In the summer the warm sun makes you feel joyful and happy. In the winter (or on a rainy day) it’s the complete opposite, things are nowhere near as cheerful and it can be kind of gloomy. It’s because sunlight helps your body increase serotonin levels and decrease melatonin levels. Serotonin has been linked to states of wakefulness and good mood, while melatonin is a hormone that controls sleep. Being in the sun also increases the body’s production of vitamin D. Vitamin D helps the body maintain serotonin levels. The final fact is- sunlight helps your mood be better. No wonder summer seems to feel like such a nice time to be outside.
I found an old piece of chocolate in the back of the cabinet earlier. It looked funny, it had kind of a white/gray color to the outside of it (it wasn’t mold). Why does that happen? It can either be the result of sugar bloom or fat bloom. What’s that? Well sugar bloom is usually caused by surface moisture that causes the sugar in the chocolate to dissolve. When the humidity evaporates it causes tiny crystals to be left on the surface of the chocolate, thus giving the chocolate a discolored look. Fat bloom is also caused by moisture but it’s not the sugar separating from the chocolate but in this case it's the cocoa butter (fat) that travels to the surface of the chocolate.
This is a chemical reaction.
I was at my grandparents today and noticed a picture of them from 10 years ago pasted on the fridge. The main thing I noticed was that my grandparents today had a lot more white hair then they did before. Why does hair turn gray and later white? It has to do with the amount of melanin in your hair. Melanin is a type of pigment that gives color to your hair and skin. When hair begins to turn white there is less melanin in the hair. Why the hair loses pigmentation like this is unclear but it occurs naturally and is controlled by your genes. The gene MC1R is known to be associated to pigment production. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-hair-turn-gray
4/26/10
Suppose you crumple up a piece of paper that you worked on. If you smooth it back out it refused to look back like the way it was (when it was all nice and straight). You wonder, “Why does this happen?” I think I have an answer.
Paper is made up of the pulp and fibers of items such as trees. These pulp/fibers are mashed together, pressed, and dried into the thin pieces of material you all know as paper. When you crinkle the paper together and crumple into up into a ball, you loosen up the bonds between the individual fibers and you bend the fibers into a different position. Since the fibers have shifted position, the paper won’t return to its original look when smoothed out. (This can be said as action-reaction: for every action made there is a different effect.)
4/20/10
Recently I noticed that the clips on my laptop case have kind of an orangey tinge to it. They didn’t use to look like that. This is a chemical reaction. Sometimes I walk outside with my laptop when it’s rainy outside. The water makes the laptop case get pretty wet so I assume the orangey tinge is probably just the littlest bit of rust. When the water touched the metal it reacts with the oxygen in the air, it oxides and turns the metal a brown-orange color. Since the change cannot be reversed (and there was a change in color) it can be proved as a chemical reaction.
4/14/10
When you burn something, it tastes bad. Why? Well some of the yummy sugars and fats and other ingredients in the food that if heated to a point they can either liquefy and evaporate leaving behind the stuff that doesn’t evaporate that tastes bad from the lack of good tasting ingredients or (like sugar for example) when it is heated it reacts with oxygen and ‘oxidizes’ and also tastes bad. All the water in the food also begins to evaporate to longer you cook it. When something beings to burn it doesn’t have enough water in it and it turns all black and over-crispy (look it’s a chemical change).
Why is that when you place a radio/clock next to a plasma TV or some other electronic device you begin to hear a faint “buzzing” noise? It’s because each electronic device emits their own EM (electromagnetic) field, no matter how small. When the devices are close enough together that EM fields overlap it causes those fields to change, making them fluctuate or perhaps disrupting one. One device begins to interfere with the other. A plasma TV usually creates more EM disturbance because the plasma in the TV is really active and has a lot of energy and electrons that fly outward.
4/1/10
Microwaves vs. toasters, which is better? That’s personal opinion; it depends on what you’re cooking too. If you want bread to be semi-moist and soft, you stick it in the microwave. If you want bread to be hard and crisp, stick it in a toaster. The bread turns out this way because of the way the machines function. In a microwave, waves of energy are sent out that make the water molecules in your food excited. The water molecules rub together, heating up your food. The water molecules don’t evaporate very much, thus keeping your food moist. In a toaster you heat the air in the toaster up, thus heating the food in the toaster; the heat makes water evaporate thus making your food drier then what went in. Make sense?
