Home Biology

Find Home Biology in the GeekDad Books!

2012-01-16T11:01:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I updated this blog. Among the things that has been keeping me busy is contributing ideas to GeekDad editor Ken Denmead's series of activity books for parents and kids. The latest in the series, The Geek Dad Book for Aspiring Mad Scientists: The Coolest Experiments and Projects for Science Fairs and Family Fun, contains a dozen projects first seen here and on my other "home science" blogs. (Check the sidebar if you've never seen them!)

What's even more exciting is that I'm now at work along with my three co-editors at GeekMom.com on our own book! It is due out in the Fall of 2012 from Potter Crafts, a division of Crown Publishing. And my own activity book for kids, Robotics: Discover the Science and Technology of the Future with 20 Projects, will be out this summer from Nomad Press.

There's a lot going on, but in the meantime, drop by GeekMom.com and GeekDad.com for more great family activities!

More Home Biology Sightings in the News

2010-12-23T22:11:00.000-08:00

If you didn't get to see the nice picture of the kids and me playing with our computer microscope for the New York Times (the photos are not on the NYT website), here's a reprint of the article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Welcome New York Times Readers!

2010-12-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

It was a thrill to be featured in the article about our computer microscope in the New York Times Business section. Home Biology is where my two teens and I kept records of all the activities we did and resources we found in the course of a year of homeschooling biology. In the sidebar on the right you'll find lots, conveniently arranged by topic.

Despite the description in the Times, we don't really have a lab in our dining room. And the computer microscope described in the article is about the most sophisticated piece of science equipment we use. But we can tell you a lot about studying living things with kids at home using low-tech and inexpensive equipment. If you look at the Topic Labels in the sidebar, you can find posts about our forays into microphotography using a standard student microscope (which has a higher magnification than the computer model) and my digital point-and-shoot camera. There are also lots of posts about our "labs" (perhaps not what a traditional high school biology lab would look like, but a hands-on activity that got my kids thinking and doing science). I also labeled some activities kitchen biology because they involve food. Those were my favorites!

I'd love to hear what you think about our activities and our blog. And if you're interested to see what we've done in other science areas, be sure to visit our other blogs: Home Chemistry, Home Physics, and this year's project, Integrated Science at Home. And anyone who's interested in ways to bring science and technology (as well as scifi, games, and all kinds of fun stuff) to kids should check out the other blogs I'm a member of, GeekMom and GeekDad.

You can also find information about activity books for kids and my school and library programs at my website Crafts for Learning. You'll find contact info there as well. Thanks for stopping by!

Now Blogging at GeekMom with Mythbuster Kari Byron!

2010-10-02T21:52:00.001-07:00

I've been busy the past few months helping to launch GeekMom, a site dedicated to moms who want to share their geeky passions with their kids. To start us off, we've got MythBusters host Kari Byron writing about her new adventure as mom to a one-year-old girl. Kari is also the host of the new hour-long kids' show Head Rush. Check us out!

And I'll still be blogging at GeekDad, so be sure to stop by there too!

Saratoga Woods and Waterways

2010-05-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

Image: Jackie Donnelly

Back when we started this blog our first project was a nature survey. Although we managed to identify many species that were new to us, we were only scratching the surface.

I just discovered a blog by a local amateur naturalist Jackie Donnelly of Saratoga Springs, NY called Saratoga Woods and Waterways. It has wonderful photos and descriptions. Since the trails she mentions are all within a short drive, we'll have to check some out and see if we can find any of the plants and animals she identifies.

More Triops -- and a Fairy Shrimp

2010-05-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

We hatched some more triops recently and got a bonus -- a fairy shrimp. We brought our shrimp to the Schuylerville Library for a presentation on the activities from my new book Discover the Desert, which was just won an Honor Award from Skipping Stones Magazine. Unfortunately, the two triops passed on after only a few weeks, but the fairy shrimp (the kind that are sold as Sea Monkeys) is still going strong.You can see the fairy shrimp on the left in this photo.

I have had a very hard time getting nice photos of our shrimp. But if you want to see some crisp, clear excellent images of triops, the book Triops: A Very Unusual Creature is now available on Amazon.

Food, Inc.

2010-04-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

I just discovered that the documentary Food, Inc. can now be watched online at the PBS website. From the PBS companion website:

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli — the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Among the experts interviewed is Michael Pollan. Last year we listened to the audio version of his excellent, accessible book, In Defense of Food.

I've had the DVD on reserve at the library forever (my request has already expired once), so I'm very glad to see that we can now watch it on demand. Now if we can only figure out how to stream video from the computer to our ancient TV...

Stuffed Triops and other Fun Critters

2010-04-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

Check out my GeekDad post about Weird Bug Lady, who makes adorable stuffed versions of triops, bugs, and other critters.

