(dramatic music) - Hello, friends, and welcome, to Live from the City Opera House: It's Storytime.

I'm your host, Ben Whiting.

And on this show every week, we're gonna have a great story read by a special guest and then have a fun activity that you could participate in right from home, using materials that you can find in your home or classroom.

We'll be learning about science, technology, engineering, mathematics and local culture.

Now, for today's book.

(upbeat music) Today, we're gonna be reading, "The Skydiving Beavers."

It's an incredible true tale about a group of conservationists in Idaho, who used ingenuity and determination to save a colony of beavers.

Now for today's activity, we're gonna be making a better sneaker and sky is the limit on the materials for today.

(upbeat music) But some things you might wanna use include cardboard, sticky tape, tree bark, string, confetti, construction paper, or shopping bags.

(upbeat music) Now, if you don't have the supplies readily available, that is okay, you can go ahead and watch the episode and come back again later when you have the supplies and work on the activity then.

Now today's special guests is Hans Van Sumeren.

He's the Director of the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute at Northwestern Michigan College.

And with that, take it away.

(upbeat music) - Hey, everybody, it's great to be here.

My name is Hans Van Sumeren.

And I work at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City and I actually, direct the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute.

So today I'm gonna be here to read a book to you that is interesting from my perspective, in that I'm gonna be reading about beavers that fall from the sky and the majority of my work is underwater.

But the two are related.

So this is gonna be a lot of fun.

For me reading a book like this was not only enjoyable, but it brought back the memories of when I found a book that I really enjoyed.

In fact, a series of books that I really enjoyed and I'll share with you that story.

The first time that I really got captured by a series of books was, I was on board a ship, I was leaving Hawaii and I was traveling to San Diego, California.

And they had a series of books written by Clive Cussler for Dirk Pitt.

And Dirk Pitt was the underwater explorer for NUMA, who explored just like James Bond, if you've ever heard of James Bond, he explored underwater.

And so not only did I read one of those books, but I read about six during that entire voyage.

And as soon as I got home, I bought all the other books in the series and I actually could live like that person by reading those books.

So reading to me has always been enjoyable and it's especially enjoyable when you're able to sort of live like the characters you're reading about and maybe relate to them from an experience that you have.

So I hope that you enjoy this book.

I did and it's a lot of fun.

So we're gonna get started.

And again, this book is called, "The Skydiving Beavers: A True Tale."

"It all started when the folks of McCall, Idaho, realized they had a problem and it was a big problem.

A big beaver type problem.

McCall, in Idaho's woodsy backcountry, was a lovely place.

The trees so tall, they touched the skies.

The Crisp mountain air.

And oh, that sparkling blue lake.

Swimming and hiking in the summer, skiing and snowmen in the winter.

Who wouldn't wanna live there?

People rushed to build homes and lodges on the shore, docks for their sailboats and canoes and paved roads to get to it all.

Trouble was, the lakeside land had already been claimed.

For decades, centuries even, beavers had been the only ones doing the building there.

Beavers feel right at home on land and in water.

For protection from critters that think they'd make a tasty snack, beavers build dams, then hide in the deep water behind those dams.

Beavers build their dams from wood they harvest from gnawing down trees, lots and lots of trees.

Now the beavers had a problem too.

A big problem.

A big people type problem.

So where beavers once built their dams, now were boaters and swimmers.

Where beavers once gathered wood for dams and food, now there were houses and people.

And where the people tried to drive their cars, now water flooded the roads because of these dams.

Where the people wanted to enjoy their backyard views, now trees toppled left and right, thanks to all that gnawing.

The people were muscling in on the beaver's habitat.

And the beavers were trashing the people's habitat.

A real turf war, and it seemed like McCall just wasn't big enough for everybody.

So what to do?

One man named Elmo Heter had an idea.

Elmo had a lot of experience with beavers, working as he did for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

He knew just what beavers needed to live happily and peacefully.

