East Timor Encyclopedia, Selections in English

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provided by the United States Agency for International

Development. The opinions expressed herein are those

of the authors and do no necessarily reflect the views

of USAID or the United States Government."

Ensiklopedia

Ensiklopedia E

n s

i k l

o p e

d i

a

Ensiklopédia Multimédia

Siénsia no Matemátika

Iha ita nia Moris Loroloron

Mai aprende siénsia no matemátika

liu husi Ita nia experiénsia iha Rai Timor

©2009



Sample English translation of the

Ensiklopedia Multimedia: Siensia no Matematika

Iha ita nia Moris Loroloron(Multimedia Encyclopedia: Science and Mathematics

In our Everyday Lives).

Contents (topics in blue are translated in the following pages):

IntroductionHow to utilize the Encyclopedia

Toys and Games

1. Toy fan

2. Pop gun

3. Candle running with rubber band

4. Spinning cassava leaf

5. Spinning bottle cap

6. Chasing the wheel

7. Soap bubbles

8. Marbles and akar seeds

9. Top

10. Tops from fruit and seeds

11. Toy car

12. Juggling and jacks

13. Kite

14. Hacky sack with leaves

15. Traditional stick game

16. Toy helicopter

Sound and Music

1. Banana leaf spine noise gun

2. Papaya branch buzzer

3. Papaya branch kazoo

4. Traditional recorder5. Violin

6. Guitar, mandolin, bass

7. Kerosene noise cannon

8. Lakado, a traditional large bamboo instrument

9. Spark plug and screw noise maker

10. Drum

Home and Kitchen

1. Water boiling and evaporating

2. Candle

3. Wok aflame

4. Fire

5. Acid and base indicators6. Carrying water

7. Yeast and Baking soda

8. Preservation of food

Everyday Electricity and Magnetism

1. Radio and Television

2. Mobile phone

3. Satellite (parabolic) television

Agriculture

1. Soil

2. Structure of food plants

3. Falling coconuts

4. Seeds and germination5. Life cycle of plants

6. Energy necessary to obtain food



Ocean and Beach

1. Tides

2. Ocean waves

3. Ocean salt

4. Refining salt from soil soaked with sea water

Mountain and Forest

1. Dew (condensation)

2. Water cycle: rain, river, well

3. Atmospheric pressure

4. Rock salt of Laga (Gasiliu)5. Fungus and mushrooms

6. Leaf comparison

7. Clay

8. Sand

9. Rock

10. Earthquake

11. Layers of earth and sedimentation

Sky

1. Image of the sun

2. Thunder and lightning

3. Clouds4. Rainbow

5. Sun clock

6. Colors in the sky

Health and Human Body

1. Hand and arm: muscle and bone structure

2. Air and oxygen

3. Lungs

4. Mosquito life cycle

5. Cigarette smoking

6. Alcohol and palm wine

7. Energy from food

8. Five primary sicknesses in Timor9. Eye

Mathematics

1. Weaving with diamonds or rhombuses (three common baskets)

2. Making diamonds from playing cards

3. Measuring area of a basket using only hexagons

4. Distances between conjoined hexagons and stars

5. Weaving the “Raga” basket

6. Factoring with the side walls of the “Mamafatin” basket

7. Rice dumpling weaving

8. Woven decorations

9. Weaving of the square forms (three examples, including mats)

10. Mathematics of the children’s stick game11. “Bobak” card game

12. “Konke” card game



IntroductionCurt Gabrielson

Science and mathematics are not things that occur only in the school room, not things that reside only within

the text book, not merely lists of information that a person can memorize and store in their head. In order to

learn science and mathematics, one must leave the school and go work the fields, or enter the kitchen, or swim

in the ocean, or climb mountains, or play cards, or drive motorcycles, or raise livestock, or weave a basket.

Only in this way can science and mathematics be learned well. If one only waits in the classrooms, perhapsone will never be able to learn science and mathematics.