A Cool Article on Aquaponics

2010-02-18T20:41:00.000-08:00

Image: NYT

When we brought the goldfish in from the plastic pond in the backyard last fall, they had doubled in size. So we picked up a second tank to keep them in. Our tanks are self-contained: rocks, plants and fish in their own ecosystem, without filters. (We change half of the water and wipe the tank down every week.)

At one point we gave a thought to putting at least one of the 10-gallon tanks on the shelf by the back sliding door, where we had our hydroponic set-up last year, and trying to grow veggies on the top of it. We never followed through. (As a side note, for the first time in my experience the boxes of dirt-planted herbs I brought in last fall are still doing going strong indoors this winter.)

However, this New York Times story describes an aquaponic experiment very similar to what we were thinking about. Given how wet our property is, we don't need to grow in tanks year-round, but maybe we'll give it a try next winter.

Brain Slices

2009-12-04T18:59:00.000-08:00

As I write this, you can watch live streaming video of a frozen brain being sliced into sections for study at the Brain Observatory at the University of California, San Diego. The brain belongs to a man who lost his short-term memory after an operation to help his seizures.

From CNN:

A camera is taking a picture of each individual slice, and these pictures will also be made available on the Web. The goals are to map the human brain in new ways and correlate individual structures with specific functions such as memory.

Nature Art -- Big and Small

2009-12-01T12:59:00.000-08:00

I finally got the chance to interview (via email) local nature writer/illustrator Carol Coogan. Read "How to Get Your Kids Out Drawing Nature" on GeekDad.

And The Micropolitan Museum of Microscopic Art Forms is a website featuring images of teeny tiny organisms. Here's their description:

For several centuries artists have depicted the human figure, still-lives, landscapes or non-figurative motifs. One subject has been widely neglected all those years: Micro-organisms!

The Micropolitan Museum finally exhibits these often overlooked works of art which are only visible with the aid of the microscope. Curator Wim van Egmond has collected the finest microscopic masterpieces nature has ever produced during eons of natural selection.

Great Kids Book about Triops

2009-11-08T07:55:00.001-08:00

Photographer Lori Adams sent me
a review copy of the new book she produced with author Helen Pashley about triops. This book is the reference you'll need when you try raising these frisky little critters for yourself. It has all the information you'll need, plus lots of clear, well-marked photos so you can identify what you're seeing. I recommend it highly. Order it through Little Science books.

You can also order triops kits through Amazon or directly from Triassic Triops (but I get a small kickback from Amazon, and shipping is free)!

See my post about triops on GeekDad. The comments are pretty funny, too.

Charlie's Playhouse - Toys that Teach Evolution

2009-11-05T06:57:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my fellow GeekDad writer Jenny for pointing me towards Charlie's Playhouse, a toy company dedicated to games and learning tools about evolution. As Jenny writes:

The 24th of November is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s work, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.” To celebrate this important anniversary, Charlie’s Playhouse, maker of evolution-inspired toys, play things and apparel, is inviting us all to ask our kids (age 4 to 10), “What is evolution?” They are hoping this will spark family discussion about evolution.

How Did Our Garden Grow?

2009-10-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

This year's garden was eventful, and deserves a report:

1. The Three Sisters Garden worked great!

Following the directions from NativeTech, I planted corn, stringbeans and various kinds of squash Native American-style. We had way more corn than the previous year (although several ears never developed), and the beans were plentiful up until the first frost. In fact, the beans grew so well that the corn stalks began bending under the weight and had to propped up with stakes taken from the tomato patch (more on which below). I also got a lot of acorn squash (reminder to self: make menus to use up acorn squash in downstairs fridge) and a few zucchinis. I even got two pickings of pickles from the one vine that grew over by the compost pile. But most of the squash didn't thrive. Possible reasons: planted seeds too deep, critters ate seeds, powdery mildew, squash bugs. But all in all relatively easy and very rewarding. (Note for next year: deepen lower plot to move corn farther away from fence.)

2. Those poor tomatoes.

Tomatoes throughout the area had it rough this year. Tomato blight arrived early, thanks to plants shipped to the big-box stores. Although experts recommended pulling up all plants and discarding them, I kept a few which still had leaves and found that by the end of the season they each had produced several more small fruits (which I failed to harvest before the frost, sadly). The other weird thing was that somehow I ended up without a single regular round red tomato among all my varieties. And due to a mistake on the part of the farmer's market guy, the green zebra seedlings I bought turned out to be orange globes (which the husband pronounced unsuitable for sandwiches, for some reason). Not a total washout, not a great year.

3. What happened to all the pumpkins?

Last year we had pumpkins up the wazoo, just from throwing our old ones on the compost pile. This year, nada. Still had vines -- but they turned out to be plain little gourds, barely suitable for decorations. Went to our usual pumpkin place (across from the dairy farm we lived on years ago) to stock up, and the girl there said all the wet weather was not pumpkin-friendly. Well, there's always next year.