And that was wide open spaces with plenty of trees, loads of rivers and creeks and absolutely no people around.

Elmo knew of a place just like that the Chamberlain Basin, many, many miles away.

Acre after acre of deep, dense forest.

Fresh mountain streams and ponds.

Pure wilderness, untouched by humans, a neighborhood where beavers would feel right at home.

But Elmo had a problem, and it was a big problem.

It was a big transportation type problem.

How do you move a bunch of beavers to a place with no roads, no railway, no airport and no bus station?

Elmo thought about using horses or mules.

He could round up the beavers put them in cages, and load them on the pack animals and hoof it for a few days into the deep wilderness.

But Elmo knew that long rough trips would make the beavers mighty grumpy, and the horses and mules would get spooked by the ornery when loaded and unhappy beavers.

No, beavers, horses and mules, they just don't mix.

Then Elmo remembered the piles of parachutes that were left over from World War II, which had just ended a few years before.

What if he dropped the beavers from a plane?

Skydiving beavers?

Well, why not?

So Elmo had his plan.

And now he needed to figure out how to make it work.

One of Elmo's early ideas was to put beavers in a box made of woven willow branches.

He thought that once the box parachuted to the ground, the beavers inside would gnaw their way to freedom.

After more pondering, though he he tossed that idea.

He wasn't quite sure that it would work.

Beavers were grade-A gold-star chewers.

The beavers might chew their way through the box way too soon.

They might run loose in the plane.

Or they might pop out mid-skydive.

So Elmo came up with another idea.

How about a box that opened automatically when it landed?

And Elmo really liked this idea and he went to work on a design.

He built a box of wood with holes drilled for air, all hinged and harnessed with a rope.

The parachute attached to the rope and the weight of the beaver-filled box hanging from the chute would keep that rope taut and the box closed during the beaver's dive.

The rope would loosen and the box would open once the beaver landed on the ground.

Elmo needed to test his nifty self-opening beaver-drop box design.

He put together a team and did a few experiments with weights and that box opened every single time.

Now he needed the real thing, he needed a beaver.

So Elmo corralled an old male beaver into the box and his name was Geronimo.

Elmo fastened a parachute to the box and a pilot took the box up in a plane.

And when the plane buzzed low over Elmo's test field, the box was dropped.

The chute bloomed open like a buttercup, then caught the breeze and Elmo surely held his breath, but the box fell as gently as a mountain snowflake, landing softly on the grass.

The box sprang open and Geronimo scrambled out.

The parachute plan had worked perfectly.

But Elmo needed to make sure that the parachute plan would work every time and not just this once.

So he and his team tested it again and again and again.

And after a while, it seemed that Geronimo was growing to like all the skydiving.

Each time he touched down and the box sprang open, he'd scurry out, but then he would crawl right back in for another go.

Finally, Elmo and his team felt sure that the parachute plan would work, to transport not just one beaver, but a whole batch of beavers.

It was a time to put the plan into action.

So that fall when the leaves were changing from green to red, the team rounded up bunches of beavers from McCall.

They packed the beavers into their boxes and loaded them onto the plane, where they headed for the Chamberlain Basin.

The pilot buzzed low over the thick forests looking for the grassy meadow the team had selected for the drop and there it was.

The team ready the chutes.

Three, two, one now.

The chutes whooshed open and the beavers fell from the sky.

They wafted like falling leaves on the autumn wind to their new woodsy patch of paradise.

And the first to hit the ground?

It was Geronimo.

With his nose leading him to water, there he and the other beavers could build a happy, peaceful home."

And that's the end of this story.

And now, I thought that this was actually probably pretty exciting for those beavers, thinking that they actually got to fly in a plane and parachute out of a plane and land on the ground.

I've never been able to parachute before.

And I'm kind of envious that these guys got to do that.

And what a way to think about solving a problem where we have animals and people trying to live together that just didn't work.

And so, parachuting these beavers out of an aircraft and making them a new home was just an a phenomenal idea.

