Brain Exercises for Summertime

School may be out for the summer, but that doesn't mean your brain has to shut down completely! In fact, summer is an ideal time to make sense of all that "school stuff."

"Kids tend to dismiss math and science once they close the classroom door, but they're a part of everyday life," says Tom Carlisle, a Phillips Petroleum chemical engineer.

You can find science on the baseball diamond (What properties of aluminum make it a good material for a bat?), and math in your summer job (How much will I save if I bank a percentage of my paycheck or a specific amount?).

You can even find them on vacation. "When we went to Disney World last spring, the hotel pool was marked in feet and meters, and I had a discussion with my fourth-grader about whether they marked it correctly," Carlisle says. (Yes, it was accurate!)

On any theme park trip, Carlisle suggests using "math sense" to help your family plan a daily schedule. For example, various attractions process different numbers of people at different rates, so go early to popular attractions that can handle fewer people at a time.

Here are some other home projects that can keep your skills sharp:

• Keep track of the stats for your favorite baseball team, or start on a smaller scale and compile statistics on your own games see how each hit and home run improves your numbers!
• Build a bridge out of toothpicks and glue, then hand weights on it to see how much it can hold. Once you find the weaknesses, modify the bridge design so it can hold more.
• There are lots of building kits available: try putting together a model rocket or a car powered by a mousetrap.

Borger Texas High School physics teacher David Brink encourages his students to use their imaginations and experiment. "You can build a model rocket without studying very much physics," he says. "Try something, see if it works, modify it - all of the sudden you're doing science and you don't even know kit!"

If you have access to a computer, Brink would be happy to give you some other ideas for summer projects. You can reach him on e-mail at debrink@tenet.edu.