4. The herbs, the strawberries, the grapes, the apples.

The herb garden we created at our last house was so wonderful, I figured it would be easy to replicate. But so far, no luck. Even though herbs are billed as being suitable for shady spots, ours have not filled out. And with the non-stop rain, everything growing in the lower part of the backyard was pretty much drenched, if not underwater, throughout the entire season. I added some more ever-bearing strawberries, which turned out to have much larger fruit than the first batch (about half the size of a regular strawberry, as opposed to little wild-strawberry-sized fruit). They only produced a few, and sometimes the bunnies got to them before I did. I'd like to add more of those next spring. Of the two grape plants I put in by the pond, one died and the other survived but didn't fruit. The apple tree produced about a dozen apples, of which the squirrels got two. All were bumpy and funny-looking, but were OK when peeled and cooked.

Winter gardening: I still need to pull out the old plants and cut what herbs remain for drying. The carrots I planted in September seem to be doing OK; I plan to cover them and see if they are pickable in the winter. I also planted some lettuce in flower boxes on the porch rail, but the squirrels decided they were the perfect place to bury nuts.

Not sure about doing any hydroponics other than sprouts this winter, but I may try to grow something in one of the fish tanks. Still looking into it! Also hope to try some of the projects in Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting.

New Blog - Home Physics!

2009-10-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

It'll be a few more weeks before it really gets up and going, but I'm starting to add helpful links and info about learning physics at home to this year's science blog, Home Physics. Come visit! And feel free to comment with your favorite resources or suggestions.

Nature Drawing

2009-09-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

I don't think I ever posted these drawings of tomato plants by my kids last winter. We have been inspired by the lovely illustrations of naturalist Carol Coogan, whose work is published weekly in our local newspaper.

Images Copyright by Carol Coogan

Dobsonflies

2009-08-31T19:18:00.000-07:00

This week's post at GeekDad is about the wetlands that used to be our backyard...

Zip Code Zoo

2009-08-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a nature ID site that works by looking at the location of your internet service provider. (Didn't know websites could do that? I use a site called StatCounter to see who's visiting my various blogs. It gives a rough approximation of your city, among other info. And that's just the free, amateur version. Anyway...)

Here's what Zip Code Zoo has to say about itself:

Our natural world is rapidly losing its diversity and abundance. To slow this loss, and to better appreciate the natural world, we must begin with local nature. ZipcodeZoo works to bring the natural world to armchair, amateur, and professional naturalists. Our focus is Applied Biogeography: understanding plants and animals in their place, perhaps even your backyard.

Compost Tube - Final Report

2009-08-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

This beautiful abstract from early July is the inside of the compost bottle. As you can see, some fungi took hold, along with the nematodes and bacteria that broke our vegetable scraps down into mush. A friend suggested using the liquid which collected in the bottom of the tube as "compost tea," so I poured it on my potted grape tomato plant. After photographing and disassembling the tube, I worked the contents into the tomato pot. (The tomato doesn't look great, but I don't know if that is the fault of the compost!)

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

2009-08-10T07:40:00.001-07:00

Another interesting-looking resource for learning about biology is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute website. It has a section called Cool Science for teachers, parents and kids, and you can access free lectures via streaming video or by ordering the free DVDs.

Backyard Biology

2009-08-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a website recommended by Robert Krampf:

Backyard Biology is a nature website written by a marine biology who works as a science educator at the Museum of Science in Boston, and an outdoor educator-turned-artist. Here's an excerpt from their bios:

When my good friend, Don asked if I would be interested in developing a web-site with him, the wheels started to turn. What fun it would be to combine art, natural history and writing as we share our mutual fascination with everything from aphids to zebras. We hope you will join us on frequent expeditions to our “backyards”.

Your Tax Dollars at Work!

2009-07-16T05:51:00.000-07:00

Hi Kathy,

Thanks for listing our booklet on your site:

Inside the Cell, an interactive online publication from National Institute of General Medical Sciences (also available as PDF)

You might be interested to know that, in addition to its online and PDF format, Inside the Cell is available free-of-charge as a full-color printed booklet. You can order it, and our other free science ed materials, at http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/order/ .

Even more print and online resources are at http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Publications/ . Everything is free-of-charge. (Your tax dollars at work.)

Best,

Alisa

Alisa Zapp Machalek
Science Writer and Editor
National Institutes of Health/NIGMS
301-496-7301 phone
alisa.machalek@nih.gov
http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/order/

Food Labs (Biochemistry)

2009-06-29T06:31:00.000-07:00

Biological macromolecules like proteins, lipids (fats), and carbohydrates (sugars and starches)
are the building blocks of living cells. They also use them to store energy. This week, for biology, we made food samples, and tested them for fat and starch. Here is how we did it:

Fat Test
For the fat test, we tested samples of milk, butter, peanut butter, olive oil, Nutella, egg whites, an egg yolk, heavy cream, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and yogurt. We also used water for the control sample. We tested them by taking a big piece of brown paper-bag-type paper, drawing squares for the samples, and spreading a little of each food in its square. We than waited for around 15 minutes for the food samples to dry. Once dry, any sample containing fat left a dark grease stain on the paper.

