Brandon lectures from the front of the classroom.

I sit by the computer and interrupt him constantly to ask questions and interject when I am not taking photographs.

In our class we have two teachers: myself (real, so far as I’m concerned) and Brandon (virtual, IMO, but he probably perceives himself as real); two students: Iris and Akiva; and two pets: Brook the Dog and Hammy the Hamster. Hammy belongs to the neighbors and has a different name when she’s at home. At our house, she’s Hammy, and like everyone else, she is homeschooled.

While building with pattern blocks and focusing on radial symmetry, one generally finds it quite easy to build forms in the regular-hexagon family. This is because most of the blocks are fractions of an equilateral hexagon. The squares and beige rhombus pieces are not fractions of the hexagon and can sometimes be a little trickier to work with. One reason I own so many pattern blocks is because I was wanting to work with square radial symmetry, but we kept running out of squares. Off to Ebay! (NOTE: I tried ordering new Hand2Mind blocks, but the sides that were supposed to be one inch long on both the blue and beige rhombuses were cut short, making them unusable.) Having more squares lets us build bigger square-base patterns. One neat thing about the 21st Century Pattern Blocks is that they, too, have pieces that would be useful in making square symmetry. Unfortunately, as noted two days ago, they don’t have enough of them. Further ranting about that issue won’t get me anywhere, so I’ll leave off.

Here you can get a tantalizing peek at what one might create in square symmetry using 21st Century Pattern Blocks.

If only…

While studying causes of the symmetry and structure in snowflakes, Akiva and I built a snowflake out of pattern blocks.

The non-standard shapes here (light blue quadrilaterals, pink right triangles; medium and large green equilateral triangles) are from the 21st Century Pattern Blocks and Upscale Pattern Blocks sets respectively, produced by Math for Love. Unfortunately, the sets always include about 50% old-style pattern blocks consisting of dark blue diamonds, red trapezoids, and yellow hexagons of which I literally have hundreds (thanks, Mom & Ebay). Dan Finkel (founder & director of operations) doesn’t plan on selling the new styles solo any time in the near future despite my pestering, and purchasing six boxes of each just to get enough of the new styles is out of my math manipulatives budget, so we’re out of luck. I’m particularly annoyed because I LOVE the new shapes, but 50% old shapes is just cocaine cut with talcum powder and I’m not falling for that old trick!

To learn to build your own custom snowflakes from real water, watch this video featuring Dr. Ken Libbrecht, world expert on snowflakes, designer of custom snowflakes, snowflake consultant for the movie Frozen, and snowflake photographer extraordinaire.

For to view snowflakes with greater beauty than can be made from pattern blocks of any sort, visit Ken Libberecht’s website, Snow Crystals.

In science, we are studying water. Water, like everything else I can think of that is larger than a single molecule, is made up of multiple molecules. I happen to have three molecular modelling kits (thanks, Mom!) with largely interchangeable parts, tho according to Akiva, the bonds in the newest set function more easily than the bonds in the others.

Akiva quickly moved beyond constructing boring ol’ H₂O.

He looked at molecular diagrams to build molecules with cyclohexanes and phenyl groups and whatnot.

I’d have to look in the booklet to see what he built.

Iris, the mad scientist, focused on symmetry.

This unidentified carbon molecule eventually absorbed all carbons in three kits into its crystalline structure.

It was lovely.

For our final inspection of the solar system, we visit the observatory museum and telescope at Mont Megantic National Park. We took an educational tour of the museum, then we drove up to the telescope at the top of the hill. Sometimes, they have sky shows at night. We didn’t see one.

They have a larger and more permanent model solar system than the one that we built. We found all the rock planets and Ceres, formerly known as a rock planet, now classified as part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The English language version of the interpretive sign reads as follows,—

SOLAR SYSTEM

in a Model Scale

Welcome to the Solar System of the Mont Megantic International Dark Sky Reserve. Designed to scale by size and distance, spread out along the Summit Drive, this is one of the largest models of this type in the world!

Measuring hundreds of millions of kilometers, our Solar System is so wide that it is difficult to imagine it well.

What would be its proportions if we could reduce the Sun to the size of the Ovservatoire du Mont Megantic (1.4 million km to 14 m)? Compressed 100 million times, our planetary neighbourhood would spread out across the whole region!

SUN

You are actually right at the heart of the scale model Solar System! If the sun was the size and in the same position as the Observatory, Pluton would be in Sherbrooke, Uranus in Lac-Megantic, and inner planets would be located within the park. Real markers are installed for each planet, and you are invited to visit them!

Born 4.6 billion years ago, our star alone accounts for 99.9% of our Solar System’s mass. A true thermonuclear heater, its core is heated to over 15 million degrees Celsius.

The map.

Download this PDF to locate all the planets:

https://www.astrolab.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/18_211_pnmm_guide_systeme_solaire_geant_en.pdf