3/25/10
When you play a stringed instrument you make sound. I bet you already knew that. But how does each string produce a different noise when you pluck, pull your bow across it? You can evidently see that each string is a different size (or perhaps) length but how does it make different noises. Different strings, when played, produce sound in the form of longitudinal waves (although the vibrations of the strings are like transverse wave). The thicker the string, the slower it vibrated, thus thicker strings produce waves that have a lower frequency. The longer the sting, the slower it vibrates and it also produces waves with a lower frequency. The lower the frequency the lower the note sounds, the higher the frequency the higher the note sounds. Thus these facts of science allow for stringed instruments to produce different noises.
3/18/10
What happens if you drop a little magnet into your computer? Not a good thing. All the computer chips and electronic devices will behave differently because of the magnetic field that the magnet generates (no matter how small). That magnetic field disrupts the electric currents in the computer, and attracts anything that’s metal, messing with the sensitive circuits in your computer. Now you need to get the magnet out of your computer, how you plan to do that I don’t know, but you don’t want to use an electromagnetic. All you will succeed in doing is wipe your hard drive (inside joke). (That’s because an electromagnets magnetic field is strong enough to realign tiny parts in your hard drive, making it loose all the data it holds.)
3/11/10
How much do you know about substances that are so cold that they almost reach absolute zero? Of course, everything has a little heat in it since scientists have not been able to reach the absolute zero of 0K. The closest they have gotten is 0.0000000001 degrees K (give or take a few zeros). But, the coldest substance on Earth is liquid helium. Liquid helium is only 5 degrees hotter than absolute zero. It is used in MRI technology because of its ability to cool objects so that they’re superconductive. Now imagine cooling helium down even colder to about 1-2 degrees K hotter than absolute zero, helium would then become a superfluid. Superfluids have really strange properties; it’s really hard to understand how they work. They are part of the 5th state of matter, Boise-Einstein Condensate. I know that when a substance becomes a superfluid, the atoms in the substance gains wavelike properties. They overlap each other, and then they suffer an “identity crisis”. All the atoms will begin to behave as one rather than behave like independent atoms. I have heard that scientists plan to use this state of matter to create quantum computers which, if they work, would be able to compute things simultaneously and many times faster than any computer today. http://www.pa.msu.edu/sciencet/ask_st/012992.html http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/NadyaDillon.shtml
3/2/10
I have just learned about AC and DC currents in electricity. AC is alternating current, DC is direct current. Both types of electricity are useful in their own ways. AC current is capable in holding onto more electrons, so over long distance wires not many electrons are lost. But, AC has its downside. In AC current the direction of electrons in constantly changing direction, moving back and forth 60 times a second. That leaves those tiny amounts of time where an object being powered by the electricity isn’t receiving any power. An object like a laptop (for instance) doesn’t run on AC power because if the electricity powering the computer is cut off for microscopic seconds, the computer would be suffering serious function problems. That’s where DC current comes in. DC current travels in one direction only and thus objects will always be receiving power. But, DC current quickly loses many of its electrons when traveling over a long distance; so DC power cannot be carried over power lines.
Short history lesson:
DC current was theorized before AC current by a Thomas Edison. He tried to get support for his theory of DC current but DC current was having problems holding onto electrons over long distances, which was a big down side for this theory. When AC current was theorized by George Westinghouse, it was more popular because of its use over long range. DC current wasn’t paid too much attention too for this reason. Later in the future, people discovered a need for DC current and the idea was put to good use. http://www.topbits.com/who-invented-electricity.html
2/23/10
The world is full of simple machines. You can find one in every room; they’re part of everyday life. If you’ve ever fallen down the stairs, you’ve fallen down an inclined plane (not that I have ever did that). Laptops have simple machines in them. When you move your laptop screen you are turning a lever. The fulcrum is the point where the screen meets the computer, the load is the screen, and the effort is where you grab the screen. This is a second class lever.