Starch Test
The starch test was slightly more complicated. For the starch test, we made samples of cooked pasta, bread, crackers, a blue chip, flour, a potato, sugar, corn starch. Again, we used water as a control. For the set-up, we took a small sample of each food, and put it in a small plastic cup. For the testing, we put a few drops of iodine on the sample. If the sample contained starch, the drops turned blue. This is because (from Wikipedia) "Starch forms an unstable complex (blue colored) in low concentrations of Iodine."

The potato after the Iodine was added.
As it's reacting with the starch,
the brown Iodine turns dark blue.

The sugar after the Iodine was added.
As you can see, the Iodine did not change color,
meaning that the sugar contains no starch.

One of the cracker samples we made after the iodine was added.
This sample has water added because we were trying to contrast it
with a cracker sample that we chewed up. The starch in the chewed-up
sample was supposed to convert to sugar via the enzymes in our saliva.
Unfortunately, we were unable to detect any difference
between the chewed-up sample and the regular sample.

A couple of days earlier, we made butter from heavy cream. All we did was put about half a cup of cream and a pinch of salt in a glass jar and shake it for roughly 15 minutes. First the cream became thick like whipped cream, then it separated into "buttermilk" and butter.

We followed these directions from Raft.net, which contain a simple explanation of what's happening. A more detailed chemical explanation is available at Butter Through the Ages.

Resources:

SEP: Testing for Lipids, Proteins and Carbohydrates
http://seplessons.ucsf.edu/node/362

Protein, Carbohydrate, Lipid Power Point http://teacher.edmonds.wednet.edu/mths/awelman/index.php?section=documents

Virtual Protein, Carbohydrate, Lipid Lab Tests
http://faculty.kirkwood.edu/apeterk/learningobjects/biologylabs.htm

Home Training Tools Food Lab
http://www.hometrainingtools.com/food-chemistry-projects/a/1591/

What's Living in Our Compost Tube?

2009-06-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

We haven't observed any change in temperature, but the food scraps in our compost tube are definitely starting to rot. And things are growing: above, looking down the neck of the soda bottle, you can see an onion sprouting up from the pile. We also took a sample of the water which collects in the bottom of the tube and took a look under the microscope. Check out the videos below:

Here you can see some of the microorganisms living in our compost pile at 40X magnification, shot with a small hand-held digital camera. The worm above is called a nematode. Cornell's Department of Crop and Soil Science has a page about compost inhabitants. They also have an online guide called Composting in the Classroom: Scientific Inquiry for High School Students which we haven't checked out yet but will.

Above is a 400X magnification of the kidney-shaped organisms, which are probably protozoa. Here's a page about Microbial Decomposers, with microphotos, from the city of Euless, Texas.

Soda Bottle Compost

2009-06-02T08:11:00.000-07:00

This week, we did another experiment having to do with bacteria and other microbes: a compost column. The purpose being to show how microbes in the soil break down old plants and turn it into fertilizer. A regular compost pile, like the one by our backyard vegetable garden, is made up of old leaves and grass cuttings. The documentary "Unseen Life on Earth" mentioned a town that was using a compost pile as its trash pile by burying it in microbe-rich soil. It could decompose all the trash in a couple of years and got up to temperatures of about 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

For our compost tube, we took some old soda bottles, cut them up to make the column, put food scraps in it, and left it for a few days to decompose. We changed the directions a little, but here is the link to the original instructions.

· 2 clear, plastic, 2-liter soda bottles, one with a cap

· Nylon netting or pantyhose

· Rubber band

· Push pin

· Metal skewer or nail

· Wide packing or masking tape

· Coffee filter - basket type

· Scissors and/or box cutter

· Soil

· Vegetable and fruit scraps

· Meat thermometer

· Waterproof marking pen

1. Rinse the soda bottles. Cut the first bottle around the middle. Set the bottom half aside.

2. Take the top half of the bottle and cut again where it widens out. DO NOT CUT ALL THE WAY AROUND. Leave a flap that will act as a hinge, so you can open the top. Set aside.

3. Cut the bottom off the second bottle just above the curve. Discard the bottom.

4. Wrap the netting over the mouth of the bottle and fasten it below the neck with the rubber band.

5. Poke a hole in the top of the cap with the skewer or nail. If you heat the skewer over the stove you can melt a hole through the cap. Make it big enough to slip in the meat thermometer.

6. With the push pin, poke holes in the second bottle all around the sides to allow air to flow into the column. Do the same with with the top of the first bottle.

7. Take the second bottle with the netting and set it upside-down inside the bottom of the first bottle. Place a coffee filter inside the upside-down bottle so it covers the opening.

8. Fit the top of the first bottle inside the upside-down bottle so they form a long column. You may need to cut small V-shapes in the edge of the inner bottle so it lies flat. Use clear packing tape inside and out to fasten the two bottles together. You may need to re-open some of the holes with the push pin.

