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There are over 175 species of Poison-arrow frogs found in the rainforests of South America (only 3 have poison strong enough to be dangerous to a human). All species are very small, just as big as your thumbnail, and have beautiful bright colors - blue, green, red, pink or gold with darker spots and stripes. Their colors warn potential predators, such as birds, that making a snack out of these frogs would be dangerous! The frogs get their name from an indigenous custom of using the poison from the frog’s skin to make their hunting darts and arrows more deadly - they are also often called "Dart frogs." The unique chemicals on the skin of these frogs are not only useful for hunting – scientists are researching ways to use them in a variety of medicine! Unfortunately, habitat loss has made many of these species endangered!
A Bromeliad is a plant with brightly colored, spiky flowers. They grow across the rainforests of South America. Their stiff waxy petals form bowls where rainwater collects. These tiny pools make unique micro-ecosystems and are the perfect place for tadpoles to grow up safely into frogs! In fact, over 300 species make bromeliad flowers their home. And if you’ve ever eaten a pineapple, you’ve had a bromeliad!
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A rotten log is an excellent example of a habitat made up of primary consumers, secondary consumers, scavengers and decomposer. The process begins when a tree is damaged by weather, insect or disease. The bark will crack allowing moisture, fungus and bark beetles to begin the break down of the wood. Over time the wood will soften and the tree will fall. Once on the ground moisture will allow the bacteria and fungus to really move in and feed on the wood. Bark Beetles, Ground beetles, bess beetles, rhino beetles,millipedes, wood lice, termites, and carpenter ants will feed on the wood as well. Toads, frogs, salamanders, centipedes and spiders are secondary consumers that move in to eat the primary comsumers and decomposers. The wood will gradually become soil which will attract the earthworms. The beetles will then move out to newer logs. The entire process averages out to about ten years.
Wetlands in our country are disappearing. Wetlands are waterlogged soil that is covered by shallow water at least part of the year. water affects the plants and animals that live there. There are different types of wetlands. Freshwater types are called marshes (near lakes, ponds and rivers), wet meadows (low lying ares), bogs and fens are cooler and higfh in acid, and swamps have trees and shrubs. Saltwater marshes are affected by tides, mangrove swamps are warmer an in tropical locations. Wetlands filter our water, protect from storms and flooding, are nurseries for fish, crustaceans and amphibians, they are stopovers for migratory birds, they store water and are beautiful. to read more check out www.wetland.org.
Alligators nest in wetland areas, Alligators breed in the Spring (April to May). A month after the noisy mating rituals and coupling, the female lays up to 50 eggs in a large (three feet tall and six feet wide) nest she constructed of mud, leaves and twigs on dry ground. Alligators do not sit on their eggs; that would crush the eggs. The rotting vegetation in the nest warms the eggs. The temperature of the nest determines the sex of the hatchlings. If the eggs are incubated over 93 degrees Fahrenheit (34 degrees Celsius), the embryo develops as a male; temperatures below 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) result in female embryos, between these temperatures, both sexes are produced. The female guards the nest from predators. The eggs hatch in 2 months, producing hatchlings about 6 inches long (15 cm). The group of babies (called a pod) are protected by the female for about a year. Alligators are among the most nurturing of the reptiles. Soda has something in it that almost no other liquid has: lots of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide or CO2 is a gas that gives soda its fizz. There are a few places in the world where water absorbs CO2 by flowing over rocks and minerals with certain chemicals in them. The sodas we buy have been carbonated at the soda factory.
Carbon dioxide is made of 1 carbon and 2 oxygen atoms that form a CO2 molecule. Plants need this gas for making food and we exhale this gas. It's a heavier gas than our air and will cause a balloon to sink instead of float like a helium balloon. The soda we drink is mostly water (H2O) 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen atoms. They add sweetner, flavoring and CO2. It's not easy to put CO2 in the water. It's forced in with a lot of pressure and sealed right away. When you open a soda you can hear the CO2 escape. They use very cold water too. Cold water holds more CO2 than warm water does. Let me know what flavors you come up with Air is a mixture of gases: oxygen (about 21%), nitrogen (78%),
and the inert gases argon, neon, helium, krypton and xenon (1%). Moreover, air contains small amounts of hydrogen, methane, carbon dioxide and water vapour. Has air got weight ? Yes: a cubic foot of air weighs about 1.33 oz. A room 15 ft square and 9 ft high contains about 170 lb of air. The weight of all the air on the earth is 11,000,000,000,000,000,000 lb. What is air pressure ? The force that the air exerts upon everything. By pressure we mean the force with which the air presses against one square inch of a wall. The unit of pressure is the atmosphere that is a pressure of about 14.5 lb per square inch, which means a force of 14.5 Ib on every square inch. At sea-level the average pressure is one atmosphere. Our project today tested Bernoulli's Principle. This principle states that for a fluid undergoing steady flow, the pressure is lower where the fluid is flowing faster. In this lesson, the "fluid" with which we are concerned is air. Fluids include liquids and gases and air is a mixture of gases and therefore a f The antique toy is a great demonstration of Bernoulli's Principle. Blowing through the wooden pipe, floats the ball steadily over the pipe. Experiment at home with other balls and paper shapes. You can experiment with a hairdryer too. The orca or killer whale is a toothed whale that is an efficient predator, even attacking huge young blue whales. Their only enemy is human beings. Orcas live in small, close-knit, life-long pods and have 1 blowhole. The killer whale belongs to the family of dolphins and is the biggest dolphin. It is sometimes called the "wolf of the sea" because its behavior is similar to that of wolves.
