Pippin's Question Box

What makes soda fizz? Best

Well, this was a fairly easy question, especially because we just learned about carbonation. It's also exciting, because I can finally answer a question with mostly prior knowledge. First of all, soda fizzes because of the common gas called carbon dioxide. To create the fizz, Pepsi, Coke, Sprite, and all soda manufacturers squeeze big amounts of carbon dioxide and water (mixed with other materials to create the flavor) into a can at high pressures, thus creating the fizz.

When the can/bottle is closed, there are barely any bubbles, so there is no fizz, because the gas particles are all compressed together at such a high pressure that they can't move and are fully dissolved in the liquid, comparable to the particles of a solid, which is very different from how gas usually behaves. Like all gas particles, when the pressure of the soda is released by opening the can, they burst out at a high speed and now freely travel through the open air.

The potential energy stored inside the soda from the pressure is now converted into the kinetic energy that causes the soda to burst out. This kinetic energy overpowers the force that is preventing the carbon dioxide and the liquid from separating, and the carbon dioxides exits the mixture, leaving the soda safe to drink. This is why you hear the "sss" sound after opening a can of soda. When you shake the soda, the molecules jump around the bottle, gaining more energy to burst after the soda is opened. That is why you get a huge explosion after shaking a can of soda and opening it. So, it's probably better not to shake a can of soda before drinking it, unless you want soda to drip on your clothes and skin.

Also, when you pour out a newly opened can of soda into a cup, you see that the fizz is rising to the rim of the cup, and then vaporizes in the air. That's why the soda tastes bad until the fizz leaves the cup. Blowing the cup doesn't help speed up the process of vaporization. Believe me, I've tried it before. In addition, adding ice cubes to the cup doesn't speed the process up, because it only adds more fizz, since it releases the dissolved gas.

Reading all of this science-y stuff can get a little confusing, but you can try it out for yourself by experimenting with soda. Although, you probably want to back away quickly if you're going to shake the bottle of soda and open it. For those of you who don't like science much, I hope that reading this will show you that science can be fun!!!

I got my information from:

http://www.letusfindout.com/why-does-soda-fizz/

http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/061010_soda_fizz.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/what-makes-soda-pop-fizz

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_does_soda_pop_fizz_when_opened

Pippin

Pippin's Question Box

Can you get drunk by walking into a room full of alcohol fumes?

This question was a little confusing. Getting drunk by walking into a room full of alcohol fumes really depends. First, how strong is the alcohol? If it is very strong, then it definitely is possible to get drunk. Although alcohol isn't an inhalant, taking a few whiffs of it is still harmful. But the main question is, if you're walking into the room, are you directly inhaling the alcohol fumes? If you are, then it's very easy to get drunk because the alcohol is delivered into your bloodstream directly from the lungs. This is because the alcohol fumes are inhaled by your lungs, and delivered to your bloodstream with the oxygen. Breathing in the fumes can definitely allow big amounts of alcohol to enter the body.

I got my information from:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/health-drunk-but-not-a-drop-passed-my-lips-did-you-know-that-you-can-get-tipsy-simply-by-breathing-in-the-fumes-from-other-peoples-booze-rob-stepney-looks-at-the-risks-and-possibilities-of-passive-drinking-1469632.html

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=An9F.49DXdAXODurLO4M5zd66xR.;_ylv=3?qid=20080608072225AATU1JJ

Pippin's Question Box

Do all plants have seeds? Best

First of all, I think that not all plants have seeds. This is because there are some plants that reproduce without using seeds. So, these plants never end up having seeds. Two examples of seedless plants are ferns and mosses. Unlike spermatophytes, which are plants that use seeds to reproduce, ferns and mosses reproduce by releasing spores. Other seedless plants may replicate by producing rhizomes, tubers and other structures. A rhizome is the horizontal stem of a plant, and since rhizomes grow rapidly, plants that grow from them grow quickly, which is why they don't live well in pots. Therefore, some plants do not have seeds.

