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

Water Cycle

I made an animation on the water cycle!

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/greenenviron/973563

Extinct For Science?

After dissecting various organisms, I was given practical tests, tests that involve real specimens. On the last practical, the practical of the frog, the final question appeared, this question had been pondered by me since the beginning of the dissection period. The question was questioning the ethics of the practice of dissection. The answer I gave was to terminate this practice. This is partly because of the numbers:

For us, one class equals six specimens at six lab tables.
6x5 classes=30 specimens per unit

30x6 7/8 grade units=180 specimens for our school

180x2 middle schools=360 specimens for our town

This doesn't include the high school, or the extra specimens needed for the practical tests.

I have no knowledge on whether these animals were farmed our not, but if they were farmed, I believe it can be less shamed upon. If these animals were taken from the ecosystem, then the practice should stop immediately. Seeing the numbers above, organisms will become extinct very soon. Also, I believe that frogs are now endangered, and the most common organism to dissect is the frog. After the organism is removed from the ecosystem, predators will have to narrow down their food selections, or adapt to different foods, both of which are difficult to do in the short amount of time before starvation. Even if the animals are farmed, they shouldn't be slaughtered for a mature form of "child's play". It would be understandable that they would be killed for food, since we need food, and we consume plants along with animals, balancing out the slaughtering. Dissection after farming still goes against some people's ethics.


Some alternatives to dissection are virtual dissection, photographic documentation, and organism analogs.


Since technology is improving over the past years, I suspect it can be possible to create a virtual frog for dissection. Perhaps the image of the frog can be projected onto an interactive "lab tray" and much like a Smart Board, students can pick up specific dissecting tools and perform on the virtual organism. The con to this is that only the sense of sight is satisfied while virtually dissecting.


There are already plenty of photographs of dissections; students could observe these instead of the real specimen. A con to this is that the pictures are in two dimensions, not three.


Analogues of the organisms can be made, specific organs made of synthetic material to look and feel like the real organ. A student can dissect the analogue just like the regular one, but not get dissecting juices all over them or removing the organisms from the environment. A con would be that mass producing analogues will be costly.


In the end, I believe that dissection should be banned whether the organisms are farmed, or captured in the wild. There are plenty of texts books and photographs. Technology will help improve our experience. If we continue this practice, not much animals will be left on the planet. Likewise, there will be less to study.

A primitive version of my imaginary virtual dissection:

http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00548/DissectionGame.html

A Connection

I, and the rest of my school, was given an assignment. I was asked to research one of five topics and compose a five paragraph essay with the notes I took. While going through the process of performing this task, I noticed a connection. A connection between the five main core classes in a student’s curriculum, a connection between language, literature, social studies, science, and math. This connection can be seen in all five topics of our choices. Going with why I chose this blog name, global warming is my topic, it is the focus of this entry, and the other focus is the relationship to mathematics.

Global Warming has a close relation to science which in turn, connects to math. When climatologists model climate change patterns into the computer, they are programming mathematical equations into them, the computer just gives them the ability to solve them quickly, but, the equations were composed by the use of mathematics. Likewise, the statistics of the temperature and carbon dioxide levels also add this connection. For example, if all of Antarctica’s ice were to melt, there would be a 64 meter rise in sea level (Jha). You would need to know the approximate volume of frozen Antarctic ice and divide this by the surface area of the ocean. Graphs are also an important tool in calculating climate change. Graphs have shown an increase in Carbon Dioxide growth over the past 200 years. graphs will somewhat help project future changes as well.

Some climate change problems make our math look primitive, some are just random. That is why people have to learn, once when they know the basics, the creativeness and logic can be used. I believe that is why we are thought these subjects in school, because of this connection. A connection between science and math, and also Literature, Language, and Social Studies. A connection forcing us to acquire knowledge that is currently thought of as having no use. This connection will also encourage us to learn, satisfying our curiosities.

Ozone Blanket

A hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica has protected areas of the continent from the dreadful effects of Global Warming. However, now, as the human race halts the emission of CFCs, Antarctica will have to acquiesce to the over heating of the globe. Not all of Antarctica though, was temporarily saved by this hole. The western Antarctica peninsula has already been thawing having been covered with ozone. The areas exposed, without this layer in the atmosphere has actually been cooling. This is because Ozone is actually a green house gas.

"They include methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), ozone (O3), and a number of industrial gases" (Michael D. Mastrandrea, Wolrdbook).

The consequences are that one third of the sea ice may be lost and 1.4 meters of sea level rise. Since Antarctica contains 90% of the world's ice and 70% of the world's freshwater, the ocean would rise 63 meters if all the ice were to melt.

My opinion on this is that this can only be stopped by cutting back on CO2 emissions. I also believe this will affect organisms from penguins to humans, and will not be stopped in the time that the ice can still be saved. We could lose biodiversity and we will have less dry land in the overcrowded earth. I also think that this is such a "funny" coincidence that a human effort to help the globe actually is helplessly destroying it and rebuilding it at the same time.

This article is from:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/01/ozone-antarctica