2/18/10
Ever wonder why bread rises? It’s because of little yeast particles in the bread. When the bread is baked, the yeast feeds of the sugar in the bread. Yeast particles transform that sugar into energy for itself, via chemical reactions. As an aftermath, the yeast also produces carbon dioxide forming bubbles in the bread. Those bubbles are trapped inside the bread; since they take up space the bread must expand outward, creating the rising action bread is associated with. The yeast then die from the heat in the oven as it is cooked.
2/9/10
This blog entry will be about glow sticks. When you use a glow stick, you see an obvious chemical reaction. Every glow stick has two different chemicals inside of it; each held in its own separate area. One chemical is in a tube which is located inside another tube where another chemical is held. When the glow stick is bent, the tube inside breaks which releases the chemical inside to combine with the other chemical in the outer tube. When these two chemicals mix, a chemical reaction occurs. Thus the otherwise dull item begins to light up and glow. How do I know this was a chemical reaction? When a change is color happens, and you cannot reverse this change, it is signs of a chemical reaction. Different glow sticks light up in different colors; and this varies depending on the type of chemicals found inside the glow stick.
2/3/10
Have you ever noticed that the charger used to charge laptops gets hot during use? Where does that heat come from? I think it has to do with the transformation of energy. When electrical energy comes out of a power outlet, it must go through a charger before entering your laptop. As energy enters a charger, more energy enters than is needed to run your laptop. That’s because your charger “removes” some of the energy, making a lower voltage enter your computer. That “removed” energy gets transformed from electrical energy into heat energy. That heat energy makes the charger warm to touch.
1/28/10
Painting has to do with science. The paint I will be talking about in this entry is liquid paint. When you paint something, you change the amount of friction of the object you are painting. Example: If you paint glass, then its surface will become rough. Thus there will be more friction when something moves across it. The paint also goes through a physical change. When the paint is first applied it is wet. After awhile the paint will dry and the water in the paint evaporates into the air.
1/19/10
The unit in PE that I did was volleyball. I realized that when you play volleyball, there are many changes in energy. When you hit the volleyball, your body uses chemical energy. When your arms impact the ball, that chemical energy gets transferred into sound and kinetic energy. The kinetic energy allows the ball to go flying over the net. As the ball goes up the ball slowly has less kinetic energy and more potential energy. At the peak of its rise, the volleyball’s has the least kinetic energy and the most potential energy. If the ball hits the floor then any remaining kinetic energy gets transferred into sound energy and the ball no longer has any energy. If the ball gets hit by someone, then the process starts all over again.
1/13/10
I remember when I was in 6th grade and there was fitness Friday in PE. One thing where was to do was a rope climb with a thick rope. When I slid down too fast, the rope burned into my fingers and it hurt really badly. Upon looking at my hands I saw they were red and sore. This result was because of friction. The rope has a lot of little course fibers in it so its surface was uneven, thus it creates a lot of friction when it rubs against something (slideing friction). Lots of friction equals a lot of heat energy being transformed from kinetic energy (transformation of energy). Ouch! Large amounts of heat burns, so that’s why the rope hurt to slide down on.
1/6/10
Yesterday I was walking home from school on a rainy day. The ground was completely wet. When I stepped on a metal grate/panel, my foot slid around on the panel. I wondered to myself, “why is metal slippery in the rain”. I reckon that it has to do with friction. Since there was water on the panel, it reduced the friction between my shoe and the panel. Since there was less friction, my foot did not grip the panel as it otherwise would, and my foot slid.
1/1/2010
One day I took a chilled bottle of apple juice out of the refrigerator. I held it for over 5 minutes. Soon my fingers were wet. The surface of the bottle was covered in water. Even the label was starting to fall off. It was because the water vapor in the air came in contact with the cold bottle and condensed; since the bottle had a temperature colder than 32oF.
12/13/09
I was glad that I learned about homogenous and heterogenous mixtures in class. Turns out that when I was reading this novel (also made a movie) called Timeline the word homogenous was used, (explaining that the universe was not absolutely homogenous because galaxies clumped together... etc). Knowing what the word homogenous was came in handy, had I not, I would have sat there puzzling for a while. Well, yay for science.
