Animals by Marty

The things that I have been learning about are all about the different species of animals and their scientific names.  I have been learning the different ways of how they adapt to their new habitat.  I have learned that theses animal reproduce which is make more of their species. I also found out of how they protect themselves in special ways. 

They have many different ways of feeding which are filter feeding or just eating their food just by chewing it. 

They all have different ways of surviving and they all live in habitats that are for their skills. They have abilities of changes color to hide with their surroundings so a predator does not sense them and tracks them.  There are different types of animals like the arachnids.  Spiders, scorpions, ticks, and mites are all in the group of arachnids.  Some of these arachnids can cause diseases like the tick it feeds on blood from a mammal and it pushes a liquid which is known to be Lyme disease.
  

What kind of things do you know that animals can also do?

Do you think that new species of animals will be found?

Where do you think that most animals on the planet could be found? If you could prove that some species of animals could excites how would you prove it?

The thing I find most interesting that there are creatures that actually exist.   

Saturation by Darell

Saturation is my favorite topic in chemistry. It is the only part of chemistry I understand. I like this subject because it's common sense. Did you know a substance can be completely saturated and not have clumps in the bottom or even be able to see anything in the container at all? A solute is a substance that is getting mixed and has the least amount. Solvents are the substances that are getting mixed into and have larger volumes. Saturation is the amount of substance a solution can hold without forming clumps.

One of the most classic examples of solubility is hot chocolate. The milk or water is the solvent because it has the most volume and is being mixed in itself. The mix is the solute because it is getting mixed into the solvent and has the least volume. These are important to us to understand because we use them in our daily lives. 

Birds by Steven

            

This week in Biology we are researching an animal class so I chose the bird class. Birds actually have evolved from Theropods and the evidence is that Theropods had wings and feathers. Birds today have more oxygen in their blood than most animals because of their four chambered hearts. Birds are also good for the environment because they spread the seeds of various plants and they pollinate some plants. Birds don’t live in subarctic and subantarctic areas. Most species of birds are in Tropical or Subtropical Lowlands. This is because birds like to live in warm areas. 

Birds don’t just find another bird to breed with they actually find the right bird for them. They do this by courting which is a dance. One bird does some kind of action and the other has to copy it. When they do this it creates a bond between them. Now they’ve found their partner. Once they breed the female heats the eggs. 

Then the birds split up during the winter and go to warmer areas or breeding areas. These are just some of the things that I’ve learned this week in Biology. But there is something I’ve been wandering about. Are there any birds that don’t migrate to warmer areas during the winter and just stay in the same place all year long? (Not including flightless birds.) 

Yeast, by Xintong

The Yeast

The kingdom of yeast is Fungi. And yeast have two types. Wet yeast and dry yeast, we usually use dry yeast to bake bread.

When you making bread, sugar and temperature will help yeast, let yeast grow more or faster. Yeast will let bread become soft and bigger. The yeast is everywhere, In grape, on the tree...

The history of yeast, 4000 years old, ancient Egyptians have begun to use yeast to making bread. In China's Shang Dynasty, about 3500 years ago. And people use it making rice wine, Then in 1680, a Dutch scientist Antony Van Leeuwenhoek use microscopically found yeast first. But he did not care it.

There is a recipe of how to use yeast to making bread.

Ingredients:

1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast

2-1/4 cups warm water (110° to 115°)

3 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons canola oil

6-1/4 to 6-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

 

Directions:

1.      In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add the sugar, salt, oil and 3 cups flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough.

2.      Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 8-10 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1-1/2 hours.

3.      Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide dough in half. Shape each into a loaf. Place in two greased 9-in. x 5-in. loaf pans. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30-45 minutes.

4.      Bake at 375° for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown and bread sounds hollow when tapped. Remove from pans to wire racks to cool. Yield: 2 loaves (16 slices each).

You can try to make bread use this recipe, and observed what yeast happened.

Science fun at the library (aka bragging about my students).

