Hey everybody. No labs to do at home this week, but lots to talk about. I have  a project due tuesday about the parts of a cell. I am making it out of jell-o. It's going to be fun, and taste very good! This week, we mostly talked about the parts of a microscope, did a microscope lab, and reviewed the parts of a cell. I still need to study quite bit for my test on tuesday or Wednesday, but it think i will do fairly well The microscope lab was kind of boring, but it was teaching us how to use a microscope for the most part. I missed the start of another lab because I was out friday, so I will have to make that up. I really hate missing school because I get so behind.

Lots to talk about, but sadly no labs. I went to Kanuga, or Mountain Trail Outdoor School. So much fun! Up near Hendersonville, N.C in the mountains. The weather was really nice. It was really sunny and cool, and the classes were great. The classes my class took were the climbing tower, high ropes, pond and stream ecology, creatures we love to hate, and outdoor living skills. 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jfg4d8gzxiv6mb2/vcid1lH8fn Here are all the pictures of me and my classmates in our classes in Kanuga. The classes were really interesting and fun. I loved the hiking and the cabins, but the shower heads were a little low. I really need to work on my upper-body strength because I could only get about half way up the climbing wall! I was so disappointed when I could not go any farther. I did get over my fear of heights though, so that is good. I was the first to start a fire in the outdoor living skills class with flint and steel, and I got to touch a opossum in the animals we love to hates class. I really enjoyed the experience! All my friends from public school went, and I thought I would miss the opportunity.

here is a link to their website http://www.kanuga.org/camps-and-outdoor-education/mountain-trail-outdoor-school/

Hey everyone! Not many labs this week, but we did finish a quiz. I got a ninety-five, but there is still room to improve and work on my class skills. As for this week, we are going to the Mountain Trail Outdoor School up near Hendersonville, N.C. I am so excited because all my friends in public school said it was amazing, as has my sister. The middle school is going as are all but 2 of the teachers. This ought to be soo much fun. Our science unit there will be pond and stream ecology, so that will be fun. I am afraid of heights, so I hope to get over that, and I hope to also forge more of a relationship with the kids at my school and with my teachers. The weather is supposed to be chilly, so I am happy about that! To the labs! We finished our spontaneous generation lab, and it smelled terrible, and it was full of fat maggots. Gross! I had a good time observing them though. I can't give any labs, so I will be giving several links to fun science sites.

• http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/resources.html
• http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/ I really love this site. I used it to get an idea for my 5th grade science fair.
• http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments.html

Here is an article for all of you news readers like me

• http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_36/b4145036678131.htm

Here is a link that I find so very interesting because it reminds me of Jurassic Park

• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323699704578328251335196648.html

Here are some pictures of things we are studying such as cells, homeostasis and other biological pieces

This is a prokaryote, a cell that has no nucleus.

 A diagram of what stimuli do to your body.

A regular cell with a nucleus called a eukaryote which most organisms are sorted under.

I know I am doing two blog posts this week. I am getting caught up for school, because I got behind. So last week! Not much actually happened, except for one lab and the start of another. We also got introduced to the first real biology terms later in this post, I will give you the list. On the note of the labs the one that we only recently started on Friday was the only one that was really noteworthy, since it involves maggots and raw meat. Yes folks, maggots. Fly larvae. It is supposed to teach about the idea of spontaneous generation, the mistaken idea that a living thing can come from a non-living thing. The other one was stimulus response. Rather boring so I have decided to not put it on here.

Spontaneous Generation Lab

Materials 

• 3 beakers
• Plastic wrap
• Gauze 
• Rubber bands
• Tape(masking tape)
• 1 piece of paper and a pencil
• Raw meat(please let parents handle the meat kids)

Procedure

• Create a data table with three rows and fourteen columns
• Place three pieces of raw meat inside each beaker
• Label them beaker A B and C
• Over the top of beaker A, place a strip of gauze over the opening. make sure the holes in the gauze aren't too big. Place the rubber band around the beaker so it will keep the gauze down.
• On top of beaker B place nothing.
• On top of beaker C place the plastic wrap over the opening and put the rubber band on it so that the plastic wrap stays.
• Put these outside
• The next day, check these containers. Do so on a daily basis.
• In your table, if you see maggots put a +. If you don't see any maggots, put a 0.
• Make sure to check each container!
• After the experiment is over, throw away the meat AND WASH THE CONTAINER THOROUGHLY!

What you have done

You have just proven the theory of spontaneous generation incorrect. In the plastic wrap covered beaker, you should have no maggots. That is because they couldn't get inside the beaker to lay their eggs. In the uncovered beaker, there should be maggots.