In the summer the warm sun makes you feel joyful and happy. In the winter (or on a rainy day) it’s the complete opposite, things are nowhere near as cheerful and it can be kind of gloomy. It’s because sunlight helps your body increase serotonin levels and decrease melatonin levels. Serotonin has been linked to states of wakefulness and good mood, while melatonin is a hormone that controls sleep. Being in the sun also increases the body’s production of vitamin D. Vitamin D helps the body maintain serotonin levels. The final fact is- sunlight helps your mood be better. No wonder summer seems to feel like such a nice time to be outside.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-nature/emotions/happiness/science/sun-happiness.htm/printable
5/10/10
I found an old piece of chocolate in the back of the cabinet earlier. It looked funny, it had kind of a white/gray color to the outside of it (it wasn’t mold). Why does that happen? It can either be the result of sugar bloom or fat bloom. What’s that? Well sugar bloom is usually caused by surface moisture that causes the sugar in the chocolate to dissolve. When the humidity evaporates it causes tiny crystals to be left on the surface of the chocolate, thus giving the chocolate a discolored look. Fat bloom is also caused by moisture but it’s not the sugar separating from the chocolate but in this case it's the cocoa butter (fat) that travels to the surface of the chocolate.
This is a chemical reaction.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question711.htm
5/3/10
I was at my grandparents today and noticed a picture of them from 10 years ago pasted on the fridge. The main thing I noticed was that my grandparents today had a lot more white hair then they did before. Why does hair turn gray and later white? It has to do with the amount of melanin in your hair. Melanin is a type of pigment that gives color to your hair and skin. When hair begins to turn white there is less melanin in the hair. Why the hair loses pigmentation like this is unclear but it occurs naturally and is controlled by your genes. The gene MC1R is known to be associated to pigment production.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-hair-turn-gray
4/26/10
Suppose you crumple up a piece of paper that you worked on. If you smooth it back out it refused to look back like the way it was (when it was all nice and straight). You wonder, “Why does this happen?” I think I have an answer.
Paper is made up of the pulp and fibers of items such as trees. These pulp/fibers are mashed together, pressed, and dried into the thin pieces of material you all know as paper. When you crinkle the paper together and crumple into up into a ball, you loosen up the bonds between the individual fibers and you bend the fibers into a different position. Since the fibers have shifted position, the paper won’t return to its original look when smoothed out. (This can be said as action-reaction: for every action made there is a different effect.)
4/20/10
Recently I noticed that the clips on my laptop case have kind of an orangey tinge to it. They didn’t use to look like that. This is a chemical reaction. Sometimes I walk outside with my laptop when it’s rainy outside. The water makes the laptop case get pretty wet so I assume the orangey tinge is probably just the littlest bit of rust. When the water touched the metal it reacts with the oxygen in the air, it oxides and turns the metal a brown-orange color. Since the change cannot be reversed (and there was a change in color) it can be proved as a chemical reaction.
4/14/10
When you burn something, it tastes bad. Why? Well some of the yummy sugars and fats and other ingredients in the food that if heated to a point they can either liquefy and evaporate leaving behind the stuff that doesn’t evaporate that tastes bad from the lack of good tasting ingredients or (like sugar for example) when it is heated it reacts with oxygen and ‘oxidizes’ and also tastes bad. All the water in the food also begins to evaporate to longer you cook it. When something beings to burn it doesn’t have enough water in it and it turns all black and over-crispy (look it’s a chemical change).
http://education.jlab.org/qa/sugar_01.html
4/5/10
Why is that when you place a radio/clock next to a plasma TV or some other electronic device you begin to hear a faint “buzzing” noise? It’s because each electronic device emits their own EM (electromagnetic) field, no matter how small. When the devices are close enough together that EM fields overlap it causes those fields to change, making them fluctuate or perhaps disrupting one. One device begins to interfere with the other. A plasma TV usually creates more EM disturbance because the plasma in the TV is really active and has a lot of energy and electrons that fly outward.
4/1/10
Microwaves vs. toasters, which is better? That’s personal opinion; it depends on what you’re cooking too. If you want bread to be semi-moist and soft, you stick it in the microwave. If you want bread to be hard and crisp, stick it in a toaster. The bread turns out this way because of the way the machines function. In a microwave, waves of energy are sent out that make the water molecules in your food excited. The water molecules rub together, heating up your food. The water molecules don’t evaporate very much, thus keeping your food moist. In a toaster you heat the air in the toaster up, thus heating the food in the toaster; the heat makes water evaporate thus making your food drier then what went in. Make sense?