And just a fun story to read about.

And this actually happened in Idaho about 70 years ago.

So you always think that maybe there's not a solution to a problem and sometimes it just takes a little ingenuity and a little thinking and you can come up with lots of solutions.

So thank you for spending this time with me, I really enjoyed it.

And I hope you have a wonderful day.

(upbeat music) - Thank you so much, Mr. Van Sumeren.

Now it's time to take what we read and put it into action.

And to do that, we have Mrs. Erin Sorenson, a teacher from Westwoods Elementary School.

Mrs. Sorenson, how about you introduce yourself and get us started on today's activity?

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Erin Sorenson, otherwise known as Mrs. Sorenson.

I'm a third grade teacher at Westwoods, and I have my husband, Justin.

- I'm Justin Sorenson, I'm a Civil Engineer, formerly a high school teacher in STEM program.

- And my son Patrick.

- Hello, I am from Westwoods Elementary School.

I'm a fifth grader, and I'm 11 years old.

- So in my classroom, I love doing STEM challenges, particularly engineering challenges with my students.

And so this is right up my alley.

And we have Mr. Sorenson's engineering expertise to help us and Patrick's creativity.

So we are going to build an earth friendly sneaker today.

And you can see we have a lot of materials.

And as we go through, I'll talk to you about some other things that you might want to use for this project.

But the idea is to build an earth friendly sneaker.

Actual sneakers, or athletic shoes, tennis shoes, whatever you wanna call them.

Actually have a lot of plastic in them.

And it can take over 1000 years for plastic to break down.

And sometimes it never does.

So an earth friendly sneaker would be made with materials that are either being reused, perhaps and recycled, or that would actually be able to decompose when they are put into the landfill.

- So for an example, we have this tennis shoe here that I cut in half.

And you wouldn't really know it until you cut it in half what's going on inside.

But as you open it up, you can see there's lots of different foams and plastics and layers to the shoe.

You've got the lower, or the outsole where the bottom of the shoe is going up three.

You've got the midsole and then you've got the upper which is protecting you from rocks and sticks as you're running.

And a lot of the stuff is all environmentally unfriendly because it's plastic and it does not break down like this Mrs.Sorenson said.

- And so if you're wondering what the connection is to the book skydiving beavers, Patrick will explain that.

How does designing an earth friendly sneaker have anything to do with the book?

- So in the book, skydiving beavers, they're like skydiving in a box with the parachute hooked up.

And I thought that was just like a shoe because the shoe is protecting your foot just like the box is protecting the beaver inside.

- Yep, so I thought that was a really interesting connection.

And in the book, the scientists who works for the Idaho Department of Fish and Wildlife had the challenge of building a box that would be safe enough for the beavers to land and land in the natural area without getting hurt and also be able to get out.

I mean, the fear was that they'd land and then not be able to get out to enjoy their brand new habitat.

So we are gonna try to follow the engineering design process like Elmo did in the story, which, well we're gonna talk through right now.

So something that you're definitely going to need is cardboard.

We are going to be making in this project specifically the midsole.

So we're gonna be making the part of the shoe that's the squishy part, the part that would protect your foot from the forces.

Because when you put your foot on the ground, the ground pushes back, it's push and pull.

So we're gonna be making the cushioning insole, the part that protects you, that has the bounce to it.

And like I said, the cushion.

If you have time beyond this challenge, you could always try to make a complete sneaker, a complete shoe, that has the outsole and the upper.

But for this challenge, your challenge is to make the midsole.

So something that you will have to have and you can see if I've already done this part, you're gonna wanna trace your foot on cardboard, and cut it out.

This was actually pretty thick and hard to get through.

So you might wanna ask an adult to help with that.

But then, so we have the base of your foot.

You are gonna be testing this out.

So we're gonna wanna find a way to attach it.

So this is the start.

Always with an engineering challenge, you should have a look at your materials.

