End of the School Year

The end of the school year is fast approaching. Students are turning in their notebooks, studying for finals, and cleaning out lockers. Soon we will all be out on break, enjoying the sunshine and the ability to stretch our legs. 

This is to let you know that your regularly scheduled content of kid's science musings will be absent for the next couple months. Check back in August!

For all my graduated seniors- fly high and free.

Where I plan to be this time next week. With the aspens...

And the creeks and ponds....

With the birds and the flowers

In alpine meadows.....

Lakes are good, too.

Talking walks with this happy girl...

Sunning myself, like the cat

I like to find all the different flowers I can...

Like this lady slipper...

Or this camas....

Mountain violets :)

There will also be morel mushroom hunting...

Do you see it?

Gotcha!

Have a wonderful summer, everyone!

Compost by Sophia

Compost

Composting is basically just making a pile or heap of green waste and stirring it until it is broken down. Green waste is simply wetted down organic matter, such as leaves and food waste. Green waste normally breaks down after a course of weeks but can also take as long as months to break down. Compost is a key ingredient to organic farming.

There are many cool and unique ways to compost food waste. After it breaks down it is recycled and used as fertilizer and soil amendment. Compost waste is rich in nutrients which it is so good to use for plant growth.

You can use one of many ways to create a compost at the comfort of your own home. There are many composting benefits, like introducing beneficial organisms to soil, it’s good for the environment, and it reduces landfill waste. You can compost materials like animal manure, table scraps, paper, and even wood chips. There are multitudes of organisms, fungus and bacteria involved in the process of composting.

In composting, you will want green materials like lawn and landscape trimmings to reduces the amount of nitrogen. More green materials like fruit and vegetable peels would work great. Tea bags and coffee grounds are brown but are just as potent as green materials when it comes to nitrogen. For carbon, you’d want brown materials such as twigs, hay, and dry leaves.

You’ll definitely want to keep water around the compost pile to keep it moist. A compost pile needs oxygen to keep the bacteria and fungus in the compost pile alive. You can add worms in the pile, and bugs will find their way there.

To start it off, you’ll want your compost pile to be about three feet deep, by three feet wide, by three feet tall (three cubic feet). This gives enough insulation and food for the organisms to live. 

OXYGEN!!! by Robey*

Oxygen is an extremely important molecule to our world. Right now…. You are breathing in oxygen!! Over 20 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere is made up of oxygen. That’s crazy! Something else crazy is, Earth is the only planet in our solar system that we know of that holds enough oxygen to be livable.

       We use oxygen for so many different things like making our ozone layer, plastics, breathable air, and its in our rocks, soils, and water. Imagine life without oxygen? Well there is not much to think about because there would not be any life at all! 

This picture above is what the earth would life like is we removed oxygen in about 9 minutes, just a complete desert with nothing living inside of it. Bet you didn’t know oxygen was that important?!

*Robey is a senior and just finished his chemistry exam, so he's a little excited.

What are Periodic Trends ? by Ella

Periodic trends are specific patterns that you can find in the periodic table. In this patterns you can see the different aspects of a certain element, like its size and its electronic properties. The electronegativity, ionization energy, electron affinity, atomic radius, melting point, and metallic are characteristics of the periodic trends. Periodic trends, are arranged based on how the position of elements are on the periodic table. It's easy to predict an element's properties with it, they exist because they have similar atomic structures of the elements like group families or periods. 

So why periodic trends are so important ?

Periodic trends are important because you are able to quickly predict an element's general properties. For example, the trends tell us what the largest atoms are, the most metallic elements,and the lowest ionization energies are in the lower left corner of the Periodic Table.

The smallest atoms, the most non-metallic elements, and those with the highest energies are at the upper right.

We also expect to see a change in properties as we go from left to right in a period or from top to bottom with a group.

I hope that I helped and at the same time made you interested on this amazing part of chemistry, but I have one more questions for you guys, which characteristics of the periodic table has the higher energy?  

Body Systems by Twinkie

There are 11 different body systems in the body that are all vital to survival. The first one that we’re going to cover is going to be the circulatory system. The main organs of the circulatory system are the heart and lungs. They are the most important because they pump blood through the body and make it so the blood is oxygenated so it can be used.

            The main things you will need to know about the circulatory system is that the right half of your heart deals with deoxygenated blood or blood that contains no oxygen, and the right half deals with oxygenated blood which is sent through arteries to muscles and oxygen is diffused into them in the capillaries, where it is then returned to the heart which pumps it back to the lungs for the whole cycle can start again.

            The next system were going to talk about is the respiratory system. The respiratory system is what gives your blood oxygen and keep you alive. The respiratory system is made up of your trachea, your larynx, your bronchi and bronchioles, your lungs and alveoli. The way the system works is that your diaphragm sucks air into your lungs through your trachea, where it is filtered by the larynx and split into both of your lungs by the bronchi, where they travel down the bronchioles to your alveoli, where gas exchange happens and the co2 is diffused out of your blood and o2 is diffused into your blood. After the gas exchange, your diaphragm contracts and pushes all of the co2 out of your lungs and the whole process starts again.

