Here are some riddles for you to consider. Try and work the problems out before looking at the answers below.

1. A woman from New York married ten different men from that city, yet she did not break any laws. None of these men died, and she never divorced. How was this possible?
2. What are the next two letters in the following series and why?
   W A T N T L I T F S _ _
3. The following number is the only one of its kind: 8,549,176,320. Can you figure out what is so special about it?
4. A murderer is condemned to death. He has to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires, the second is full of assassins with loaded guns, and the third is full of lions that haven't eaten in 3 years. Which room is safest for him?
5. In Okmulgee, Oklahoma, you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why not?
6. You are in a place called Jack's world and there is only one law. There is a mirror, but no reflection. There is pizza with cheese, but not sausage. There is pepper, but no salt. There is a door, yet no entrance or exit. What is the law?

Answers:
1) She was a minister.
2) The letters are the first words of the sentence. The answer is a"" and "w".
3) It is the only number using all single digits in alphabetical order.
4) If the lions hadn't eaten in thre years they would be long dead.
5) Because you can only take a picture with a camera.
6) Everything in Jack's room has double letters in it (cheese, pizza, etc.)

Who is the Greatest Actor of All-Time?

My wife and I were debating who the greatest actor of all-time is, and I decided to create a March Madness style tournament to help us determine a winner. If you get some time, print this out and go through the first round. I think you'll find some of the pairings are pretty tough to decide upon. See what you think. Here are the pairings:

Greatest Actor of All-Time

1. James Stewart                       vs.                    Bruce Willis
2. Sean Connery                        vs.                    Jeff Bridges
3. Robert Downey Jr.                vs.                    Edward Norton
4. Sidney Poitier                         vs.                    Jim Carrey                        
5. Jack Nicholson                       vs.                    Tom Cruise
6. Harrison Ford                        vs.                    Kevin Spacey
7. Charles Boyer                         vs.                    Fred Astaire
8. Daniel Day Lewis                   vs.                    Adrien Brody
9. Orson Welles                          vs.                    Matt Damon
10. Russell Crowe                        vs.                    Heath Ledger
11. Clint Eastwood                       vs.                    George Clooney
12. John Wayne                           vs.                    Nicolas Cage
13. Tom Hanks                            vs.                    Christian Bale
14. Robert Duvall                        vs.                    Michael Douglas
15. Anthony Hopkins                  vs.                    Brad Pitt
16. Gregory Peck                         vs.                    Alec Guinness                                   
17. Johnny Depp                         vs.                    John Travolta                       
18. Dustin Hoffman                    vs.                    George C Scott
19. Jack Lemmon                        vs.                    Robert Mitchum
20. Al Pacino                                vs.                    Richard Harris
21. Spencer Tracy                       vs.                    Lee Marvin
22. Gene Hackman                      vs.                    Kenneth Branagh
23. Cary Grant                            vs.                    Frederic March
24. Robert De Niro                      vs.                    Charles Laughton
25. William Holden                      vs.                    Sean Penn
26. Gene Kelly                             vs.                    Robert Redford
27. Edward G Robinson             vs.                    Frank Sinatra
28. Laurence Olivier                   vs.                    Errol Flynn
29. Steve McQueen                      vs.                    Danny Kaye
30. Clark Gable                           vs.                    Anthony Quinn
31. Paul Newman                        vs.                    Bing Crosby
32. Denzel Washington               vs.                    Ben Kingsley
33. Humphrey Bogart                 vs.                    Montgomery Clift
34. Henry Fonda                         vs.                    Michael Caine
35. Gary Cooper                         vs.                    Morgan Freeman
36. Charlie Chaplin                    vs.                    Jeremy Irons
37. Marlon Brando                     vs.                    Ernest Borgnine
38. Richard Burton                     vs.                    Phillip Seymour Hoffman
39. Charlton Heston                    vs.                    Ian McKellen
40. Kirk Douglas                         vs.                    Hugh Jackman
41. James Cagney                        vs.                    Rod Steiger
42. Leonardo Di Caprio             vs.                    Dennis Hopper
43. Peter O’Toole                        vs.                    Ralph Fiennes
44. Burt Lancaster                      vs.                    Richard Dreyfus

Next take your 22 survivors and match them up against each other.