Domingus is a boy from Ermera. He made a beautiful top. Domingus knows a lot about his top. He learned

it all himself from his friends. That top also has a lot of science within it. It is possible to use that top to learn

about rotational motion, inertia, angular acceleration, momentum, frequency, gyroscopic forces, gravity, and

more. The problem is that when Domingus goes to school, he doesn’t hear anything about his top, because

even though the science curriculum includes all the aforementioned topics, it doesn’t include tops of Timor.

The lafatik (winnowing basket) also does not appear in the mathematics curriculum. Kids can use the lafatik to

learn about arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, three dimensional space, area, volume, sequences, paterns,

and more. Many grandmothers in Timor know how to make the lafatik, even though some have never steppedinside a school. But a person who doesn’t know mathematics wouldn’t be able to create a lafatik. Thus,

grandmothers in Timor, and their grandmothers before them, already know a lot of mathematics, because they

know how to weave the lafatik.

Timorese knew mathematics before the colonizers came. If not, they wouldn’t have been able to weave la-

fatiks or other baskets, nor build houses, nor weave cloth, nor make good plans for planting fields, nor under-

stand climate or seasons.

Timorese knew science before the colonizers came. If not, they wouldn’t have been able to farm fields, nor

catch fish, nor prepare and preserve food, nor maintain good health, nor extract oil from the ground or coco-

nuts, nor make and play musical instruments.

Therefore, Timorese ancestors already knew and used much science and mathematics in order to live better.

This question about how to live better is the root of science and mathematics. “How to farm better?” “How to

make a traditional gun to shoot birds more effectively?” “How to weave a beautiful rice dumpling katupa for

the feast?” “How to make a house using the materials that we already have?” Beginning with these questions,

people studied new things and found new knowledge. How wonderful if we could also use this method in

teaching children in school. The contents of this Encyclopedia are based on simple questions such as these.

This is our basic philosophy: only when one starts with something simple, something that is already known,

already experienced, is it possible to comprehend something abstract and higher level. My meaning is not that

Timorese should only learn science and mathematics of Timor. My meaning is this: when people from anylocale start learning science and mathematics through their own experience, education will function more ef-

fectively, and students will be able to continue learning up to international standards.

I teach physics at UNTL. My students have many questions. For this I’m extremely happy. I try to answer

these questions in the classroom, but many times this uncovers even more questions and there is not time to

discuss it all. So, in May of this year I began to meet with students from the physics department who had

questions and interest in doing simple research in order to gain more knowledge. We met each week and soon

I found that students in the Biology Department and the Mathematics Department also wanted to form a group

like this.

In these six months, we carried out much research, unearthed fascinating information, and developed simple

hands-on experiments that all teachers in Timor can use in their schools. Altogether we developed 83 topics.

We decided to compile all this information into an encyclopedia. In that we had taken some videos, we de-

cided to make a multimedia encyclopedia and produce it as a CD.



I wrote up the results of the research, and took many photos in order to document these topics. I found seven

teachers who were very interested in editing what I had written. I found support from the Vice Minister of

Education, Mr. Paulo Assis Belo, who gave funds for stipends to the teachers who edited the encyclopedia.

The General Director, Mr. Apolinario Magno and the Director of the Department of Curriculum, Mr.

Raimundo Neto, also gave guidance and many valuable suggestions. UNTL’s Vice Rector II, Mr. Miguel

Maia and Education Faculty Dean Mr. Marcos Antonio Amaral also gave moral support, guidance and also

the space of the UNTL laboratories in order to carry out this research and experimentation. We hope that we

can continue to work together with UNTL and the Ministry, especially the department of curriculum.

UNESCO Timor gave support for duplicating and distributing the Encyclopedia to schools and teachers in all

the districts, and we also received much moral support from members of UNESCO’s National Commision.