9. Bend back the hinged top of the uppermost bottle. Fill the column with fruit and vegetable scraps. You can add any plant matter, including leaves from houseplants. Sprinkle some soil over the scraps, and shake or poke down so it’s evenly mixed. If it’s dry, add some water.

10. Close the hinged top and fasten with tape. Screw on the cap. Insert the meat thermometer. Mark the height of the material in the column with the pen, and write down the date.

11. Put the compost column in a place where it can be observed for several weeks without smelling up the house. Check it regularly to see if the height or temperature changes and to see what is happening to the plant material inside.

Growing Bacteria Cultures

2009-05-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

The ingredients and the bacterial smear of the window.

We tried a couple of formulas for homemade growth medium in which we could grow bacteria cultures. In real labs, a vegetable product called agar is used to make a gel. The agar is melted and poured into Petri dishes, and then chilled until it solidifies again. To get bacteria samples, a sterile cotton swab is rubbed across a surface. Then the dish is streaked by rubbing the swab in a zigzag pattern across the agar. It is set aside in a warm place and allowed to grow for several days.

The first formula was from The Science of Life by Frank G. Bottone, Jr. It used combined flavored Jello and SlimFast diet drink. Instead of Petri dishes, we used small plastic cups (the kind they put ketchup in at fast food places) covered with clear plastic wrap held on with a rubber band. For the sterile swabs, we took Q-Tips and dipped them in a cup of boiling water. Sadly, this formula grew mold but no bacteria.

Stirring the gelatin.

We had better luck with the second formula. It came from a website called Science in the Real World and was designed by biologist Teresa Thiel of the University of Missouri. It used unflavored gelatin, beef boullion cubes and sugar. We used bacteria from yogurt, a toilet, the stem of our hydroponic tomato plant, the inside of one of our mouths, the inside of our refrigerator, the inside of our fish tank, a window, the inside of one of our navels, some dirt from our back yard, the kitchen counter, a sock, and one of our fingers.

The naval smear and the finger smear at 7 days.

The dirt smear after 2 days and after 7 days. The fuzz on the right is mold.

The plant smear and window smear (see top) at 7 days.

At the end of the week, we're going to dispose of the smears and bleach out the box so that any possible escaped bacteria won't start infecting our house.

Yogurt

2009-05-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

This week for Biology, we made yogurt using a bacterial process. The bacteria ferments the yogurt by converting milk sugar to lactic acid. We used store-bought yogurt as starter to introduce the bacteria into the milk. The milk is heated to kill off bad bacteria and to alter the proteins to give it a better consistency.

There isn't much to do for this experiment so the instructions are in the photo captions.
Source: New York Times. You can also read more about the biology of yogurt making here.

The Ingredients: All you need is some yogurt, milk, a closed container, something to keep it warm, and a candy thermometer.

Put 3 1/2 cups of milk in a pan and heat.

The milk's temperature being tested. You want it to go up to 180 degrees.

Then put the pan inside a larger pan filled with cold water. Cool the milk down to 120 degrees.

The yogurt being poured into the container -- a quart-sized travel mug.
You want to mix in about about 2 tablespoons of yogurt to one quart or less milk.

Keep the container warm for about 12 hours. We put ours in an insulated lunch cooler.
When it's done, put it in the refrigerator. Homemade yogurt will keep for one week. Enjoy!

Foraging

2009-05-22T19:47:00.001-07:00

Last week's post for GeekDad featured Wildman Steve Brill, the famous New York City expert on edible weeds and plants. Brill gives tours of parks in the metropolitan NY area. Maybe someday we'll catch one. In the meantime, I'm putting his site in the sidebar in the hopes I work up the nerve to try a wild backyard salad...

Brill has a book you can buy, but on his website there's a wonderful section for kids. He also recommends these Wild Cards. I'm ordering a set. They'll come in handy.

2009-05-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

In the Wall Street Journal today:

In Attics and Closets, 'Biohackers' Discover Their Inner Frankenstein
Using Mail-Order DNA and Iguana Heaters, Hobbyists Brew New Life Forms; Is It Risky?

(Something to worry about if you're too successful in getting your kids interested in biology!)

See also my post on DIYbio.

Science in the Real World: Microbes in Action

2009-05-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

The Science in the Real World: Microbes in Action website is a resource for K-12 teachers. It has classroom activities for all levels, which look easy to do and use readily available materials, as well as tips and techniques for preparing baterial cultures. We're going to try preparing petri dishes using "agar" made from gelatin and beef bullion this week. (So far we haven't gotten any growth on dishes we made last week using a recipe of flavored Jello and Slim Fast...)

The website comes from the University of Missouri in St. Louis.

Cells

2009-05-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

This week, for biology, we learned about cells. We have been watching some of the videos here, and we watched two movies about cell death (Death By Design and The Life and Times of Life and Times, as mentioned in the previous post.) We decided to look at some different things under our microscope.

