There are any number of ways you can go about making up a timeline. You can simply use good quality bond paper in a three-ring binder. Carefully draw a line across the middle of the paper (both sides). It needs to be fairly heavy paper or markers will "bleed" through it. Leave several pages blank at the beginning for preliminaries like a title page. Let each side of a page stand for 50 years and 100 years can be viewed with the binder opened out flat. How many pages will you need to represent 7000 years? This system has advantages: you can replace individual pages when you make mistakes and use dividers in order to represent periods of history such as "The Middle Ages".
You can also make a replica of an ancient scroll to serve as your timeline. This will make it more difficult to correct mistakes, but like the scribes of ages past, you will learn tobe very careful! To make a scroll you will need to purchase a roll of brown wrapping paper for packages (it is durable and kind of has the "look" of parchment) and a large dowel (2 inches across will be nice, or smaller, if this can't be found at a hardware store.) Ask an employee at the hardware store to saw the three-foot length in half for you (one-half for each end of the scroll), unless you have access to appropriate tools at home.
While the roll of paper is still in its wrapper, neatly cut it in half (creating two lengths of paper for your scroll. Next use a yardstick (also available at the hardware store) to run a visible pencil line down the length of the scroll. You will want to have room to keep track of events from about 5000 BC to through the present and into the future - about 7000 years.
If you want to make a fairly detailed timeline, you should carefully glue the two rolls of paper together (so your scroll can be twice as long, allowing more space per century). Please remember when you make up your scroll you won't want to damage it by unwinding it all the way to the end where it is attached to the dowel, so leave at least a foot or two of paper at each end which you do not intend to write on. Use a good quality glue made for wood and paper (carpenter's glue) to neatly attach the paper to the dowels, do this AFTER you have marked off and labeled (in pencil for now) your units of measurement. This project will take you some time if you are going to do it neatly. Patience now will pay off later. Calculate your units of measure by dividing the length of paper you have available (computed in inches) by 700 to create blocks of time of 100 years. You can just pencil in the 500 year marks to get started. If you want to make a real work of art out of your scroll, you can get four fancy knobs (try wooden drawer pulls) and screw them to the end of the dowels, paint or stain the dowels (before attaching the paper) and perhaps even add gold tassels (they sell such things for tyingback draperies). If you get too fancey, handling might be difficult.
Make it a habit to add important people and events to your timeline. It is very important for you to develop a sense of the flow of history. Add Thales (he was Greek) and Marie Curie to your timeline for their contributions to chemistry. She received Nobel Prizes for her research.
Assignment 2: Investigate career options available in the science ofchemistry and chemical engineering. You can visit your local public library or browse around in cyberspace to locate information. Build up an idea file of things you might want to pursue in life careers you might like, books to read some day, things you might like to try.
Assignment 3: Every good scientist should have a journal for keeping track of ideas. You should be keeping one yourself. You can use an inexpensive spiral available at any convenience or department store, invest in a nice blank book, or even make your own book (a wonderfully useful skill to master.) The most important feature of your journal is that it needs to be near at hand and you need to discipline yourself to use it to capture ideas, as they occur to you, that might otherwise escape your remembrance.
Thought problems are assigned across the curriculum here at Eagle. Write the problem out in your journal and leave ample room to record the best solutions that come to you even days and weeks later, if you cogitate about them. (Remember to date each entry and record important circumstances under which your entries are made, like "Somebody said something that contained the seed for the solution to a problem I thought over weeks ago.") Have you ever heard about Leonardo's idea books? You don't ever need to hand your journal over for grading, but you might choose to submit some of your ideas to us in brief reports.
Thought Problem Imagine that you are being sent back through time to the year 1000 BC. All you can take along with you besides your clothing is one container about the size of an airline carry-on bag. Nothing you do in the past can change the course of the future, so do not concern yourself with that. What would you select to take along? What coordinates do you pick for your destination? Choose wisely, imagine that this will be a one-way trip.
Assignment 4: Your task is to find five unusual units of measurement each for distance, speed, and time. The more odd they are, the better. Determining how you can discover this infomation is part of the learning experience. How are these units related to one another? Can you express their relationship clearly using words? Would it help if you expressed it in symbols?
Can you figure out how far (distance) it is from the earth to the sun given that light travels about 180,000 miles per second and takes a 8.5 minutes to travel get here? DO NOT look up the answer to this question or ask for help until you have honestly applied some mental effort to figuring this out for yourself. Record how you solved the problem, or at least how you tried to solve it in your laboratory journal. Someone first solved this problem without being able to look it up or to ask someone else! While you are working on this problem try and observe your own reasoning processes. How does your mind function? Any good scientist needs to figure out strategies for solving problems.
Assignment 5: You will need a notebook for this course. As a cover for your notebook, create a mini-poster of the symbols the alchemists used to represent their four fundamental elements. One set of these symbols were: Bird = Air, Beast = Earth, Dragon = Water and Angel = Fire. You can use clear contact paper to attach this to the front of your notebook.
