Hey guys! This week, we did more dissections! I mean wow! We have done more dissections this year then we did labs last year. It's awesome. I also caught up on what I missed last week, including that test. I think I did ok, but I know I missed at least a few questions.

Foe labs this week, we dissected a squid, and boy was the smell of that thing rank. It made my eyes water worse than onions. We also started a cricket dissection lab. Like the giant worms from Australia, these giant crickets from Africa are as long as your middle finger. I swear, any animal off either Africa or Australia is mutated to be gigantic. I think I handled it pretty well considering I have an intense fear of bugs.

I need to work on lots of things. I don't really understand all the different groups in this chapter, but I do understand most of their body parts. I also need to make improvements to my hydrometer/salinometer, because during Science Olympiad, the marker on it washed off. Luckily I had a pen.

Tomorrow we are excused form all our classes to go to the library for a research paper in Social Studies, so I will miss some of the cricket dissection, which I am sad about; I really want to cut that thing open. I know I did this blog late at night, so night y'all. Have to get up early tomorrow.

Hey guys. This week, I don't have much to talk about from school, because I was sick, yet again. Basically, I slept all day or studied for Science Olympiad. I was there Monday/Tuesday, but couldn't get out of bed Wednesday. I even missed a field trip Friday, which I was not happy about. But what can ya do, right?
On Monday, we finished up our giant worm dissection lab. I didn't have mine because I let my lab partner borrow it because he was behind. Only he didn't give it back. So I still have to bug him to get it tomorrow. On Tuesday, we reviewed for the test we were supposed to take Wednesday. That wasn't the big part of our science week, though.
We got up early Saturday put on our safety green shirts, and headed out for UNCW. It was the day of Science Olympiad! We had to be there at eight o'clock for check in, and we hung out for another ten minutes. Then I went to my first event, Water Quality. The event was fairly straight forward, a simple test. Only two questions required the homemade Salinometer. The only thing I didn't understand was naming actual sea-creatures, which was no-where on the Science Olympiad study guide. I knew some from seeing the in pictures or hearing about them, like the redfish, carp, cuttlefish. I knew the difference between sponges and cnidarians because we learned that in class.
Then, I had a two hour break before Road Scholar, which is using topographic and road maps. Our director brought pizza and a bunch of other foods. Lunch was pretty awesome. The Road Scholar test was pretty hard because I couldn't find one one of the towns that was required through all the other towns and cities. And I needed that particular town for about eight or nine different questions.
The third event of my day was Heredity. Again, the test was very straight forward and we had studied a lot of the material in class, but there was one topic that was on there that we hadn't studied. It was on the study guide that we needed to know it, but we didn't study it, so whatever.
For the last hour of our day, we sat sweating in the UNCW gym. I swear that place didn't have any central air conditioning. WAAS got a lot of medals. I got fifth place out of seven in Water Quality, and our school got fifth in the region. We were so excited, because the top six schools go to state. You should have seen Mrs. Giacomelli's face! She was so shocked! At the end of the day, I had sooo much fun. I am also glad I found out that ninth graders can compete with a middle-school team! I am gonna do it again next year! Thanks to Mrs. G for being an awesome coach and teacher.
Some things I can work on are my study habits. I always wait to the last minute and get really stressed out. I will try to start studying when I hear about a test instead of waiting. I also procrastinate on projects and other work. It is a terrible habit that I need to break. I understand what we are studying in class to a T. If you ask me anything about worms, sponges, or cnidarians, I will be able to tell you.

Okay everyone. We did a lot this week and some of it is kind of gross, but really fun. We did three labs this week, two involving a microscope, one involving dissection. The first lab we did was finishing our sponges and hydra lab. We really made our hydra mad and he tried to sting us. Good luck with that little guy. They look like tiny sea anemones and the venom in their nematocysts isn't strong enough to hurt humans. So jokes on you. The second lab we did was observing flatworms. The worms were much more active than the hydra, but mine was very lazy. We created a false magnetic field to see how it affected the worm. Mine turned in a certain direction and stopped. Then it didn't move. I really couldn't tell if it was dead or not. Of all the things it could have done, it decides to die. Sad. The third lab was dissecting these enormous earthworms. These things were more than a foot long. They didn't fit lengthways into the dissecting pan, so we had to go corner to corner.

We are having a test once we finish our earthworm dissection lab, and I know most of it, but I need to touch up on my vocabulary a little bit. I also need to work on my Science Olympiad. I finished my salinometer/hydrometer so thats out of the way,  but I need to study my marine ecosystems and estuaries. I didn't realize how much work this actually was, so I took on three events, which was a bad idea on my part.  I mean, heredity I'm not worried about because one, we studied heredity earlier in the year, and my partner is researching what we don't know.

