BJU Press Blog

BJU Press Writer

What Probeware Is Best for Your High School Student?

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ProbewareIf you saw the introductory video for Biology (5th edition), you heard Rachel mention that the new lab manual uses probeware. (If you haven’t seen the video, you can check it out here.)

What is probeware?

Probeware is an exciting technology that measures a variety of factors using probes and sensors attached to a handheld  interface. Despite the value of lab work, the price of the testing equipment and sensors can be a major impediment. Especially for homeschool families.

Probeware allows your child to detect or measure carbon dioxide, or to measure temperature and pH. But most importantly, probeware allows students to record a series of data points in a spreadsheet for analysis.

This may all sound rather technical, so let me explain how probeware adds value to your homeschool. Probeware allows you to buy one or two devices that can be used in a variety of experiments. It will make your students’ lab experience much more interactive. Generally much simpler to use than the instruments it replaces, probeware makes it easier to incorporate STEM into your curriculum.

How do you use probeware?

Lab 20A in Biology (5th edition) is an inquiry lab that uses probeware to compare how well areas of human skin can recover from cold. A high school student using a more traditional method would measure the temperature from each area of skin using a thermometer, record the temperature on paper or in a spreadsheet, and then repeat the process. But meaningful data requires a number of data points, so the lab time would have to be extended, or the number of areas of skin would have to be limited, possibly to as few as two.

Probeware eliminates this problem by automatically recording the data at a set time interval, giving the student a helpful number of data points in a short time. The student can then move on to the next area of skin. In this way, a student can test more areas in less time and with fewer mistakes. While a thermometer would work, probeware makes this lab more accurate, faster, and—I think your teen will agree—more fun.

What are the different types of probeware?

We wrote our skin temperature lab to be used with the Vernier LabQuest probeware system. Recently, we were introduced to the Globisens Labdisc. This system could also be used for the skin temperature lab without any problem. By researching and working with both systems, we discovered the strengths and weaknesses of each one.

Vernier LabQuest

Vernier LabQuest is a high-quality high school and college level system featuring well-built and easy-to-use probes and a separately sold interface. It makes two interfaces (the LabQuest® 2 and the LabQuest® Mini) and dozens of individual probes. This makes the LabQuest® highly customizable, allowing the user to purchase only the probes needed. The downside of this product is the price. While not unusual for this type of device, a price tag of $329 for each LabQuest® 2 interface probably isn’t realistic for the average homeschool family. Vernier also offers a less sophisticated LabQuest® Mini for $149. Individual probes range in cost from $29 to $299.

Globisens Labdisc

Rather than using a single interface and dozens of separate probes, Globisens Labdisc integrates most of the sensors directly into the interface and includes any additional probes in a single package. Labdisc comes in four versions:

  • GenSci—designed for general science
  • Enviro—for environmental science
  • BioChem—for biology and chemistry
  • Physio—for physics

The units cost $599 apiece, with the exception of the BioChem unit, which retails for $699. For many homeschool families, the price (significantly cheaper than the combined cost of a LabQuest interface and individual probes) makes Labdisc more cost effective.

Its two main downsides are lower quality and lack of customization. The Labdisc unit’s plastic shell feels brittle. Given the wear and tear a unit is likely to experience in the hands of middle and high school students, a Labdisc unit may not hold up well over the long term. Secondly, integrating the sensors directly into four separate interfaces makes customization impossible. If you find that your unit does not contain a sensor you need, you have to purchase an entire unit rather than just an additional probe.

Summary

If you’re considering buying probeware for your high school student, either of these would be a good purchase. However, if your budget is tight and you don’t need a lot of customization, the Labdisc might be right for you. If money is less of an object and you value quality and customizability, you might find the LabQuest to be just what you’re looking for.

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Elwood holds a BA in biology and an MA in English from Bob Jones University. After working with the video lesson department at BJU Press for five years, he now serves as a secondary-level science writer at BJU Press. When not working, he enjoys taking random college classes, reading, playing disc golf, and hanging out with his wife and three kids.

Inspiring Women in Science

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Behind every woman in science, there is often another woman.

History is full of women in science who we may not have noticed before. Rosalind Franklin was an emerging chemist at the University of Cambridge when she met Adrienne Weill. Adrienne, a chemist herself and a French refugee, was a former student of physicist/chemist Marie Curie. Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Adrienne tutored Rosalind in French and eventually helped her get a job with the French government doing x-ray crystallography. X-ray crystallography involves using x-rays from atomic crystals to make images of the shapes of molecules.

At the same time (in the early 1950s), James Watson and Francis Crick were working on building a model of the DNA molecule that contains the code of life in the cell. They were having a hard time determining the shape of DNA. Rosalind’s work in x-ray crystallography on the DNA molecule convinced Watson and Crick that DNA was a double helix. Rosalind’s experience in chemistry opened up doors of understanding in biology for generations to come.

inspiring women in science

As a woman involved in science myself, I have a BS in chemistry and a MS in teaching and learning. It was my mom, who studied biology and chemistry, who inspired me to study science. However, I’ve largely stayed away from biology, working for the past thirteen years at BJU Press on textbooks for physics, earth science, physical science, and chemistry. But that changed two years ago when I started collaborating with several other people to write Biology (fifth edition).

