Tag: cool science

Posted on

The Sediment of Lead (II) Nitrate

The Sediment of Lead (II) Nitrate

Today, I’m going to do a common experiment about the sediment of Lead (II) Nitrate. This is a very quick demonstration showing that two solids can react together. White lead nitrate and white potassium iodide react to make yellow lead iodide.

I added 5 grams of each chemical into 95ml  of water so I could have 5 % of each.

I pour 10ml of potassium iodide solution into each test tube. And poured 3ml of lead (II) nitrate into the first test tube. Poured 6ml of lead (II)nitrate into the second test tube. And poured 9ml of lead (II) nitrate into the third test tube.20170621_204221

As you could see on the picture the more lead (II) nitrate I add to the potassium iodide, more sediment increases in the test tube.

The demonstration might have more impact if the test tubes are opaque and the yellow product can be poured out and shown to the unsuspecting audience. Have a white background available.

Point out that for a reaction to occur, particles of the reactants must meet. This is much easier in solution (where the particles are free to move) than in the solid state.

The reaction is:

Pb(NO3)2(s) + 2KI(s) →  2KNO3(s) + PbI2(s)

All of these compounds are white except lead iodide, which is yellow.

Lead ethanoate can be substituted for lead nitrate, but the reaction is much slower.

The experiment  Diffusion in liquids is a class practical using the same compounds but as solutions.

We must first convert from a word equation to a symbol equation:

Lead (II) Nitrate + Potassium Iodide → Lead (II) Iodide + Potassium Nitrate

The lead (II) ion is represented as Pb2+, whilst the nitrate ion is NO−3. To balance the charges, we require two nitrate ions per lead (II) ion, and so lead (II) nitrate is Pb(NO3)2 .

The potassium ion is K+ and the iodide ion is I−. The two charges balance in a 1:1ratio, so potassium iodide is simply KI.

In lead (II) iodide, the charges balance in a 1:2 ratio, so the formula is PbI2.

Finally, in potassium nitrate, the charges balance in another 1:1 ratio, giving a formula of KNO3 .

The symbol equation is as follows:

Pb(NO3)2+KI→PbI2+KNO3

The most obvious change we must make, when balancing this equation, is to increase the number of nitrate ions on the right hand side of the equation. We can do this by placing a coefficient of 2 before the potassium nitrate:

Pb(NO3)2+KI→PbI2+2KNO3

In doing this we have upset the balance of potassium ions on each side of the equation. Again, we can fix this: we must simply place another coefficient of 2, this time before the potassium iodide:

Pb(NO3)2+2KI→PbI2+2KNO3

Checking over the equations once more, you will notice that we initially had 1 iodide ion on the right hand side, but 2 on the left. However, we already dealt with this in balancing our potassium ions. Now, our equation is balanced.

And that’s it! One last thing to add is that you may have noticed the irregularity in iodide ions rather than nitrate ions. In this case, you would have arrived at the same answer simply by working backwards.

Source: https://socratic.org/questions/how-do-you-write-the-the-reaction-of-lead-ii-nitrate-aq-with-sodium-iodide-aq-to

Posted on

Why can’t Chickens Fly?

Why can’t Chickens Fly?

Most chicken breeds are still able to fly short distances. For example, flying up into a tree (that’s where they would naturally roost), or to escape a predator.

They certainly are not good at flying, though. There are two reasons for that.

1. Ancestry
Chickens were bred from a wild species call the red jungle fowl. These jungle fowl are a little more adept at flying than chickens are now, but they are fundamentally more adapted for a ground-based life

All of their food is located on the ground, and they have an adapted beak to match. Their feet are adapted for walking, rather than perching. Its wings have become partially vestigial since the survival of an individual no longer relies heavily on flight; instead, natural selection has advanced those ground-oriented traits. So, to recap, chickens are bad at flying because their direct ancestor was bad at flying, because they’re adapted for spending time on the ground.

2. Selective Breeding by Humans
Chickens are not a natural species; they were created by breeding the red jungle fowl into a new organism. Since humans were responsible for the gene selection process (“artificial selection”, as opposed to natural selection), chickens were bred not for survivability traits, but to have great big tasty breast muscles. Chickens’ ability to fly has only worsened under human management because no breeder has prioritized that, opting instead for edibility and commercial traits.

Posted on

Changing Iron to Copper

Changing Iron to Copper

In this post, I’m going to show you how to change iron to copper in two easy steps.

20170619_105304
That’s not rust

 

Things you’ll need: copper (II) sulfate, a cup, a spoon, water, and nails or paper clips.

  1. Pour water into the cup.20170619_105233
  2. Put lots of copper sulfate into the cup. I put two spoons.20170618_200525
  3. Drop a paper clip or a nail into the solution.
  4. Wait for 24 hours, and take the paper clip/nail out of the cup. Be careful not to leave it too long in the cup, or else the metal will rust. (Wait for one day after you take the metal out of the solution).

    20170619_105333
    You can’t see the copper very well because of the shadow
   In Discorso, one of the last manuscripts written by Antonio Neri before his death, he reveals several transmutation recipes. One describes turning iron into copper; it is instructive because it uses common materials that we can identify and because the chemistry is now well understood.
Take some iron sheets and lay them in vitriol water, being immersed in that, they will rust. Scrape off this rust, which will be a red powder, melt it in a crucible, and you will have perfect copper. The same effect can be had from various waters that are naturally vitriolated, because they flow through mines of vitriol, such as those of a source some distance from Leiden, and another below the fortress of Smolnik, [now in Slovakia].
Vitriol is an acidic sulfate dissolved in water, it could be made in the laboratory, but it also occurred naturally around mining operations where sulfurous minerals were present. Alchemists knew this solution as “oil of vitriol” and “spirit of vitriol.” The mine that Neri references in Smolnik became famous for transmutation. As late as the eighteenth century, scientists and experimenters from around Europe made the pilgrimage to see the effect for themselves and tried to figure out what was happening. It may be a surprise to some readers, but following the above instructions will, in fact, produce copper just as Neri claimed. There is no deception or sleight of hand involved; the explanation is straightforward, but first, Neri treats us to a rare glimpse of his own reasoning on the subject:
Some estimate and not without reason, that this experiment, being used to prove the transmutation of metals, is not suitable for this purpose. They say that the vitriolated waters become such because they are already heavy with the corrosive spirits of sulfur, having passed through the copper or iron mine, these waters corrode copper in the same way aqua fortis corrodes silver. So that really the substance of the copper remains in the water, which attacks the surface of the iron, which always remains iron. However, if that were true then the iron would not get consumed, or if it were consumed it would mix with the substance of the corroded copper in the water, and if it were fused, it would remain a mixture of iron and copper. And yet in this experiment, all the iron is consumed; it is reduced by the vitriolated water into powder, […] which in the fusion is still pure copper, so there should remain no doubt that this is a true transmutation.
Given the state of chemistry at the time, Neri’s reasoning is clear and rational. The iron disappears and a copper coating materializes in its place. What better evidence of transmutation could one ask for?
The key to what was actually happening is in the criticism leveled by skeptics. It turns out that they were on the right track, but neither they nor Neri had the full picture. Today, we understand it as a simple ion exchange reaction; blue vitriol water is a transparent saturated solution of copper sulfate (CuSO4), in the presence of solid iron, the liquid dissolves the iron; copper from the vitriol is deposited in its place. The two metals, copper and iron, change places: the iron dissolves, forming green vitriol (FeSO4) and copper is expelled from the solution. The result is a reduction in the amount of the iron, which is replaced by a proportional deposit of pure copper.
On a physical level, this chemical reaction is no different today than it was in the seventeenth century. What has changed is our interpretation of the experiment. What Neri viewed as a transformation of iron into copper, we now see as an exchange. There is, however, a deeper lesson in all this. As an alchemist, Antonio Neri was not being delusional or dishonest; he was careful, observant and applied his knowledge as best he could. This is no different from the way science works today. Both then and now, to be successful in unraveling nature’s secrets, one must become accustomed to a very uncomfortable situation: In the past, careful reasoning by brilliant thinkers has led to utterly wrong conclusions. The fact that much of our world is a mystery is unsettling; that the very process we use to understand it can be so flawed is harder to accept. Even more difficult is that the faculty we all rely on for survival—our own wits—can lead us so far astray.
Posted on

How can the Glass Catfish be Transparent?

How can is the Glass Catfish be Transparent?

You’ve probably heard about this fish. But if you don’t know what the fish looks like I’ll tell you how it looks like. Anyway, I wrote this post because I was wondering why is it transparent. The answer will be below.

