Hex Bug

Hello people. During Memorial Day, I went camping on a boyscout trip. One kid from another troop was selling these toys to sponsor his robotics team. These toys are called Hex Bugs. Hex Bugs are these robotic ants that travel on wheels with a flip of a switch, but also demonstrate Newtonian Laws. Newton one said, "For every action, there is an oposite and equal reaction." Well, on the robotic bugs, there are sensors on the antennae and some wire in the back so that if the sensors come in contact with something, like a hand, the bug's direction will reverse. These toys are really neat, and I would be glad to share it with our class.

Hi everybody! This is my hurricane project. There is a link to my Blabberize videos since I could not embed it into my real action movies. Enjoy!

http://blabberize.com/mystuff

Lit. Poems

"Accordion's Music"

Accordion
Large, antique

Bellowing, playing, pumping

Eric's, musical, free, audible

Captivating, soothing, exciting

Creative, entertaining
Music

"Red"
Accordions are black,
Snow men are white;
Red is the color
Of Hans' ghost light

Yellow is pea soup,
Brown is coffee;
Red is the blood
On Rudy's beaten knee.

Pink is a saukerl,
The Amper is blue;
Frau Diller's red candy
Is too hard to chew.

By Ben Atwater

Aquarium Trip

Last Friday, we went to the Adventure Aquarium. I saw many vibrant lifeforms unknown to me until that day, such as a prod, which a shrimp like crustacean. One of my favorite aspects of the trips was that they had many touch tanks in which we could touch different marine organisms. We could touch starfish, sea cucumbers, jellyfish, rays, sharks, horseshoe crabs and sharks. My personal favorite organism to touch were the rays. Some felt fuzzy, but others felt bumpy. Unfortunately, the hippopatami were asleep when we visited, but I got to witness a symbiotic relationship. As the hippos were sleeping in the water, dozens of fish were feeding of the algae on the hippos. So, the hippos were cleaned and the fish were fed, demonstrating mutualism. I also learned that jellyfish actually eat fish as their primary diet. I was surprised at the size of some of the cnidarians. Some of the jely fish's tentacle's looked well over three feet long. Well, I would not want to be in that tank!

Popcorn Lab

In class today, we did a popcorn lab. We cooked popcorn in two ways: radiation and convection. In radiation, we used a microwave. We put a bag of corn kernels in a microwave for one minute and thirty seconds. Now, we've all made popcorn hundreds of times in our lives, but I never thought of the science in it. When I made it in the microwave, the process of radiation took place. The radiation from the microwave heats up the kernels and surrounding kernels in a process called "double heating". After a certain point, the heat expands the kernels to a point where they "pop" to form popcorn. The kernel expodes out, so to speak. In the convection stlye, we used a hot air popper to make the movie munchie. However, the way the popcorn formed is through convection, not radiation. We put the popcorn in the hot-air popper and turned on the heat. The hot air rose to the kernels, and after tranferring enough heat, the kernels popped. This is the process of convection at work in an everyday life aspect. In both cases, this is a much healthier way to have popcorn. If you make your own popcorn, there are no added fats or preseratives and it is much healthier to eat.

Class Response

In school a few days ago, we dissected frogs. I personally enjoyed the process, but dissections have always been a very controversial topic. There has always been debate about the value of life for these specimens. Several animal rights activists have held rallies to slander this practice. According to the World Conservation Union, one third of the world's amphibians face extinction. This could be due to the practice of dissection, but there are many other factors that contribute to this decrease. However, for students who don't want to dissect, there are excellent digital dissections that can be found on the web. Dr. Gaunt of PBS says, "I think it's a great idea. A lot of good things could benefit from it. One popular program called Visifrog has been a great sucess in schools across the globe. Above is an image of one of the virtual frog dissections and it still maintains the visual effect and not the smell.:) Personally, I think that students should have a right to choose if they feel comfortable or not dissecting a frog. Often, religion stands in the way and in which case the student should be required to do a virtual dissection. No matter how you choose to dissect, the purpose in doing so is to aquire knowledge, not to have fun. Many cruel individuals will cut open animals for entertainment and that is wrong.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/speakout/science/jan-june08/dissection_4-11.html

Bosnia War Stats and Numbers

Fifteen years ago in Bosnia, an ethnic group called the Serbs killed a
anyone that defied them. About 250,000 people died, whether it be the Bosnian-Muslims, Croats, Serbs or NATO troops. The conflict was that Yugoslavia broke apart and the Serbs wanted it to stay together. Bosnia, one of the new countries that were formed, is 37% Serb, 14% Croat, and 48% Bosniak, or Bosnian-Muslim, totaling the population at 4,377,053 in 1991 at the start of the war. The new size of independent Bosnia and Herzegovina is 19,767 square miles. The independent Croatia is 21,851 square miles and the population is 4,437,460 as of 2001. The new Serbia is 34,116 square miles with a population of 7,334,935 in 2000. These numbers are significantly smaller than former Yugoslavia and shows that math truly is involved in the world.

Jellyfish: Cnidarians(class response)

In class, we learned about cnidarians. I was fascinated by the interesting cnidarian known as the jellyfish. Now, I've seen Spongebob and I know that jellyfish sting. Yet I thought it was cool to find out more about them. One particular aspect that is cool is their reproductive cycle. A male jellyfish releases sperm and the sperm grows into a polyp on a rock. Then, parts of the polyp break off and swim away from relatively stationary polyp. Another interesting fact is that when plant fertilizer gets into water, it can mutate the jellyfish into much larger jellyfish. There are some jellyfish that can glow, just like fireflies. Overall, I think that jellyfish are pretty interesting for such a simple life form.