Here are those definitions I promised you earlier

• Organism- any living thing
• Cell- basic unit of structure within the body
• Unicellular- a single celled organism
• Multicellular- multiple celled organism with a complex structure
• Stimulus- something that causes an organism to react
• Response- the reaction to the stimulus
• Development- how something grows and changes
• Spontaneous Generation- the mistaken idea that living things can grow from non-living things
  
• Autotroph- an organism that can make its own food
• Heterotroph- an organism that cannot make its own food and eats other organisms to survive
• Homeostasis- The stable internal organs and cells of the body

Hey again! Sorry for the belated post! This week we did several labs, but only one was really interesting. I had my first test and I got a 96%. We were basically reviewing the scientific method, and did several labs based on studying it. Here is a link to my school website so that you can see my fellow students blogs www.wilmingtonacademy.org.

Here was that interesting lab: The Bubble Lab

Materials: 

• Dish detergent 
• Milliliter type measurer
• Cups
• Water
• Straw
• Paper and a pencil
• Towel
• Stopwatch

Procedure: 

• Create a question
• Make a hypothesis.
• Create a table that looks somewhat like this

• 	Trial 1	Trial 2
  Solution 1
  Solution 2

  Solution one should have ten mL of dish detergent and 100 mL of water
• Solution two should have 100 mL of water and fifteen mL of detergent
• After you mix the detergent with the water pour one solution across the table and spread it around
• Take the drinking straw and put one end in the puddle of solution
• Begin to blow the bubble and as you do so, start the stopwatch
• Stop the stopwatch as the bubble pops and record your findings
• Do this for each solution three times

 Did you notice how solution 2 seemed to last longer than solution 1? This is most likely because the bubble is more elastic due to the detergent to water ratio. I would like you to leave comments on your findings. I am very interested to find if someone got a different result.

I also encourage you to get a subscription to National Geographic. It has many interesting articles on biology, chemistry and many other advances in research and science. One example is how they brought back and extinct type of goat by regrowing its organs from old stem cells. It stayed alive for only 18  minutes, but they still brought it back! This and many other articles can be found in the magazine and on their website, http://www.nationalgeographic.com 

Hey there! Welcome to my science blog! I will be posting new info and stories weekly, as well as fun labs and projects that you can try at home. Certain pieces of information with be displayed in different colors. Cool projects with displayed in this color green. Materials will be displayed in this color yellow. Procedures will be displayed in this red and the end result in this purple. Everything else, unless an article from a magazine which will be in orange, will be in black.


Cool things from the first day:

• Potato gun using density and air pressure
• Seeing which type of soap floats: ivory or normal soap
• Melting ivory soap in a microwave to see how gases expand

Those are several things you can try at home! Heres how to start the potato gun lab.

You will need:

• A clear plastic tube
• 1 or 2 potatoes 
• One slightly smaller tube

Procedure:

• Stick one end of the tube into the potato
• Take the tube out of the potato, and make sure the opening is full of potato.
• Stick the other end  in, and repeat the same process as last time.
• After both ends are filled, put the slightly smaller tube up to one end.
• Push the piece of potato up the tube. You will start to feel more pressure.
• Once the other piece of potato you are pushing gets to a certain point, the other will shoot out of the end.

What you just witnessed:

• You demonstrated air density. As the space between the two pieces of potato got smaller, the air became more tightly compact, and once it got to a certain point, the other piece had to get shot out.

The ivory soap lab:

What you will need:

• 2-3 bars of ivory soap and 2 bars of normal bar soap.
• A microwave(Kids ask for permission)
• A bucket of water.
• a glass dish.

Procedure:

• Place the bucket of water on a porch or in your backyard
• Make a prediction. Which will float?
• Place both bars of soap in the bucket at the same time.
• Was your prediction correct?

Procedure for part two of this lab:

• Place the bar of normal soap inside one of the glass dishes.
• Place the glass container containing the normal bar soap inside the microwave
• Make a  prediction as to whether or not it will grow.
• Turn the microwave on, and watch.
• After two minutes, what happened to the soap?
• Next, do the same to the ivory soap. What was the same between the two soaps? What was different?

What just happened:

• You just demonstrated the different levels of air in the two soaps. The ivory soap has more air trapped inside of it, which makes it more buoyant so it floats, while the normal soap is more dense, and sinks. Also, gas expands. Soooo... when you put a bar of regular soap into the microwave, since it hardly has any trapped air in it, it hardly expands. On the contrary, ivory soap has lots of air trapped inside it, so it expands quite a bit.