Kryptopterus vitreolus, known in the aquarium trade traditionally as the glass catfish and also as the ghost catfish or phantom catfish, is a small species of Asian glass catfish. It is commonly seen in the freshwater aquarium trade, but its taxonomy is confusing and was only fully resolved in 2013. It is endemic to Thailand, where found in rivers south of the Isthmus of Kra that drain into the Gulf of Thailand and river basins in the Cardamom Mountains. There are also unconfirmed reports from Penang in Malaysia.

 

Kryptopterus.jpg
A Glass Catfish

Until 1989, it was considered to be the same as the “glass catfish” Kryptopterus bicirrhis, a larger species infrequently seen in the aquarium trade. Subsequently, the ghost catfish commonly seen in the aquarium trade was believed to be the same as K. minor, but in 2013 it was established that the aquarium specimens actually represented another species, which was described as K. vitreolus. The true K. minor, which is restricted to Borneo, has rarely (if ever) entered the aquarium trade.

But how is it transparent?

This is a question for which there is no satisfactory answer, because we are only beginning to understand the physical and anatomical basis of transparency in living tissue.

Although the physical and anatomical bases for some transparent tissue (e.g. the cornea and lens in the eye) are better understood than others, the situation in the eye is unique in the sense that the tissues are highly modified for transparency and these modifications (e.g. complete absence of a circulatory system) are not applicable to muscular tissue.
amyc0eezg.png

Furthermore, many of the primary modifications for transparency are ultrastructural and can only be seen with an electron microscope. For biological tissue to become transparent, the primary mechanism is to reduce the amount of light being scattered as it passes through it: the less light scattered by the tissue, the more light will be transmitted through it and the more it becomes transparent.

While we do not yet fully understand how biological tissues (particularly muscles) can be transparent, there are several possible mechanisms which might contribute.  The first is that transparent fishes such as glass catfishes and glassfish have very thin bodies.  The flatter the body, the less the potential scattering of light (and hence the easier it is to make the tissue transparent).

Another possible mechanism is the ordered packing of small molecules within the cytoplasm of the cells to reduce the scattering of light.

Lastly, theoretical models also predict that the many subcellular components of transparent tissues (e.g. mitochondria, ribosomes) should be small and highly dispersed. As a recent review paper on biological transparency states, this field of study has more questions than answers, and we await future studies to fully understand this phenomenon.

 

Posted on

Leaf Fish

Leaf Fish

Do you know what camouflage is? Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see (crypsis), or by disguising them as something else (mimesis). Examples include the leopard’s spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier, and the leaf-mimic katydid‘s wings. A third approach, motion dazzle, confuses the observer with a conspicuous pattern, making the object visible but momentarily harder to locate. The majority of camouflage methods aim for crypsis, often through a general resemblance to the background, high contrast disruptive coloration, eliminating shadow, and countershading. In the open ocean, where there is no background, the principal methods of camouflage are transparency, silvering, and countershading, while the ability to produce light is among other things used for counter-illumination on the undersides of cephalopods such as squid. Some animals, such as chameleons and octopuses, are capable of actively changing their skin pattern and colours, whether for camouflage or for signalling.

Some animals camouflage in the ocean like the rockfish or flounders. But in my opinion, this one would be the best. It is called the “leaf fish”.
Monocirrhus polyacanthus.jpg

Leaffishes are small freshwater fishes of the Polycentridae family, from South America.

All of these fishes are highly specialized ambush predators that resemble leaves, down to the point that their swimming style resembles a drifting leaf (thus the common name leaf fish, which is shared with old world fishes of family Nandidae with a similar lifestyle); when a prey animal – such as an aquatic insect or smaller fish – comes within range, the fish attacks, swallowing the prey potentially within a quarter of a second. To aid in this lifestyle, all members of the family have large heads, cryptic colors and very large protractile mouths capable of taking prey items nearly as large as they are. These intriguing behaviors have given the family a niche in the aquarium hobby; however, none of these species are easy to maintain in aquariums, requiring very clean, soft, acidic water and copious amounts of live foods.

Posted on

How to Make a Burglar Alarm Mat

How to Make a Burglar Alarm Mat

If a wire connects the circuit will turn on. If a wire is disconnected the circuit will turn off. Wait, that gave me an idea! So today I’ll show you how to make a burglar alarm mat or an alarm under a mat.

Things you’ll need: Aluminum foil, paper clips, a battery, 3 pieces of wire, 2 straws, tape, and a speaker with sound (I used a piezo buzzer).20170612_124758

  1. Connect two pieces of wire on the battery and connect the speaker to one end.20170612_125814
  2. Connect one more wire to the speaker.20170612_124941
  3. Make a chain out of paper clips and connect it with the other wire.
  4. Tape the straws on the ends of the foil and tape the paperclips between them.20170612_125750
  5. Connect the other wire to another piece of foil.
  6. Stack the foils on top on each other and step on it. The speaker will turn on. You could also hide it under a rug or a mat.20170612_125524

20170612_125556

A wire is a single, usually cylindrical, flexible strand or rod of metal. Wires are used to bear mechanical loads or electricity and telecommunications signals. Wire is commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Wire gauges come in various standard sizes, as expressed in terms of a gauge number. The term wire is also used more loosely to refer to a bundle of such strands, as in “multistranded wire”, which is more correctly termed a wire rope in mechanics, or a cable in electricity.

Wire comes in solid core, stranded, or braided forms. Although usually circular in cross-section, wire can be made in square, hexagonal, flattened rectangular, or other cross-sections, either for decorative purposes, or for technical purposes such as high-efficiency voice coils in loudspeakers. Edge-wound coil springs, such as the Slinky toy, are made of special flattened wire.

Posted on

Eggs are Strong

Eggs are Strong

Next time someone’s cooking with eggs around your house, save the eggshells so that you could astound your friends with this incredible stunt.

Things you’ll need: 4 raw eggs, a small pair of scissors, masking tape, some books.

  1. To crack the eggs and get four empty eggshells, gently break open the small end of each egg by tapping it on a table or counter.20170611_120634
  2. Carfully peel away some of the eggshell.20170611_120758
  3. Pour out the egg inside.
  4. Put a piece of masking tape around the middle of each eggshell.20170611_121250
  5. Put the eggshells on a table, open end down, in a rectangle that’s just a smaller than one of your books.20170611_121328
  6. Lay a book on the eggshells. Do any of the shells crack?
  7. Keep adding books until – CRRACKK! How many books you can stack on the eggs? Weigh the books and see how many kg or lb it took the break the eggs. Mine is 3.8 kilograms!20170611_121503

Each half pf the eggshell is a miniature dome, and domes are one of the strongest shapes. Why? Weight on the top of the dome is carried down along the curved walls to the wide base. No single point on the dome supports the whole weight of the object on the top of it. That is why domes are often used for big buildings that can’t have pillar supports, such as hocky rinks and arenas.

Staff at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto have shown that a single egg can support a 90 kg (200 lb) person.

Posted on

The Wood-nettle: a Plant that could Sting like a Bee

The Wood-nettle: a Plant that could Sting like a Bee

This will be a short post. If you’re interested please continue reading. There are lots of poisonous plants out there. But not as painful as this one:330px-Gardenology.org-IMG_1442_bbg09

Laportea canadensis, commonly called Canada nettle or wood-nettle, is an annual or perennial herbaceous plant of the nettle family Urticaceae, native to eastern and central North America. It is found growing in open woods with moist rich soils and along streams and in drainages.

Laportea canadensis grows from tuberous roots to a height of 30 to 150 centimeters, and can be rhizomatous, growing into small clumps. Plants have both stinging and non stinging hairs on the foliage and the stems. It has whitish green flowers, produced from spring to early fall.

This herbaceous perennial plant is about 2-4′ tall and either branched or unbranched. The stems are light to medium green and abundantly covered with stiff white hairs that have the capacity to sting when they are rubbed against. The lower to middle leaves are alternate, while the upper leaves are opposite. These leaves are up to 6″ long and 4″ across; they are medium to dark green, ovate-cordate to oval-ovate in shape, and coarsely serrated or serrated-crenate. Young leaves are densely hairy and wrinkled in appearance, while older leaves become less hairy and wrinkled with age. Leaf venation is pinnate. The petioles are up to 4″ long and abundantly covered with stinging hairs, like the stems. The leaves may have a few stinging hairs as well, particularly along the central veins of their undersides. Some plants have a tendency to loose many of their stinging hairs as the season progresses. Individual plants are either monoecious (separate male and female flowers on the same plant) or unisexual.

The male flowers occur in branching cymes from the axils of the leaves. These cymes spread outward from the stem and they are about the same length as the petioles of the leaves. Each male flower is greenish white to white and less than 1/8″ (3 mm.) across, consisting of 5 narrow sepals, 5 stamens, and no petals. The female flowers occur in branching cymes toward the apex of the plant. These cymes are erect to spreading and 4″ or more in length. Each female flower is more or less green and about 1/8″ (3 mm.) across, consisting of 4 sepals of unequal size (2 large and 2 small) and an ovary with a long style. The blooming period usually occurs during mid- to late summer. The flowers are wind-pollinated. Each female flower is replaced by a small dry fruit that is curved and ovoid in shape. This plant often forms colonies of variable size.