First, we looked at an onion skin. We took two pieces from the bottom layer of an onion, and we put them on two different slides. With one, we put some Iodine on the slide so we could see the different layers, and the other we didn't use Iodine on. Here are some of the pictures we took:

The slide without Iodine at x100

The slide with Iodine at x100

Onion Cell Lab Instructions.

Add 2 drops of iodine to the center of a glass slide. Be careful! Iodine can stain your clothes.
Take a small piece of onion. Use tweezers to peel off the skin from the underside (the rough, white side) of the onion. Throw the rest of the onion piece away.
Carefully lay the onion skin flat in the center of the slide on top of the iodine.
Add 2 drops of iodine to the top of the onion skin.
Stand a thin glass cover slip on its edge near the onion skin, next to the drop of iodine.
Slowly lower the other side of the cover slip until it covers the onion skin completely. If there are air bubbles, gently tap on the glass to “chase” them out.

The second lab we did was our fishtank plants. Having two tanks we took a sample from both, it was quite simple to set up, we merely put a small leaf with a couple drops of water on a slide. Photos below:

Leaf cell plant at x400

Leaf at x40

Plant Cell Lab Instructions

Tear off one small leaf/stem from the plants in the fish tank.
Add one drop of tap water to the slide.
Stand a thin glass cover slip on its edge near the leaf, next to the drop of water.
Slowly lower the other side of the cover slip until it covers the leaf completely. Make sure there are no air bubbles.

The last lab we did was human skin cells. This was an interesting lab to do, we looked at three different samples of cheek cells, though there wasn't much difference between the cells. Photo:

The cheek cells at x400

Human Cheek Cell Lab Instructions

Add one drop of methylene blue to the middle of a clean slide. Be careful! Methylene blue will stain your clothes and skin.
Use the flat side of a toothpick to gently scratch the inside of your cheek. DO NOT GOUGE YOUR CHEEK - you don’t need chunks of skin and definitely don’t want to draw blood.
Gently touch the toothpick to the drop of dye on the slide. Some of your cheek cells should drift off into the dye.
Throw the toothpick away.
Stand a thin glass cover slip on its edge near the drop of dye.
Slowly lower the other side of the cover slip until it covers the dye completely. Make sure there are no air bubbles.

Links:
My Science Box (Source of experiments)

A Nobel-Winning Home Biologist

2009-05-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

"I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately, in university institutes but in a bedroom." -- Rita Levi-Montalcini

Last night we watched Death by Design, a 1996 documentary that explains programmed cell death in a very entertaining manner. Interspersed with interviews with biologists from the US, France, Germany and Italy are scenes from old comedies that illustrate metaphorically what the scientist is discussing. Together with the lively score it made for a very interesting 70 minutes.

One of the most interesting segments was an interview with Nobel Prize winning scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini. Levi-Montalcini, who celebrated her 100th birthday on April 22, is still active as a scientist and as a life-long member of the Italian parliament. The daughter of Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician, and Adele Montalcini, a talented painter, Levi-Montalcini had to convince her traditionalist father to allow her to pursue a University education. (Her twin sister Paola, an accomplished painter who also appears in the film and who died in 2000, was allowed to study art, which her father did not feel would interfere with her future duties as a wife and mother.)

In 1936, Levi-Montalcini had graduated from medical school and was trying to decide whether to go into practice or research when World War II intervened. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini decreed that Jews like the Levi-Montalcinis could no longer work in academic or professional careers. Rather than fleeing to the United States, the family decided to stay in Italy and work at home. Levi-Montalcini set up a laboratory in her bedroom and began studying the development of chicken embryos.

As the film explains (if I understand it correctly), it had been shown many times that cells "commit suicide" when given a signal by the rest of the organism, but those findings had never been considered important. But as she says in the film, Levi-Montalcini likes to work by intuition. She sees a connection between scientific investigation and art. (Her twin Paola, also shown in the film, was likewise often inspired by her sister's research.) And the armies clashing around them made the idea of organized death even more concrete. (The family had to pack up their life and work and leave their hometown of Turin for the hills when fighting got too intense.) Working in her bedroom lab, Levi-Montalcini was the first to study how embryos shape themselves during development by creating more cells than are needed in the mature organism and signaling certain cells to die. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1986.

I just loved learning Levi-Montalcini's remarkable story. It shows what you can accomplish simply working at home. I especially love how the sisters' work in art and science influenced each other. I've started looking into their story further with the intention of turning it into a children's book. I'll keep you posted!

Yeast Cell Monday

2009-04-27T08:05:00.001-07:00

Left: Science Image; Right: The Artisan-Bread Basics

Now that I've got a live sourdough starter residing in my refrigerator, I have to remember to feed it once a week. And since that process involves removing some of the old starter, I'm going to try to bake with it, rather than just toss it out. Last week's waffles were not universally loved. (For some, "tangy" and "waffles" apparently don't go together.) So I will try some more bread, which was much more popular. In fact, I could see how it could become addicting.

