Thursday, May 5, 2016

Birds

 
Birds are amazing winged animals that have very intricate designs. Many birds that are kept as pets prefer to have a "friend', so that it doesn't get lonely while its owner is away. Hummingbirds lay the smallest eggs. Ostriches lay the largest. Penguins are the only birds that swim but don't fly. They are also the only birds that walk upright.
 
Owls can turn their heads almost 360 degrees, but they cannot move their eyes. Birds' eyes take up about 50% of their head. Humans' eyes take up about 5% of our head. Males usually have the prettier coloring, better feather shapes, and more beautiful songs to attract mates.
 
The first bird domesticated by a human being was the goose. Birds eat twice their weight each day. So when people say "you eat like a bird", it usually isn't the truth. Chickens that lay brown eggs have red earlobes. Mockingbirds can imitate naturally-parrots have to be taught to do so. Though mockingbirds can't talk like parrots can learn to, they can mimic many different sounds.  Info Credit

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Flexible, Paper Sculptures



These are flexible, paper sculptures. They are able to do this because it is made from thousands of sheets of paper glued together in a special way. It is made of parallel lines of glue and then a sheet of paper is added and then another parallel lines of glue and another piece of paper is added and this is done over and over again. When it is finished and dried, the artist can carve it out to create a sculpture that moves and can be pulled apart.

Liquid Earth


This is weird grass on a golf course. There are two layers underneath this grass. On the top, there is a layer of topsoil containing sand and slit. Underneath, there is a layer of clay made up of particles 1000 times small than a grain of sand. After a heavy rain, water can get through the top soil layer because of its larger particles and gaps in between them but when it reaches the clay layer it cannot. The clay layer is smaller and more dense so the water gets trapped at that level until it can't fill anymore. The rainwater is unable to penetrate the clay layer which is called waterlogging. This is what creates the liquid effect of the ground.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Mind Blowing Fact About Atoms!

This is an image of the Atlantic ocean which is huge. Now in your head imagine it being measured in teaspoons. That would be a very big number. Did you know that one teaspoon of water has more atoms than there are teaspoons in the Atlantic ocean? In one teaspoon there are 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules, and each of these is made of three atoms. If you lined all of these atoms end to end you would get 50 billion km which is 10 times the width of our solar system.

photo credit

SO MUCH DNA!!!!!!!!!!

Did you know that in your body there is enough DNA to go from the sun to Pluto and back 17 times!
DNA is a code in our bodies that is responsible for how our body operates. It controls how we grow what functions our organs do and how we differ from others.The human cell contains 23 DNA molecules each containing between 500,000 to 2,500,000 nucleotide pairs. When uncoiled these molecules are 5 cm long on average. In our bodies there are 37,000,000,000,000 (trillion) cells. So if you uncoil all of the DNA in your body and lay it end to end the distance it would stretch over would be 200,000,000,000,000 meters long which is enough to complete thee round trip from Pluto to the sun about 17 times. ( the round trip is 12,000,000,000,000  which if you divide the 2 distances would give you 16.6666666666667 round trips)

Photo Credit

Daddy Long Legs




In Puebla, New Mexico, some biologists might call this creepy. The ball isn't really a ball. This ball are Harvestmen or otherwise known as Daddy Long Legs. Daddy longs legs aren't spiders but are closely related. They are combined in this video to form a ball of fluff called an aggregate. They spend their nights hungtin and in the daytime they huddle close together for protection and defense. When you touch this ball they scatter to confuse their predators. It's called the dilution effect.

Dry Ice




Dry ice is carbon dioxide in solid form. The temperature for carbon dioxide to become a solid is at least -109.3 degree F. When the dry ice is exposed to room temperature it changes from a solid directly to a gas which is called sublimation; it bypasses the liquid phase. The sudden drop in temperature causes water vapor to condense into tiny droplets, or fog.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

How does smog affect your vision?



If you've ever had  smoke blown in your eyes
you know it can dry out your eyes and
it makes you very irritated. It's something
you generally want to avoid smog. If you
hadn't known already by the 12,000 plus
times we blink on average a day, we blink
because our eyes need moisture almost
constantly. Smog is something that causes
ours to get very irritated and can, if long 
enough, cause some vision problems.

In Beijing, China they have one of the highest
smog pollution rates in the world and they have
many people who have medical problems from
this pollution. Imagine smoke getting blown in
your eyes right now, then Imagine living in Beijing
and having that same feeling frequently. Doesn't feel
good does it? Well smog isn't good for your eyes 
and you should stay away from it as much as possible.