I am constantly amazed by my students, and yesterday after school was no different. I met 5 environmental studies students at the library where I watched them teach about 20 elementary students about climate and pollution. They thought of everything- from climate-themed coloring pages to hands-on activities, engaging questions, and examples from the world the elementary kids inhabit and interact with. 

The poster the students created to advertise their class at the library

The climate lesson was a community-service component of a larger climate project that also involved building a website and creating their own independent experiment. I posted the website a couple weeks ago, but here is the link to the page about the lesson at the library, with stories from the environmental studies students. I highly encourage you to check it out!

Climate Library Lesson

Pictures from torpedoes, protist lab, and self-propelled vehicles

I finally downloaded pictures from my camera- here are some highlights from the year.

Amaize setting up her torpedo for launch

Parker explaining to the elementary students how the torpedo works

Zoom!

Collecting ditch water for lab

Drawing all the protista they found

I found one!

Who knew you could hunt organisms in lab?

Pond scum: Tardigrades' favorite habitat.

Santi making sure everything is in working order

Bryce and Connor show off their car

Physical science watching the racing track

The Societal Impacts of Energy by Sara Jane

For a typical blog post, we are required to write in our own voice. In this blog post, I am not talking in my voice to get a good grade, but for the voices of the third world human beings who lack any voice in their own communities let alone for the attention of the rest of the world. The main issue I will be focusing on is the developmental influences of third world countries from energy.

            Equatorial Guinea’s main export is petroleum. According to a cultural studies project I had done in another class, Equatorial Guinea’s economy relies 92% on petroleum. Another massive percentage in their country is the 65% of women from 15-49 years old who have experienced domestic violence. 54% of those women had experienced domestic violence within a year of the survey. This research had been conducted by Equatorial Guinea’s Ministry of Health and Social Wellbeing. However, as I learned in the same cultural studies project, Equatorial Guinea’s censuses are little or none, so there is a great probability that these rates are much higher. On top of this, the UN Human Rights Council sent representatives to Equatorial Guinea in 2008. Domestic violence is not criminalized. The problem that connects petroleum and domestic violence is that our first world countries aren’t taking action to solve these conflicts. Our politicians are too busy labelling our own citizens as “terrorists” and wanting to “build a wall” so that the “rapists and murders” from Mexico don’t come in that they aren’t even focusing on the terrorist, rapists, and murders from those we import petroleum from. First world countries are too afraid to lose the petroleum if they wanted to take action.

            A similar problem can be found in Venezuela. 97.3% of Venezuela’s economy is based on petroleum. The United States invests 29.4 billion dollars in Venezuelan petroleum. This causes the same problems that can be found in Equatorial Guinea, whereas our government doesn’t want to get involved in fear of losing the petroleum they desire. Venezuela is considered the most dangerous country in all of Latin America. According to Latin Correspondence Magazine, Venezuela averages three violent deaths per hour. The number of violent deaths last year was 27,875.

            However, if the world focuses on creating renewable energy sources for third world countries, we might be able to reverse some of the economic and social conflicts of energy manufacturing within those conflicted nations. If we, as first world countries, rely too heavily upon fossil fuels from third world countries that experience social or governmental issues, we are only fueling the problems. If we pull away from petroleum and begin to use renewable energy, we might be less reserved to confront poorer nation’s problems. There is hope. Many third world countries in Africa and Asia are racing towards renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. This might increase the quality of life within these nations in relativity to the health conditions revolving around the production of fuels. However, these countries are only beginning to develop without much attention from the first world media, so the official impact of societal aspects from renewable energy isn’t well known.

            I am using this blog post to talk about the wellbeing of those who can’t talk for themselves. Most third world countries affected by the production of energy for first world countries live under terrible conditions. Some countries face uncontrollably high crime rates, and others face overwhelming domestic violence. The poison that our country is drinking is the poison of ignorance and turning a blind eye towards the conflict of others. Somehow, we manage to weigh our inconveniences over the life or death of other human beings we deem “lesser”. However, if first world nations like our own choose renewable over non-renewable there might be hope still. Also, if we can provide for third world countries to be able to provide renewable energy for themselves, who knows what global societal change could occur? If it will save the life of another human being, it is time for us to step into the unknown.

