The 2010 Kansas Teacher of the Year is...

All previous Kansas Teachers of the Year in attendance pose for a picture with Karen Tritt, 2010 KTOY (sitting front and center)

Karen Tritt!!!! Karen is a Spanish teacher at Shawnee Mission West High School and will represent teachers across our state for the next year. The journey she, and the 2010 KTOY Team, begins today is life-changing in so many ways. As my team met with the "new" team, I was overcome with emotion. The opportuni! ties, experiences, and friendships that I have had the past year is hard to put into words. Trying to communicate what the year will be like for them was difficult.

What I am feeling can best be summed up by the lyrics to the song "For Good" (from the musical Wicked):

(Elphaba) I'm limited
Just look at me - I'm limited
And just look at you
You can do all I couldn't do,
So now it's up to you
For both of us - now it's up to you...

(Glinda) I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must! learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

(Elphaba) It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend...

Like a ship b lown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
Because I knew you
I have been changed for good.



TA-DAAAA....The 2009 KTOY Team saying Goodbye!
We have all been "changed for the better."

reflexive property

March, my birthday, and I'm still here!

Hi Readers! I am still here responding to people's requests for homework help, I just don't post the answers on my blog as much anymore. But rest assured, I am still here answering your emails.

Also, to celebrate my birthday this week, I invite you to partake in this fun online gaming experience called "Auditorium"!

http://www.playauditorium.com/

I enjoyed it so much that I played it all the way through on my first sitting!

online help math

How to make a calculator work with a homemade battery

Question: Can you make a calculator work with a homemade battery?
Hypothesis: The vinegar will react with the wire and the galvanised nail to make electricity to charge the calculator.

Equipment: 2 galvanised nails, 2 bits of of masking tape, 1 marker, 3 wires, 2 cups, White Vinegar and a battery powered calculator.

Method: 1.The two cups are filled with vinegar and tape is put over the cups,it is pierced and marked positive and negative. 2.The nails are put into the negative end of the tape and a wire is put into the positive end and the other end of the wire is tied around the nail on the other cup. 3.Another wire is tied around the last nail and the last wire is put into the last positive hole and both wires are put into each end of the battery place in the calculator.

Observation: When the wires are hooked up to the calculator it turns on.

Explanation: The calculator worked because when the nail and the wire went into the vinegar it created negative and positive particles and the ! negative particles went through the wires and into the calcula! tor and turned it on.

negative and positive calculator

Climbing Nasturtium "Spitfire"

Nasturtiums are my favorite annual to plant in the garden because they're very versatile plants. They're easy to start from seed, they produce beautiful, edible blooms and they grow very well in poor soils. Whether I plant them in the ground or in containers nasturtiums never ask for much attention. In fact, nasturtiums in my garden thrive on benign neglect. I plant nasturtium seeds early in the spring and forget about them until it is time to collect nasturtium seeds. Last year I grew Climbing Nasturtium "Moonlight" in the garden for the first time, this year I'm growing Nasturtium, Climbing, "Spitfire."

Given my experience growing nasturtium "Moonlight" last year I was already prepared for how nasturtium "Spitfire" would react to growing in my garden. The microclimate in the garden must be too warm for the climbing varieties of nasturtium. I'm not complaining, really, the same microclimate allows my Voodoo Lily to overwinter. The climbing nasturtiums don't seem to start vining, or sending out long shoots, until about August. If you read the post on "Moonlight" you'll see that the day after I complained about them not vining or trailing to Renee's Garden the plant sent out a long vine. "Spitfire" is a couple of weeks ahead of where "Moonlight" was last year. Today I had vines long enough to actually start training them up the bamboo stakes in the cinder block pots I planted them in.

As the flower bud opens "Spitfire" looks like it will be a really red nasturtium bloom, but as you can see from the photo above it is more orange than red. Renee's Garden, who I got these seeds from, describes them as a "scarlet orange." The bloom color looks like molten lava to me.

"Spitfire" has foliage that is an average green, unlike some nasturtiums that have a blueish hue to them, the darker foliage of nasturtium "Empress of India," or the variegated foliage of  nasturtium "Alaska."  When the foliage gets long enough to start training up a support structure like a trellis or a fence all you have to do it wind the longest stems up and around. Some stems may break near the tips but they'll quickly be covered up my more vines and leaves, and of course more blooms.

In my garden nasturtiums continue to grow well after the first frost and won't die down completely until we get a really good freeze. This being my second year of growing climbing nasturtiums I think I've exhausted my interest in growing them. While they're my favorite garden annual I think the climbing varieties don't perform as well in the heat of summer as the mounding varieties. Next year I'm going back to performing nasturtium diversity and planting several varieties at the same time.

Where to Plant Nasturtiums. 
The mounding varieties of nasturtium look beautiful planted at the edges of garden beds or paths. Even in containers or window boxes they spill over the sides of pots enough to add interest and movement. The climbing nasturtium varieties like "Spitfire" and "Moonlight" would also work well as a ground cover, if you don't want to train them up a support or drape them over the side of balcony gardens.