I got my info from:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-rhizome.htm

and

http://www.superseedsite.com/seeds_general/why_do_plants_have_seeds.html

Pippin's Question Box

What is a gravity wave? Most Scientific

A gravity wave is a vertical wave moving through a stable layer of the atmosphere. A gravity wave is basically a general classification for all types of waves, such as sound waves, electromagnetic waves, lee waves, mountain waves, and much more. Just like electromagnetic waves, gravity waves travel at the speed of light. Considering light travels at 186,000 miles per second, that's really fast. A gravity wave looks like a undulating wave, meaning that it travels an up and down motion. It looks a little like a ripple in water, which forms when you throw a rock in it. It is much harder to detect gravity waves than electromagnetic waves, and although a number of experiments have been performed, we still have not been able to detect gravity waves directly.

http://fofweb.com/Science/default.asp?ItemID=WE40

http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/64/

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/glossary.php?letter=g

Literature: 5 Fables

For literature, we had to read five fables and write what we think the moral of the fable is. I think that the maxim, or moral, of The Fox and the Goat is that you should think before you act and you shouldn't blindly trust someone. If the goat considered that the fox could have been lying, he wouldn't be tricked into getting stuck at the bottom of the well. The maxim of The Crow and the Pitcher is little by little does the trick because by gradually placing the pebbles into the pitcher, he was able to raise the water level enough so that he could quench his thirst. If he threw the pebbles in quickly, most of the water would have fallen out, and his efforts would go to waste. The moral of The Fisher and the Little Fish is that it is better to have something little in your hand than to possibly have something big because if the fisher didn't catch a bigger fish, he would have regretted letting the little fish go. I think that the maxim of The Four Oxen and the Lion is that united we stand, divided we fall because the oxen were able to defend themselves together, but when quarreling, they were defenseless and were therefore attacked. Finally, the moral of The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing is that appearances can be deceiving, and because the wolf appeared to be the lamb's mother, the lamb was tricked into following him. Those are the maxims/morals of the five fables.

Ask A Geneticist

By reading these websites, I learned many facts about chromosomes and DNA. A chromosome is a package containing a chunk of a genome, which is an organism's genes. A chromosome is similar to a package which helps a cell to keep a large amount of genetic information neat, organized, and compact. Chromosomes are made of DNA and proteins. Some simple organisms, such as bacteria, can package their their entire genome (the genetic information) in a single chromosome. However, for more intricate organisms, such as humans, the genome is much larger, and more chromosomes are required to store all of the genetic information. The amount of chromosomes that an organism has depends on the species, and is therefore not a fixed amount. Closely related species usually to have a similar number of chromosomes. For instance, chimpanzees, our closest cousins, have 48 chromosomes in each of their cells, while we have 46 chromosomes. It is expected for more complex organisms to have more chromosomes, but nature doesn't work that way. Surprisingly, goldfish, who are fairly simple organisms, have 96 chromosomes, in comparison to humans, who have 46 chromosomes. The number of chromosomes that an organism has is unique to its species, and it is not very specific.

Pippin's Question Box

What food group do mushrooms fall under?

I think that mushrooms belong in the vegetable food group because they are high in water and low in fat. Peanuts and beans are classified as meat because they are high in fat, which mushrooms are not, therefore, they are vegetables. Also, mushrooms are sources of minerals and vitamins. They have a high density and are important sources of vitamin A, vitamin C, riboflavin, folate, iron, and magnesium, as do all vegetables. Therefore, I think that mushrooms fall under the vegetable food group. I got my information from these two sources:

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jul2001/995573163.Gb.r.html

and

http://www.answers.com/topic/food-groups

Literature: Wooden Bowls

Wooden Bowls

In my opinion, the story, Wooden Bowls teaches an extremely important lesson. The theme, or moral, of the story is to respect your elders. In this story, the parents realize that they should have respected the grandfather, since he is their elder and elders should always be respected. They realized that they should have overlooked the grandfather's messy eating, since he is family, and you should enjoy life with your family. This is important because family time is quality time and the four-year-old's parents forgot that when they were small, their parents cared from them and didn't ban them from the dinner table, even when they made a mess while eating. They forgot that the grandfather cared for them so much, and it was their responsibility to care for him in his time of need, which is old age. This story related to CARES because as a child, it is your parents' responsibility to care for you. When you grow up and your parents and getting older and less able-bodied, it is your responsibility to help them, the way they helped you. Furthermore, the story also related to empathy, because the grandson felt bad that his parents were treating his grandfather so rudely, and shows his parents how unfair they're being to the grandfather. I can connect this story to my life because my grandparents live in India. My parents and I can only see them once a year. When we visit them, we try to make them happy, by making their favorite foods, helping them out in the house, and most of all, spending time with them. To sum up, family is very important, and should care for family as much as possible, especially for your elders because your elders should receive your utmost respect.

Pippin's Question Box

Can you "bake" a pie in a microwave- or will it just explode?

I think that you can "bake" a pie in a microwave because the pie gets warmer when the heat from the microwave transfers to the pie. But, you need to microwave the pie in a metal container, otherwise the plate gets burnt. However, the pie won't be cooked well, so it is better to bake it in the oven.