While working on the first chapter, I realized that the story of Rosalind Franklin’s contribution aptly illustrates the way science works in the real world and how women can be a part of that. My hope is that our work on Biology (fifth edition) will inspire both young women and young men alike to investigate God’s world and use their knowledge to help people for generations to come.

If you’re interested in learning more about Biology (fifth edition), I’ll introduce the book to you in this video.

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Rachel is passionate about helping students engage, learn, create, and experience the joy of learning. And she wants this enthusiasm to be contagious. The same sense of wonder that sparked her curiosity in childhood spurred her to pursue a degree in chemistry and a master’s degree in education. She wants to share her passion as she draws from her teaching and writing experience to provide academic oversight for writing teams at BJU Press.

The Pilgrims and God’s Providence

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The following account of the Pilgrims first Thanksgiving demonstrates how much they had to thank God for. It’s a celebration of God’s preserving grace.

A small group of English Separatist Christians waited to board their ship, the Speedwell. They had lived in Holland for twelve years and were longing to taste freedom. They set out for the New World to spread the gospel, preserve their own language and culture, and bring up their children according to the dictates of their own consciences.

The voyagers loaded food and cargo onto the Speedwell. William Brewster brought along his printing press and almost two hundred books. On July 22, 1620, with a fair wind, the Pilgrims knelt and prayed for God’s blessing. They set sail for England, where they would join the Mayflower.

Both ships sailed for the New World on August 5, 1620. Within three days the Speedwell began taking on water and twice had to turn back. All the Pilgrims had to board the Mayflower.

Finally, the Mayflower set sail a month behind schedule with 102 passengers. With travel provisions already consumed, supplies would last only two months more. But they had sold their houses and could not turn back.

They faced not only shortages but also harassment from some of the sailors. One self-appointed leader jeered at the Christians’ seasickness and boasted that he would soon sew them all into shrouds. Ironically, within hours, he himself died of a strange fever. His was the first shrouded body to go overboard. The mocking ceased.

Halfway across the Atlantic the Mayflower encountered a violent storm that snapped the crossbeam supporting the mainmast. The situation was desperate until someone remembered the great iron screw of Elder Brewster’s printing press. Placing the press beneath the beam, they raised it back to its proper position. It held for the rest of the voyage.

By now their food was almost inedible. The bread was rock hard, the grain bug-infested, and there was no fresh water. But on November 9, the Pilgrims heard the cry, “Land-ho!” Tears of relief mingled with shouts of joy and prayers of thanks.

illustration of pilgrims signing the Mayflower Compact

Captain Christopher Jones informed them that they had reached Cape Cod—far north of where their patent entitled them to settle. But winter was too close to permit any more searching. As they had begun their long voyage by kneeling on the dock at Delftshaven to ask God’s guidance, so they ended it kneeling in gratitude on the sands of Cape Cod.

Providentially, they found land already cleared at Plymouth. It seemed as if unseen friends had prepared this very spot. But the summer growing season was over, and a bitter winter would follow.

By April 1621 the Pilgrims had lost twenty-eight of their original forty-eight male adults and forty-seven people in all. But in God’s mercy, an Indian named Samoset, who had learned to speak English from fishing captains, walked into their camp! He had a remarkable story to tell the Pilgrims.

According to Samoset, that area used to belong to a large hostile tribe that killed every white man who had landed there. But four years before, a mysterious plague had devastated the entire tribe. Convinced that some great spirit was responsible, neighboring tribes had shunned the entire area.

In October of 1621 Governor William Bradford declared a day of public thanksgiving. The Pilgrims furnished turnips, cabbages, carrots, onions, parsnips, cucumbers, radishes, and beets from their gardens for the feast. Ninety Indians joined them with venison and wild turkeys.

Elder Brewster led in prayer to God, whose providence had guided and protected them. “We have noted these things,” said Bradford, “so that you might see their worth and not negligently lose what your fathers have obtained with so much hardship.”

[Adapted from “The Pilgrims and God’s Providence” by David O. Beale, Faith of Our Fathers: Scenes from American Church History, edited by Mark Sidwell, pages 8–12.]

What are you praising our gracious God for during this season of thanks?

What’s the Best Thanksgiving Harvest?

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All right, we admit it.

For most of us, the bounty of the harvest we celebrate in November comes from the grocery store. The Pilgrims would never recognize our “harvest”—canned, prepackaged, pasteurized, and processed—as bearing any resemblance to theirs.

Not long before their harvest made it onto the table, it was either still growing or still flying around in the woods. Their harvest was the culmination of months of ceaseless prayer, backbreaking labor, and skillful hunting.

Does that mean our “harvest” has any less value than theirs did? Not at all! We pray too (for the regular paycheck), labor (to make the most of our grocery money), and skillfully hunt (for the best bargains).

