The Definition of Life

What part of the definition of life is being presented here? Which aspect of that definition is emulated by this picture? Click on the image to enlarge it. Write down your answer and why you think it is true.

Critical Evaluations

Greetings! This is Mr. Palosaari, and welcome to the new year! As with last year, Extra Credit Critical Evaluations are due at the end of each month. Read below for some changes from last year's procedures.

There are two possibilities for this, one audio and one written. They are Science Friday and World Science. (Science Friday Video Picks of the Week may not be used, unless you are analyzing the actual audio podcast, as well as watching the video.  Science Friday must be listened to, not only read or watched.) An analysis of a Science Friday article will be worth 25 points (as detailed below). World Science will be worth 15 pts., 2 pts. per section.

You are welcome to listen or read the articles immediately, of course. But remember for the Critical Evaluation the articles must be from the current month or the prior month, and they must be the science of whichever class you are in.

The other guidelines are as follows:

• Your entire report should be 1/2 page, single spaced, typed.
• Summarize in your own words. This means no cutting and pasting, and no more than two words in a row that are from the article, unless they are technical scientific terms. Provide a short summary; do not just change words around in each sentence and repeat the article. Your summary should be much shorter than the length of the article. Grammar and spelling will be graded as well. 3 pts.
  
• What would be a question that is being asked in the study, or could be asked about the subject matter? First try to state what question the study in the article was asking. If there is absolutely no study or question in the article, only then may you come up with your own question about the subject matter. (Often it is easier to identify the hypothesis in the article first, and figure out the question that would have been asked after identifying the hypothesis.)  3 pts.
  
• What would be a hypothesis to answer the question? First try to figure out the hypothesis within the study. 4 pts.
  
• What experiment was performed by the scientists in the article? If there is absolutely no experiment done, what experiment could you perform to determine the validity of the hypothesis? World Science articles will usually have an experiment. Many Science Friday articles may require you to come up with your own experiment, as none will be listed. 3 pts.
  
• What is the experiment variable? 1 pt.
• What is the experiment control? 3 pts.
• What future experiments might you propose based on the research in the article? 3 pts.
  
• You must have listed at the bottom the Works Cited, with the full and exact url of the article, the name of the website and the name of the article, the date of the article and the date you accessed the article. 5 pts.
  

In order to know what science articles are being discussed within the last two months, do one of the following two actions:

• Go to iTunes and sign up for the Science Friday podcast for free, by typing "Science Friday" in the iTunes search engine. If you don't yet have iTunes, you can download iTunes online. You do not need an iPod in order to use iTunes.
• Go to the top left of the World Science website, and type in your email address and press "send". You will then receive new article titles every week to your inbox, and can click on the links provided to find out more about the subjects that interest you.

Suffering Creates Life

Please view this video, and answer the following questions based on this video.

1. What and when are the Mass Extinction Events?
2. What had to happen before the rise of the Age of Mammals?
3. Why do we say our species almost didn't make it?
4. What is it that would concern us in the future, in about 900 years?
   

VFABP Collage

Viruses/Fungi/Archaea/Bacteria/Protista Collage Guidelines

·        Pick one clade of Virus, Archaea, Bacteria, Fungi, or Protista

·        Different clade for everyone

o       First come first serve

o       Virus

o       Archaea

o       Bacteria

o       Protista

§         Excavata

§         Chromalveolata

§         Cercozoa, Foramnifera, and Radiolaria

§         Amoebozoa

§         Choanozoa

o       Fungi

§         Basidiomycota

§         Ascomycota

§         Zygomycota

§         Chytridomycota

·        For the collage, use

o       Pictures from a magazine

o       drawings

o       photographs

o       Remember- collage means many intersecting pictures covering the entire page

·        One page typed paper

o       Follow the Source Guidelines given out earlier

§         Books need author, title, publisher, publish date, publish location, page numbers

§         Magazines and journals need author, name, article title, date, and page numbers

o       Be careful to report all sources used in the Works Cited

o       Be careful to report all sources used within the body of the paper, i.e. (Name, Year), or (Benjeloun, March 32^nd, 2024).

o       2.5 cm margins on all sides, 10-12 pt. font, Times New Roman or Ariel.

·        For research, use

• The web- official science sites only
•  Use Wikipedia to get real sources 

• Your Biology book

Due April 18th.

The Tree of Life

For Biology: Go to the Tree of Life. This website is a wiki, designed to be all-encompassing for all of life, with pictures and text on every species.

Click on the tree on the front page, or go to “Root of the Tree”, and follow the links for awhile, simply exploring. Each page is constructed as a branching cladogram.