We hope to continue walking together with UNESCO and the National Commision of UNESCO, because our

work is like their work: to develop education, science and culture. Finally, in the month of October, my own

country, the United States of America, through USAID, gave excellent support to myself in order to finish this

project, and also gave funding for this launch and exposition. To all the donors we are much obliged.

My Tetum is not so good, but I really love the Tetum word for “learn:” buka hatene (“search-know”). This

word is not “listen-know,” nor “read-know,” nor “sit and wait-know.” If you want to know, you have to

search! In the course of these six months, our science and math groups truly searched, and found a great deal

of knowledge, which we put into this encyclopedia so that others can search and learn without difficulty.

Students and teachers: sometimes you may think that you are missing a lot: missing resources, missing books,

missing good conditions within the schools, missing preparation, missing money, missing knowledge. That is

the reality now in Timor. But if we all search, and not search alone but together, teachers together, students

together, teachers together with students, with sincerity, honesty, and enthusiasm, we will find much knowl-

edge, and escort Timor to a brighter future. Thank you.



Toy CarThe toy car is driven by a force that it receives by way of a

stick and string.

DESCRIPTION:

Children in Timor often make many types of toy cars. Its

body can be made of wood, a bottle, or something else. Its

wheels can be made from the small disks from a battery,

bottle caps, or rubber from old flip-flops. The wheels must

turn easily; they can’t be tight. Usually, the toy car is pulled

by a string that is connected to a stick. Try to make oneyourself! Once you have it made, you can also make a

small road for it and

pull it down that road.

BASIC THEORY:

The scientist Isaac Newton said an object at rest will begin moving

when it receives a force. The toy car receives a force by way of the

string. The string receives a force by way of the stick, and the stick

receives a force from the child’s hand. The stick goes down to give a

force to the string that is only directed forward. This is good, because

only the forward force makes the car go forward. Analyze the forces

received by the toy car, as fol-

lows:

• If the string goes straight forward, the entire force is in the forward

direction and none is lost.

• If the string goes up a bit, the force received by the toy car can be

divided into two: one upward and one forward. The upward forcegives no help to move the toy car forward.

• If the string goes straight up, the toy car only lifts a bit but it does-

n’t move forward at all.



• If the toy car receives a force to the side a little bit, this force can be

divided by two: the force to the side, and the force ahead.

Furthermore, if the toy car receives a force backward, it will go backward. In order to make the toy car drive

down the road, one must give a force that follows the road. This sort of analysis is called “vector analysis.” It

is often necessary to use vector analysis in physics.

TRY IT OUT

*Make the string longer or shorter to see which is better for

pulling the toy car. Think about why this is true.

*Make a little race between toy cars. Make a ramp and let

two cars go from the top of the ramp. Watch to see which

one goes farther. In order to go farther, the toy car cannothave much friction. A lot of friction comes from where the

wheels connect to the body of the car. If this is made very

well, it will reduce the friction.



Candle

A candle’s flame burns paraffin to create light.

DESCRIPTION:

A candle’s flame is small but it gives a lot of light. In addition, a candle does-

n’t give off much smoke like a wood fire. We can make many observations

about candles, for example

When you disturb a candle’s flame, it gives off black smoke.

A candle’s flame always rises upward. If you hold a candle on its side, the

flame continues to rise upward.

It does not feel too hot on either side of a candle flame. It feels extremelyhot above the flame.

A candle needs a string or something else (a stick, piece of paper, etc) in or-

der to light. You can’t light the paraffin alone.

The string alone is also no good. It will light, but only for a short time. You

can then ask: why does the candle need the string, and the string needs the

candle?

The color of a candle’s flame varies from place to place within the flame.

BASIC THEORY:

A candle is composed of just two things: paraffin, which is white, and string

(wick). The function of the candle’s wick is to carry paraffin to the candle’sflame. The candle’s flame burns paraffin very slowly. Therefore, it only needs

a tiny bit of paraffin. When the paraffin gets hot, it changes to liquid. This liq-

uid can rise inside the string. When the liquid gets very hot, it turns into gas.