When the stinging nettles come in contact with the skin, the unlucky individual is dealt a painful burning stinging sensation, sometimes with barbs left in the skin. The skin can turn red and blister, and blisters can last for several days.

Mmm… that should really hurt. Well, thanks a lot for viewing this short post.

Posted on

Walking Fishes

 Walking Fishes

Can fishes walk on land? Sounds crazy! But these two fish can.

1.  Mudskippers are amphibious fish, presently included in the subfamily Oxudercinae, within the family Gobiidae (gobies). Recent molecular studies do not support this classification, as oxudercine gobies appear to be paraphyletic relative to amblyopine gobies (Gobiidae: Amblyopinae), thus being included in a distinct “Periophthalmus lineage”, together with amblyopines. Mudskippers can be defined as oxudercine gobies that are “fully terrestrial for some portion of the daily cycle” (character 24 in Murdy, 1989). This would define the species of the genera Boleophthalmus, Periophthalmodon, Periophthalmus, and Scartelaos as “mudskippers”. However, field observations of Zappa confluentus suggest that this monotypic genus should be included in the definition. These genera presently include 32 species. Mudskippers use their pectoral fins and pelvic fins to walk on land. They typically live in intertidal habitats, and exhibit unique adaptations to this environment that are not found in most intertidal fishes, which typically survive the retreat of the tide by hiding under wet seaweed or in tide pools.

Mudskippers are quite active when out of water, feeding and interacting with one another, for example, to defend their territories and court potential partners. They are found in tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions, including the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic coast of Africa.

 

GambianMudskippers.jpg
Mudskippers

2. Climbing Perch

The Anabantidae are a family of perciform fish commonly called the climbing gouramies or climbing perches. The family includes about 34 species. As labyrinth fishes, they possess a labyrinth organ, a structure in the fish’s head which allows it to breathe atmospheric oxygen. Fish of this family are commonly seen gulping at air at the surface of the water. The air is held in a structure called the suprabranchial chamber, where oxygen diffuses into the bloodstream via the respiratory epithelium covering the labyrinth organ. This therefore allows the fish to move small distances across land.

 

download
Climbing  Gourami on land
Of the four genera, Anabas is found from South Asia (they are called chemballi (Malayalam: urulan sugu/Karippidi) in Kerala, kau (odia) in Odisha, India, kawaiya in Sri Lanka), east to China and Southeast Asia. The remaining three genera are all restricted to Africa. They are primarily freshwater fishes and only very rarely are found in brackish water. As egg-layers, they typically guard their eggs and young.

Climbing gouramis are so named due to their ability to “climb” out of water and “walk” short distances. Even though it is not reliably observed, some authors mentioned about they having a tree climbing ability. Their method of terrestrial locomotion uses the gill plates as supports, and the fish pushes itself using its fins and tail.

Mudskipper video

Climbing Perch video

 

Posted on

Ice is Sticky

Ice is Sticky

I have an experiment that uses only ice.

Things you’ll need: 2 ice cubes.

  1. Press the flat sides of two ice cubes together.

    20170606_180056
    You probably know what I mean. I can’t do it because I’m holding the camera.
  2. Slowly count to thirty, then let go one of the ice cubes. What happened?

When you pushed the two ice cubes together, you created pressure between the two flat sides. Pressure melted the ice, making a thin layer of water in between. When you release the pressure, the water refroze, “gluing” the ice cubes together.

20170606_180042
It glued!

 

Posted on

Do Dolphins live in Rivers?

Do Dolphins live in Rivers?

We probably heard that dolphins live in the ocean. But do they live in rivers? To find out please continue reading.

River dolphins are a widely distributed group of fully aquatic mammals that reside exclusively in freshwater or brackish water. They are an informal grouping of dolphins, which is a paraphyletic group within the infraorder Cetacea. The river dolphins comprise the extant families Platanistidae (the Indian dolphins), Iniidae (the Amazonian dolphins), and Pontoporiidae (the brackish dolphins). There are five extant species of river dolphins, and two subspecies. River dolphins, alongside other cetaceans, belong to the clade Cetartiodactyla, with even-toed ungulates, and their closest living relatives the hippopotamuses, having diverged about 40 million years ago.ddddd

River dolphins are relatively small compared to other dolphins, having evolved to survive in warm, shallow water and strong river currents. They range in size from the 5-foot (1.5 m) long South Asian river dolphin to the 8-foot (2.4 m) and 220-pound (100 kg) Amazon river dolphin. Several species exhibit sexual dimorphism, in that the males are larger than the females. They have streamlined bodies and two limbs that are modified into flippers. River dolphins use their conical-shaped teeth and long beaks to capture fast-moving prey in murky water. They have well-developed hearing that is adapted for both air and water; they do not really rely on vision since the water they swim in is usually very muddy. These species are well-adapted to living in warm, shallow waters, and, unlike other cetaceans, have little to no blubber.download

River dolphins are not very widespread; they are all restricted to certain rivers or deltas. This makes them extremely vulnerable to habitat destruction. River dolphins feed primarily on fish. Male river dolphins typically mate with multiple females every year, but females only mate every two to three years. Calves are typically born in the spring and summer months and females bear all the responsibility for raising them. River dolphins produce a variety of vocalizations, usually in the form of clicks and whistles.

River dolphins are rarely kept in captivity; breeding success has been poor and the animals often die within a few months of capture. As of 2015, there are only three river dolphins in captivity.

River dolphins are members of the infraorder Cetacea, which are descendants of land-dwelling mammals of the order Artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates). They are related to the Indohyus, an extinct chevrotain-like ungulate, from which they split approximately 48 million years ago.

 

 

Posted on

Euglena, an Amazing Organism

Euglena, an Amazing Organism

I have found this amazing organism in one of my books. When I read the whole thing and read that sentence, I knew this would be great for my blog. This organism is half animal half plant. So if you’re interested please continue reading.

download

Euglena is a genus of single-celled flagellate Eukaryotes. It is the best known and most widely studied member of the class Euglenoidea, a diverse group containing some 54 genera and at least 800 species. Species of Euglena are found in fresh and salt waters. They are often abundant in quiet inland waters where they may bloom in numbers sufficient to color the surface of ponds and ditches green (E. viridis) or red (E. sanguinea).

The species Euglena gracilis has been used extensively in the laboratory as a model organism.

Most species of Euglena have photosynthesizing chloroplasts within the body of the cell, which enable them to feed by autotrophy, like plants. However, they can also take nourishment heterotrophically, like animals. Since Euglena have features of both animals and plants, early taxonomists, working within the Linnaean three-kingdom system of biological classification, found them difficult to classify. It was the question of where to put such “unclassifiable” creatures that prompted Ernst Haeckel to add a third living kingdom (a fourth kingdom in toto) to the Animale, Vegetabile (and Lapideum meaning Mineral) of Linnaeus: the Kingdom Protista.

Euglenoids_from_a_ditch.ogv

When feeding as a heterotroph, Euglena takes in nutrients by osmotrophy, and can survive without light on a diet of organic matter, such as beef extract, peptone, acetate, ethanol or carbohydrates. When there is sufficient sunlight for it to feed by phototrophy, it uses chloroplasts containing the pigments chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b to produce sugars by photosynthesis. Euglena’s chloroplasts are surrounded by three membranes, while those of plants and the green algae (among which earlier taxonomists often placed Euglena) have only two membranes. This fact has been taken as morphological evidence that Euglena’s chloroplasts evolved from a eukaryotic green alga. Thus, the intriguing similarities between Euglena and the plants would have arisen not because of kinship but because of a secondary endosymbiosis. Molecular phylogenetic analysis has lent support to this hypothesis, and it is now generally accepted.

Diagram of Euglena sp.

Euglena chloroplasts contain pyrenoids, used in the synthesis of paramylon, a form of starch energy storage enabling Euglena to survive periods of light deprivation. The presence of pyrenoids is used as an identifying feature of the genus, separating it from other euglenoids, such as Lepocinclis and Phacus.

All euglenoids have two flagella rooted in basal bodies located in a small reservoir at the front of the cell. In Euglena, one flagellum is very short, and does not protrude from the cell, while the other is relatively long, and often easily visible with light microscopy. In some species, the longer, emergent flagellum is used to help the organism swim.