Pick a clade and read about it. Write down the clade's name and a short summary of what you learned. Be sure the summary is in your own words and not copying from the website. Remember, other than scientific words, you may not have more than two words in a row the same as the website.

Be sure to include the full source site, including url, Title of the website, Title of the page, date it was written (if mentioned), and the date you accessed it.

Your Footprint

In some classes today, I mentioned your ecological footprint. This is how many Earths we would need if everyone lived life just like you do. You plug in information about your life, and it tells you your Carbon Footprint, your Food Footprint, your Housing Footprint, and your Goods and Services Footprint, all in a chart. If you're interested in how much energy you use and how much you waste, and how to reduce your footprint to not use up precious resources on our planet, visit this link. You'll have to go through a couple steps to get to the quiz. For distances, you may want to use the distance calculator.

Article Review

8th Grade Science: Read and outline one article at this site. Be prepared to present a summary in class.

Massive Molarity

For the past week, we've been studying Moles. Today I want you to work on the equations in the computer lab. For the molecules listed below, determine:

• How many grams are in a mole.
• How many moles are in a gram.
• What the percentage of each element is in the formula.

We've done this before with the elements in the back of the room. Now you're going to do it with molecules. Let us take water as an example. How many grams are in a mole of water?

• H = 1.0079 amu
  
• O = 15.999 amu
  
• There are two Hydrogens in Water.
• Therefore, 2(1.0079) + 15.999 = 18.015 amu.
  
• Now, transfer that directly into grams for the Molar Mass, and a mole of water weighs 18.015 g.
  

Next, determine how many moles would be in one gram. Again, we did this in the lab yesterday. Take water's mass in grams, and divide it into one, such that 1/18.015 = 0.0555 moles.

Lastly, figure out what the percentage of each element is in the molecule. This is easier than you might expect. Take the individual masses of each element, and divide them by the overall mass.

• H2 = 1.0079 * 2 = 2.0158 g
• O = 15.999 g
• H2 + O = 18.0148 g
• H2/H2O = 2.0158 / 18.015 = 0.1119 or 11.19%
• O/H2O = 15.999 / 18.015 = 0.8881 or 88.81%

Please do all three steps for each molecule. But I don't want you left unsure as to what to do, and if you are doing this correctly. Therefore, when you have completed all equations for each molecule, after each molecule, go to this website to doublecheck your work. About halfway down the page you can plug in formulas to get all of this data, to get the correct answers. Be sure to use the correct capitol or lower case letters as needed. (You certainly could just fill in the correct answers from this website, but then...I'm also asking you to show all work for each step.)

Following is a list of the molecules I'd like analyzed:

• He
• O2
• C6H12O11
• H2
• LiOH
• H2PO4
• H2SO4
• PCl5
• SF6
• NaCl
• CsC2H3O2
• NH4ClO
• Li2CO3
• NCl3
• BCl3
• N2O3
• Cl2O7
• CO2

Oh- and this assignment is due at the end of the period, to hand in to Mr. 'iissa, so you better get cracking! :-)

The End of the World....?

For IPC, please go to Counterbalance and read the article pages on Angels and Demons and the Large Haldron Collider, and the science (or lack thereof) in Angels and Demons. This page links to four other pages that need to be read as well, to whit:

• Anti-Matter
• The Physics of Creation
• The God Particle
• Other Technical Notes

Read through these pages for tomorrow and come prepared to discuss them in class- if you agree with the author, Adrian Wyard, or disagree, and why; if the science in Angels and Demons is accurate or not.

Science Article Titles

Effective immediately, the Critical Evaluations aforementioned will be expanded, such that all students will now be required to provide a list of the titles of both Science Friday and World Science in their respective subjects. On Science Friday this will be due on Mondays; for World Science this will be due two school days after World Science comes out, or the next Monday, whichever comes first. Science Friday comes out every Monday; World Science comes out twice a month, but at random intervals.

Only titles are due, and only titles from that issue that just came out. On any given Friday, you will have between five and ten Science Friday articles. Any given World Science issue will have up to twelve articles. Look through the articles and find the ones that pertain to your respective discipline (marine biology, biology, chemistry, or chemistry & physics). Write a list of the titles down. If you are unsure if an article is about your discipline just from looking at the title, you may have to click on the link for World Science or listen for some thirty seconds to Science Friday.

The easiest way to do this is to put your email address into the World Science website, in the top left corner, and wait to receive your email with the links. If you do not do this, it will become very difficult to determine which articles belong to the most recent disbursement of articles. For Science Friday, the easiest way is to go to iTunes and subscribe to the free podcast of "Science Friday" by putting "Science Friday" into the search parameter. If you do not have iTunes, you can download it for free here (even if you don't own an iPod). If you do not have iTunes and don't want to download it, you can remember to check Science Friday on your own every weekend.