Orcas grow to be about 27-33 feet (8-10 m) long, weighing more than 8,000-12,000 pounds (3.600-5.400 kg). The male orca is larger than the female. They are the largest member of the dolphin family. The Orca's skin is mostly black with distinctive white patches. Orcas have stocky bodies and a rounded head with a distinctive beak. They have a tall, falcate (sickle-shaped) dorsal fin and large, paddle-like flippers. The dorsal fin of the male is taller (up to 6 ft tall) and more upright than that of the female (whose dorsal fin is up to 4 ft tall). Orcas are efficient hunters that eat a very diverse diet of fish, squid, sharks, marine mammals (including whales and seals), turtles, octopi, and birds (penguins and gulls). They have even been known to attack young blue whales and other large whales. They have 10-13 pairs of large, interlocking conical, enameled teeth distributed in BOTH the upper and lower jaws (for a total of 20 to 26 pairs, so the orca has from 40 to 52 teeth). The teeth curve inwards and backwards - this helps the orca catch its prey. Teeth average about 3 inches (7.6 cm) long and about 1 inch in diameter, but some are even longer. Members of a pod frequently cooperate in hunts. An average-sized orca will eat 551 pounds (250 kg) of food a day. Orcas live in small pods of 6-40 whales; they are very social animals. The bonds between the close-knit members of Orca pods are strong and last for life. The members of a pod hunt together in a very sophisticated manner, attacking even very large prey and then sharing it. The pod members protect the young, the sick and the injured. Orcas can dive to a depth of 100 feet (30 m) in order to hunt. Orcas commonly breach (swim at very fast speeds toward the surface in order to rise above the surface of the water and then fall back onto the surface, splashing and making noise). Spyhopping (poking the head out of the water to look around) and tail slapping are also common orca activities. The purpose of these activities is unknown. Orcas are very fast swimmers. They can swim up to 30 mph (48 km) in bursts in order to catch prey. Male orcas have a life expectancy of 50-60 years. Females have a life expectancy of 90 years. Heat is the energy that flows from a warmer substance to a cooler one. Touch something warm and the energy flows into your hand. This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Heat is the thermal energy of a substance or how fast the atoms are moving or vibrating. There is not a max temperature. Solids change to liquid, liquid to gas and in space gas to plasma as the atoms loose there electrons and a cloud of electrically charged particles form. There is an absolote zero though, this is where atoms lose all of there kinetic energy. The third law states we cannot reach absolute zero.
We'll experiment with frozen gas, CO2. We'll eperiment with chemical reactions that release heat, light or sound - exothermic and those that absorb heat - endothermic. The students will take home zinc sulfide that glows and produces cool light. We'll make glowing putty. You canexperiment to make your own cool chemistry at home. A magician performs a trick so quickly that you can't determine how they did it. A good magician never does a trick twice.
A scientist wants you to understand and learn how things work. They will repeat until you understand. In this weeks class I'll perform some classic tricks and experiments and explain how it works. A potato is a tuber. A tuber is a plant structure which saves energy for the parent plant; tubers can also be used for vegetative reproduction by most plant species which form tubers. This differentiates tubers from roots; roots are capable of taking up energy, but they cannot store it, and they also cannot be used for propagation. Many cultures eat tubers, because of their stored energy and dense, fleshy texture. The best-known example of an edible tuber may be the potato, a South American plant which has been cultivated for food for thousands of years.
There are two forms of tubers: stem tubers, and root tubers. Stem tubers form from underground stems known as rhizomes; potatoes and begonias are both stem tubers. Stem tubers are closely related to corms like cassava, which form when the stems of their parent plants swell. Root tubers are formed when sections of the root swell and bud; cassavas and dahlias are two familiar examples. A sweet potato vine is easy to grow. Take it home and set the potato where it will get lots of sun and wait for it to grow. Normally within just days you’ll begin to notice shoots starting to grow from the potato. Within a week or so there should be roots growing down into the water and you should have more shoots growing up out of the potato. It’s a good idea to change the water about once per week, stale water might start attracting gnats or other insects. You can actually just keep the vine growing in water, but if you want you can transplant it into soil after about three weeks. Just carefully remove the potato, remove the toothpicks and plant it in a pot that is large enough to completely bury the potato. You’ll be really surprised at what a beautiful house plant a sweet potato can become. With it’s purple colored stems and leaves mixed with green it’s a really pretty vine A balloon is an inflatable flexible bag filled with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. Modern balloons can be made from materials such as rubber, latex, polychloroprene, or a nylon fabric, while some early balloons were made of dried animal bladders, such as the pig bladder.[1] Some balloons are used for decorative purposes, while others are used for practical purposes such as meteorology, medical treatment, military defense, or transportation. A balloon's properties, including its low density and low cost, have led to a wide range of applications. The inventor of the rubber balloon, (the most common balloon) was Michael Faraday in 1824, via experiments with various gases.
The concept behind the Balloon Powered Car is pretty simple, but that doesn't make it any less impressive! When you blow up the balloon, set your racer down, and let it go, escaping air from the balloon rushes out of the straw causing propulsion. The principle at work is Newton's Third Law of Motion, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the case of the Balloon Powered Car, the action is the air rushing from the straw. The reaction is the movement of the car! The moving Balloon Powered Car has kinetic energy, but even an object that isn't moving has energy. This energy is called potential energy. The potential energy of the car is in the elastic material of the balloon. As the balloon fills with air, it builds more potential energy. As the air flows from the balloon, it changes to kinetic energy. This is the conservation of energy. The baloon helicopter works in the same way but doesn't have to contend with friction of the table. |
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