Frog Blog

Picture from Superiortutoring.net, by Randy Glasbergen

Picture from Neatoshop.com, designed by Matthew Lawson

In class, we dissected a frog that smelled really bad. It has similar organs and a similar digestive system, too, helping the class learn how our digestive system works. The digestive system is the system that turns food molecules into nutrients that our body can use for nutrients. The frog had a lot of *cough* liquid inside and THREE livers! I believe a human has one liver, because THREE is a lot! It also had an esophagus(if you pry the frog's mouth open, you can stick your finger down the esophagus), a gallbladder, heart, stomach, fat bodies, and many more organs that humans have, too. 

The frog my lab group had was a female, which had black eggs inside scattered everywhere that looked like caviar with a female reproductive system. Our frog had a pair of oviducts, which are long tubes that are sometimes mistaken for the small intestine. The oviducts transports the eggs from the ovaries to the cloaca, the opening of the frog. We had to remove the fat bodies and eggs to see each organ clearly. I could tell that the frog was ready for hibernation because it had a lot of fat bodies that looked like spaghetti.

Things I enjoyed about this lab is that we were able to understand a little better about the different organs in our body. We also got to take the frog's eyeball out and watch it bounce. What I didn't like about the lab is that the class room smelled really bad and the frog's "liquids". Overall, this experience would definitely be a highlight for eighth grade.

When The Stomach Churns Lab: Part 2

Today in class, we finished the lab we did yesterday that models how the stomach digestive juices work. The egg whites in each test tube did change in appearence, but the results for the blue papers that change to pink when acid is in its presence were the same as day 1. We learned that the hydrochloric acid and pepsin together helps in the process of digestion. However, the digestion process is slow. The hydrochloric acid is used to help dissole the broken food particles. The reason the food particles are broken down is because the pepsin makes the protiens into smaller pieces. Without pepsin, hydrochloric acid won't work properlly and vise versa.

As the Stomach Churns Lab Report: Part I

Today in class, we filled four different, labeled test tubes with egg whites to see how different amounts of substances, in this case, enzyme pepsin (meat tenderizer), hydrochloric acid, and water, react together. The first tube contained 10mL of meat tenderizer with nothing occurring immediately. Test tube "B" had 5mL of pepsin and 5mL of water. The liquid turned foggy making the egg whites difficult to see. Hydrochloric acid was added to the egg whites in test tube "C". There was no immediate reaction. The fourth tube contained 5mL of pepsin and 5mL of hydrochloric acid; the egg whites started breaking down and the solution became bubbly. We were then assigned to test the solutions with blue litmus paper which turns pink when acid is in its presence. Test tubes A and B stayed the same, possibly because it didn't have hydrochloric acid in the solution. Test tubes C and D, however, turned pink. My guess is that hydrochloric acid causes the litmus paper to turn pink. I await for the results tomorrow.

Chicken Wing Dissection

In this picture, the skin is being removed so the muscles and bone can be seen.

 

 

Today in class, we were shown the dissection of chicken. The purpose of this lab is to display how our own skeleton works and to show the different tissues we have in our body. The teacher showed the how when the muscle called the flexor is pulled, the extensor, another muscle, can be pushed so the flexor relaxes when the extensor contracts. We were also shown bone marrow and explained the cells in the bone, which is a connective tissue. There were also other parts of the chicken wing we saw like cartilage and ligaments which connect bones to other bones at joints. We saw fat which keeps the animal warm but we couldn't find the nerve the the chicken wing. Coincidentally, we had some chicken for lunch that day, too.

Lab 10/12/11

Today in class, we did the Diffusion Lab, a lab activity observing how the cell plasma membrane in a cell works. We first make a corn starch mixture with a teaspoon of corn starch and a half a cup of water in a plastic baggie. Then, iodine was added to a beaker with water and the baggie was submerged into the mixture. What was suppose to happen didn't: iodine entering the baggie and tinting the corn starch purple. The starch turned a slight shade of purple on the bottom when more iodine was added, but overall, the lab didn't work as expected.
 