3/25/10
When you play a stringed instrument you make sound. I bet you already knew that. But how does each string produce a different noise when you pluck, pull your bow across it? You can evidently see that each string is a different size (or perhaps) length but how does it make different noises. Different strings, when played, produce sound in the form of longitudinal waves (although the vibrations of the strings are like transverse wave). The thicker the string, the slower it vibrated, thus thicker strings produce waves that have a lower frequency. The longer the sting, the slower it vibrates and it also produces waves with a lower frequency. The lower the frequency the lower the note sounds, the higher the frequency the higher the note sounds. Thus these facts of science allow for stringed instruments to produce different noises.
3/18/10
What happens if you drop a little magnet into your computer? Not a good thing. All the computer chips and electronic devices will behave differently because of the magnetic field that the magnet generates (no matter how small). That magnetic field disrupts the electric currents in the computer, and attracts anything that’s metal, messing with the sensitive circuits in your computer. Now you need to get the magnet out of your computer, how you plan to do that I don’t know, but you don’t want to use an electromagnetic. All you will succeed in doing is wipe your hard drive (inside joke). (That’s because an electromagnets magnetic field is strong enough to realign tiny parts in your hard drive, making it loose all the data it holds.)
3/11/10
How much do you know about substances that are so cold that they almost reach absolute zero? Of course, everything has a little heat in it since scientists have not been able to reach the absolute zero of 0K. The closest they have gotten is 0.0000000001 degrees K (give or take a few zeros). But, the coldest substance on Earth is liquid helium. Liquid helium is only 5 degrees hotter than absolute zero. It is used in MRI technology because of its ability to cool objects so that they’re superconductive. Now imagine cooling helium down even colder to about 1-2 degrees K hotter than absolute zero, helium would then become a superfluid. Superfluids have really strange properties; it’s really hard to understand how they work. They are part of the 5th state of matter, Boise-Einstein Condensate. I know that when a substance becomes a superfluid, the atoms in the substance gains wavelike properties. They overlap each other, and then they suffer an “identity crisis”. All the atoms will begin to behave as one rather than behave like independent atoms. I have heard that scientists plan to use this state of matter to create quantum computers which, if they work, would be able to compute things simultaneously and many times faster than any computer today.
http://www.pa.msu.edu/sciencet/ask_st/012992.html
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/NadyaDillon.shtml
3/2/10
I have just learned about AC and DC currents in electricity. AC is alternating current, DC is direct current. Both types of electricity are useful in their own ways. AC current is capable in holding onto more electrons, so over long distance wires not many electrons are lost. But, AC has its downside. In AC current the direction of electrons in constantly changing direction, moving back and forth 60 times a second. That leaves those tiny amounts of time where an object being powered by the electricity isn’t receiving any power. An object like a laptop (for instance) doesn’t run on AC power because if the electricity powering the computer is cut off for microscopic seconds, the computer would be suffering serious function problems. That’s where DC current comes in. DC current travels in one direction only and thus objects will always be receiving power. But, DC current quickly loses many of its electrons when traveling over a long distance; so DC power cannot be carried over power lines.
Short history lesson:
DC current was theorized before AC current by a Thomas Edison. He tried to get support for his theory of DC current but DC current was having problems holding onto electrons over long distances, which was a big down side for this theory. When AC current was theorized by George Westinghouse, it was more popular because of its use over long range. DC current wasn’t paid too much attention too for this reason. Later in the future, people discovered a need for DC current and the idea was put to good use.
http://www.topbits.com/who-invented-electricity.html
2/23/10
The world is full of simple machines. You can find one in every room; they’re part of everyday life. If you’ve ever fallen down the stairs, you’ve fallen down an inclined plane (not that I have ever did that). Laptops have simple machines in them. When you move your laptop screen you are turning a lever. The fulcrum is the point where the screen meets the computer, the load is the screen, and the effort is where you grab the screen. This is a second class lever.