What is Yeast by Brady

Yeast is made in all sorts of bread.  Examples are sour dough, white, and whole wheat bread.  The best thing about yeast is it helps the bread to rise.  It helps it rise before baking and during baking.  To make bread you need to use Canola oil, flour, sugar, water, yeast, and eggs.  After you put the ingredients in, you mix it all together.  You also have to knead the dough.  You then put it into square pans, set the timer for the yeast to help it rise, then you bake the dough so it will bake and become bread.

Elements by Santi

 This week in Physical Science we presented our element family powerpoints. My group had alkali metals.

I had the element potassium. Potassium is the most reactive out of all the elements in my group, if you put it in water, it will explode Potassium is in bananas. The compound for potassium is potassium chloride.

            What I find most interesting is that Humphrey Davy discovered most of the alkali and alkali earth metals.  He discovered: Barium, calcium, boron, sodium, and potassium.

            My question for you is- what is your favorite element and why?

Saturated Solutions by Zack

What does it mean when water is saturated?

●     When you add a given solvent to water, or any given solute, and it becomes so dissolved that the solute cannot dissolve any more, that solute is considered saturated. If the given solute is able to dissolve more solvent, it is unsaturated.

●     3 interesting facts:

○     Solutes can dissolve more solvent at higher temperatures.

○     When water evaporates, the solute stays behind and therefore the solution becomes more saturated, or if already saturated, more solute forms at the bottom of the container.

○     Solute molecules often link together to form solid crystals after evaporation occurs.

○      

●     Why is this relevant to my life..?

○     Good question. Let’s say that you want to make some lemonade for a barbecue at your neighbor’s this sunday. Nobody wants lemony tasting water, and nobody wants the bottom half of their drink to be sugar, either.

○     The perfect lemonade would be perfectly saturated lemon juice and water, or in other words, they need to have as much sugar as it can hold without having sugar resting on the bottom.

○     The solution to your lemonade-barbecue problem is in your solution(I’m punny). The goal is to add sugar and stir it until it dissolves. Continue this process until the sugar sinks to the bottom and does not disappear. Stop immediately. Hopefully, there is a minimal amount of sugar at the bottom, and kaboom, you got yourself some good ole’ lemon drink.

Sponges by Sean

This week we in biology we learned about phyla by working on our project. We learned about multiple phyla like porifera which are a aquatic invertebrate animals that comprises the sponges. We also learned that they have no circulatory system and that they are filter feeders that eat tiny floating particles and plankton that they filter from the water that flows by them. The food is collected by specialized cells called choanocytes and brought to other cells by amoebocytes. What i find interesting is that there are so many types of phyla.

Interesting Facts:

            -They don't have spines

            -There are different classes of phyla

Question:

            -Is there phyla around you everyday?

Sodium by Rachael

This week I’m learning about sodium, so I decided to share some information on sodium. Sodium’s atomic number is 11 and its mass is 22.990. Sodium was discovered by Sir Humphry Davy in the year of 1807. It is a part of the alkali metals group and is the most explosive of the group. Its density is 0.968 and it has an atomic symbol of Na.  Sodium is solid at room temperature and can only be stored in a nature free environment. The atomic symbol comes from the Latin word natrium which means sodium carbonate.

            Sodium comes from the English word soda, but it also comes from a Medieval Latin word sodanum which means headache remedy. It was discovered by the process of electrolysis of caustic soda. Sodium is the sixth most abundant element in the earth’s crust. It can only be found in nature combined with another element. Sodium also conducts electricity and heat really well.

              

Interesting Facts:

v When sodium is exposed to water it explodes

v Best tasting out of the alkali metals

v Sodium liquid is used as a coolant for nuclear reactors

v It combines with chlorine to make table salt

v Sodium vapor is used in streetlights

v Air makes sodium turn white

Questions:

What else is Sodium in?

Why do you think that Sodium is so explosive?

Is Sodium in anything that you use every day besides salt?