                        Another system is the digestive system. The digestive system is the system responsible for breaking down food and absorbing nutrients so your body can grow and to keep you energized. The main organs of the digestive system are the esophagus, the stomach, the liver, the pancreas, gallbladder, and the small and large intestines. Once you take a bite of food and it travels down your esophagus, it is digested and turned into a soup of nutrients and water. Then it is sent to the small intestines where the nutrients are absorbed and some of the water. Once the leftover waste is sent to the large intestine where the water is absorbed out and sent back throughout the body.

Another major system and the last of the 11 that we’re going to cover is the nervous system. The nervous system is arguably the most important system in the body, for without it, our bodies have now source of power and no movement. The main organs of the nervous system are the brain, the brainstem, the spinal cord, and nerves. The way the system works is a message is sent out from your brain for you to, for example, type on a keyboard. So the message is sent down into the spinal cord through the brainstem, where the message begins its journey to your hands where the electric impulse from the nerves in your hands are translated into movement causes your muscles in your hands to move which allows you to accurately type each key and even move your hands.

Questions:

1.    What are the main organs of the circulatory system?

2.    What is the main function of the circulatory system?

3.    How does your respiratory system work?

4.    What gases are involved in gas exchange?

5.    What do your small intestines do?

Some fun facts about the three systems are that your heart beats more than 3 billion times during your whole life. You eat around 1 ton of food a year. The most interesting fact though is that your body radiates about 100 watts of electricity at any point.

The circulatory system by Nikolai

This system is my fav because without this you would not be alive. This system includes the heart,blood and blood vessels, lymph, lymphatic vessels, lymph glands. The process is based on involved in circulating blood and lymph through the body.

The circulatory system is the delivery of oxygen, nutrient molecules, and hormones and the removal of carbon dioxide, ammonia and other metabolic wastes. Capillaries are the points of exchange between the blood and surrounding tissues.

Trout by Kauy

Trout are a type of freshwater fish that live in cold rivers, lakes, streams, and ponds. There are many species of trout, such as rainbow trout, brown trout, and cutthroat trout. Some species of trout aren't really trout at all, and are actually char, a close relative of the trout. Examples of these fish are brook trout and bull trout. 

Trout have a varied diet that depends on the time of year. In winter, they eat insect nymphs and smaller fish. In warmer months, they eat insects off of the water’s surface. Big trout eat fish all year round. Big trout have even been known to eat mice. How can we preserve this wonderful fish? The answer to this question is simple. We can practice more catch and release, and take better care of our water systems. The most interesting thing about trout is their coloration. They are often very pretty, unique colors that are darker and richer during spring or fall, when they spawn.

Respiratory System by Wrenlie

The most interesting about this topic is it's a necessary thing for survival and how it functions. The respiratory system functions with oxygen and carbon dioxide. The most important organs in the respiratory system is the lungs. The lungs take in oxygen and filters it then exhales out carbon dioxide. There is also red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the whole body and carry carbon dioxide back to the lungs where it may leave the body.

Without a respiratory system you can not survive, a infants normal breath rate is 40 times per minute and matures to different breath rates by age.  The average adults is 12 to 16 per minute and increases through certains situations such as exercise. And children and women breath faster than a man.  We also loose around have a liter of water through breathing, that is why you're able to fog up a window. And that your right lung actually bigger than your left lung.

Questions:

1.      Why is this necessary for survival?

2.      How do red blood cells carry oxygen and carbon dioxide?

3.      Does having one bigger lung serve a purpose? 

Acids and Bases by Dillon

This week we learned about weak and strong acids. We learned about how to ionize them and what their similarities and differences are. Some similarities are they both have conjugate acids and bases and both use hydrogen. To ionize an weak acid or strong it has to donate a hydrogen atom to the conjugate base.

 

What I find really interesting about acids and bases is the pH of them and how some are really dangerous and some are really safe.  Some examples of a dangerous and a safe acid is vinegar which is used everyday for cooking and hcl which is highly corrosive. 

Food Preservations By Trystan

Questions

How do food preservations actually preserve the food?

Does keeping the food preserved change the taste of the food?

How does it prevent the food from spoiling?

Topic

My topic is about food preservation and how it keeps food preserved. I chose this topic because I want to learn more about how keeping food preserved actually keeps the food preserved. I’ve always wondered how keeping something in a fridge or putting it in a little bow can make it last longer compared to if it was in wide open spaces and just breathing in oxygen. By doing this topic I can learn more about how to keep things preserved so I can have it later on in the future.

3 interesting facts

Three interesting facts about this topic are it will make the food last longer, a lesser chance of getting mold on it, and there are different types of food preservation. There is canning and freezing and also putting food into small or large plastic containers.

Updates from the classroom!

Chemistry- We are having good clean fun in class! Soapy fun, that is. As part of learning about acids and bases we will be making soaps next week.

In Biology we got to experiment with what factors affect heart rate- they looked at volume of music, laying down, and exercising. What other factors might affect heart rate?

Plants galore! Advanced Biology is going to be collecting plants and creating their own collection. 

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Environmental Science is doing two really neat projects- an experiment on composting, and research on how to get a hydroponics system in the school so we can serve our own home grown veggies in the salad bar. Yum!

Kitchen Biology is making pickles- we just stuffed the jars today full of cabbage and we will be sampling our goods next week.

And finally, Physical Science is going to be looking at how elements are able to create fireworks.