Like other euglenoids, Euglena possess a red eyespot, an organelle composed of carotenoid pigment granules. The red spot itself is not thought to be photosensitive. Rather, it filters the sunlight that falls on a light-detecting structure at the base of the flagellum (a swelling, known as the paraflagellar body), allowing only certain wavelengths of light to reach it. As the cell rotates with respect to the light source, the eyespot partially blocks the source, permitting the Euglena to find the light and move toward it (a process known as phototaxis).

Spiral pellicle strips

Euglena lacks a cell wall. Instead, it has a pellicle made up of a protein layer supported by a substructure of microtubules, arranged in strips spiraling around the cell. The action of these pellicle strips sliding over one another gives Euglena its exceptional flexibility and contractility.

In low moisture conditions, or when food is scarce, Euglena forms a protective wall around itself and lies dormant as a resting cyst until environmental conditions improve.

Euglena reproduce asexually through binary fission, a form of cell division. Reproduction begins with the mitosis of the cell nucleus, followed by the division of the cell itself. Euglena divide longitudinally, beginning at the front end of the cell, with the duplication of flagellar processes, gullet and stigma. Presently, a cleavage forms in the anterior, and a V-shaped bifurcation gradually moves toward the posterior, until the two halves are entirely separated.

 

Posted on

How to make the Surface of the Moon

How to make the Surface of the Moon

The Moon is an astronomical body that orbits planet Earth, being Earth’s only permanent natural satellite. It is the fifth-largest natural satellite in the Solar System, and the largest among planetary satellites relative to the size of the planet that it orbits (its primary). Following Jupiter’s satellite Io, the Moon is second-densest satellite among those whose densities are known.

The average distance of the Moon from the Earth is 384,400 km (238,900 mi), or 1.28 light-seconds.

The Moon is thought to have formed about 4.51 billion years ago, not long after Earth. There are several hypotheses for its origin; the most widely accepted explanation is that the Moon formed from the debris left over after a giant impact between Earth and a Mars-sized body called Theia.

The Moon is in synchronous rotation with Earth, always showing the same face, with its near side marked by dark volcanic maria that fill the spaces between the bright ancient crustal highlands and the prominent impact craters. It is the second-brightest regularly visible celestial object in Earth’s sky, after the Sun, as measured by illuminance on Earth’s surface. Its surface is actually dark, although compared to the night sky it appears very bright, with a reflectance just slightly higher than that of worn asphalt. Its prominence in the sky and its regular cycle of phases have made the Moon an important cultural influence since ancient times on language, calendars, art, and mythology.

The Moon’s gravitational influence produces the ocean tides, body tides, and the slight lengthening of the day. The Moon’s current orbital distance is about thirty times the diameter of Earth, with its apparent size in the sky almost the same as that of the Sun, resulting in the Moon covering the Sun nearly precisely in total solar eclipse. This matching of apparent visual size will not continue in the far future. The Moon’s linear distance from Earth is currently increasing at a rate of 3.82 ± 0.07 centimetres (1.504 ± 0.028 in) per year, but this rate is not constant.

The Soviet Union’s Luna programme was the first to reach the Moon with uncrewed spacecraft in 1959; the United States’ NASA Apollo program achieved the only crewed missions to date, beginning with the first crewed lunar orbiting mission by Apollo 8 in 1968, and six crewed lunar landings between 1969 and 1972, with the first being Apollo 11. These missions returned over 380 kg (840 lb) of lunar rocks, which have been used to develop a geological understanding of the Moon’s origin, the formation of its internal structure, and its subsequent history. Since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the Moon has been visited only by uncrewed spacecraft.

Now, after we know what the moon is, let’s make the surface.

Things you’ll need: plaster dust, a deep plate, small rocks, forceps, and a sprayer.

  1. Pour the plaster dust onto the plate and spread it around. This is the surface of the moon.20170604_103100
  2. Drop the rocks on the plate carefully. The rocks are meteors.20170604_103127
  3. Use the forceps to take the rocks out.20170604_103226
  4. Spary some water on it. Now you have a moon surface.20170604_103912

A permanent asymmetric moon dust cloud exists around the Moon, created by small particles from comets. Estimates are 5 tons of comet particles strike the Moon’s surface each 24 hours. The particles strike the Moon’s surface ejecting moon dust above the Moon. The dust stays above the Moon approximately 10 minutes, taking 5 minutes to rise, and 5 minutes to fall. On average, 120 kilograms of dust are present above the Moon, rising to 100 kilometers above the surface. The dust measurements were made by LADEE’s Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX), between 20 and 100 kilometers above the surface, during a six-month period. LDEX detected an average of one 0.3 micrometer moon dust particle each minute. Dust particle counts peaked during the Geminid, Quadrantid, Northern Taurid, and Omicron Centaurid meteor showers, when the Earth, and Moon, pass through comet debris. The cloud is asymmetric, more dense near the boundary between the Moon’s dayside and nightside

Posted on

The Magnetic Strip of Credit Cards

The Magnetic Strip of Credit Cards

Credit cards offer you a line of credit that can be used to make purchases, balance transfers and/or cash advances and requiring that you pay back the loan amount in the future. When using a credit card, you will need to make at least the minimum payment every month by the due date on the balance. I’ll show you that there’s a magnetic field on the strip.

Things you’ll need: a used credit card, clear tape, iron dust, and a piece of paper.20170531_115513

  1. Sprinkle the iron dust onto the magnetic stripe on the credit card.20170531_115650 - Copy
  2. Tap the credit card on the table to make the iron dust spread around the magnetic stripe20170531_115728
  3. Put a piece of tape along the magnetic stripe.20170531_115822
  4. Pull the tape out and observe it.20170531_115938

The ­stripe on the back of a credit card is a magnetic stripe (that’s what you’re seeing on the tape), often called a magstripe. The magstripe is made up of tiny iron-based magnetic particles in a plastic-like film. Each particle is really a very tiny bar magnet about 20 millionths of an inch long.

Your card also has a magstripe on the back and a place for your all-important signature.
The magstripe can be “written” because the tiny bar magnets can be magnetized in either a north or south pole direction. The magstripe on the back of the card is very similar to a piece of cassette tape fastened to the back of a card. (See How Tape Recorders Work.)
Instead of motors moving the tape so it can be read, your hand provides the motion as you “swipe” a credit card through a reader or insert it in a reader at the gas station pump.
There are three basic methods for determining that your credit card will pay for what you’re charging:

  • Merchants with few transactions each month do voice authentication, using a touch tone phone.
  • Electronic data capture (EDC) magstripe card swipe terminals are becoming more common — so is having you swipe your own card at the checkout.
  • Virtual terminal on the Internet

This is how it works: After you or the cashier swipes your credit card through a reader, the EDC software at the point of sale (POS) terminal dials a stored telephone number via a modem to call an acquirer. An acquirer is an organization that collects credit authentication requests from merchants and provides a payment guarantee to the merchant.
When the acquirer company gets the credit card authentication request, it checks the transaction for validity and the record on the magstripe for:

  • Merchant ID
  • Valid card number
  • Expiration date
  • Credit card limit
  • Card usage
Posted on

The Tropical Pitcher Plant

The Tropical Pitcher Plant

I’ve found this amazing plant and I’ve grown it in my garden before. But it died because of the humid weather in Thailand. Anyway, I want to show you this amazing plant and what can it do.330px-Nepenthes_peltata

Nepenthes, also known as tropical pitcher plants or monkey cups, is a genus of carnivorous plants in the monotypic family Nepenthaceae. The genus comprises roughly 150 species, and numerous natural and many cultivated hybrids. They are mostly liana-forming plants of the Old World tropics, ranging from South China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines; westward to Madagascar (two species) and the Seychelles (one); southward to Australia (three) and New Caledonia (one); and northward to India (one) and Sri Lanka (one). The greatest diversity occurs on Borneo, Sumatra, and the Philippines, with many endemic species. Many are plants of hot, humid, lowland areas, but the majority are tropical montane plants, receiving warm days but cool to cold, humid nights year round. A few are considered tropical alpine, with cool days and nights near freezing. The name “monkey cups” refers to the fact that monkeys have been observed drinking rainwater from these plants.

Nepenthes_distribution.svg
Global distribution of Nepenthes

 

Nepenthes species usually consist of a shallow root system and a prostrate or climbing stem, often several metres long and up to 15 m (49 ft) or more, and usually 1 cm (0.4 in) or less in diameter, although this may be thicker in a few species (e.g. N. bicalcarata). From the stems arise alternate, sword-shaped leaves with entire leaf margins. An extension of the midrib (the tendril), which in some species aids in climbing, protrudes from the tip of the leaf; at the end of the tendril the pitcher forms. The pitcher starts as a small bud and gradually expands to form a globe- or tube-shaped trap.

Basic structure of an upper pitcher
Here is the important part.