Only this gas can burn.

A candle’s flam is like other fires: it occurs because oxygen reacts with

paraffin. Paraffin is a hydro-carbon. A candle gives of H2O (water) in gas

form. When it is burning well, it also gives off carbon-dioxide, which we can’t see. But when someone dis-

turbs the candle flame or wind blows it a bit, it gives off straight carbon that we see as black smoke.

The reaction that occurs in a candle’s flame is quite complicated. Oxygen comes from the air, which

enters from the lower side of the candle flame and from the sides. Paraffin goes up the string in the middle.

The reaction makes the whole area hot, but not every point has the same temperature. Points that the give off the most light are colored white. Points with other colors have lower temperatures than the points that are

white.

Even though we use candles only to give light, they also create

heat. Just like all fire, the flame heats the air around it. Hot air al-

ways rises, and when it rises it lifts the candle’s flame up with it. Be-

cause of this, a candle’s flame always rises. Thus, when you put your

finger to the side of a candle’s flame, it is not too hot but when you

put your finger on top it feels

very hot.

TRY IT OUT*Try to burn paraffin from a

candle without a wick:

Scrape some paraffin from a candle and put it in a spoon.

Heat the spoon on top of a candle.

Try to ignite the smoke that rises.

This small experiment can prove that the smoke (that carries gas with it) is what burns, not the liquid nor the

solid. When paraffin is hot enough to send off smoke and gas, it can be burned.



*You can use a spoon

with water in it to check

which part of the can-

dle’s flame is the hot-

test:

Put a bit of water in a

spoon.

Heat it above a can-

dle until it is boiling

Move the spoon up

and down in theflame from the very

tip to the center to the

base.

Observe where the water boils the most vigorously.

*It is possible to make a can-

dle with the candle-nut

(kamii). Get candle-nut meat,

a mortar and pestle, cotton

from the ai-lele tree (or other

tree), and a stick. Sun-dry the candle-nut and

take off the shell.

Clean the seeds out of the

ai-lele cotton.

Put the candle-nut meat

and the cotton into the mortar and grind it until it’s nice and soft.

Press and wind it around the stick.

Burn it.

Candles from the candle-nut give off black smoke because the candle-nut’s hydrocarbon is not like paraffin.

It’s reaction is not the same, and gives off a lot of elemental carbon. This kind of candle can also be made

from the fruid of the ai-munikala (Makasae language), and possiblyothers as well.

*It is possible to make a candle from coconut oil. Get dry coconut

meat, coconut oil and a can.

Cut the can as in the photo here.

Pour in some coconut oil into the

can.

Put in a rock and some cotton, one

end sticking out of the oil, and the

other end in the oil.

Light the end of the cotton that issticking up.

When normal candles burn, the paraf-

fin gets hot and melts to liquid, then

turns to gas. Coconut oil is already

liquid. When it gets hot, it also turns to gas. To burn liquid like this

is a bit dangerous. If someone makes a mistake and dumps the oil, it

could burn the house down or hurt someone.



Wine and alcoholIn wine there is a chemical called alcohol that has an effect on peo-

ple’s bodies and nervous systems.

DESCRIPTION:

Alcohol comes from a process called fermentation. Wine comes from

trees such as the akideru palm, sego palm, black-wine palm, and oth-

ers, because in these trees the process of fermentation occurs within

the branches. It is possible to assist this process by adding certainleaves—such as from the acacia or “ai-dak” tree—into the wine that

comes from the branch. In addition, people can create the fermenta-

tion process and get alcohol from many things such as rice, corn, wheat, fruit, etc.

People can drink wine and also use it for other things. For example, alcohol can kill

some bacteria and also small insects. Thus, one can pour alcohol onto the injury in or-

der to clean it. If the alcohol is very strong, it can be used to burn and create light or

heat.

