Ensiklopedia

Ensiklopedia
Ensiklopédia Multimédia
Siénsia no Matemátika
Iha ita nia Moris Loroloron
Ensiklopedia Mai aprende siénsia no matemátika
liu husi Ita nia experiénsia iha Rai Timor

©2009
"This publication was made possible through support
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."
 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):
Introduction
How 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 recorder
5. 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 indicators
6. 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 germination
5. 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. Clouds
4. 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 Timor
9. 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 game
11. “Bobak” card game
12. “Konke” card game
 Introduction
Curt 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, perhaps
one 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 stepped
inside 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 any
locale 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 Car
The 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 one
yourself! 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 force
gives 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 cannot
have 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 extremely
hot 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’s
flame. 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 the
flame 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 possibly
others 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 is
sticking 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 alcohol
In 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 certain
leaves—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 wine
gets 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 shown
in 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 liters
every day
to get
around 60
liters of
hard palm
liquor.
They used
a piece of
bamboo
around 30
meters
long. 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” BASKET
On 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. Factor 120 
Pattern uses  Pattern occurs 
So, if one wants to make a pattern or se- how many  how many 
quence that repeats on the wall of the strips  times 
mamafatin, one must find a factor of 120.
2  60 
Thus, the possibilities are as listed in the
table here: 4  30 
5  24 
6  20 
The pattern of the mamafatin in
8  15 
the photos at left uses 4 strips
and occurs 30 times. 10  12 
12  10 
15  8 
20  6 
24  5 
30  4 
60  2 
The pattern of the mamafatin in 120  1 
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.
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:
XYZXXYZXXYZXXYZXXYZXXYZX
1 2 3 4 5 6

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