I got my information from http://home.att.net/~mrmicrowave/docs/youcanusemetal.html

Basic Genetics Homework

By going on http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/ , I learned many things about heredity and traits. First, I learned that a trait is a notable quality in a person. Each of us possesses a different combination of traits that makes us unique. Traits are passed from generation to generation. We inherit traits from our parents and pass them down to our children. I also learned that heredity is the passing of traits from parents to child. Children look like their parents because we "inherit" some of their traits. Our genes are made of DNA and they live in our chromosomes. We all have thousands of genes and the environment we grow in, as well as our genes, help define our traits. Humans have two complete sets of 23 chromosomes, totaling to 46 chromosomes in our body. When children are born, each parent contributes one set of chromosomes to the offspring, passing on genes to the child. That is what I learned about heredity and traits by visiting this interesting website.

Science Class Response

Owl Pellet Lab

My favorite class activity was the owl pellet lab. It was interesting to attempt to put together an entire skeleton of an owl's prey. I wasn't too fond of picking out bones from regurgitated owl food. However, analyzing the variety of bones, especially the small ones, was intriguing. It was amazing how putting together an entire skeleton from an owl pellet can show you how the owl's prey looked while it was alive. I enjoyed learning about owl pellets and dissecting owl pellets. Overall, this activity was very educational and fun, and I hope to do another activity like this again during the year.

Initially, before doing this lab, I thought that an owl pellet was just excreted waste. However, now, after studying owl pellets, I know that an owl pellet is a mass of bone, teeth, hair, feathers, and exoskeletons of the prey of the owl. Since owls don't have fingers and can't pick apart bones and fur from flesh, they swallow their food whole. Bones and feathers can't be digested by owls, just like with humans, therefore, the gizzard filters out the indigestible parts of the food. Several hours later, they are compressed into an owl pellet and are regurgitated when the digestive system has finished extracting the nutrition from the food. I found these facts interesting because they show the similarities and differences between owls and humans, and they display what all owls have to do just, because they don't have fingers. When I noticed this article posted on Sunny-D's blog, I read this interesting article on another mammal species found because of an owl pellet. The article said that Dave Tosh, from the School of Biological Sciences at Queens University, found the greater white-toothed shrew in Tipperary and Limerick because of some unusual shrew skulls that he found inside a few owl pellets that were sent to him by John Lusby, Barn Owl Research Officer from Bird Watch Ireland. This obviously shows how much you can learn about other animals that are the prey of the owl, just by examining an owl pellet.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428071113.htm

Science Current Event #2

Are Wolves the Pronghorn's Best Friend?

As of 2008, the Wildlife Conservation Society has made a new study that cautions that removing the gray wolf from the protection of the Endangered Species Act may result in a decline in the pronghorn species. Since wolves are larger than coyotes, they decrease coyote numbers by either killing them or by causing them to shift to safer areas which are not inhabited by wolves. Healthy wolf packs balance out the coyote population, and the fewer the coyotes, the more pronghorns because coyotes and pronghorns have a predation relationship. Wolves are too big to feed on pronghorns themselves, since a small pronghorn won’t satisfy their empty stomachs. The wolves feed on coyotes, providing themselves with food, and reducing the amount of predators for the pronghorns.

Therefore, I think that in a way, wolves are the pronghorn’s best friend. The relationship between the pronghorns and the wolves is commensalism, a type of symbiosis that benefits one animal and does not affect the other. This is because when wolves eliminate some of the major predators of the pronghorn, its population increases since they have a longer life due to their greater chance of survival. I think that the gray wolf is safe to be removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act because their reproduction rate is increasing, as well as the gray wolf population. It will not necessarily impact the pronghorn population because the amount of gray wolves is not decreasing. If an unexpected drop in the wolf population does occur, then the gray wolf should immediately become protected by the Endangered Species Act again. Otherwise, as the Wildlife Conservation Society predicted, there could be a decline in the population of the pronghorn species. Therefore, unless a drastic drop in the wolf population occurs, I think that it is safe to remove them from protection under the Endangered Species Act.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080303145300.htm

Science: Current Event #1

In Geneva, Designing a Global Climate-Alert System

During 2007, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared that it was likely that global warming could be an effect of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Their evidence proved that the gases emitted from the smolder of fossil fuels and deforestation travel into the atmosphere and enhance the greenhouse effect, causing global warming. Most of the idea of climate change has been proven by scientific work and experiments. However, the predictions for the future are still a little hazy because we have no mechanism to hypothesize what will happen in a warmer planet. New updates on climatology don’t come very frequently, about every five to six years. For our rapid global climate change, this frequency isn't enough. As Jane Lubchenco states, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we have an urgent need for ongoing information about climate change, and we don’t have a mechanism to provide it. Lubchenco will be leading the US delegation at a World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. This conference, along with many others, could eventually allow scientists to predict climate-change just as they daily predict the weather. The NOAA issued an in-depth report about how the climate will change in America, which set the stage for the entire world. At the Geneva conference, it is planned to create a Global Framework for Climate Services. Also, scientists will try to agree on a plan to reduce carbon emissions and other pollution in another world climate conference located in Copenhagen, Germany that will also be occurring in the near future. For now, this conference might be the best we can do, but sooner or later, we will have to take more action.