 

The trap contains a fluid of the plant’s own production, which may be watery or syrupy, and is used to drown the prey. Research has shown this fluid contains viscoelastic biopolymers that may be crucial to the retention of insects within the traps of many species. The viscoelastic fluid in pitchers is especially effective in the retention of winged insects. The trapping efficiency of this fluid remains high, even when significantly diluted by water, as inevitably happens in wet conditions.

The lower part of the trap contains glands which absorb nutrients from captured prey. Along the upper inside part of the trap is a slick, waxy coating which makes the escape of its prey nearly impossible. Surrounding the entrance to the trap is a structure called the peristome (the “lip”) which is slippery and often quite colorful, attracting prey, but offering an unsure footing. The prey-capture effectiveness of the peristome is further enhanced in moist environments, where condensation may cause a thin water film to form on the surface of the peristome. When wet, the slippery surface of the peristome causes insects to ‘aquaplane’, or slip and fall, into the pitcher. Above the peristome is a lid (the operculum); in many species, this keeps rain from diluting the fluid within the pitcher, the underside of which may contain nectar glands which attract prey.

Prey usually consists of insects, but the largest species (e.g. N. rajah and N. rafflesiana) may occasionally catch small vertebrates, such as rats and lizards.255px-Rattus_baluensis_visiting_Nepenthes_rajahThere are even records of cultivated plants trapping small birds. Flowers occur in racemes or more rarely in panicles with male and female flowers on separate plants. They are insect-pollinated, the primary agents being flies (including blow flies, midges, and mosquitoes), moths, wasps, and butterflies. Their smells can range from sweet to musty or fungus-like. Seed is typically produced in a four-sided capsule which may contain 50–500 wind-distributed seeds, consisting of a central embryo and two wings, one on either side.

Posted on

Cold Chemistry

Cold Chemistry

Endothermic chemical reaction use up heat energy, which means the end result is cool to the touch. Use Alka-Seltzer to see this reaction for yourself!

Things you’ll need: A beaker, a thermometer, an Alka-Seltzer tablet, ice, and water.20170526_144541

  1. Fill the beaker with ice. Add enough water to cover the ice fully.20170526_144708
  2. Put the thermometer in the beaker and read the temperature of the ice water after about one minute when the temperature is steady. Mine is 11°C  (51°F).20170526_144807
  3. Add the Alka-Seltzer tablet to the beaker and read the thermometer. Mine is 6°C  (42°F)20170526_144929

Melting ice absorbs heat and cools water until the ice water reaches the freezing point (0°C=32°F). Mixing Alka-Seltzer with the cold water was an endothermic reaction, meaning it used heat. An Alka-Seltzer tablet contains two main ingredients: sodium bicarbonate and citric acid. In the ice water, they reacted to form sodium citrate and carbon dioxide, which removed energy and further dropped the solution temperature. The Alka-Seltzer solution became super-cooled by the endothermic reaction.

Posted on

What will Happen if You stop taking showers?

What will Happen if You stop taking showers?

Introduction: On the last time, I did a post about: Are Video Games Bad for You?. And the answer will be on there. But today I have a new question. The question is: What will happen if you stop taking showers? This is going to be weird but, I really want to know what will happen if you do that. Now it’s two articles in a row. So let’s get started.

I think if you never take a shower, your friends in school or nobody would probably get close to you. Nobody at all.

1. The first thing that would happen to you is you will stink. Of course, when you sweat and didn’t take a shower you will stink. The components of sweat are 99% water and 1% of salt, urea, and bacteria. Sweat itself does not in fact smell. The familiar smell of body odor, or B.O, comes from normal skin bacteria breaking down the sweat secretions released from the sweat glands. This is because the apocrine glands, which are involved in causing body odor, begin to function from puberty. That is why you stink after you sweat.

Yes. This is already bad because you stink… And nobody would come close to you as said above.

2. The second thing that will happen is you are going to have Germs, Germs, And More germs! Your body typically has a lot of bacteria on your skin, most of which are actually good for you. Some of them provide useful functions for your skin, and even the otherwise “useless” ones take up space that harmful bacteria might have occupied instead, effectively crowding out the bad germs. But harmful bacteria can still wind up on your skin, and when you don’t take showers, you increase the chances that those harmful germs will get into your body through your eyes, nose, or mouth — and then get you sick.dd

Scary right? But that’s not all.

3. If you don’t wash them away, dirt, sweat, dead skin, and oil build up on your skin, which not only makes you look dirty, it’s also bad for you. In addition to possibly getting sick, some types of bacteria and fungi can cause skin infections, too, especially if you don’t periodically wash them away.images

Yup, it’s getting worse but there is still more.

4. Go without washing for long enough and you’ll wind up with brown scaly patches on your skin, a condition dermatologists call dermatitis neglecta.

Dermatosis neglecta is a skin condition in which accumulation of sebum, keratin, sweat, dirt and debris leads to a localized patch of skin discoloration or a wart-like plaque. It is caused by inadequate hygiene of a certain body part, usually due to some form of disability or a condition that is associated with pain or increased sensitivity to touch (hyperesthesia) or immobility.

Dermatosis neglecta typically develops several months after a disability or other affliction leads to improper cleaning. Patients may deny that negligence is the cause of the lesion, even though it completely resolves on vigorous rubbing with alcohol swabs or water and soap (which provides both diagnosis and treatment). Recognizing the diagnosis avoids unnecessary skin biopsies.

Examples of case reports from the literature include a man who avoided washing the skin area surrounding an artificial pacemaker out of fear it might be damaged; a woman who didn’t clean the right side of her chest due to hyperesthesia following an amputation for breast cancer (mastectomy); a girl who was afraid to wash the area around an abdominal scar; and a man with multiple fractures, shoulder dislocation and radial nerve palsy which significantly reduced his mobility. Ick!

IndianJDermatol_2015_60_2_185_152525_f5
dermatosis neglecta on woman’s face

Wow! that is very scary… I wish this woman wasn’t on my blog 😦

Watch this video to learn more about this article.

I take showers every day. And as you could see that stop taking showers is bad for your health. So you should take showers every day. And there is one thing that I just thought about. If you never take showers that mean you never wash your hair. That means you have a chance to have lice in your hair.

See also: Amou Haji, the man who hasn’t bathed in 60 years!

 

Posted on

Are Video Games Bad for You?

Are Video Games Bad for You?

Introduction: The last time I did a post about Why Kids Should Study Science. And it has 6 views and four likes but maybe it has more now. Anyway, now my question is: Does video games make your brain think slower? Good question right? And on this post I’ll try to find the answer to this question from internet. So let’s get started. Also, try to read the whole post please if you’re interested.

The first video game was created in October 1958, Physicist William Higinbotham created what is thought to be the first video game. It was a very simple tennis game, similar to the classic 1970s video game Pong, and it was quite a hit at a Brookhaven National Laboratory open house. After that, Since the 1980s, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern popular culture in most parts of the world. One of the early games was Spacewar!, which was developed by computer scientists. Early arcade video games developed from 1972 to 1978.

After that, there were more video games created like Minecraft and Terraria. Both of those video games are popular. Now if you ask me do I like video games? Well… of course! All kids like video games including me.

Article number 1.

Anyway, let’s go back to our question. Some studies suggest that video gaming can improve vision and enhance information processing abilities. But that may be total nonsense, according to a study that examined the short-term effects of video-game ownership on academic development in young boys. Families with boys between the ages of 6 to 9 were recruited for the study in Psychological Science. The families did not own video-game systems, but the parents had been considering buying one for their kids. The children completed intelligence tests as well as reading and writing assessments. In addition, the boys’ parents and teachers filled out questionnaires relating to their behavior at home and at school.

Half of the families were selected to receive a video-game system (along with three, age-appropriate video games) immediately, while the remaining families were promised a video-game system four months later, at the end of the experiment. Over the course of the four months, the parents recorded their children’s activities from the end of the school day until bedtime. At the four-month time point, the children repeated the reading and writing assessments and parents and teachers again completed the behavioral questionnaires.

Results showed that the boys who received the video-game system immediately spent more time playing video games and less time engaged in after-school academic activities than boys who received the video-game system at the end of the experiment.

Furthermore, the boys who received the video-game system at the beginning of the study had significantly lower reading and writing scores four months later compared with the boys receiving the video-game system later on. Although there were no differences in parent-reported behavioral problems between the two groups of kids, the boys who received the video-game system immediately had greater teacher-reported learning problems.

Further analysis revealed that the time spent playing video games may link the relationship between owning a video-game system and reading and writing scores. These findings suggest that video games may be displacing after-school academic activities and may impede reading and writing development in young boys.

After these paragraphs, the answer is probably yes. But let’s not decide yet, look at these paragrapgs on the bottom.

Article number 2.