Anyway, the yeast posts the kids put together left out a look at yeast cells. So here they are. Yeast cells are jelly-bean shaped. At the top left is an electron microscope photo of yeast cells dividing from Science Image in Australia. The diagram at right is from a bread baking webpage.

These two photos were taken with our microscope at 400X magnification. To the left is a digitally-enhanced photo of storeboughten baker's yeast. If you click on it, you can see it large enough to pick out the nuclei in some of the cells. To the right is the wild sourdough yeast we captured in our kitchen.

Why yeast cells are interesting, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute:

Key findings about human genes have come from studying the humble, blob-like cells of baker's or brewer's yeast, which one researcher calls, shockingly, our relatives. In 1996, yeast became the first eukaryote (an organism whose genetic material is enclosed in a cell nucleus) to have its entire genome sequenced. Ever since, it has remained at the forefront of research on genetics. Almost everything we know about the cell-division cycle, for instance, comes from experiments with yeast, and many new methods of analyzing genes were first tried out in yeast.

Some more resources on yeast cells:

The University of Sidney in Australia's website on fungi.

DIYbio

2009-04-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

Not quite sure what these guys are doing, but it does look interesting:

DIYbio is an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety. This will require mechanisms for amateurs to increase their knowledge and skills, access to a community of experts, the development of a code of ethics, responsible oversight, and leadership on issues that are unique to doing biology outside of traditional professional settings.

There's a lot more info at their Wiki. They're based in Cambridge, MA, but have local cells (so to speak) around the world. Check them out!

What is ATP?

2009-04-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

Today's episode of Unseen Life on Earth talked about ATP, but somehow I didn't catch what ATP was. The video above offers a quick explanation using cereal. You can also check out:

ATP and Energy Storage from Biology in Motion - a cartoon mini-lecture

What is a cell?

2009-04-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to find some resources that explain the basics of cell biology, including explaining what all those little organelles are. So far most of the sites I've found seem designed for reviewing material that's already been covered. So I'm making a list here of some sites that we can check out. Hopefully some will turn out to be useful. I'll add more as I find them, and list them in the sidebar as well.

Basics of Cell Structure:

Cells from Enchanted Learning. (This is a website aimed at elementary students that I used a lot when my kids were younger. Still good for really basic information on lots of topics.) Includes directions for making a model of a cell from Jello and candies.

Plant cell pitch-penny game: From Ellen McHenry, for elementary-age kids

Cell (biology) from Wikipedia

The Virtual Cell Webpage: There is an "online text" written in simple language for rank beginners, and a 3D animated cell to explore.

Cell Ultrastructure from BiologyMad. Also clearly written. To find it, click on AS Biology, then Microscopy, Cells, Diffusion & Membranes, then scroll down to Cell Ultrastructure.

What is a Cell? from the National Center for Biotechnology Information

Inside the Cell, an interactive online publication from National Institute of General Medical Sciences (also available as PDF)

A Tour of the Cell from the National Science Foundation. The illustrations here are somewhat clearer than some of the others.

More Advanced:

Unseen Life on Earth: We've started watching this online 12-part video series, based on a PBS special

Inside a Cell from the University of Utah

Photos and Videos:

The Biobus is a mobile educational lab in NYC. Their website has videos of crawling goldfish cells. (Maybe we can try that with some of our goldfish!)

Virtual Cell Animation Collection

The Inner Life of a Cell (3D Animation, no narration - look for link in article about how the video was made)

Thanks, Lorna!

Capturing wild yeast to make sourdough bread

2009-04-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

The yeast starter The finished loaves

Last week, we were trying out a yeast experiment that didn't work out in time for the post, but this week we have successfully finished the project: making sourdough bread using home-grown yeast.

Growing Yeast (Or "Starter")
Source: Recipe Zaar

Ingredients:
1/2 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 cups water

DAY ONE: Mix 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons pineapple juice. Stir well, cover and let sit for 24 hours at room temperature.

DAY TWO: Add 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons pineapple juice. Stir well, cover and let sit another 24 hours at room temperature. We started to see bubbles.

DAY THREE: Add 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons pineapple juice. Stir well and let sit 24 hours at room temperature.

DAY FOUR: Stir mixture and measure out 1/4 cup--discard the rest. To the 1/4 cup, stir in 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup water. Let sit 24 hours at room temperature.

REPEAT Day Four until mixture expands to double its size and smells yeasty.

The starter being poured into a bowl

Updated: Kathy's Foolproof (!) Whole Wheat Sourdough Recipe

To make a loaf for supper, I make the sponge the night before, make the dough after breakfast, shape the loaf after lunch and turn on the oven to bake the bread (no preheating) about 35 minutes before I need to start making supper. Then I use the hot oven for whatever I'm making that night.