People drink alcohol for various reasons, such as:

To rest well after hard work

To sleep well

To stay awake To reduce stress

To reduce pain

To feel comfortable and happy

To increase courage

To increase energy

To make blood stop flowing when seriously injured.

After delivering a baby

For certain traditional ceremonies

Sometimes people also rub alcohol on their skin to stop itching when an injury is nearly healed.

Among the reasons above, some make sense and others don’t. When you drink a lot of alcohol you be-come drunk and many times this can cause other problems. If a person drinks often, they may become de-

pendent or addicted to alcohol That means that even though someone may want to stop drinking, they can’t.

A certain tender leaf or white flower has something like alcohol in it. If you smash it, the pulp smells just

like alcohol. You can use this liquid to clean a wound as well.

BASIC THEORY:

Alcohol in wine is a chemical that is a “hydrocarbon” just like oil and petroleum. Its molecule has two atoms

of carbon, six of hydrogen, and one of oxygen. Its chemical name is “ethanol.” Like other

hydrocarbons, its gas will ignite and burn well when it reacts with oxygen in air.

Alcohol usually looks just like water and can mix with water in a solution. Thus, it is

hard to know how much alcohol there is in wine. If the percentage of alcohol in winegets high, it will be possible to burn the wine. This is because when the percentage of

alcohol is high, a lot of it evaporates and creates alcohol gas, which is easy to burn.

People drink wine and feel calm because alcohol has the effect of slowing the func-

tions of the nervous system. People’s reaction time slows. Thus, it is quite dangerous

to drive a car when drinking wine. It is not necessary to become intoxicated; if one

drinks a bit, one will still be able to think straight but the reaction time will become

slower. If something happens, such as a buffalo walking onto the road or another car blocking the way, a per-

son who has drunk wine will not have a sufficiently fast reaction to prevent disaster.

People get drunk depending on the percentage of alcohol in their blood. If a large person drinks one cup,

the percentage of alcohol is not great. But if a person with a small body drinks one cup, the percentage of al-

cohol in the blood will be larger. Also, if a person drinks regularly, his or her body can become tolerant of alcohol and this person will have to drink more in order to become intoxicated. Many times, if a person drinks

a lot, his or her body will develop a need for alcohol. This person may become mentally unstable if they do

not get alcohol.



TRY IT OUT:

*White palm wine can be used to make hard palm liquor through the process of

distillation. Distillation separates water from alcohol and also cleans the alco-

hol. The process is simple, but it is necessary to understand science well. Our

group at UNTL did an activity about

distillation using a pot and its lid with a

hole. We used an electric stove, but it is

also possible to use fire. We used bam-

boo to create the simple system shownin these photos. We learned a lot, in-

cluding the following:

The vertical bamboo piece can’t be

too long. If it is, alcohol will condense

on its walls and the drops will fall back

down into the pot.

The bamboo going to the side needs

to be long. If not, alcohol gas will come

out the end of the tube and float away to

another place. This alcohol gas needs to

condense inside the bamboo tube in or-

der to turn into a liquid and flow into the

cup.

This is a long process. We saw the

drops of hard palm liquor drop very

slowly into the cup, about 5 seconds per

drop.

We also tried distilling hard palm liquor again. We achieved an even higher

alcohol content through this process.

The strongest liquor—the highest alcohol content—that we achieved was the first few drops that came

from the end of the tube. After ten minutes, the drops were not so strong and didn’t contain as much alcohol.The first drops contained the highest percent of alcohol because there is the greatest amount of alcohol in just

at the moment it begins to heat up. This alcohol will ignite immediately with a match. Not long after most of

alcohol has come out of the wine and most of the liquid left is just water. If the alcohol content of the wine in

the pot is low, the hard palm liquor created will also have a low content.

It is said that the heat must not be too high when boiling the palm wine. If it is too hot, a lot of water gas

also gets mixed into the hard palm liquor, and sometimes even the froth from the wine will mix in. But, it also

can’t be too cool. If so, alcohol gas from the wine will not come out.