Another thing that happened this week was our science teacher, Mrs. Giacomelli, got slimed for charity. Our seventh grade students have to pick a UN Millennium goal and try to help bring it along for a huge part of their social studies grade. One of our students, Zane, picked education in Afghanistan for his project, and he somehow talked Mrs. G into getting slimed. For ever dollar donated, he would add an ounce of slime to the bucket. Zane raised three hundred dollars! Great job Zane! And a big round of applause to Mrs. G for helping out. Here is the link for the video that was on the news! http://www.wect.com/video?clipId=9868527&autostart=true

As my Aunt would say, Heeeey Y'aaallll.  Today we are going to be talking about Sponges and Cnidarians(pronounced nidarians). Sponges and cnidarians are actually pretty cool creatures. Sponges are not the sponge you use in your kitchen sink, although they look very similar. Sponges are known as the vacuum of the sea because they suck in dirty water and then they push it back out clean of all the little micro-organisms. Cnidarians are a class all their own. These are the jelly fish, sea anemones, etc. They use little polyps full of poison to catch their food, although many do not contain enough of this toxin to injure a human. An interesting fact bout jellyfish is that they do not actually have a brain! They simply float along and the food kills itself.

I understand most of the concepts this chapter, but I need to work on my vocab and some of the information. I also need to get my Science Olympiad stuff together. I am building a home made hydrometer/salinometer.

We did a lab using the microscope. We viewed sponge and Hydra parts under the microscope. On Monday, apparently we are going to abuse a living hydra cnidarian and try to make it sting something. Oh boy! I feel bad for the little guy. Haha. We are not going to actually abuse it. Just poke it a little. I don't really know how well the bio-dome lab is doing. Lat I checked, the egg sacs were developing nicely. Thanks for reading. Be back next week!

Hello everyone. This week was pretty interesting. I turned in my plant tissue lab that wee started two weeks ago before the snow days. We also did another lab called the flower dissection lab. It taught us about the male and female reproductive parts of the flower. The plant tissue lab wasn't that interesting to me because I wasn't there for the microscope part of the lab. I hate being sick. I really do. I am now going to start taking in more antioxidants to boost my immune system. It's a really good thing that I like blueberries. We also took a test  on the plants. I got had one of the best grades in the middle school. I got a 96%! I am proud of that. I know my blogs the last few weeks have been short and boring but there haven't been too many labs to talk about that you guys can do at home. The whole school has been set back because of that stupid ice storm, and now we have to make up days, which I am really not going to enjoy. We had a ton of work to do over that 'break' and we still have to make up a few days at the end of the year.
We did fun projects on Friday. We made fake 'snow' that is actually made up of a water absorbing polymers. It started out as a light coating of dust at the bottom of a cup that as soon as wee added water, poofed up. It was really cool. We are also growing crystals out on pipe cleaners. The crystals are made up of borax, which is used in laundry detergents. As the water evaporates, crystals form on the pipe cleaner. We twisted the pipe cleaners to look like snowflakes, and at the end of the lab, they should look like the picture on the left.

Wow guys1 what a week! I was out Monday for because I was sick. Then school was canceled because of a sheet of ice on the roads. It was super dangerous to go places because of the ice patches. Plus nobody here is used to snow, or for that matter ice. I really need to study for a couple of tests that were rescheduled because of the snow storm. Math science and spanish tests, oh my! I chilled this week and worked on a couple of projects. Hope you guys have had a good week and weekend. Stay safe!

Hi all. i'm not exactly feeling great right now as I went on a 15 mile backpacking trip in Uwaharrie National Forest. It was 9 degrees Fahrenheit, which is pretty cold! Pair that with the wind and it made it sort of miserable. Two summers from now, I am going to have to do that distance times five when I go to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. There really wasn't that much that we did this week except for one BIG lab. The bio-dome. A three litter bottle high tower made up of clear plastic soda bottles, potting soil, randomly assorted twigs and leaves, and crickets, earthworms, shrimp, and snails. Paired with the plants in the habitat, the bio-dome is a self-sustaining ecosystem, which is really cool! It even waters itself through evaporation and condensation. Each level serves a different purpose. The top level is the terrarium level. It houses the twigs and leaves as well as the earthworms and crickets. The second level is the evaporation condensation level. This is how the top level is watered and how water falls into the aquarium giving it nutrients from the soil above. The bottom level is the aquarium level. It houses the most water as well as two pieces of elodea, a water plant, and shrimp and snails.The one problem is the shrimp in the aquarium level are suicidal.