2/18/10
Ever wonder why bread rises? It’s because of little yeast particles in the bread. When the bread is baked, the yeast feeds of the sugar in the bread. Yeast particles transform that sugar into energy for itself, via chemical reactions. As an aftermath, the yeast also produces carbon dioxide forming bubbles in the bread. Those bubbles are trapped inside the bread; since they take up space the bread must expand outward, creating the rising action bread is associated with. The yeast then die from the heat in the oven as it is cooked.
2/9/10
This blog entry will be about glow sticks. When you use a glow stick, you see an obvious chemical reaction. Every glow stick has two different chemicals inside of it; each held in its own separate area. One chemical is in a tube which is located inside another tube where another chemical is held. When the glow stick is bent, the tube inside breaks which releases the chemical inside to combine with the other chemical in the outer tube. When these two chemicals mix, a chemical reaction occurs. Thus the otherwise dull item begins to light up and glow. How do I know this was a chemical reaction? When a change is color happens, and you cannot reverse this change, it is signs of a chemical reaction. Different glow sticks light up in different colors; and this varies depending on the type of chemicals found inside the glow stick.
2/3/10
Have you ever noticed that the charger used to charge laptops gets hot during use? Where does that heat come from? I think it has to do with the transformation of energy. When electrical energy comes out of a power outlet, it must go through a charger before entering your laptop. As energy enters a charger, more energy enters than is needed to run your laptop. That’s because your charger “removes” some of the energy, making a lower voltage enter your computer. That “removed” energy gets transformed from electrical energy into heat energy. That heat energy makes the charger warm to touch.
1/28/10
Painting has to do with science. The paint I will be talking about in this entry is liquid paint. When you paint something, you change the amount of friction of the object you are painting. Example: If you paint glass, then its surface will become rough. Thus there will be more friction when something moves across it. The paint also goes through a physical change. When the paint is first applied it is wet. After awhile the paint will dry and the water in the paint evaporates into the air.
1/19/10
The unit in PE that I did was volleyball. I realized that when you play volleyball, there are many changes in energy. When you hit the volleyball, your body uses chemical energy. When your arms impact the ball, that chemical energy gets transferred into sound and kinetic energy. The kinetic energy allows the ball to go flying over the net. As the ball goes up the ball slowly has less kinetic energy and more potential energy. At the peak of its rise, the volleyball’s has the least kinetic energy and the most potential energy. If the ball hits the floor then any remaining kinetic energy gets transferred into sound energy and the ball no longer has any energy. If the ball gets hit by someone, then the process starts all over again.
1/13/10
I remember when I was in 6th grade and there was fitness Friday in PE. One thing where was to do was a rope climb with a thick rope. When I slid down too fast, the rope burned into my fingers and it hurt really badly. Upon looking at my hands I saw they were red and sore. This result was because of friction. The rope has a lot of little course fibers in it so its surface was uneven, thus it creates a lot of friction when it rubs against something (slideing friction). Lots of friction equals a lot of heat energy being transformed from kinetic energy (transformation of energy). Ouch! Large amounts of heat burns, so that’s why the rope hurt to slide down on.
1/6/10
Yesterday I was walking home from school on a rainy day. The ground was completely wet. When I stepped on a metal grate/panel, my foot slid around on the panel. I wondered to myself, “why is metal slippery in the rain”. I reckon that it has to do with friction. Since there was water on the panel, it reduced the friction between my shoe and the panel. Since there was less friction, my foot did not grip the panel as it otherwise would, and my foot slid.
1/1/2010
One day I took a chilled bottle of apple juice out of the refrigerator. I held it for over 5 minutes. Soon my fingers were wet. The surface of the bottle was covered in water. Even the label was starting to fall off. It was because the water vapor in the air came in contact with the cold bottle and condensed; since the bottle had a temperature colder than 32oF.
12/13/09
I was glad that I learned about homogenous and heterogenous mixtures in class. Turns out that when I was reading this novel (also made a movie) called Timeline the word homogenous was used, (explaining that the universe was not absolutely homogenous because galaxies clumped together... etc). Knowing what the word homogenous was came in handy, had I not, I would have sat there puzzling for a while. Well, yay for science.