With the rise of video games in modern culture, researchers and psychologists have taken close looks at the impact gaming can have on people in a multitude of situations. Numerous experiments have been done in recent years, many of which draw conclusions that gaming can increase brain function, problem solving skills, spatial reasoning, memory, attention span, strategic planning, and even social skills among others.

But “video game” is a broad term — with so many different types of games, researchers have focused their studies to see how different genres affect players. Let’s take a look at the benefits of various game types.

Puzzle/Platformers

Improves: Brain function, IQ

These brainteaser games are meant to give your mind a workout. Puzzle games like Brain Age or Angry Birds — which use problem-solving, memory, spatial reasoning, and attention to detail — can boost brain function and IQ, as well as slow down the brain’s aging process. But some games don’t make it quite so obvious that players are flexing those skills. The Legend of Zelda and Mario Bros.franchises are both well-known for challenging puzzles that you’re required to figure out in order to advance to the next area or unlock some special item. Additionally, the platforming aspects (jumping from place to place, avoiding projectiles, moving around obstacles, etc.) of some games can also improve motor skills and reaction time.

Role-Playing Games (RPGs)

Improves: Problem-solving, strategy, logic, reasoning

Mass Effect, the Elder Scrolls, and Final Fantasy are just a few famous franchises that are RPGs — games in which the player assumes the role of a character. Typically, RPGs focus on player-driven choices, dialogue options, and the consequences of player actions. In essence, RPGs are much more customizable than other games, which leads to unique experiences and no two games being quite the same. Though many cognitive elements are utilized while playing these games, the most prevalent ones are problem-solving, strategy, and reasoning. Socially, players can exercise their empathy and ethics, as they’re often faced with morally difficult choices that can have lingering consequences — skills you can take back to the “real world.”

Real Time Strategy (RTS):

Improves: Planning, Multitasking, Prioritization

Flickr user Jeff Nelson

Sometimes you have to think on your feet, a useful lifelong skill that can be developed and exercised in RTS games. As the name suggests, these games use strategic planning in order to accomplish a task, defeat an enemy, or work with other players (known as a co-op) to win. Games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, or World of Warcraft all challenge a player to think ahead, think smart, and think together (if it’s co-op). And since it’s in real-time, things can go wrong. While players increase their multitasking ability and prioritizing skills, they also learn to adapt to changing situations.

Now the answer is probably no. But…. let’s keep looking before decide. Here’s the most important part

Article number 3.

1. Though the activity level needed to play Wii or Xbox Kinect are a step in the right direction, a majority of video games still involve sitting in front of a screen, often with poor posture.  A study published in Pediatrics International found that “excessive television-game playing” led to increased levels of muscle stiffness, especially in the shoulders.

2. Experts have long debated whether violent video games desensitize young people to violence. Some studies have disputed this while others, indicate that young people who show more rapid desensitization to violent pictures are going to be more accepting of violence, which is dangerous to the community at large.

3. Many parents suspect that kids who spend significant amounts of time playing video games may not be devoting enough time to school work.  A report in Issues in Mental Health Nursing confirmed just this: “Results revealed that time spent playing games was related … to aggression and … to school competence.”  In particular, violent games were directly related to attention problems and generally led to a greater decline in academic performance.

4. According to a report in Pediatrics, seven out of 10 children are vitamin D deficient.  Vitamin D, of course, is commonly absorbed from exposure to sunlight.  Unfortunately, being holed up in front of video games system does not afford the same exposure to sunlight as, say, being outside.  Word to the wise: Leave your mom’s basement and go outside from time to time.

5. Yes, video games have been associated with changes in physical appearance.  According to Pediatrics International, school children who played “excessive” amounts of video games were much more likely to develop black rings in the skin under the eyes and to suffer from a displacement of the shoulder blade, which can be caused by poor posture and muscle stiffness.

6. A report in Pediatrics International recommends that video games should be limited to less than one hour per day. But some hardcore gamers are spending three times that amount of time playing.  Along with increased gaming can come sleep deprivation, especially among young people.  Rather than reducing the amount of time spent playing, gamers often opt to lose sleep instead.

7. A 2010 study found that kids who spend too much time watching TV or playing video games may have more trouble paying attention in school. Researchers found that children who had more than two hours of screen time per day were twice as likely to have trouble paying attention. The study, published in Pediatrics, analyzed both elementary school students and college students.

Yes, number 7 happens to me to sometimes. ↑

All right. The final answer is revealed.

Are video games bad for you? The answer is……………. Yes and No.

Why is it yes and no? What if it is only yes? Then article 2 is false.

But what if it’s no? Then articles 1 and 3 is false and everybody would be playing video games.

But why is it yes and no? According to my research and as you could see on the top, the first and the third article says that it is bad for your heath and knowledge. Video games (I think) is bad for your eyes and brain. But video games are good at some points too. It relieves stress and boredom. I only play video games for fun. I only play video games for thirty minutes or to an hour per day. I recommend to play video games for at least a half an hour or even never would be better. And try to tell your child to play less video games.

 

Posted on

Mushroom Spores

Mushroom Spores

A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source.

The standard for the name “mushroom” is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence the word “mushroom” is most often applied to those fungi (Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes) that have a stem (stipe), a cap (pileus), and gills (lamellae, sing. lamella) on the underside of the cap. These gills produce microscopic spores that help the fungus spread across the ground or its occupant surface.download

I’ll show you how to see spores without a microscope.

Things you’ll need: A fresh mushroom from a forest (mushrooms from the market wouldn’t work), a cup, and a piece of paper.

  1. Take the cap off the stem of a mushroom (be careful, wear gloves while you’re doing this).
  2. Lay the the cap of the mushroom onto the piece of paper.
  3. Cover the mushroom with the cup on the piece of paper.20170521_091449
  4. Wait for 24 hours.
  5. Take the cup and the mushroom off the paper and observe the paper.

The spores of the mushroom will stick to the paper.

Aviary Photo_131398454278771167
Spores of a mushroom

 

 

 

Posted on

Invisible ink

Invisible ink

We know that phenolphthalein will turn pink if you drip 2-3 drops into a chemical that is base. That gave me an idea of how to make invisible ink.

Things you’ll need: phenolphthalein solution, white paper, Q-tip, and ammonia-based glass cleaner (like Windex)

  1. Put a few drops of phenolphthalein onto a Q-tip. Use the Q-tip as your pen to write a simple message (like “hello”).
  2. Let the paper dry. You cannot see the message.
  3. Once the paper is dry, spray it with a few squirts of glass cleaner. The message will appear again in purple.20170519_165110

Phenolphthalein is a PH indicator that is pink in the presence of bases. Since the window cleaner is a base, it reacted with your phenolphthalein writing to change color and appear visible. Look at this picture below.

 

20170519_172601
In the first test tube is vinegar. In the second test tube is water. In the last test tube is borax. Each test tube has 2 drops of phenolphthalein.

 

 

Posted on

The Sleeping Grass

The Sleeping Grass

Mimosa pudica (from Latin: pudica “shy, bashful or shrinking”; also called sensitive plant, sleepy plant, Dormilones, sleeping grass, or shy plant) is a creeping annual or perennial herb of the pea family Fabaceae often grown for its curiosity value: the compound leaves fold inward and droop when touched or shaken, defending themselves from harm, and re-open a few minutes later. The species is native to South America and Central America, but is now a pantropical weed. It can also be found in Asia in countries such as Bangladesh, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Japan. It grows mostly in undisturbed shady areas, under trees or shrubs.Mimosa_pudica_-_Kerala_1

The species is known by numerous common names including sensitive plant, humble plant, shameplant, and touch-me-not.

The stem is erect in young plants, but becomes creeping or trailing with age. It can hang very low and become floppy. The stem is slender, branching, and sparsely to densely prickly, growing to a length of 1.5 m (5 ft).

The leaves are bipinnately compound, with one or two pinnae pairs, and 10–26 leaflets per pinna. The petioles are also prickly. Pedunculate (stalked) pale pink or purple flower heads arise from the leaf axils in mid summer with more and more flowers as the plant gets older. The globose to ovoid heads are 8–10 mm in diameter (excluding the stamens). On close examination, it is seen that the floret petals are red in their upper part and the filaments are pink to lavender. The fruit consists of clusters of 2–8 pods from 1–2 cm long each, these being prickly on the margins. The pods break into 2–5 segments and contain pale brown seeds some 2.5 mm long. The flowers are pollinated by the wind and insects. The seeds have hard seed coats which restrict germination.

The roots of Mimosa pudica create carbon disulfide, which prevents certain pathogenic and mycorrhizal fungi from growing within the plant’s rhizosphere. This allows the formation of nodules on the roots of the plant that contain endosymbiotic diazotrophs, which fix atmospheric nitrogen and convert it into a form that is usable by the plant.