You will be graded by percentage of the number of articles, receiving points for every correct article you include, and for every incorrect article you do not include. Thus, for example, if your class is Biology, and you include an article on "Breast Cancer Gene Patents Challenged", that is clearly about biology, and you get points. If you include an article on "Do Moon Craters Harbor Caches of Water Ice", this is clearly not about biology, and you will lose points.

Hopefully, this will help all students 1) realize that there are many articles to pick from in their Extra Credit Critical Evaluations, which are still due at the end of each month, and 2) become more inspired to do the Extra Credit.

Darwin's Blog

I just came across a most amazing blog. Evidently it has just recently been unearthed, a very old copy of Charles Darwin's blog, on his Voyage of the Beagle! I'd encourage everyone to visit, as he slowly posts excerpts from his amazing trip that is beginning to change the world, and everything we understand about reality.

Creationism vs Evolutionism Forum

Hi students,
for those of you that might be able to drag yourselves out of bed by 9 over the weekend, there are some good discussions happening on the origins of the world and man. Here is the link to the Fes world sacred music festival with the program. The discussions are supposed to take place in French with an English translation.

These discussions are from 9 AM to 1 PM at the Musee Batha and cost about 100 Dirhams to get in. There is one on Saturday and one on Sunday.

(Definite bonus points to anybody who attends one of the sessions, and can provide proof.)

Link for McDonald's

http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutrition_facts.html

8th Grade Nutrition Test

Here it is! Just like our friend Morgan Spurlock your job will be to "eat" a whole days worth of McDonald's food. UNLIKE Morgan, your job will be to get NO MORE than 2250 calories (I'm taking it easy on the girls to be fair.) You also need to get all of the carbohydrates and protein, without getting more than your recommended amount of fat. You can get more than you need of protein and carbohydrates, but not more than 2250 calories.

Rules:
MAXIMUM - 2250 calories
MAXIMUM - 87.5 grams of fat
MINIMUM - 253 grams of carbohydrates
MINIMUM - 56 grams of protein

3 meals - breakfast has to be breakfast foods.

You must have 1 soda.

You must have a main dish and a side (ex. burger and fries)

Bonus: Get enough Vitamin A 9 milligrams

Enjoy!

7th Grade: Excretory System! - 24.3

You always wanted to know how peepee worked, right?

Ok, it's too gross to think about. But I'm going to make you, for a grade. Ha!

Your urinary system, briefly
Your urinary system, the way your doctor thinks about it
Urinary system anatomy, big size
Kidney and nephron
Nephron, up close
Bladder!
Urine... ewwww....

7th Grade: Respriratory System!

You knew that talking about lungs was fun... and pretending to do mouth-to-mouth on your classmates is not an option at school. So, what to do? Look at somebody's vocal cords through a tube going down their nose! Fly through the bronchi! Animate your alveoli! See your cilia! Look at your lungs!

Oh, the joys of YouTube

Bugs Bunny's Creator - Vocal cords, LIVE!
Flying through the bronchi
Animated alveoli
Motion of Cilia
Lungs of a smoker

Poor Puppy!

Such a sad thing, to be born as somebody else's stupid play-toy.

Behold, the glowing puppy.

General Science: Harvard's Multimedia Page

COOOOOOOOOL videos! Ok, they're college-oriented, but if you're a nerd like me - or you just like to pretend you are - go to this page full of extremely cool animations and videos. I bet even Mr. Mills and Mr. Rice's replacement would like them.

Harvard's Molecular and Cell Biology Multimedia Page

7th Grade: Resources for Activity 23-2, page 642-643

Use the links in this article to answer the following questions.

Pictures of Human Blood, Bird Blood, and Frog Blood. Red blood cells are called erythrocytes, white blood cells are called lymphocytes, and platelets are called thrombocytes.

You can also see this human lymphocyte with special stain under a microscope, and scanning electron microscope (SEM) pictures of an individual human lymphocyte and human blood. From these pictures, and the three microscope slides of different bloods, answer the questions below.

In your classwork notebook, answer the Analyze and Apply questions as well as you can. Observe carefully.

6th Grade: Links for Unconformities

These links should help with any confusion on the pictures of unconformities.

Diagrams:
Making a disconformity
Making an angular disconformity
A page on all the topics

Here are some decent pictures of unconformities
Grand Canyon
Angular Unconformity 1
Angular Unconformity 2
Disconformation
A gallery of pictures