Critical Thinking

See how good you are at figuring out some of these questions.

1. It is greater than God and more evil than the devil. The poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it you'll die. What is it?

     2. It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening. What is it?

3. I am the beginning of the end, and the end of time and space. I am essential to creation, and I surround every place. What am I?

    4.What always runs but never walks, often murmurs, never talks, has a bed but never sleeps, has a    mouth but never eats?

5. I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all, To live and breath on this terrestrial ball. What am I?

6. At night they come without being fetched. By day they are lost without being stolen. What are they?

7. There was a green house. Inside the green house there was a white house. Inside the white house there was a red house. Inside the red house there were lots of babies. What is it?

8. What is in seasons-seconds-centuries & minutes but not in decades-years or days?

9. Think of words ending in -GRY. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is.

10. The one who makes it, sells it. The one who buys it, never uses it. The one that uses it never knows that he's using it. What is it?

Check below to see how you did.

1. Nothing. Nothing is greater than God, nothing is more evil than the devil, the poor have nothing, the rich need nothing and if you eat nothing you'll die.
2. Man (or woman). Crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult and uses two legs and a cane when they're old.
3. The letter e. End, timE, spacE, Every place
4. A river.
5. Tomorrow or the future.
6. The stars.
7. A watermelon.
8. The letter 'n'.
9. It states, "There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word?" The third word of that phrase is of course "language."
10. A coffin

The Man Who Never Was

So I was watching an old movie the other day and was mesmerized by how the event shaped our history during World War 2. The movie is titled "The Man Who Never Was" and I had it laying on my shelf for a few years before I actually decided to watch it. I was so taken by it that I decided to create a lesson around the movie. My students were mesmerized by the topic and how they had to decide whether or not to use "classified" information from a dead body they found washed up on the shore. This was an excellent critical thinking activity that took about 30-45 minutes of discussion and individual thought. I have the lesson posted below.

The Man Who Never Was

Major William Martin’s body washed ashore on May 1st, 1943 on the beach in Spain. The country was controlled by Nazi Germany. Major Martin was a member of the British Royal Marines. He had a faulty parachute still connected to his body. Attached to his body was a briefcase. The contents on his body and briefcase were:

·        Dog tags with his name, rank, and serial number

·        British pounds (money) and various coins

·        Wallet

·        A Letter from his fiancé (with her address on the envelope)

·        Picture of his fiancé

·        2 tickets stubs from a recent performance at a London theatre

·        A receipt for six shirts from a local department store

·        A set of keys (one belonging to the briefcase, another to an apartment, another to a safe deposit box at his bank)

·        A bank overdraft notice

·        Membership to a country club

·        Inside the briefcase were:

o   A sealed letter from Lord Mountbatten (a very high-ranking official) to another commander criticizing the performance of other British and American leaders on various aspects of battle planning. It also discloses plans for “Operation Husky”, a secret allied plan to invade Nazi Europe by way of Sardinia, Corsica, and Greece (the Nazis had received previous knowledge of an Allied plan to attack Sicily as the invasion point so they had fortified their stronghold in Sicily).

o   Letter two was a personal letter from one high ranking official to his close personal high ranking friend discussing why the Allies chose to start “Operation Husky”.

o   Other documents with specifics on how, what, why, and when the attack will take place.

o   The briefcase also included instructions for Major Martin to deliver these letters to the individuals written on the envelope.

o   A 45 Luger revolver

o   Instructions on what to do if Major Martin is caught by the Nazis (suicide after destroying the contents of the briefcase).

Assignment “Operation Mincemeat”

You are German SS agents who have made copies of everything found on the body and suitcase of Major Martin. What decision will you make on what to do with this information? Do you disregard it as a trick by the Allies? Do you shift your troops away from Sicily to fortify Sardinia, Corsica, and Greece? Remember that you have spies located in London where Major Martin resides who are posing as British citizens. Write what you would do and discuss why you made the decisions you did. Reveal any ideas you can think of to either verify or discredit the information found on Major Martin. The lives of thousands of your men (and quite possibly the outcome of the war is now on your shoulders).

 

Will you act on the information found on Major Martin or not? ___________________________

Explain your reasoning and discuss what steps were taken to either verify or discredit the contents found on the corpse of Major Martin.

