Taiwan pipe organ
and stops of an
organ in Germany.


Pennies ~Zinc ~ Pipe Organs

I'm dabbling with unschooling. There, I've said it, I'm out of the closet. whew. Because we're moving in 2 weeks I can do this guilt-free.

I have been reading and thinking about this unschooling for a few years, but I'm a wimp. I'm afraid of letting go of any small amount of control I might have.... A couple of weeks ago I met Sandra Dodd. (http://sandradodd.com/unschooling) She's some kind of unschooling guru, but I didn't realize that at the time.
We were just chatting via email about a video game. Then I began reading the rest of her website and asking questions, which she patiently answered. Next I ordered her book, received it and read it in a matter of days. I don't even want to let anyone borrow it because I'm afraid I'll miss it too much! If you are considering unschooling at all, check-out the website.
But let me tell you about today. Life was imitating theory. This morning we watched a news report on the possible elimination of the penny.
This began the questions:
What is the penny made of?
What is zinc ?
The boiling point of zinc is 787 degrees F (melting point over 1600 degrees).That's over seven times as hot as it is outside today!
Then we read on to find zinc is used in contemporary pipe organs (dd ~ Is ours contemporary? I think it is, I'll have to ask Sunday!) ,
as a substitute for the classic lead/tin alloy in pipes sounding the lowest (pedal) tones, as it is tonally almost indistinguishable from lead/tin at those pitches, and has the added advantages of being much more economical and lighter in weight.
Pictured next to all this cool information were all these cool pictures of pipe organs!
Dd has made a friend of our organist at our church, so she was immediately interested in the pictures. She wants to show the organists the organ from Taiwan in particular, so we emailed them to her dad and asked him to print them out at work.

I think I'll stack the school book boxes in a corner of the garage when we move. Maybe we'll unpack them last...........