* When you go back to the mountains, take a look at the distillation systems in use there. Our group visited a

system in Baukau and took these photos. There they used wine from the coconut palm, and cooked around

360 litersevery day

to get

around 60

liters of

hard palm

liquor.

They used

a piece of

bamboo

around 30

meterslong. They put the coconut palm wine into large

bamboo sections while it was waiting for distilla-

tion.



* When alcohol is heated, evaporation becomes more vigorous and a lot of alcohol gas is gen off. When you

light and burn gas, only its gas is burning. You can do the

following experiment to show this.

Get some white palm wine, or another type of wine. Put a match or stick that is lit close to it. Try to get it to

light. Normally you can’t.

Put a bit of the wine onto the top of the stove and heat it

until it boils.

Again put a match or burning stick close by. Some-

times you can light the alcohol gas that’s coming off.



FACTORING WITH THE SIDE WALLS OF THE

“MAMAFATIN” BASKETOn the wall of the mamafatin basket is a hand-woven design. To

make this pattern, an understanding of mathematics is necessary. Any

design that repeats itself can be called a “pattern” or “sequence,” us-

ing terms from Portuguese. In the photo here the design is 13 strips

high and 24 strips wide. This design repeats 5 times around the wall

of the mamafatin. This means that total

vertical strips that make up the wall of

the mamafatin number 120.

But if you count the number of strips on the base of the mamafatin, you get only

60. If you look very closely, you will find that each strip on the base of the

mamafatin splits into two when it bends to

the vertical wall.

So, if one wants to make a pattern or se-

quence that repeats on the wall of themamafatin, one must find a factor of 120.

Thus, the possibilities are as listed in the

table here:

The pattern of the mamafatin in

the photos at left uses 4 strips

and occurs 30 times.

The pattern of the mamafatin in

the photo at left here is differ-

ent; it uses 6 strips and repeats 20 times.

The mamafatin in the photo at left here has a pattern using 12 strips

and occurs 10 times.

Factor 120 Pattern uses how many

strips

Pattern occurs how many

times

2 60 4 30 5 24 6 20 8 15 10 12 12 10 15 8 20 6 24 5 30 4 60 2 120 1



TRY IT OUT:

*Gather all kinds of mamafatin and observe them carefully. Count the strips carefully. Count the strips on the

base and the walls. Count how many strips the pattern uses before it repeats.

*You can make a pattern or sequence with beans. Get two or three kinds of beans and make patterns like the

examples shown here:

>Red-White, Red-White, Red-White. (The pattern uses only two

beans and repeats three times.)

>Red-White-White, Red-White-White, Red-White-White (The pat-

tern uses three beans and repeats three times)

>Red-White-Spotted-White-Red, Red-White-Spotted-White-Red, Red

-White-Spotted-White-Red (This pattern uses five beans and repeats

three times.)

You can try to make patterns from other things, for example rocks, leaves, flowers, etc.

*Number 24 also has many factors: 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 12. Try to make patterns or sequences that repeat a cer-

tain number of times within the number 12.

For example, the following pattern uses four places (XYZX) and repeats six times:

X Y Z X X Y Z X X Y Z X X Y Z X X Y Z X X Y Z X

1 2 3 4 5 6

The following pattern uses six places (XYZZYX) and repeats four times:

X Y Z Z Y X X Y Z Z Y X X Y Z Z Y X X Y Z Z Y X

1 2 3 4

Try making a pattern with factors 2 and 12, and 3 and 8.

*Sometimes a mamafatin is not round, such as the one shown in the photo below. Four of its sides have 14

strips and the two sides on the points have 6 strips. Thus: (14x4)+(6x2)=68. Its strips are also divided into

two when they turn the corner from the base to the sides, so its walls contain 136 strips. The pattern uses 4

strips, and repeats 34 times:

34x4=136

East Timor Encyclopedia, Selections in English

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