Thanks to our friends at Factmonster.com for the educational and entertaining way our US coins are made. I just ordered my annealing furnace from Amazon :).

How Coins Are Made

Source: The U.S. Mint

Step 1: Blanking	The U.S. Mint buys strips of metal about 13 inches wide and 1,500 feet long to manufacture the nickel, dime, quarter, half-dollar, and dollar. The strips come rolled in a coil. Each coil is fed through a blanking press, which punches out round discs called blanks. The leftover strip, called webbing, is shredded and recycled. (To manufacture the cent, the Mint buys ready-made blanks after supplying fabricators with copper and zinc.)
Step 2: Annealing, Washing and Drying	The blanks are heated in an annealing furnace to soften them. Then, they are run through a washer and dryer.
Step 3: Riddling	The shiny blanks are sorted on a “riddler” to screen out any that are the wrong size or shape.
Step 4: Upsetting	Next, the good blanks go through an upsetting mill. This raises a rim around their edges.
Step 5: Striking	Finally, the blanks go to the coining press. Here, they are stamped with the designs and inscriptions, which make them genuine United States coins.
Step 6: Inspecting	A press operator uses a magnifying glass to spot-check each batch of new coins. Then all the coins go through a coin sizer to remove any misshapen or dented ones.
Step 7: Counting and Bagging	An automatic counting machine counts the coins and drops them into large canvas bags. The bags are sewn shut, loaded on pallets, and taken by forklifts to be stored in vaults. New coins are shipped by truck to Federal Reserve Banks. From there, the coins go to your local bank!

You Best Grab a Snorkle...Cuz We're Going Down!

Hey Matey, what do you know about the ocean? Why not check out some facts about the Pacific and Atlantic ocean. I used this in my class and had two groups spend 15 seconds perusing the sheet. Then they competed as I quizzed the teams on the information. They did not do too well. I had them do it again but first gave them one minute to plan how to work effectively as a group. They did much better and not only learned about our oceans but also how to collaborate as a group.

Oceans Competition

Atlantic Ocean	Pacific Ocean
1/5 of the earth’s surface	28% of the earth’s surface
You could fit 6 United States in it	Average depth is 14000 feet
Current is in counter-clockwise direction	Current is in clockwise rotation
Is actually growing in size each year	Larger than all land put together
Has more shark attacks than any ocean. Only about 50 attacks occur each year with about 10 fatalities. More people are killed by elephants than sharks each year	Has what is called the “ring of fire”, meaning it is circled by earthquake lines and volcanic eruptions
Has highest tides that measure higher than a 3 story building	Named by Ferdinand Magellan. Means peaceful sea.
Icebergs are the biggest danger to ships	Decreased in size in 2000 when part of it was renamed as a separate “Southern Ocean”
Deepest part is Milwaukee Deep 28,000 ft	Has about 25,000 islands on it
The deepest recorded free dive is an astounding 282 feet by	Home of the “Great Barrier Reef”, the largest living structure in the world and can be seen from outer space
The Arctic has as much ice as the Atlantic has water	One pearl from a clam was found and sold in New York for 10 million
Average depth of 6000 feet	Red bass often live for 50 years
	Accounts for ¾ of all volcanoes in world
The legendary continent of Atlantis resided here	Some parts (near the equator) are normally about 86 degrees
Is about 9000 miles long	Supplies about ¾ of all fish for food
Varies in average temperature greatly between 80 degrees to 28 degrees	Has deepest depth of 36000 feet            (called Mariana Trench)
Most hurricanes occur in the Atlantic ocean	In 1960 2 men reached the deepest part of the trench. The pressure was over 16,000 pounds per square inch. This would be like one person trying to hold up 50 jumbo jets
Is the saltiest ocean on average	Accounts for almost 1/2 the water in world
Ocean Facts	Is a natural healer for many skin ailments
Sound travels 5 times faster through water than air	3 times more garbage is dumped into the ocean than the amount of fish caught each year
Contains about 80% of all living things on earth	Nearly 1/3 of the oil comes from the ocean
The freezing point is 28.5 degrees (regular freezing is at 32 degrees)	The blue whale is the largest animal and its heart is about the size of a Chevy Nova
One mouthful of sea water contains over 1 million bacteria	Many deep sea creatures have both male and female sex organs
Swordfish can swim about 75mph	Sea coral has been used to graft onto human bones to enhance healing
Many fish change sex in the ocean	3% of the ocean is freshwater

A Science Lesson about Taste...without the Smell!

