories at the World Championships shall be proclaimed world champion for the forthcoming 12 months, and be awarded a prize as set by the organisers.
Perhaps we should organize an interwebs-wide game of welly wanging this week! I mean, because of Rule #3, it sounds like we can all just report our distances (in yards, feet, and inches, please: Rule #4).
So here’s your assignment for this week: Enter our world-wide welly-wanging competition! Submit your best measurements in the comments anytime this week (honorably tallied, of course!) and a photo of you wanging your wellies (remember you can post to instagram using #bobbledyspring)! For our purposes, we can all ignore Rule #9 (make your own Thong!) and Rule #13. Our winner will get a REAL LIVE TROPHY and two runners-up will get an 8×10 print of the past auction item of your choice (style points will be considered for the runners-up, so make sure to include a great picture or story to go with your measurement!).
Here’s what I know about castles: they’re old, they’re made out of stone, they have towers and dungeons, and they’re completely awesome.
I got my first castle when I was 7. It was probably the greatest present I ever got (thanks, Dad!). It had three towers, a drawbridge (that actually worked) and a bunch of knights and horses. And the best part…?
I got to build it myself.
But when I sat down to write this post about castles, I realized that I didn’t know a lot about how real castles actually worked. And so I did some research. Which involved reading a bunch of stuff on the internet. Actually, Robbi did all of the research for me while I took a nap. And now I get to do the fun stuff, which is sharing it with you. HINT: When you are in high school and have to write research papers, see if Robbi will do the research for you while you take a nap.
But what are castles FOR? In addition to looking awesome, their primary role is to keep the people inside safe and to keep the people who want to get inside the castle OUT.
Apparently, the best place to build your castle is on top of a hill.
That way, the people who are trying to get into your castle will already be tired by the time they get there (especially if they are wearing a bunch of heavy armor) (which castle-storming folks are typically inclined to do). This is Hohenzollern Castle in Germany.
Another great idea when building a castle is to give it a moat—which is a bunch of water that surrounds the castle—making it difficult to push ladders or battering rams or excitable horses right up against the walls. Some moats are like little rivers all around the base of the castle.
And some castles take the moat idea to the extreme, basically getting an entire ocean involved:
Yes, Mont St. Michel castle in France has the best moat ever. Nowadays there’s a road that you can drive on to get there, but back in the old days, the only way to get there was by walking across at low tide. At high tide, it was totally surrounded by water.
As for the castle door, it’s often protected by a portcullis, which is an awesome-looking gate which could be raised and lowered with a huge crank.
This is not to be mistaken for Robbi, who is another kind of “huge crank” if I wake her up too early in the morning. I’m talking about a big wheel that’s attached to a chain that’s attached to the portcullis and makes it go up and down.
It’s true that most castles are made out of stone.
For obvious reasons. Castles made out of marshmallows wouldn’t cause enemies much difficulty (though it could give them a stomach ache potentially, should they decide to EAT their way in).
Because they are made of stone, castles are cold and drafty in winter and hot and stuffy in summer. Because they were originally built for protection, they weren’t very comfortable (it was only later when they weren’t as necessary for protection that they became fancy with grand ballrooms and chandeliers and whatnot).
Because people sometimes had to stay in the castle for a long time (while other people tried their hardest to get in), there had to be stocks of food, animals, and most importantly water, which might be stored underground and lifted up to sinks and bathtubs with an awesome-looking machine (with a slightly smaller, but still very important crank) (also not Robbi).
Protecting the water supply was the most important. Many castles were defeated because the enemies somehow got access to and poisoned the water supply, which is not very nice, for the record. But people are not always nice. Something to keep in mind when deciding where to put your water supply.
Sometimes there are multiples walls to get through. Here is Beaumaris Castle in Wales, for example.
I bet it was very discouraging to get through that FIRST wall only to discover a SECOND wall. If I were an invader, I would probably just give up at that point, even if the inner wall were made out of marshmallows.
As you can see in the picture above, castles have lots of towers so that you can look out for enemies coming from any direction.
Originally, towers were square, but eventually, castle builders started making them round because when there were square, the enemies found out that if you dig out from under one corner, it would eventually tip over. Round towers are much more stable.
Here’s something interesting: In all those round towers, the stairwells run clockwise, and this is quite deliberate. (Here’s a spiral staircase from Blarney Castle in Ireland).
Since most post people are right-handed, when the invaders were going up the stairs, this arrangement made it difficult to swing their swords (which were in their right hands) and very easy to tip over because there was nothing to hold onto to keep them from tumbling down the stairs. BUT, the defenders of the castle who were coming DOWN the stairs could lean back against the wall while swinging their swords ahead of them with confidence. Basically, this was a huge advantage to the people who were defending the castle. Kind of like home-court advantage in a basketball game.
Also, castles have lots of hallways and tunnels and secret passages to give you different ways to escape.
Because if someone does manage to climb up your hill and get over your moat and through your portcullis and through your inner marshmallow walls, it’s unlikely that they are just coming to share chocolate chip cookies.
Another thing about castles: in spite of what you might think from watching Disney movies, the old ones did not have luxurious accommodations. They were basically just a place to hang out until whoever was trying to get in got tired and went away. As such, the bathrooms were kind of…rustic. As in, no toilet seat. And no flushing. Just a hole that you sat on.
But at least there was a nice window.
I’m guessing that most of you are familiar with THIS castle, built for a princess named Cinderella a long, long time ago.
Ok, this castle was actually built by the Disney Corporation, but still, it’s quite something. It gets a prize for taking the whole tower idea to all new levels. I’m guessing that there’s not a lot of fighting in the stairwells.
Here’s the actual castle that inspired Cinderella’s: Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany (those Germans sure built nice castles).
Technically, Cinderella’s Castle and Neuschwanstein Castle are both palaces and not castles. Castles were built for defense and daily life (vs. forts, which are just for defense), and palaces are more for living and entertainment, not defense. Which is why castles were crowded and stuffy and uncomfortable and palaces are fancy and such.
We don’t have castles in America, because our country is too new. For the most part, castles are from a time in history before America was formed, when people had to protect their stuff from the next marauding horde. Now we have a three-part government structure of checks and balances to settle our our internal difficulties. That, however, is a theme for another week.
But we do have one notable castle (which is actually a forgettable string of MANY castles).
If you’ve never been to White Castle, you’re probably better for it. But this uniquely American establishment is known for serving little tiny (and awful-tasting) cheeseburgers.
There are no towers, there is no moat, and as far as I know, no portcullis.
And I’m not sure why anyone would want to invade the White Castle. Perhaps to use the restroom? I’m guessing that the toilets there do have seats. Though I can’t swear to it.
Thanks so much for stopping by to learn about castles with us.
We’ll leave you with this parting question:
If you could build a castle, where would you put it, and who would you be trying to keep out? Or who would you be trying to keep safe inside?
Post your answers in the comments below! And stop by later this week to read my story and see Robbi’s drawing and take the KidQuiz!
