For our experiments we used vinegar and baking soda to create a reaction.

To set up our experiment we used a 100mL flask, a 250 mL flask, and a 100 mL graduated cylinder.

We used glass and surgical tubing to connect the flasks and the cylinder together.

The first flask was for the baking soda and vinegar reaction, the second flask was for the liquid we were measuring, and the graduated cylinder was for the liquid to be pushed into to measure.

Here is an example of the set up we used.

Each group in our class did a different experiment.  My group’s experiment was to see if the amount that the vinegar was diluted made a difference to the amount of liquid that ended up in the graduated cylinder at the end.

Each time we did the experiment, air bubbles would blow into the last cylinder when there was no more water to push through so we could tell the reaction was still happening and if there was an unlimited amount of water in the second flask, a lot more water would have ended up the the cylinder.  Because of this, in the end we came to the conclusion that the amount we diluted the vinegar didn’t change the amount of liquid passed through to the graduated cylinder.

As a class our challenge was to end up with 15 ml of alcohol in the graduated cylinder. We had 40 minutes and 1 try to get the experiment right.  We gathered all the groups data and went over what had affected the amount of liquid passing through the most.  We realized that it was the amount of vinegar that changed the amount of pressure created.  We did some calculations and decided to try 1.75 ml of vinegar and .2 grams of baking soda to make our reaction.  We did the experiment and ended up with 15.5 ml of alcohol in the cylinder at the end.  We were successful!

Some problems we had were that some groups did not take very good data so it was hard to figure out what to do for the class experiment because we didn’t know exactly what they used and exactly what happened as a result of that.  Another problem encountered was that not everybody wanted to help with the group experiment and they left a couple people to do most of the work.

I learned that chemical reactions produce gas, atleast the vinegar and baking soda reaction did.  Because we had the reaction in a closed container it created pressure that forced the water out of the second flask and into the cylinder. Also, I learned that anything can come in a solid, liquid, or gas form depending on what temperature it is.

If we were to do this experiment again, in my group I would have started by using the same dilutedness of vinegar that everyone else was using and building from there instead of starting out with 100% concentrated vinegar.  In our whole class, I would try to involve everyone a little more and try to step back so others could do some of the experiment too.

There are many things I would like to learn in chemistry this year.

-dictionary.com

• Why some chemicals have reactions when you combine them
• What a chemical is
• Things you are supposed to do with chemicals
• What a chemist does
• Why chemistry and the periodic table are important
• How to conduct a good reliable experiment
• How to think of good questions
• Lab safety
• Jobs in the science career path
• How chemistry will help me in my life
• Current issues and debates going on in chemistry
• New discoveries in chemistry

“Neuroscientists Take One Step Closer To Reading Your Mind”

Have you ever thought it would be cool to be able to read someone else’s mind?  In science, Eleanor Maguire has come one step closer to being able to do that.

Eleanor “has used fMRI scans, interpreted by a computer algorithm, to pick out the patterns of brain activity that indicate whether a person is remembering one movie versus another.”

Her and her team picked a crew of 10 people.  They then showed them 3 different movies, about seven seconds long each.  They were of a different actress doing different simple tasks.  When the movies were over they team asked the group of people to remember each movie separately, so they could see what their brain activity looked like while remembering each movie.  The activity they saw in the hippocampus (a major component of the brain important for long-term memory) stayed consistent for each movie throughout the experiment and was similar between separate individuals.

However, the computer was not able to predict what movie the individual was thinking about every time.  The computer had a 40-45% accuracy level which is about 10% above the accuracy level of a blind guess would be.

I think that it is pretty amazing that there are ways (even if not very accurate) to tell what people are thinking on a simple level, however i doubt that it will ever get more complex than that.  I believe it would be terrible if it ever got to be to the point where everyone could know what everyone else was thinking because sometimes people need to be able to keep things to themselves that not everyone needs to know.  It is pretty cool though that it is possible to tell what people are thinking.

Scientists say that the ability to tell what someone is thinking is progressing with remarkable speed.  Maybe it is only a matter of time before everyone can tell what you’re thinking.

Link to Article: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/03/12/neuroscientists-take-one-step-closer-to-reading-your-mind/

1. Why is this species important to the ecosystem?

Komodo Dragons are important to the ecosystem because they are the only carnivore on Komodo Island, where they live.  They keep the other animals populations from becoming out of control.

2. What would happen to the ecosystem if it were removed?

Pro: The herbivores on the island would have a better chance of survival because there would be nothing to eat them.

Con: The island would overpopulate with the herbivores because nothing would be killing them off.