So you have available and then draw a plan.

Make your plan, design it.

So having a notebook and a pen or pencil handy is a good thing.

So you wanna sketch your design, figure out what you're gonna use and where.

So we have, this is from a planter.

It's kind of like a grassy material.

And we have some big cotton balls, tape, a couple different types of painters tape and masking tape.

Some foam from projects of years past in our household, I had fun going through our storage room for this.

Rope, some old rags that I found that we don't use anymore in the kitchen, they're just being reused.

These are called shims.

But paint stirs, Popsicle sticks those would work too.

I have some bubble wrap here.

Some packaging from a box that I got in the mail, egg cartons.

A football that our dog got after and deflated and ripped up.

(laughing) So it's kind of a leathery material.

And plastic bags.

Oh, sponges would work.

These happened to be fun shapes, because they're from painting, we don't use those anymore.

And of course, scissors.

So, oh, and I have some styrofoam.

So I'm thinking about the design.

And I'm gonna tap into the other two engineers that we have here.

If we're going to make this, cushion the impact of hitting the ground, what materials do you think we should use?

- Definitely not something hard.

What do we have here to choose from, Patrick?

This feels good doesn't it?

- Yeah.

- So you're thinking, some sponges?

Right, why don't you put them on how you think that they should go.

Maybe just arrange it first before actually taping anything down.

- Put some sponges.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- Maybe this guy because I like the beach.

Let's use a palm tree.

(laughing) - Yeah, you can give it some style if you want, although this is an interior part of the shoe.

But, why not have fun?

- Oh, it should be stylish.

(Mrs.Sorenson laughing) Yeah, super foamy.

Covers the whole bottom where your toes, your heels, and the bottom of your foot are gonna hit.

- Put it here.

- Yeah, that looks good.

- So what we're doing right now is creating a prototype.

And a prototype happens in designing... Well, Justin if talk about this more, but designing all kinds of things, all kinds of goods.

The prototype is going to be what's tested before anything's ever manufactured.

And in the engineering design process, you are testing, re-evaluating, redesigning, making changes as you go.

So this would be our first prototype.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Every single thing that we use in our day-to-day life it starts with an idea.

And then it's made into a prototype like what we're doing.

It's tested, evaluated, and almost always changed.

It's never perfect on the first try.

In fact, it shouldn't be because you're just trying to make a prototype and you're gonna see what works, and what doesn't.

And we're at the point now where what's next, we have to add some more?

- So we have, the midsole with just the cardboard and the sponges so far, but we're gonna actually test this out.

So right now obviously, if I took this over, everything's gonna spill off.

Now do you think we need anything else to secure it, to make it even cushionier?

So we can resist that force against, because remember, just like with the box, there's a force from the ground.

- Maybe, like over the top, maybe a couple pieces.

So I could take like scissors.

- No, keep in place.

- Thank you.

This is kind of like tape but it's foam insulation for pipes and it cuts really easily.

It's kind of like old stuff.

So may or may not hold but it is spongy and it is rigid.

So maybe we could put a layer over the top, possibly to just distribute the weight maybe.

But it's not gonna hold, it's not sticky enough.

So what are we gonna do now, Patrick?

- We can use of this two.

- Okay.

- what do you think we go around this way or go around this way with it?

- Like around this way.

- Yeah.

Bring it down around.

- I wonder if the egg cartons would make fun little, just cut some of those.

I wonder if that I give it some more spring shoe.

- Also like screwing at the bottom?

Kind of like those screw track shoes that I've got some extra spring jump.

Some of the stuff you'll find is just a straight up fail, and you're not gonna wanna use it.

That's all right, it's part of the deal.

- Okay, so I'm thinking ahead.

So we talked about maybe doing some egg cartons for the bottom, maybe, like, where's the foot gonna actually rest?

Where's your foot gonna be?

- You want it to be the most stable.

- Okay, so your foot maybe... - Yeah, maybe.

- Seems to me like the foot should be resting here.

