By Blog Editor Susan Wells
Spring time means getting out and enjoying the sun, watching the trees bloom and cleaning out those flower beds and garden patches and filling them with flowers and plants. Before you start clearing out the dead of winter and putting plants in the ground, get a little compost going.
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Have you ever wondered how clouds form? We all learn the water cycle in school - water falls from the clouds in the form of rain or snow and collects on the ground. The water on the ground heats up and turns to vapor and the vapor travels up into the atmosphere and creates clouds.
But how do those clouds form?
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DNA is the building block of all living creatures, plants and animals. It is found in the cells of animals and determines the genetics or make up of every individual organism. DNA is also present in the whole foods we eat.
Thanks
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Stand back and watch as I pull a needle through a balloon without popping it.
This trick is a magicians’ favorite. They can mystify an audience by putting a needle through a balloon and pulling through a ribbon without popping it. The demonstration is mysterious until you learn a little stress-related science.
When a balloon is inflated, the middle is under a lot of stress and pressure from the air inside. The top and bottom are not stretched as far or put under as much pressure. To illustrate this – color dots all over a deflated balloon. Then blow it up and look at the dots. The dots in the center of the balloon will be stretched and thin, while the dots on the ends won’t be stretched as far.
Have you ever wondered how clouds form? We all learn the water cycle in school – water falls from the clouds in the form of rain or snow and collects on the ground. The water on the ground heats up and turns to vapor and the vapor travels up into the atmosphere and creates clouds.
But how do those clouds form? Here’s an experiment that demonstrates how the water molecules join together and form a cloud.
Before you start on your own cloud, let’s learn a little more about clouds.
A cloud is a lot of droplets of water and or ice crystals, depending on the temperature. The droplets float in the air molecules.
Even though we don’t see them, water molecules are in the air all around us. These airborne water molecules are called water vapor. When the molecules are bouncing around in the atmosphere, they don’t normally stick together.
Clouds on Earth form when warm air rises and its pressure is reduced. The air expands and cools, and clouds form as the temperature drops below the dew point. In other words, cold air cannot hold as much water vapor as warm air. Invisible particles in the air in the form of pollution, smoke,
DNA is the building block of all living creatures, plants and animals. It is found in the cells of animals and determines the genetics or make up of every individual organism. DNA is also present in the whole foods we eat.
Thanks to the special characteristics of strawberries, it is possible to extract, isolate and observe the DNA. You don’t have to be a geneticist. You don’t even need a microscope. All that is needed are some household materials.
The long thick fibers pulled out of the extraction solution are strands of strawberry DNA. DNA is present in every cell of all plants and animals and determines the genetics of the individual organisms.
While other fruits are soft and just as easy to pulverize, strawberries are the perfect choice for a DNA extraction lab for two reasons: they yield more DNA than any other fruits, and they are octoploid, meaning that they have eight copies of each type of DNA chromosome. These special circumstances make strawberry DNA easy to extract and see. (Human cells are generally diploid, with only two sets of chromosomes.)
Who knew noodles could dance? Head to the kitchen, grab a handful of pasta noodles along with a few other materials and get ready for a science pasta party. This is some kitchen science that will have you learning about volume and density in a brand new, hands-on way!
Materials
Clear drinking glasses
Pasta noodles (cooked or uncooked)
Water
Vinegar
Baking soda
Food coloring
Measure 2 cups of water and pour the water into a clear drinking glass.
Measure 2 cups of vinegar and add it into the clear drinking glass with the water.
Add 3-6 drops of food coloring to the water and vinegar mixture.
Add some pasta noodles to the glass. How much pasta? It’s up to you! (We used uncooked noodles)
Drop 1 tablespoon of baking soda into the glass. Be ready… adding the baking soda into the mixture might get a little messy!
Watch closely and check out all of those dancing noodles!
Are your noodles done dancing? Add more baking soda to the glass and start the dance party all over again.
What will happen if you use other kitchen foods like raisins, candy hearts, beans or Cheerios? What else will work?
Water is a miracle liquid. All living things need it to survive and it has some unique properties unto itself. Hydrogen bonds are responsible for the unusual characteristics of water. These strong intermolecular forces are formed between water molecules and are responsible for the high boiling point and wide range of temperatures in liquid water.
Water is known as the Mickey Mouse molecule because two hydrogen atoms bond with one oxygen atom to form a molecule – H2O. When the two hydrogens bond with the oxygen, the electrons are not shared equally. (Pull out that high school chemistry for this lesson.) Because of this, the oxygen has a partial negative charge, and the hydrogen has a partial positive charge.
The opposite charges attract each other like magnets and form a hydrogen bond.
Hydrogen bonds are not strong bonds, but they make the water molecules stick together. The bonds cause the water molecules to associate strongly with one another. But these bonds can be broken by simply adding another substance to the water.
