I am glad to see that someone has already recommended What is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods (1941; 1996). Even though my background is not in mathematics, I have always found Courant and Robbins's exposition clear and engaging.
In addition to Feynman's lectures, you might want to look at the following:
Holton, Gerald, and Stephen G. Brush. Physics, the Human Adventure: From Copernicus to Einstein and Beyond. 3rd ed. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
This is the third edition of the classic text Introduction to Concepts and Theories in Physical Science, something of a landmark title in science education in that Holton makes full use of the history and the philosophy of science in presenting physics concepts.
I recommend J. Glenn Brookshear's Computer Science: An Overview. I read an earlier edition and thought it was brilliant: the writing is clear, the material is well organized, the book includes lots of examples, and thoughtful questions and exercises. Above all, Brookshear's text is enjoyable to read.
Even if you decide not to assign it to your students, the book will be a great resource for you if you design your own course.
You are right to point out that English is generally treated as a "support subject for other classes." It is true at the primary and secondary levels, and it is no less true at the tertiary level. The latter is a serious problem in that English departments at colleges and universities--the very people who train those who go on to become K-12 teachers--have failed to make tenable arguments for why one should take reading, writing, and the study of literature seriously.
Fortunately, there are some people who have made, what seem to me, tenable arguments for why one should take reading, writing, and the study of literature seriously. One of these people is Mark Turner, author of several books including Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science (1991), The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language (1996), and, with Gilles Fauconnier, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities (2002). Without going into great detail, Turner's work develops the theory proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By (1980) that our conceptual apparatus is "metaphorically" structured; that is, we proceed by means of relations.
My reason for mentioning Turner et al. is that their work suggests that the distinction often made between "ordinary" language and "poetic" language is false. It's "metaphor" all of the way down. If you introduce the topic of language to your eighth-grade students, then you will have a way of combining discussions of both language and biology, broadly conceived. A perceptive and engaging introduction to some of the matters I've mentioned is James P. Byrnes's Minds, Brains, and Learning: Understanding the Psychological and Educational Relevance of Neuroscientific Research (2001).
Two other books come to mind: Robert and Ellen Kaplan's Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free (2007), about their Math Circle program, and Gerald Holton and Stephen G. Brush's Physics, the Human Adventure (3rd ed., 2001).
The above titles ought to provide you with some insight into how you can go about engaging your students. Good luck!
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the link to the citation describing Les Valiant's work: http://www.acm.org/news/featured/turing-award-2010
There is an on-going discussion of note taking during lectures over at Math Overflow.
See: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/12638/taking-lecture-notes-in-lectures, especially Anton Geraschenko's comments on Live TeXing. It works!
The European Space Agency's ESA Portal has a short article on the unexplained variations in orbital energy experienced by these spacecraft.
See http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEMUCV3VU1G_0.html
Professor Andy Adamatzky has published a number of papers on plasmodium computing. See his web page at UWE Bristol:
http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/adamatzky/
and the video complimentary material for the article "Physarum boats: If plasmodium sailed it would never leave a port" at:
http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/adamatzky/physarumboat/
The video requires a Intel Indeo 5 decoder plugin.
The abstract for Gentry's article can be found at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1536414.1536440
I am glad to see that someone has already recommended What is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods (1941; 1996). Even though my background is not in mathematics, I have always found Courant and Robbins's exposition clear and engaging.
In addition to Feynman's lectures, you might want to look at the following:
Holton, Gerald, and Stephen G. Brush. Physics, the Human Adventure: From Copernicus to Einstein and Beyond. 3rd ed. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
This is the third edition of the classic text Introduction to Concepts and Theories in Physical Science, something of a landmark title in science education in that Holton makes full use of the history and the philosophy of science in presenting physics concepts.
It's a marvelous book!
I recommend J. Glenn Brookshear's Computer Science: An Overview. I read an earlier edition and thought it was brilliant: the writing is clear, the material is well organized, the book includes lots of examples, and thoughtful questions and exercises. Above all, Brookshear's text is enjoyable to read.
Even if you decide not to assign it to your students, the book will be a great resource for you if you design your own course.
See the book's website at http://www.aw-bc.com/brookshear/ and the author's personal website at http://www.mscs.mu.edu/~glennb/.
English or African, it doesn't matter. The sensors could be carried on a strand of creeper.
You are right to point out that English is generally treated as a "support subject for other classes." It is true at the primary and secondary levels, and it is no less true at the tertiary level. The latter is a serious problem in that English departments at colleges and universities--the very people who train those who go on to become K-12 teachers--have failed to make tenable arguments for why one should take reading, writing, and the study of literature seriously.
Fortunately, there are some people who have made, what seem to me, tenable arguments for why one should take reading, writing, and the study of literature seriously. One of these people is Mark Turner, author of several books including Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science (1991), The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language (1996), and, with Gilles Fauconnier, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities (2002). Without going into great detail, Turner's work develops the theory proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By (1980) that our conceptual apparatus is "metaphorically" structured; that is, we proceed by means of relations.
My reason for mentioning Turner et al. is that their work suggests that the distinction often made between "ordinary" language and "poetic" language is false. It's "metaphor" all of the way down. If you introduce the topic of language to your eighth-grade students, then you will have a way of combining discussions of both language and biology, broadly conceived. A perceptive and engaging introduction to some of the matters I've mentioned is James P. Byrnes's Minds, Brains, and Learning: Understanding the Psychological and Educational Relevance of Neuroscientific Research (2001).
Two other books come to mind: Robert and Ellen Kaplan's Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free (2007), about their Math Circle program, and Gerald Holton and Stephen G. Brush's Physics, the Human Adventure (3rd ed., 2001).
The above titles ought to provide you with some insight into how you can go about engaging your students. Good luck!
Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike gloss /etc as "(et cetera)."
Kernighan, Brian W., and Rob Pike. The UNIX Programming Environment. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1984. 63.