Owl Pellet Dissection

Just yesterday I lost all of the little interest I had in archeology. I dissected an owl pellet.

Last year, I thought the owl pellet was the fecal matter of a barn owl. I now know that it is the owl's regurgitation of undigested matter. The bird, having no teeth, swallows its prey whole or in huge chunks. Even if it swallows its prey whole, the feathers, fur, and bones cannot be digested. Therefore, it is regurgitated, into a round, oblong pellet colored green. After it is dry, it is given to us to take apart. Our task is to pull out all the bones of whatever the owl ate. Then we are to identify what animal it is, and piece together its skeleton.

In my case I pulled out a rodent. I started to identify the bones. The skeleton was like a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle, only that the pieces are poorly and inaccurately cut. I new I did not have to have a perfect skeleton, my skull was in several fragments. However, I could not resist trying to fit the skull together. I spent the majority of the period on the skull alone. And at the end, I realized that I had an entire skeleton left to assemble.

This is when my opinion towards archeology diminished. The work is time consuming; it is a very complex puzzle. This is because there are so many variables, a piece could fit in one way or another, a fragment smaller than a speck of dust could cause two correct pieces to not fit, also, the piece could not even be part of the organism! I am also very horrible at puzzle solving. Although I am not the best at this, I still enjoyed this lab. Since this is regurgitation, I felt no guilt in splitting the pellet open. I was able to identify ribs, jaws, and a skull. I am glad to start a new year of science with this dissection.

(picture from: http://www.cryptomundo.com/wp-content/uploads/barred-owl.jpg)

All About Tornadoes

http://www.omegatornadoes.webs.com

Save SBPL!

Just today I visited my library's website to renew some materials and I saw a post about Save My Library. I read on and I learned that the governor of my state is planning a 4.5 million dollar cut for library funding. This of course has ramifications for my town, but our library is one of the more fortunate ones. Other libraries barely have an adaquate supply of books or resources. If you are a resident of New Jersey, please help.


http://www.savemynjlibrary.org/

Lit. Poems

In my literature class, I am given a project to write two poems based upon a setting, character, or theme of the novel The Book Thief. Out of the three poem types, I selected the Diamante Poem, and the Character poem.

This is the Diamante:

"The Owner of the Words"

Words

Colorful persuasive

Changing empowering frightening

Bellicose benign ambitious revered

Orchestrating ruling aspiring

Articulate Inventive

Speaker

This poem is the character poem:

"The Life of Death"

Death

Thoughtful, and Frightful

Who loves observing the world for colorful distractions

Who feels intrigued about Liesel Meminger's life

Who needs to collect souls during a time of war

Who shares his thoughts, words, and life

Who fears humans

Who'd like to see how people view death

Who dreams of a day off

Who ends up returning The Book Thief back to Liesel Meminger

So these are the two poems I wrote. If you have not yet read The Book Thief then please do. The intriguing words, paragraphs, and pages are carried to you by Death itself. The point of view is unique, this story is told from the German side of World War Two. If you have already read this excellent novel, please comment on whether these poems are relevant.

Magnatized Subatomicly

As a vacuum draws the air out of a tube, physicist Tim Gay prepares to smash polarized electrons into select molecules at the end of the tube. A Bayard-Alpert Gauge monitors the progress of the vacuum. Tim Gay studies polarized elections, which are electrons spinning in the same direction, at Nebraska-Lincoln University. In Gay's words, he explains it like this,

"The electrons have to move down the tube and hit a target without bumping into air molecules. Pumping out the air gives electrons a good shot at the target."

Gay studies polarized, or magnetized electrons have many uses. Uses such as improving computers and electronics to more energy efficient light bulbs to answering some of life's fundamental questions. Gay, with funding from the National Science Foundation, uses the magnetized electrons to answer some intriguing questions. Questions such as why DNA twists clockwise.

Naturaly, electrons spin is arbitrary directions, canceling out the magnetic energy. This is why most materials are not magnetic. Making the elections spin in the same direction is time consuming. Gay aims to make the process simple, and easy-to-use. A good source of polarized electrons provide new tools for industry and research. During the process of developing this method, the scientist has trained at least 85 undergraduates in his lab.

"I really view the mission of these experiments as half physics and half training tomorrow's high-tech workforce," Gay said.

http://www.livescience.com/researchinaction/ria-100420.html
image from: Craig Chandler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln through Vicki Miller, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Turn It Into Rock

The green house effect is a very important factor of life. The carbon dioxide absorbs the infrared light reflected from the ground. Other gases such as water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone join to help the green house effect. This delicate balance has been maintained up until the industrial revolution. During this period humans begin burning fossil fuel to satisfy their luxuries. This is when the green house effect will ultimately doom the earth. Humans do not want to surrender their luxuries, so they find ways to eliminate the carbon dioxide by-products.

One of the ways is to turn the carbon dioxide into rock. This is done by injecting the CO2 into a rock called peridotite which has minerals that react with the CO2 turning it into a solid magnesium carbonate. Such rocks are found in vast amounts in Oman that could store 10 percent of all the carbon emitted by humans in a year. A pipe line or trucks will carry either gas or liquid CO2 into the site. Normally, this reaction would be too slow, but this process could be made use of because of the high pressure involved. Columbia University’s geochemist Peter Kelemen says "Right now we’re working on finding that sweet spot where the system is self-sustaining." Another way of eliminating the green house gas is to inject the carbon dioxide into volcanic basalt 1800 feet under ground. Pressure keeps the gas dissolved and from leaking into the atmosphere. Eventually, the Carbon dioxide bonds with the rock to form a solid carbonate.

I believe that these ideas are indeed crucial to our survival. A combination of these techniques and us humans using less energy will help stabilize the earth. I think that we must give up some luxuries; we cannot depend on these methods alone. We have to cut back, and watch our carbon spending, along with the help of the scientists.

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/dec/10-forget-putting-co2-under-rock-let.s-turn-it-into-rock

Temperature

Temperture is the measure of the movement of molecules or atoms in a substance. If the tempurature (movement) is higher, the particles colide with each other more often, giving of more energy. There are four ways to measure temperature, Fahrenheit, Celsius, Kelvin, and Rankine. Rankine is not common, but it is basically a scale that starts at absolute zero, and one Rankine degree is one Fahrenheit degree. Here are some places and temperatures on each temperature scale: (http://funphysics.jpl.nasa.gov/adventures/temperature-game.html)

Fahrenheit, Celsius, Kelvin

Boiling point: 212, 100, 373
Death Valley: 134, 57, 324
Human Body: 98.6, 37, 310
Room Temp.: 68, 20, 293
Freezing Point: 32, 0, 273
Mars: -81, -63, 210
Antartica: -128, -89, 183
Saturn: -229, -145, 128
Space: -454.54, -270, 2.7
Super Fluid Helium: -455.76, -271, 2.17