Mimosa_Pudica
The movement of Mimosa pudica

 

 

Mimosa pudica is well known for its rapid plant movement. Like a number of other plant species, it undergoes changes in leaf orientation termed “sleep” or nyctinastic movement. The foliage closes during darkness and reopens in light. This was first studied by the French scientist Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan.

 

The leaflets also close when stimulated in other ways, such as touching, warming, blowing, or shaking. These types of movements have been termed seismonastic movements. The stimulus is transmitted as an action potential from a stimulated leaflet, to the leaflet’s swollen base (pulvinus), and from there to the pulvini of the other leaflets, which run along the length of the leaf’s rachis. The action potential then passes into the petiole, and finally to the large pulvinus at the end of the petiole, where the leaf attaches to the stem. The action potential causes potassium ions to flow out from the vacuoles of cells in the various pulvini. This causes water to flow out from those cells by osmosis through aquaporin channels, making them lose turgor, which is the force that is applied onto the cell wall by water within the cell. Differences in turgidity in different regions of the leaf and stem results in the closing of the leaflets and the collapse of the leaf petiole.

It is not known exactly why Mimosa pudica evolved this trait, but many scientists think that the plant uses its ability to shrink as a defense from herbivores. Animals may be afraid of a fast moving plant and would rather eat a less active one. Another possible explanation is that the sudden movement dislodges harmful insects.

Gallery:20170518_163311

Before being touched
After being touched

20170518_163401

20170518_164256

See also: Codariocalyx motorius (Telegraph plant)

Credits: Wikipedia the free encyclopedia.

 

Posted on

Swirling Colors

Swirling Colors

Can you make colors move in milk? Then perform this experiment.

20170514_155028

Things you’ll need: whole milk, a shallow dish, food coloring, and liquid dish soap.

1. Pour whole milk into the shallow dish.20170514_1550402. Let the milk warm up to room temperature.

3. Place drops of different food coloring in the milk. DO NOT STIR.

20170514_160304

4. Place 1-3 drops of liquid dish soap in the middle of the dish. Enjoy the show!

 

3 seconds after 2 drops of liquid dish soap
5 seconds after 2 drops of liquid dish soap

The colors move as the soap spreads across the surface of the milk. Once soap covers the surface, the swirling will stop instantly (if you use water).

In whole milk, fat is the secret ingredient that keeps the colors move. As the soap spreads out, it sticks to tiny globules of fat. As the globules take up soap, they make more room for soap to spread out.

Posted on

My Optical Illusions

My Optical Illusions

Here are some of my optical illusions that I made myself.

1. The Cubes:20170409_160250

How many cubes are in this picture? It depends on how you look at the picture.

2. The Four Sides:

Screen Shot 2560-04-09 at 4.29.55 PM

Can you spot the four sides of the figure in the picture? (Clue think about an opened book)

3. The Secret Stairs:20170409_160202

Can you find the upside-down stairs in the picture?

  1. On the cubes illusion, there are 13 cubes total.
  2. On 2. think of a jacket and the pages of a book.
  3. On the stairs illusion, the stairs will be upside down.

Optical illusions are caused by a mismatch of what the eyes see and what the brain interprets, according to ABC News. The brain is often tricked into thinking something is moving when contrasting colors are placed in close proximity to each other and repeated. This is why when people want a pattern to move like an optical illusion, the shapes of the pattern are outlined in black and white. The term optical illusion is not the best way to describe this phenomenon, according to ABC News. It is best to call them visual illusions because the illusion is caused by more than just the eyes. It is caused by the primary visual cortex, which is the area of the brain that helps to process visual information.

350px-Revolving_circles.svg
This is my favorite optical illusion. If you move your head back and forth, you can see the circles spin.
Posted on

The Browning Reaction of Apples

The Browning Reaction of Apples

We’ve all been there; you leave a few apple slices out too long or take too long to eat your way around an apple, and you’re confronted with an unpleasant sight. Your once crispy, juicy white apple has turned a dismal shade of brown. I’ll show what causes it and how to stop it from turning brown.

Things you’ll need: An apple, a knife, salt water, vinegar, tap water, and 3 cups.

  1. Cut the apple into four pieces.
  2. Dip the pieces of the apples into salt water, vinegar, tap water, and leave the last piece by itself.
  3. Wait five minutes.
  4. The apple that has been dipped in the vinegar should be the brownest, the apple in tap water should be the second brownest, the apple that is touching air should be the third brownest, and the saltwater piece should be the least brownest.

    Click on picture to make bigger

When an apple is cut (or bruised), oxygen is introduced into the injured plant tissue. When oxygen is present in cells, polyphenol oxidase (PPO) enzymes in the chloroplasts rapidly oxidize phenolic compounds naturally present in the apple tissues to o-quinones, colorless precursors to brown-colored secondary products. O-quinones then produce the well documented brown color by reacting to form compounds with amino acids or proteins, or they self-assemble to make polymers.

The phenolic compounds work well in PH 5.8 – 6.8 and that why the piece of apple that has vinegar is the brownest and browner than tap water.

The way to stop turning it brown is by putting salt water or sugar on it.

Posted on

A Water Pressure Experiment

Water Pressure Experiment

This experiment is good to demonstrate water pressure.

Things you’ll need: a water bottle with water, modeling clay, two straws, and scissors.

20170405_134809

  1. Use the scissors to cut one straw to be shorter than the other.
  2. Use the modeling clay to hold the straws together as shown in the picture.20170405_135023
  3. Place the straw and the modeling clay on the bottle as shown in the picture. (Warning: don’t let one of the straws touch the water and don’t let any air come out from the bottle). Seal the clay tightly and close all the holes.20170405_135207
  4. Blow the straw that didn’t touch the water and the water will come out from the other straw.

    Click on image to get bigger

Water pressure is a measure of the force that gets the water through our mains and into your pipes. It is measured in ‘bars’ – one bar is the force needed to raise water to a height of 10 meters. 0.1 bar equivalent to approximately 1.45 pa of pressure. With low-pressure water systems, you’ll want to measure your water pressure precisely to find a tap or shower that will give you optimum flow.

20170405_135450 copy The red arrows are water pressure.

Posted on

The Floating Needle

The Floating Needle

What will happen if you put a needle in a cup of water? It would sink. But you can do it if you use density.

Things you’ll need: a needle, a sharp pencil, A strip of paper that is a little bigger than the needle, a cup, and water.

20170328_112826

  1. Fill water into the cup
  2. Put the piece of paper on the water.20170328_112911
  3. Put a needle on the piece of paper.20170328_112925
  4. Use the sharp point of the pencil to push the paper down to make it sink.20170328_112956
  5. Now, you should have a floating needle.

    Click on picture to make it bigger

A material’s density is defined as its mass per unit volume. It is, essentially, a measurement of how tightly matter is crammed together. The principle of density was discovered by the Greek scientist Archimedes. To calculate the density (usually represented by the Greek letter “ρ”) of an object, take the mass (m) and divide by the volume (v): ρ = m / v

The density of water is about 1 gram per cubic centimeter (62 lb/cu ft): this relationship was originally used to define the gram. The density varies with temperature, but not linearly: as the temperature increases, the density rises to a peak at 3.98 °C (39.16 °F) and then decrease. This unusual negative thermal expansion below 4 °C (39 °F) is also observed in molten silica. Regular, hexagonal ice is also less dense than liquid water—upon freezing, the density of water decreases by about 9%.

Posted on

Amazing Paper Planes

Amazing Paper Planes

Tried of the same old paper airplane designs? Try these two unusual ones.

1. Straw Plane

Things you’ll need: one strip of paper 1.5 cm x 9 cm long, one strip of paper 2 cm x 12 cm, plastic straw (21cm), and tape

1. Make a loop out of each strip of paper, overlapping the ends and taping them inside and outside the loop. The overlapped ends will form a pocket into which you can slip the straw.

2. Put one loop on each end of the straw by slipping the straw through the pockets you’ve made.

3. Done!20170313_212935

Paper airplanes – even the odd looking one you’ve just made – fly using the same principles as real airplanes. When they’re moving, the shape and angle of their wings cause the air to move faster over the wing than under it. This reduces the pressure of the air above the wing, increases the pressure underneath the wing, and the plane is held up by the difference.

A real airplane must race down the runway to get the air moving fast enough past the wings to create enough difference in air pressure to lift it, and then must stay above minimum speed while in the air.

2. Heli-paper

Can you make a helicopter out of paper? Hard? Then try this simple one.

Things you’ll need: a piece of paper 25cm x 5cm, scissors, and a paper clip20170315_183314

  1. Draw the pattern on the piece of paper as shown above. Cut along the solid lines and then fold on the dotted lines.
  2. Fold A forward and B backward.
  3. Fold C in and overlap it with D.
  4. When D and C are folded, fold upward E.
  5. Holding it with E towards the ground, lift your heli-paper above your head and drop it.
  6. Try launching it from as high a place a possible.
  7. Put a paper clip over the folded part at E. Then see if it changes the flight pattern.    20170315_184559      
Posted on

The Moebius Strip

The Moebius Strip

You’ve probably heard the expression, “There are two sides to everything”. But are there? You can find out by making this strip.

