Today’s blog post features a sketch from Anna Nguyen, who’s a 9th grade student. Anna observes, “Math is one of my favorite subjects. I’m not a genius or the smartest in my class, but I do enjoy dealing with letters and numbers, which is also why I like chemistry. I think GSP is the most wonderful computer program ever created. I’m not an artist or anything but I truly love being creative and showing my skills with the program. It’s amazing the things that are possible to do on GSP. Everyone should learn how to use this program.”

Friday was an amazing astronomical day, with the spring equinox arriving at 6:45 pm on the US East Coast (3:45 pm Pacific Time), exactly 13 hours after the maximum of a complete solar eclipse. We didn’t get to see the eclipse here in Philadelphia (or pretty much anywhere in the Western Hemisphere), and for us in Philly the eclipse marked the start of what we hope was our last big snowstorm of the season. Though it would have been nice if the storm had ended by the time of the equinox, that was not to be, so for us the astronomical start of spring was marked by winter’s fierce refusal to depart.

At such a time, when at least in this part of the country we’re all wondering when (or if) winter will ever be over, it was a delight for me to receive an email from Anna containing her “Hello Spring” sketch, and not only, or even mainly, because of its reminder that spring really will come, even if in its own time. More exciting for me was to see Anna’s expression of creativity, the joy she communicates through her sketch. Most students—and most teachers—use Sketchpad in a much more utilitarian fashion, as a way to explore a specific mathematical question or to produce a specific geometric or algebraic construction. That’s certainly worthwhile, and it would be hard to overemphasize either the importance of studying and learning mathematics or the advantages of doing so while using a dynamic, visual tool. But mathematics also plays an often unrealized role in art, in music, in dance, and so forth. For that reason it’s particularly exciting for me to see a student express herself through color, geometric shape, and animation as Anna has done here.

So cue the music, let the sun shine, and enjoy Anna’s animated movie.

In Anna’s original GSP construction, her “Cue the Music” button was a link button to a YouTube page of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Like most things in every sketch, this button worked properly when exported to Web Sketchpad (WSP), and the music and the animation work very well together. In fact, there are a couple of places in the first movement where I can actually hear Anna’s bees buzzing, thanks to the violins.

In WSP, the original Cue the Music link button did the same thing as in native Sketchpad 5: it switched you away from this blog page when you press the music button. I didn’t like that; I wanted to continue watching Anna’s animated sketch, without interruption. And with WSP, there’s fortunately an alternative. Because WSP is implemented in JavaScript and HTML5, I was able to add some custom JavaScript in the sketch’s web page that detects when the user presses the “Cue the Music” button and takes appropriate action. In this case, the appropriate action is to call on HTML5 to play the Spring movements of Four Seasons (downloaded from freemusicarchive.org). When the first movement ends, I programmed the JavaScript to automatically play the second movement, and then the third. I dressed the code up a bit by allowing you to click “Cue the Music” repeatedly to switch from one movement to the next.

So I want to express my thanks to Anna for brightening for me these last days of winter—and I also want to thank her teacher, Chris Taranta, for encouraging her creativity and for putting her in touch with me. It’s been a pleasure!