Previous Posts on Nasturtiums:

5 Reasons Why I Grow Nasturtiums in my Garden

Nasturtium "Dwarf Cherry Rose"

Nasturtium "Jewel  Mix"

Climbing Nasturtium, "Moonlight" (pics & video)

When I Collect Nasturtium Seeds.(pics & video)

Collecting Nasturtium Seeds Video.

mounding annual

March, my birthday, and I'm still here!

Hi Readers! I am still here responding to people's requests for homework help, I just don't post the answers on my blog as much anymore. But rest assured, I am still here answering your emails.

Also, to celebrate my birthday this week, I invite you to partake in this fun online gaming experience called "Auditorium"!

http://www.playauditorium.com/

I enjoyed it so much that I played it all the way through on my first sitting!

free math answers

Graphing - Parallel and Perpendicular Lines

If you have two lines on a graph, and you have determined their equations or slopes, you may be asked if the two lines are parallel or perpendicular to each other.

Parallel lines are at the same angle and will never cross... like two railroad tracks. It doesn't matter what direction the lines travel. As long as they are going the same way, they are parallel. In mathematical terms, two lines are said to be parallel if they have the exact same slope.

So, y = 3x + 5 and y = 3x + 200 are parallel lines (they differ in their y-intercepts, but they have the same slope m).

Perpendicular lines have a bit of a twist to them. Two lines are perpendicular if they cross (remember, any two straight lines that are NOT parallel will cross at a single point) and they form a 90 degree angle. eg. The x-axis and y-axis are perpendicular to each other. Mathematically, if line 1 has a sl! ope of m1, then a perpendicular line 2 will have a slope m2=(-1/m1)... that is, it's slope will be the negative inverse of the first.

Try it out... y=2x + 1 and y= (-1/2)x +5... m1=2 and m2=(-1/2). Check it out on the graph to see that they indeed form a 90 degree angle where they intersect.

To determine if lines are parallel or perpendicular, all you need to know is their slopes!

find the slope and y intercept

Visualizing Functional Groups

I told you that I would post more functional groups and I meant it. But I also want to make the ones I've already introduced clear. And condensed structures can confuse people. I heard you're easily confused. So we'll spend a bit more time getting acquainted with these. I think I covered the hydrocarbons well enough, so we'll focus on functional groups that contain heteroatoms.

More about alcohols
The nature of the carbon that the hydroxyl group is attached to determines the type of alcohol here. First, there's a primary alcohol...
Note that the carbon attached to oxygen is attached to only one other carbon (in the R group). In a secondary alcohol, this carbon is attached to two other carbon atoms...
And as you might have guessed, in a tertiary alcohol, that carbon is bonded to three other carbons...
< img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NvQHHJRdJ9o/SqTC252DPtI/AAAAAAAAAls/8wkQ_FWMAIA/s320/tertiary+alcohol.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378638103483465426" border="0" />If you were thinking that a quaternary alcohol would be one in which that carbon is attached to four other carbons, you sure are dumb. Carbon is tetravalent. You remember that, don't you? It can't form five bonds. There is no such thing as a quaternary alcohol.

If you were wondering, whether an alcohol is primary, secondary, or tertiary has important implications for its chemical properties, hence the distinction. This is also the case with amines, as I already alluded to, but in that case, it's how many carbons the nitrogen is attached to that determine which type of amine the molecule is. So there's some cool new information for you. But now for some clarity on material I alrea! dy covered in my last post.

Visualizing aldehydes & ketones
Here's the Lewis structure of an aldehyde...



And here, for contrast, is a ketone...
Notice the big difference: with an aldehyde, the oxygen is at the end of a chain and with a ketone, the oxygen is attached to a carbon that is somewhere in the middle of a chain. These structures both have a "carbonyl" group and their chemical properties are often similar, but they can be different in important ways and this distinction is certainly worth remembering.

Carboxylic acids and friends
Carboxylic acids get several other classes of compounds grouped with them as "derivatives of carboxylic acids" quite literally because carboxylic acids can be used to make these other compounds. I won't cover all of them because there's a whole chapter on this stuff and it's way later in my textbook. But because you're! slow, I worry about your ability to even deduce the general appearance of these groups from a condensed structure. So here's a carboxylic acid...
Like the aldehydes and ketones, there's a carbon double-bonded to an oxygen and single-bonded to an R-group. But the fourth bond isn't to hydrogen or another carbon. It's to oxygen, which itself is attached to hydrogen. Remember acidity? You know, that thing the last chapter was all about and such. And maybe you even remember that in my "Aspirin" post I said, of th! e carboxylic acid, "This arrangement of atoms makes it easy fo! r a cert ain reaction to occur. That reaction is a Brønsted-Lowry acid-base reaction." Really, it's not familiar. Whatever. That proton can totally come off.

Since I like functional groups so much, here are some more in condensed structure...

Acyl halide
R—COX (like a carboxylic acid, but with the second oxygen replaced by a halogen)

Imine (imino group)
R=N—R' (these come in multiple varieties and I haven't really studied them yet)

Peroxide (peroxy group)
R—O—O—R' (the oxygens are actually attached to one another)

Nitrile (cyano group)
R—C≡N

Enough. We will now cover new functional groups as they come up.

do the following have a ketone functional group?