Things you’ll need: several strips of paper 25cm long and 2cm wide, scissors, a pen, and tape.

1. To make the Moebius strip, you need to half-twist the strip of paper and tape the ends together. Now you have the Moebius strip.20170313_194322

2. Make some more Mobius strips. Then, cut one-half in the middle of the Moebius Strip with scissors as shown below. Oops! What happened?20170313_194322 copy

3. Now cut a new strip one-third (1/3) just like the picture above but cut it 1/3.

The Möbius strip, Möbius band, Mobius or Moebius, is a surface with only one side and only one boundary. The Möbius strip has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It can be realized as a ruled surface. It was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858.

An example of a Möbius strip can be created by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist and then joining the ends of the strip to form a loop. However, the Möbius strip is not a surface of only one exact size and shape, such as the half-twisted paper strip depicted in the illustration. Rather, mathematicians refer to the closed Möbius band as any surface that is homeomorphic to this strip. Its boundary is a simple closed curve, i.e., homeomorphic to a circle. This allows for a very wide variety of geometric versions of the Möbius band as surfaces each having a definite size and shape. For example, any rectangle can be glued to itself (by identifying one edge with the opposite edge after a reversal of orientation) to make a Möbius band. Some of these can be smoothly modeled in Euclidean space, and others cannot.

On 2. the Mobius strip will turn into a normal paper strip. On 3. the strip will turn into 2 paper bands!

Posted on

How to Make a Periscope

In 1854 Hippolyte Marié-Davy invented the first naval periscope, consisting of a vertical tube with two small mirrors fixed at each end at 45°. Simon Lake used periscopes in his submarines in 1902. A periscope works by using two mirrors to bounce light from one place to another. A typical periscope uses two mirrors at 45-degree angles to the direction one desires to see. The light bounces from one to the other and then out to the person’s eye. Now I will show you how to make one.

Things you’ll need:

Cardboard paper, two small mirrors, glue, a pen, a ruler, scissors, and tape  (tape not included in photo).

20170312_101803

  1. Use a pen and a ruler to draw the periscope’s body. 20170312_102444
  2. Cut it with scissors as shown in the picture.20170312_103259
  3. Put glue behind the mirrors.20170312_103325
  4. Glue the mirrors on to the square as shown in the picture.20170312_103431
  5. 5. Fold it.20170312_103551
  6. Secure the box with tape and it will be finished.  20170312_103734
  7. How to use it: If you look in one of the mirrors, you can see the jar in the other mirror as shown in the picture.20170312_104031Light always bounces off a mirror at the same angle at which it hits. If it hits the mirror at 45 degrees, it will reflect at 45 degrees, enabling it to make the 90 degrees turn around the corner. You can test this by shining a flashlight into the hole where you would look. If your mirrors are correctly angled, the light will shine out the other hole. Similarly, the light reflecting off an object you’re looking at will bounce off each mirror and into your eye.
Posted on

The Process of Viral Infection

The Process of Viral Infection

I have drawn a diagram of “The Process of Virus Infection” (my diagram is on the bottom). Viruses are cells that infect animals, plants, and bacteria and reproduce only within living cells. Viruses are considered as being either living organism or inert chemicals. The first step of virus infection is attachment. The Host cell has receptors on the cell membrane. In order for the virus to infect the Host cell, the virus needs the right receptors to match the Host cell receptors. Then it enters the host cell if the virus receptors match with the Host cell. Then the capsid of the virus comes apart. Then it transcripts and translates the viral proteins and copies the genome. And then assembles and releases many virions in the process called “Lysis”. A virion is the complete form of a virus when it is outside a Host cell.

This is my diagram of The Process of Virus Infection
This is my diagram of The Process of Virus Infection
Posted on

The Blue Rose Experiment

The Blue Rose Experiment 

(March 1, 2016)

Introduction:

In this Blue Rose Experiment, I was trying to confirm what other researchers found: that food dye added to water in a vase will cause the rose to change color. My hypothesis was that adding blue food coloring to water into the vase would cause a white rose to turn blue.

Materials:

2 white cut roses (I got the rose from my mother’s garden),

DanPickingRose

  • 2 cups
  • Blue food coloring
  • Water
  • Pure refined sugar

1. Add 250ml of water into the first cup, then add 250ml of water into the second cup and then add 1ml of blue food coloring.

2. Add a pinch of pure refined sugar about .125cc into the two cups and place the stem of the roses into the cup.

3. Wait for 2 or 3 days and record what happened. If the rose in the first cup turns blue that means the sugar makes the rose blue.

Results:                        Control                          |                         Experimental

                Day 1    

                          controlday1                    controlday1    

              Day 2

                    controlday2              testday2

The control is not blue and that means the sugar didn’t make the rose blue. The rose in the blue dye vase turned blue on the second day.

Conclusion: Blue dye caused the white rose to become blue because the dye was absorbed through the stem.

Posted on

3D Printer-What It Can Do

 3D Printing

WHAT IS 3D PRINTING? 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), refers to various processes used to synthesize a three-dimensional object. In 3D printing, successive layers of material are formed under computer control to create an object. These objects can be of almost any shape or geometry, and are produced from a 3D model or other electronic data source. A 3D printer is a type of industrial robot.

Futurologists such as Jeremy Rifkin believe that 3D printing signals the beginning of a third industrial revolution, succeeding the production line assembly that dominated manufacturing starting in the late 19th century. Using the power of the Internet, it may eventually be possible to send a blueprint of any product to any place in the world to be replicated by a 3D printer with “elemental inks” capable of being combined into any material substance of any desired form.

3D SCANNER vs 3D COPIER A 3D copier is a copier that can copy any solid objects into another one. A 3D scanner is a device that analyzes a real-world object or environment to collect data on its shape and possibly its appearance (e.g. color). The collected data can then be used to construct digital three-dimensional models.

Many different technologies can be used to build these 3D-scanning devices; each technology comes with its own limitations, advantages, and costs. Many limitations in the kind of objects that can be digitized are still present, for example, optical technologies encounter many difficulties with shiny, mirroring or transparent objects. For example, industrial computed tomography scanning can be used to construct digital 3D models, applying non-destructive testing.

HOW DOES 3D PRINTING WORK? It all starts with making a virtual design of the object you want to create. This virtual design is made in a CAD (Computer Aided Design) file using a 3D modeling program (for the creation of a totally new object) or with the use of a 3D scanner (to copy an existing object). A 3D scanner makes a 3D digital copy of an object.

3d scanners use different technologies to generate a 3d model such as time-of-flight, structured / modulated light, volumetric scanning and much more.

Recently, many IT companies like Microsoft and Google enabled their hardware to perform 3d scanning, a great example is Microsoft’s Kinect. This is a clear sign that future hand-held devices like smartphones will have integrated 3d scanners. Digitizing real objects into 3d models will become as easy as taking a picture. Prices of 3d scanners range from very expensive professional industrial devices to 30 USD DIY devices anyone can make at home.

Many things have been printed, such as food, body parts, and skin, hamburgers, guns, a beak for a Falcon, peanut butter, a 1-story house. Maybe you could even print phones, make toys, make computers and make furniture.

Here are some links that give an overview:

 

Some specific things that can be printed, with some videos and my short summaries:

1. 3D printed clothes: 3D printed clothes are sometimes for fashion. Girls like to design their own cloths with 3D printing.I think we should make men’s clothing too.
Make a nice and cool blue suit for men. This video is about a woman design clothes
from a 3D printer.
https://youtu.be/3s94mIhCyt4

 

2. 3D printed body parts: They use ink called “Bio Ink” that can make body parts. They have made: hair, skin, liver, kidney, and lots of more things. And they use these body parts to put or replace the humans’ organs. This video is about 3D printer make live body parts.
https://youtu.be/a1Ikv3yHs0w

3. 3D printed tools: If you don’t have a tool you’ll need to buy it from the store. But you can print your own tools. I think you should combine them, for example, a wrench+screwdriver that will be a great idea. This video is about 3D printed wrenches.
https://youtu.be/WmDz7Q9_h6c

4.3D printed cars: How can they print cars! They print the part and assemble them. This video is about the first printed car.
https://youtu.be/O9odhgH24oA

 

5. 3D printed house: The printer must be huge and I wonder how did they carry it. They use cement as ink and they can make a one-floor house less than one day. This video is about ten houses printed in 24 hours.
https://youtu.be/SObzNdyRTBs

%d bloggers like this: