Chemical Reactions

We did this awesome experiment in science. We had little pieces of paper and we drew a dot on it with a marker then we put it in a cup that had a little bit of water in it. And as the paper soaked up the water it moved up the paper. Because the water had a bigger pull it was then polar and the water pulled the marker up the paper. Near the bottom when the water started is where it is mostly polar. But near the end as the water started to take longer to go up the page it was least polar.

Here are some of the differnt ways I did this experiment.

When w use the water it goes up the paper very fast. So here I just drew three dots and if you can see it brings the colour up the page and also there is some pink in it too.

Here I did a squiggily line of yellow and blue highlighter so it looks like a big blog but it cool.

Then I did the same again but instead I did a stripe.

For me this one was the coolest becasue i drew a flower that was dark red, but the water took the red out so now the bottom is highlighter pink and the red mixed with blue making purple

Now we used alcohol instead, the difference is that the the alcohol pulls the colour up more and it takes much longer for the alcohol to go up the paper.

And I tried these two and they look really cool!

and

Skin Pigment of Black Mice

Melanocyte is a type of cell in an organism that is used for skin, so it is in its hair and fur. This fur and hair protects them from the sun and gives the fur and hair the colour. But because of these cells it can lead to skin cancer called melanoma. It is a very difficult to cure. A few years ago scientist have found a protein in the human body that is more than 50% melanoma. But over the years scientists are doing very well to make a treatment to cure it. Besides the treatment still this type of caner shows up in several patients. So scientist have tried to find how this melanocytes works, and will try to remove it from mice with black fur and see if the pigment changes.  But there was no changes in the pigment of the mice, but at birth then had a normal colour but as they grew they turned grey from black before coming white.  So since there is this changing it then means that the pigment cells clearly exist. The renewing of the pigment cells shows another step for treating melanoma. By blocking these proteins they could eliminate all cancerous stem cells.

Bibliography

"Mice With Black Fur That Turns White Help Illuminate Skin Pigmentation." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 05 Oct. 2012. Web. 07 Oct. 2012. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121005123809.htm>.

Molecule Builders

In class we did a cool thing where we built actual molecules, and here are the ones that we built:

 Here is the molecule Methane. It is a gas, its chemical formula is CH4. As you can see in the top this is how it all becomes stable by sharing its valence electrons. So we have one carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms.

 And here we have the molecule Propane, it is a gas. We use it in barbeques. Its chemical formula is C3H8. So it has three carbon atoms and 8 hydrogen atoms.

This is Ethanol its chemical Formula is C2H5OH. So it has two carbon atoms, six hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.  But also depending one how you put this molecule together it can become a different molecule. So even though it could have the same elements the different form makes different compounds.

 Then this molecule is, well I don't have the name so then you an try and figure it out. But this has the chemical formula of H2CO. Two hydrogen atoms, one carbon and oxygen

Then We got to do something really fun and we made our own molecule, so my group called ours Hanalexium. Its is a solid and has the chemical formula of C12H19O6F2Cl2Br. Yes there is a lot! And it makes us fly but since it has Fluorine in it, and that burns our skin then it can kill us. So yeah it is a cool molecule.

Naked Mole Rats are able to live in Acidic Enviroment!

Naked mole rats are making a steady progress on being able to live in an acidic environment where other mammal’s even humans would not be able to do! In African naked mole-rats burrows the carbon dioxide levels build up where the air become too toxic for other mammals but for the naked mole rats they go on with their daily business, the air does not do any harm to them. As scientist Thomas Park said, ‘Much of the lingering pain of an injury for example is caused by acidification of the injured tissues.’ He also said that Acidification is an unavoidable side effect of injury. So these animals feel no pain from air of the environment they are living in. He said there should be new ways in which humans could be able to have that effect. In the nose of the naked mole rat it has nerve fibers that are then activated by the fumes, triggering the nucleus, of the nerves in the brain stem. The scientists then tried a few different tests putting the naked mole rats into different cages of different acid fumes, the animals could do what they wanted and the scientists kept track of what they were doing. They also compared their behavior with mice, rats, and other rodents related to them. Park said, ‘the naked mole rats spent as much time exposing themselves to acidic fumes as they spent in no fume areas’ but other species avoided the fumes. 

So this news was really cool and interesting because I guess I never really hear information about rodents and smaller creatures.  But when they talk about them being able to live in an environment with toxic fumes where humans and other mammals cannot, is very interesting. 

Bibliography

"Naked Mole-Rats May Hold Clues to Pain Relief." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 Sept. 2012. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120921180752.htm>.

Otters protecting the Kelp Forest

Researchers in Santa Cruz have discovered the big population of sea otters eating sea urchins which then you see the sea urchins eat the kelp and with the sea urchins being eaten there is more kelp to grow which absorbs 12 times the amount CO2 (carbon dioxide). As scientist Wilmers said, ‘The animals can have a big influence on the carbon cycle.’ The sea otters have a big affect when they are out and around the sea urchins are hiding and eating little bits of kelp scrap but when the otters are not there they graze a lot on the living kelp. Carbon dioxide has increased 40 % ever since the industrial revolution, which causes global warming. Scientist Wilmers and Estes say ‘that spreading the otter population will not do anything but just managing the populations can affect ecosystems.’ Because you see many animals in the world all work differently so they all impact the carbon cycle.  If ecologists can get a better handle on it then it could be good for both ways, animals can be protected, can both eat and carbon could still be absorbed. And that could be hard because there is no easy solution. So the otters are protecting their kelp forest.

 In my opinion this is cool because I never would have thought that only humans would have effected the carbon cycle with their fuels and gases creating global warming, where as animals like sea otters can help take out some of the carbon dioxide. 

Bibliography

"How Sea Otters Can Reduce CO2 in the Atmosphere: Appetite for Sea Urchins Allows Kelp to Thrive." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 07 Sept. 2012. Web. 09 Sept. 2012. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120907161437.htm>.

Super Fuel Cell Material

Scientist have found a way to use fuel cells to change it into a source of electricity for technology. It can power electronic devices, vehicles, and even military aircraft equipment! The fuel cells convert the energy from hydrogen fuel into electricity by reacting with oxygen. It can produce electricity continuously as long as it has a fuel supply. They would use platinum as the catalyst to speed up the chemical reaction but because it costs so much instead they use other fuel cells. A team of researchers have discovered that if you replace the center of the catalyst with gold and copper and having the outer layer in platinum, it is 5 times higher activity and better stability than the platinum catalyst. So the company is coming up with new alternative that uses less platinum.  ‘They have designed the core of nanocrysytalline material to be a gold- copper mixture and slightly smaller lattice spacing than the platinum coating on the nanocrystals surface’, said professor Ying. This then makes it compressive on the surface of the platinum atoms. This then makes the atoms more active, then reducing the oxygen for the fuel cell. But replacing the core with the nanoparticle the cuts down on the platinum, which is very expensive. So because of this we can make advance fuel cell development, and make it better for technology.  

I think it is really cool how they can use fuel cells to change into a source for technology. And making it just by reacting Hydrogen with oxygen. So this is my current event hope you enjoyed it!

Bibliography

"Superior Fuel Cell Material Developed." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 23 Aug. 2012. Web. 02 Sept. 2012. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120824103022.htm>.

The Best element in the Periodic table........ Hydrogen!!!!

 Hydrogen is the simplest kind of atom. A few days after the big bang, hydrogen was the only kind of atom in the new universe! It has a nucleus made up of just one proton and around the nucleus is one electron which goes round and round. First hydrogen atoms in space grouped together in clumps which was called nebulae. When it is dense enough it becomes a star.

Inside the star there is lots of heat and gravity, causing all the atoms to press together. When 4 hydrogen atoms are pressed together they then form a new atom called the Helium atom. The helium atom has 2 protons, 2 newtrons, and 2 electrons. Newtrons have a little less energy than protons and with extra energy it gets shot of into space and became light and heat for us. Inside most stars in the universe, billions of hydrogen atoms are turning into helium atoms almost everyday. When stars run out of hydrogen it then becomes a red star. Not all hydrogen stays inside stars, some began spinning around the outside of the star, and then orbiting the new star. It then eventually was mixed with other atoms, and gravity gradually pulled them all together into planets. There are many hydrogen atoms on earth, but most are combined with other atoms to make molecules. They are simple so they are light, lighter than oxygen, so for example if I fill a balloon with hydrogen it will fly up to the sky.

So one question that you might wonder is, what do we use hydrogen for? The two of the things that we use hydrogen for is elevation and fuel.

 As I said before hydrogen is lighter than oxygen so it rises. It use to be used to lift blimps off the ground, but after the hindenburg which burned and crashed, hydrogen was replaced with helium which has a lower chance of being flamable. Today we use hydrogen to elevate weather balloons that go higher than blimps, and they are so small so it is less of a risk of them exploding.
                                                             
                                                                             


 Then we have fuel. Hydrogen is very flamable when it is mixed with pure oxygen. Even though it is dangerous it is very usueful. Rockets and space ships mix pure hydrogen and oxygen to make combustion reaction. Also we use hydrogen for petroleum products, oil and gasoline. In the future maybe hydrogen will replace gasoline for cars. It is also being researched for alternative fuel for cars because when hydrogen burns it does not relase gases into the air, only water. So it could be harrnessed into auto fuel which would then help the green house gases.

 

 And lastly the most important about hydrogen fur us are when two hydrogen atoms combine with one oxygen atom makes one molecule of water. And when hydrogen atoms combine with carbon atoms to make hydrocarbons which are what all living things are made of!   


Bibliography

http://historyforkids.org/scienceforkids/chemistry/atoms/hydrogen.htm

Kennan, Mark. "How Do We Use Hydrogen?" EHow. Demand Media, 08 July 2009. Web. 21 Aug. 2012. <http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5164245_do-use-hydrogen.html>.