Because this is pretty rigid, this will be good for contact against the ground.

- I just wonder, what do you think?

Probably not that much of it.

But take some of those.

Maybe have some at the cause the most of the impact on your shoe I learned I had to do a little research for this.

I did not know as much about shoes yesterday as I do now.

But I guess it's in the ball area of your foot.

That midfoot areas where you want that cushion and support that springiness.

So what if we took like two?

Yeah, let's tape them on.

That'll be interesting to see when we test it, what's gonna happen?

- Well, you know I'm a runner, and I know so little about shoes, just kind of crazy.

- Well, let's get the cut in half shoe.

- All right.

- So where do you see most of the cushion?

- Seems like... - It is a midfoot.

- Yeah, right there.

- So yeah, you're right, it should go.

That's a good idea too when you're thinking about designs, look at others designs of things that already exists, and see if you can make it better, or borrow some ideas.

- Yeah, it's good to find things that are not very good so you can improve upon them.

Or take your old shoes like me and just cut it in half.

And why not?

- Get an adult's help for that though.

- I could have used an adult too, but I didn't.

All right.

That's pretty good.

- All right, so it's... Huh, that's pretty comfortable.

(laughing) Feels pretty cushioning and springy.

- Actually, that's pretty good.

- I think I'm gonna let Patrick be the tester.

Okay, so now, Patrick, you're gonna test the prototype just like Elmo tested the boxes with the beavers before dropping them from an airplane.

- Alright, so what do we got going on here?

We've got... Let's see what's going on.

Alright, so we get to the bottom of our shoe.

In the middle, everything is taped together.

Alright, why don't you put your foot on there, Patrick, and let's see if we can get you in place.

All right?

- Yes.

- Keep those toes on lockdown.

We got some rope, do we?

- I don't know if we need it or not.

What do you think Patrick?

Move your foot around.

- I don't know.

- So it's staying on, do you think you could jog?

Oh, yeah, I could see the tape.

- See the tapes have failed, but that's part of the deal.

- Does it feel hard, yeah?

Feels pretty cushioning?

- Wait for that for a second.

- How about springing?

Does it feel springy?

- Well, I haven't jumped around.

- That's pretty ridiculous once this is done.

- Alright, so you're gonna jack in place?

- Run.

(laughing) - It's so weird.

- How does it feel?

- Very cushioning.

- Still cushioning, comfortable?

- Okay, so what do we need to fix in our next redesign?

Remember, that's what engineers do.

Alright, so Patrick, what do you notice when it was on your foot?

- Well, I noticed it was really hard to run.

- Okay, what made it hard to run?

- It's like, compressing down too much in the bottom of the shoe just wasn't working.

- Okay, and then you said this part felt okay, though, pretty comfortable?

So our cushion is good, but it was too hard to run.

So just some ideas and so this is normal.

I also noticed the sponges were falling out.

So we would have to definitely do something about keeping the cushion in, because we only did that on the sides.

We didn't do that on the front and the back.

And maybe try some harder materials on the bottom so that there's better just running will be easier.

- Like what if you cut out some of the football?

I believe that's pretty durable, tough material that could protect the bottom of the foot from concrete and running.

- Yeah, so that's the design process, you design, you build, you test and you go back and you do some redesign.

So I hope that you have a really awesome time trying to make your environmentally friendly sneaker and that you'll share what you do.

Thank you for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Great work everyone.

Well that is it for today's episode of Live from the City Opera House: It's Storytime, brought to you from the beautiful historic City Opera House in downtown Traverse City.

If you wanna watch future episodes or check out episodes from the past you can do so by visiting tcaps247.com, michiganlearning.org or tune into your local PBS station.

Thank you so much for being our wonderful audience.

My name is Ben Whiting and until next time, stay safe, have fun and keep learning.

Take care.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program is made possible in part by Michigan Department of Education, the state of Michigan, and by viewers like you.

(upbeat music)