Class 6-16-11

Today in class, we talked about transverse and longitudinal waves. We also discussed the different types of waves that are used, such as light waves, radio waves, and water waves. We even used a sensor to determine the amount of energy used in each wave we made using a slinky per second. It was also the day when we found out we were having a quiz on waves!

Sixteen Year Old Discovers Cure for Cystic Fibrosis

An article was found on Yahoo! about sixteen year old Marshall Chang discovering a promising cure for cystic fibrosis, which previously didn't have one. Cystic Fibrosis is a genetic mutation which causes difficulty of breathing because there is thick mucus that builds up in the lungs and other parts of the body. Chang had thought that two compounds could be able to fight against the protein that causes the disease. He tested his theory, which came out with astonishing results which met his expectations. Chang's discovery could help others and he could possibly saving lives. Because his young age, he inspires me. We studied genetic mutations like cystic fibrosis in our genetic unit, which has me relate to the article.

Toothpick Fish Lab

To determine the generations of fish, colored toothpicks were used as alleles and were picked out randomly. There was collected data recording the series of fish alleles picked out. When the yellow fish became extinct because the fish pool was very lush and verdant with seaweed and algae, the population of fish decreased. But not all of the yellow alleles were gone, the yellow alleles could blend in with red alleles to make orange scaled fish. This is called codominance, the blending of two alleles. Since there are still yellow alleles left, it is possible for two fish to have yellow offspring. In the first three generations, the green allele was the most common because it was dominant over the rest of the recessive alleles, which blocks the red and yellow alleles. But when the green fish loses its ability to camouflage after having factory waste dumped into the fish pools, it is eaten and the whole population of green fish is wiped out! The population decreased tremendously, but the yellow fish will probably start increasing again because yellow alleles still exist and there are no more dominant green alleles to block the recessive yellow allele.
If the green fish wiped out first before the yellow fish went extinct, the population of the fish will decrease dramatically fast because most of the fish were green. Also, the green allele is dominant over the rest of the alleles. If the yellow fish didn't lose their ability to camouflage, there will probably be more orange fish in the next generation because there is the same amount of yellow alleles as the red ones, which can be combined in codominance and have orange offspring. If the orange fish went into the "morgue", there will be a loss of red and yellow alleles. If the red fish went extinct, many red alleles would be lost because it is a recessive allele which needs two red alleles to make a red fish. Red fish is able to be part of green fish offspring because green fish could have red alleles. Genetics and ecology come together because you could figure out the probability of some animals and extinction using genetics. I believe ecologists needed to know how to solve a mono-hybrid punnet square in order to study organisms and how they became extinct and if the population will ever increase!   

Underground Yellowstone Volcano

 Yahoo Article Link

Yellowstone National Park is a great, beautiful, tourist site where family and friends enjoy spending a few hours. But scientists caution that Yellowstone might explode someday.  The Los Angeles size underground volcano gives a few "breaths", causing the ground to rise dramatically. According to National Geographic, the last eruption was "a thousand times more powerful than Mount St. Helen's 1980 eruption." Scientists explain the volcano will erupt soon, and it is estimated the ashes will go up to 25 feet high! Chemicals and modern technology are a few things I enjoy in science, but natural disasters and ecology helps scientists understand how the earth was like without electricity and chemical interruptions. Overall, we learn a lot from natural science.

A Green Blob of Gas

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_sci_space_blob, it is informed that there is a green blob of gas giving birth to new stars. The stars form at remote parts of the universe, though, where most stars don't normally form. The blob was first discovered in 2007 by Dutch teacher, Hanny's Voorwerp (HAN'-nee's-FOR'-vehrp). NASA released the Hubble telescope photo of the green blob recently on January 10, 2011. When elementary school teacher Hanny van Arkel first saw the blob, he called it a "small blue smudge", but now it's seen as a bright green. The group of stars is approximately 650 million  light years away and our own Milky Way Galaxy is about the same size as the blob. Astronauts has visited the blob, and I find it fascinating of our generation finding out new information in the most unknowns places.