3. What other organisms do Komodo Dragons affect?

Pro: Komodo Dragons affect their prey.  If they were to go extinct the prey could live without being eaten and have a better chance at survival.

Con: Komodo Dragons affect their prey.  If they were to go extinct the prey would overpopulate, run out of food, and probably become extinct, too.

4. What is man’s role in causing Komodo Dragons to go extinct?

Pro: Man has raised awareness about the Komodo Dragons and made laws to protect them.

Con: Man has captured Komodo Dragons for it’s skin and teeth and to take to zoo’s.  Also, man visits Komodo National Park and causes the dragons distress and destroys their natural habitat.

5. What role do national governments play in this debate?

Pro: National governments have made Komodo Island a national park and made it illegal to kill the dragons.

Con: National governments encourage tourism and have used Komodo Island as a money-making decision instead of a decision to protect the dragons.

6. What should be done to save Komodo Dragons?

Pro: Governments should make it illegal to set foot on Komodo Island and relocate the people who live there because the dragons need to be saved, the whole ecosystem would be ruined without them.

Con: The government should just leave the Komodo Dragons alone and not do anything different.  They should just let them go extinct because that is the ways of the world; species go extinct and new one’s are found.

Works Cited

“Dragons (Agamidae Family of Lizards).” Komodo Dragons. 18 Feb. 2010. Reptiles <http://www.komododragon.biz/Agamidae Family of Lizards>

“Komodo Dragon.” National Geographic. 17 Feb. 2010. <http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/komodo-dragons.html>

“Komodo Dragons.” Bali Bird Park Magazine. Oct. 1998. Friends of Komodo. 18 Fed. 2010. <http://baliwww.com/bali-bird-park/44.htm

Scientific Name: Varanus Komodoensis

Habitat: lives on the Indonesia Lesser Sunda Islands.  It lives in hot dry conditions with not much vegetation.  The islands are very mountainous.  The Komodo Dragons live near the ocean on the islands because they can swim from one island to another.  There are many droughts on the islands, it’s dry almost all year around.  For shelter, Komodo Dragons dig burrows in the dirt to sleep in at night.   These islands are the only place the Komodo Dragon is found in the world (excluding zoo’s).

Diet: Komodo Dragons are carnivorous.  They eat almost any living animal on their island.  Their diet consists of carrion, deer, pigs, and smaller dragons.  Komodo Dragons have even been known to prey upon and eat humans.   The way they catch their prey is they sit motionless for hours on end until a small animal walks by then the Komodo Dragon snatches them with it’s mouth or claws.

Predators: The Komodo Dragon is the apex predator on the islands, meaning that nothing is a threat to the dragon (besides humans).  It is on the top of the food chain.

Population Size: There are only around 3,000 to 5,000 Komodo Dragons left in the wild.

Other Animals in the Same Family: Komodo Dragons are Agmids, which is part of the lizard family.  Agmids are usually known as dragons or old world iguanas.  Some related lizards are:  the Chameleon Dragon, the Bearded Dragon, and Thorny Devils.

Adaptations to Enviroment: Komodo Dragons have developed a forked tongue to be able to detect the smell of decaying flesh kilometers away from where it is.  Also, they have adapted to be able to eat 60% of their body weight in one sitting because sometimes they don’t get meals very often and they can extract 80% of they water they need from their prey in times of drought on the island.  They have adapted over time to have deadly venom in their saliva to help them kill their prey since they can’t make many high-speed attacks.

Other Interesting Facts: The movie “King Kong” was loosely based on the first time man found a Komodo Dragon.

Komodo Dragons are known to prey on people and actually eat the villagers on their islands, even when the people are not bothering the dragons.

Works Cited

“Dragons (Agamidae Family of Lizards).” Komodo Dragons. 18 Feb. 2010. Reptiles http://www.komododragon.biz/Agamidea Family of Lizards

“Komodo Dragon.” National Geographic. com. 2010. National Geographic. 17 Feb. 2010. http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/komodo-dragons.html

“Komodo Dragons.” Bali Bird Park Magazine. Oct. 1998. Friends of Komodo. 18 Feb. 2010.  http://baliwww.com/bali-bird-park/44.htm

Questions:

Did the war affect the spread of influenza?

How many people died?

How many nurses were recruited?

How long was the influenza?

What started the influenza?

How many people lived through the influenza?

Why is it called the Spanish Flu?

What did the flu do to the body?

Question we will answer:  How many people died because of the influenza?

“The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people…an estimated 675,oo0 Americans died ot influenza during the pandemic.”

-http://virus.sanford.edu/uda/

To us this quote means that 20 to 40 million people died world wide and 675,000 Americans died because of the influenza.