Here is a fun science lesson about taste. My students really enjoyed this and were very active throughout the lesson.

Taste Testing Without Smell

We all know that some foods taste better than others but what gives us the ability to experience all these unique flavors? This simple experiment shows that there's a lot more to taste than you might have first thought.

What you'll need:

• A small piece of peeled potato
• A small piece of peeled apple (same shape as the potato so you can't tell the difference)

  Instructions:

1. Close your eyes and mix up the piece of potato and the piece of apple so you don't know which is which.
2. Hold your nose and eat each piece, can you tell the difference?

 What's happening?

Holding your nose while tasting the potato and apple makes it hard to tell the difference between the two. Your nose and mouth are connected through the same airway which means that you taste and smell foods at the same time. Your sense of taste can recognize salty, sweet, bitter and sour but when you combine this with your sense of smell you can recognize many other individual 'tastes'. Take away your smell (and sight) and you limit your brains ability to tell the difference between certain foods.

No Saliva, No Taste?

 In order for food to have taste, chemicals from the food must first dissolve in saliva. Once dissolved, the chemicals can be detected by receptors on taste buds. Therefore, if there is no saliva, you should not be able to taste anything. To test this theory, dry your tongue with a clean paper towel. Once your tongue is dry, try tasting a few samples of salt, sugar or other dry foods. Rinse your mouth and dry your tongue after each test.

Materials:

• Food items - sugar, salt, crackers and other dry food
• Clean paper towels
• Water (for rinsing in between tests)

Have you ever thought about why foods taste different? It's really quite amazing. Your tongue and the roof of your mouth are covered with thousands of tiny taste buds. When you eat something, the saliva in your mouth helps break down your food. This causes the receptor cells located in your tastes buds to send messages through sensory nerves to your brain. Your brain then tells you what flavors you are tasting.

Taste buds probably play the most important part in helping you enjoy the many flavors of food. Your taste buds can recognize four basic kinds of tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. The salty/sweet taste buds are located near the front of your tongue; the sour taste buds line the sides of your tongue; and the bitter taste buds are found at the very back of your tongue.

Everyone's tastes are different. In fact, your tastes will change as you get older. When you were a baby, you had taste buds, not only on your tongue, but on the sides and roof of your mouth. This means you were very sensitive to different foods. As you grew, the taste buds began to disappear from the sides and roof of your mouth, leaving taste buds mostly on your tongue. As you get older, your taste buds will become even less sensitive, so you will be more likely to eat foods that you thought were too strong as a child.

What if you could not taste anything? Things like medications, smoking, not getting enough of the right vitamins, injury to the head, brain tumors, chemical exposure, and the effects of radiation can cause taste disorders.

ü  We have almost 10,000 taste buds inside our mouths, even on the roofs of our mouths.

ü  Insects have the most highly developed sense of taste. They have taste organs on their feet, antennae, and mouthparts.

ü  Fish can taste with their fins and tail as well as their mouth.

ü  In general, girls have more taste buds than boys.

ü  Taste is the weakest of the five senses.

ü  Dogs have taste buds. Most of their taste buds are located at the tip of the tongue. However, they only have about 17% as many taste buds as we do. (That means that they only have about 1,700 taste buds.

GOT TASTE?

1.      Of the five senses, which is the weakest sense?

a.    Taste

b.    Touch

c.    Smell

d.    Hearing

2.    When you eat, what helps break down your food?

a.    Saliva

b.    Teeth

c.    Time

d.    Sulfuric Acid

3.    Does your tongue have different taste buds? If yes, what are they?

_____________________________________________________________________

4.    Which of the following is not one of the four basic tastes?

a.    Salty

b.    Bitter

c.    Nasty

d.    Sweet

5.    Which two senses are directly connected?

_____________________________________________________________________

6.    Do animals have taste buds?     Yes              No

7.    What is YOUR favorite taste? Explain your answer

___________________________________________________________

  8.     What is the value of having taste buds? Explain your answer

_______________________________________________