Remember, though, that God provided for the Pilgrims’ needs exactly what was most appropriate to their time and place. Can you imagine gifts of food from Massasoit and his braves containing things like refrigerated pie crusts and prepackaged stuffing? As resourceful as those first settlers were, they probably wouldn’t have known what to do with such gifts! God evidenced His goodness to the Pilgrims with gifts they could use.

pumpkin pie

It’s easy to forget in today’s environment of “have it all” that everything we have is intended by God to remind us of His goodness. And the plain truth is that we would never be able to make use of “all” even if we tried. (Granted, some of us would prefer to learn that lesson by experience!) But just as with the Pilgrims, God provides for our needs in the ways that are most fitting to our times and places.

So while we want to take the best possible care of our bodies by eating healthful food, sometimes our most pressing need is for quality time with our families. And if that means buying a prebaked pumpkin pie instead of making it from scratch or using instant mashed potatoes instead of homegrown ones, does that make our harvest any less real, valuable, or commendable than the Pilgrims’ first? Not at all! We have an even better harvest—one they would gladly have shared.

By the time the little colony at Plymouth was ready to celebrate its first harvest, it had lost almost half the original members to sickness and hardship. The harvest we celebrate when we gather together consists not so much of the food on the table as of the people around it. The young people we do our best to rear for God’s glory, the elders we respect for their wisdom and experience, the family members of various ages who all have their part in shaping our lives—these loved ones are the bountiful harvest of God’s goodness in our lives.

So whether your Thanksgiving table holds little or lots and whether it’s fresh from the outdoors or fresh from a package, remember this: Far more important than the quality or quantity of the food on the table are the loved ones it’s shared with.

May you find His abundance in your life to be far beyond what you can ask or think this Thanksgiving season!

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How to Develop Your Child’s “Thirst” for Reading

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Do any of the readers at your house fit one of these categories?

  • They can read, but they don’t like to.
  • They have difficulty selecting books they think they will like.
  • They can’t navigate the reading level of books on topics they’re interested in.

Reading skills may be one part of the issue at hand, but another part has to do with the need to develop a love for the written word—information that serves a need, humor that tickles a funny bone, or simply a story that can be enjoyed or appreciated. If reading is hard and seems to have little benefit to a developing reader, reluctance is a reasonable response, even if not the response you want to see.

Love for the written word is a love you cannot force on someone else. We all know the saying “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” and that may be where you are in attempting to turn your child into a satisfied reader. So let’s add a corollary: “You can put salt in his oats.”

Reluctant Readers & Salty Oats

Book Selection

Here are some proven ideas about how you can develop a thirst for reading by how you choose books.

  • Visit the library regularly so that your reader is comfortable there. Allow your child to select his or her books for leisure reading. The reader gets to choose; the parent gets to approve (or redirect, if necessary). Pay attention to what is being selected to understand where interests lie.
  • Look for books that are:

True stories—adventures, events, biographies

Factual—science- or history-related books in the nonfiction section of the library

Hands-on guides—project or craft instructions

Adventure novels with fast-paced, action-driven plots

Topics your reader is passionate about

  • Look for books with:

Short chapters

Accessible sentence structure (not overly long or complex)

Plenty of white space between lines and in the margins

Comfortable font size

Illustrations that are appropriate to the age of your reader (not off-putting to your reader because they seem juvenile)

  • Ask for title recommendations—Learn what has engaged other readers who have similar interests as your own readers. Consider, for example, a new title from JourneyForth that your reluctant reader might enjoy: Nick Newton Is Not a Genius features a merely average boy from the imaginary country of Thauma. Nick’s not brilliant like his mom and dad or a child prodigy like his sister, but he doesn’t let that stop him from uncovering the mysteries of a clockwork factory or revealing a war hero’s greatest secret.

Book Engagement

And you may be able to create a thirst for good books by trying out these ideas for getting your reader involved in reading.

  • Read aloud—Among the many benefits of reading aloud is the ease of being captivated by the words and the story, which becomes its own reason to learn to read independently. (Note: The age range for listening to books is from birth to age 102, and that end age is flexible.)
  • Listen to audio books—This is another way to “read aloud” with the added benefit of hearing some well-produced dramatic presentations. Many audio books can be checked out as digital downloads through your local library system with apps from OverDrive® or hoopla.
  • Read cooperatively—You and your child share the reading, alternating paragraphs or letting one read the narrative and the other the dialogue (what the characters say). Break the text into manageable bits. You lift part of the reading load while your partner views the words you’re vocalizing.
  • Read for fun—Pack up a blanket and some books (food optional), and go on a book-nic. Sit, lie, or sprawl at a local park or in your backyard and just read.
  • Read shorter works like magazine articles, short stories, or poetry—Sometimes the sheer volume of a book can be daunting, so remove that concern.

Do you have salty oats ideas that have helped your reluctant readers? We’d love to hear from you.

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Nancy Lohr is acquisitions editor at JourneyForth, a division of BJU Press. She has edited dozens of books over the last twenty years and is a writer as well, having authored two historical novels for children, curriculum stories and articles, and numerous book reviews and articles for parents and educators. Nancy was an educator and children’s librarian before moving into publishing, and she loves to see young readers develop into capable and satisfied readers.