This is a picture of a hospital in America, full of hundreds of people ill with the 1918 infuenza.  Most of them would go on to die within a couple of hours.

http://www.squido.com/spanish-flu

1. What did you learn about designing an experiment?

I learned that when you design an experiment you have to be really clear on what your variables are so you are only testing one thing.  You need to ask a question and make a hypothesis so you know what you are testing and why.  Also, you must make sure that what you want to be tested is being tested by what you are doing.  I learned that if you are using people to do your experiment on, like we did, that you both need to be very clear on what you are doing so both people will do the same thing and have accurate results.  I learned that when you plan an experiment you don’t always get the results you were hoping for.  We planned our experiment to do the center splits, but we could never do them all the way, just further than we could before.  Designing  an experiment takes a lot of planning.

2. How did your experiment affect the body system(s) involved? Why did it affect the system this way?

Our experiment affected the muscular system.  It affected it by making our muscles longer after we stretched, therefore making us moreflexible.  It affected us this way because when you stretch what is happening is that the actin and myosin in your muscles are working together to make your muscles longer.  The myosins attach to the actins and slide them as far over as they can, lengthening the muscle.  They will heal this way and the next time you stretch you will be able the lengthen them even longer.

3. If you could have done it differently, how would you change your experiment?

If I could’ve done my experiment differently I would have had both people invloved stretch everyday instead of one stretching everyday and the other stretching about every other day for the same amount of days.  Also, I would have let the experiment last two weeks instead of one so we could have had more data and more accurate results.

4. Was your data reliable?

Our data was semi-reliable because we were supposed to stretch everyday and one  of us did but the other one had a few days between some of the times that we stretched.  If we both stretched everyday the data would have been more reliable.  Also, I think we should have had more than two people do the experiment so we could see other people’s results and compared them to ours for better, more reliable data.

5. What problems did you have during the experiment?  How did you address them?

Our problem was that one of us didn’t stretch everyday because she forgot.  We addressed it by reminding her forcefully and making sure she stretched everyday after that.

6. What new questions do you have about your experiment?

I would like to know how long it would take us to be able to successfully do the center splits and what all the benefits of stretching are.

We have to create our own experiment in Mr. Rices class.

The question I’m trying to answer: If I stretch everyday will I become more flexible?

The body system involved in my experiment: The musculoskeletal system.

Why I chose this experiment: I am a cheerleader and to be a cheerleader its important to be flexible, so I wanted to test ways that could help me become more flexible.

• This week I have accomplished many things. 

1. I brainstormed many questions about possible experiments I could do.

2. I then narrowed it down to one question that could be answered by an experiment and that I was the most interested in.

3. After that, I started researching what strethches I could do to make my legs more flexible.

4. Finally, I researched the body system that my experiment involved and what stretching does to that body system.

• This week I learned many things about the musculoskelatol system. 

1. I learned that you can hurt your muscles by not stretching in the correct way.

2. I learned that good stretching can prevent injuries and make your athletic performance better.

3. I learned that the musculoskeletal system provides protection for your internal organs.

4. I learned that muscles are attached to the bones by tendons.

5. Finally, I learned that muscles are what allows your body to move.

Hence, that is everything I have worked on in biology this week and all about the first experiment I designed on my own.

This year in biology I hope to learn many things.

1. I would like to learn how to disect something and know what the body parts are.
2. I want to learn how people can use chemicals to make something the same as what a body would do, such as steroids.                                                                                                         
3. I want to learn about single cell organisms and how they survive without a brain.
4. I would like to learn about humans and how our body works the way it does.
5. I would like to learn about diseases and what they do to our bodies.
6. I want to learn about why combining some chemicals make strange reactions.

I have learned many things in biology so far this year.

• I learned how steroids work.
  • They go into your body and go into the cell nucleus.
  • There they tell the DNA to make more protein which results in the muscles growing faster.

• I learned the steps to the scientific method and how to create a good experiment.
  • First, find a problem.
  • Next, find out information about the problem you have.
  • After that, make a hypothesis about your problem that you can answer with an expirement and distinguish your variables.
  • Then, complete the experiment that you planned with the hypothesis.
  • Following that, record the data that you found from your experiment.
  • Finally, write a detailed conclusion about what you learned and if your hypothesis was supported or not.  Also including any new questions the experiment made you think of.  Share the results.

• I learned that warmer water contains less oxygen than cold water so stoneflies do “push-ups” (moving their body up and down with their arms) to get the water to flow through their gills better so they can breathe and get enough oxygen when the water in their environment is too warm.  This picture of a stonefly, the kind we did experiments on, are the larvae of the adult which actually looks like a fly.

Now you see all the major things I have learned this year in 9th grade biology.