In my opinion, this Geneva conference could lead to a series of steps towards achieving our goal of recognizing the causes of climate change. With a meeting of world-wide scientists, they can share ideas and cooperate to ultimately create the mechanism which we yearn for, the one that can predict climate change. I strongly believe that such a conference can only benefit us, and if it is followed up by a conference in Copenhagen, then we may actually be able to invent such a machine that will tell us if summer will be in the 90s range or the 70s range in temperature. An update on climatology every five or six years is simply not enough. We need to be able to know if this winter, temperatures will sky-rocket as opposed to previous years which will prevent snow, or if there will be freezing temperatures, the coldest the Earth has ever experienced. We need to know if we are really experiencing global warming, or if the Earth is just entering an Ice Age. This requirement for information can not be satisfied if we just get updates about every five to six years. We need information that comes every year, so we can plan for the next winter, or the the following summer. The NOAA has gotten a head start, hopefully beginning a trend of in-depth reports around the world. However, without collaboration across the globe and a consensus to solve this issue, the world needs to acknowledge the fact that climate change is happening right here, right now, and we need to do something about it before it is too late.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1919932,00.html

Literature: Bullying (Man's inhumanity to Man)

There are many reasons why society and our own school's community don't attempt to cease bullying. Most bystanders do not have the courage to become an upstander and support the victim because often, they fear the bully and don’t want to take a risk to save someone because it could jeopardize their self. One of the causes of bullying is a negative event in the bully's past. The bully may have been put down and made fun of before and in order to vent his/her anger, he/she imposes it on innocent victims, thinking that they would find out how it feels to be bullied. In Lord of the Flies, in order to gain power, Jack, who can be called the antagonist of the book, bullies Piggy. Since Piggy is plump and does not have much physical strength, Jack plays on these weaknesses to crack up the assembly and turn them against Piggy. In reality, Jack might fear Piggy because of his high intelligence and his potential to be leader of the little community on the island. Furthermore, Jack says "Bollock to the rules!" on page 89 because he wants to ignore the rules of the assembly. Also, he tries to indirectly persuade the assembly members to stop following them. He does this also to gain power and eventually, I predict that he will break up from Ralph's leadership and lead his choir and anyone else who sides with him to a new group where he will be chief. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph doesn't support Piggy much and goes along with Jack and the rest of the group whenever they make fun of Piggy or laugh at him. This is because if Ralph openly supports the victim of Jack's bullying, then he will be made fun of, too, and he could potentially lose his ranking as chief. Ralph knows that agreeing with Jack is wrong, but he sacrifices his friendship with Piggy to keep his power. Ralph also may not have the bravery to oppose Jack, knowing that Jack is his equal, in physical strength at least.Therefore, even though bullying is a moral wrong that should be rectified, people either don't have the courage to oppose it, or don't want to lose power, which is why they don't attempt to end bullying.

Literature: Summer Reading Question

For Summer Reading, I read the book, City of Ember. I picture the author of City of Ember to be a creative, kind, and imaginative person. In order to think up the entire concept of an underground city, with all the details and ideas and laws, it takes a great imagination, which Jeanne DuPrau, the author of City of Ember, undoubtedly possesses. Also, after reading her writing, I think that Jeanne DuPrau has a compassionate personality because of the way she writes. The City of Ember uses excellent word choice and has a positive connotation. She seems like a nice person and I really enjoyed reading her novel, The City of Ember and I plan to read the rest of the Ember series based on this excellent first book.

Welcome Scientists!

My favorite subject is science because I find it very interesting and I like experiments.
The best book I ever read was Time Capsule. My favorite food to buy in the cafeteria is Mozzarella Sticks with Marinara Sauce. On the weekend, when all my chores are done, I like to hang out with my friends, go to a party, or watch a movie. If I won a free airline ticket to any place I wanted, I would go to Hawaii because it is a tropical island and has a lot of beaches. My favorite color is lavender. If I had a pet, it'd be a puppy and I would name it Diamond. This year, if I work hard enough, I hope to make many new friends and get straight A's on my report card.