Ingredients:
3 cups of sponge (proofed starter)
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups white flour (less or more as needed)
4 teaspoons of sugar
2 teaspoons of salt
1 tablespoon of olive oil

To make the sponge, add one cup water and one cup whole wheat flour to starter in large bowl. Let sit out overnight (or at least 2 hours). If you use a glass bowl, you can check that it is bubbly all the way through.
Measure out the sponge for the bread into a large mixing bowl. Take the leftover starter and add one cup water and one cup flour. Mix, cover, and return to the refrigerator.
Take the sponge for the bread and add the sugar and salt. Mix well, then knead in the flour a half-cup at a time. Knead in enough flour to make a good, flexible bread dough. The dough should stretch, not tear, when you fold it.
Pour oil into bowl. Put dough in bowl and turn until covered in oil. Let rise, loosely covered, in a warm place (like an oven heated for 1-2 minutes) for ~3 hours, or until doubled.
Place dough on baking tray. Gently knead and shape into a loaf. Make three gashes across the top. Let rise again, loosely covered, 2-3 hours.
Remove covering on loaf. Sprinkle with water. (This makes the crust crispy.) Turn oven on to 425 degrees F. (No preheating needed.) Bake about 35 minutes, or until brown and fragrant. Loaf should sound "hollow" when tapped on bottom.

NOTE: If you don't use your refrigerated starter in about a week you will need to feed it. Remove one cup of starter (you can use it for waffles!), add one half cup each water and flour, mix, and return to fridge for a week. Continue indefinitely.

ALSO NOTE: The liquid that sometimes separates out is called hootch, and smells like it! Just stir it back in.

The two loaves made on our second try. (Read to go into the oven.)

Some links we used:

Breadtopia video
Microbiologist Debra Wink's sourdough experiment
Sourdough use and maintenance tips from King Arthur flour
Sourdough basics by S. John Ross

Root Beer

2009-04-14T05:34:00.000-07:00

This week for chemistry, we decided to make root beer (To learn about yeast.) We used the yeast to carbonate the soda, and we more or less followed the instructions on this site
We actually made two bottles using different methods. Here are the two methods we used:

The flavoring syrup

Bottle #1
For this one, we took all the ingredients in the original instructions, but we dissolved the sugar on the stove until it was a syrup, than we mixed the rest of the ingredients (plus a packet of Maltodextrin To make it thicker) into the syrup, and poured the syrup into the bottle along with about a liter of water.

The flavoring being poured into the bottle

Bottle #2
For this bottle we pretty much followed the instructions on the website. Also, we didn't add any Maltodextrin.

A glass of the finished project

Planting Science

2009-04-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

Planting Science is a resource for teachers which includes two, free, online units you can also use at home, "The Wonder of Seeds" for grades 7-12 and "The Power of Sunlight" for grades 9-12. They not only include experiments, but information on things like Investigating Plants Safely, Thinking and Working Like a Scientist, and Making Meaningful Graphs.

This site was recommended by a homeschooler, but a quick glance at it makes me think it needs some translation from "biology teacher speak" into regular people language. However, it could give you good ideas for experiments, and you can always Google to find a more novice-friendly version or explanation of what's going on.

Yeast Experiments, Part 1

2009-04-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

Yeast Week - Home Brewing

We have been doing a few yeast experiments this week, some of which are still in the process of being completed. The major part of this week was making our own root beer, which will be covered in another post. Here we have two small experiments that we did as well.

Testing Yeast Experiment.

Before we tried the root beer experiments, we found that the yeast we were going to use (it was champagne yeast from a kit) had expired in 2006, so the first thing we did was to test to see if it was still good with this experiment.

Materials:

Small glass measuring cup
Candy thermometer
Measuring spoons
Water
1 package Champagne yeast (1 package yeast = 2 1/4 teaspoons)
Sugar

1. Pour 1/4 cup water into a small glass measuring cup for liquids. Heat in microwave 20 seconds on high. Stir. Measure temperature. Water should be between 100 and 105 degrees F. If too cool, heat for 10 seconds. If too hot, add some cool water.

2. Add ½ teaspoon yeast and a pinch of sugar. Stir and let sit for 5 to 10 minutes, until the sugar and yeast dissolve. If a foamy layer forms on the surface, the yeast is still active.

3. If still active, seal the package and put in refrigerator for later. If not, throw it out.

The result was that the champagne yeast was too old to be used. We tested this along with regular baker's yeast and decided to use that instead.

Champagne yeast on the left, baker's on the right.

Watching yeast ferment

This experiment was just for fun. It has a neat effect which was very cool to see.

Materials:

2 empty soda bottles, washed no tops
2 latex balloons
2 rubber bands
glass measuring cup, 1-cup capacity
measuring spoons
clock
flour
sugar
water, room temperature
yeast

1. In each bottle put 2 teaspoons yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 cup water.

2. In one soda bottle, add 2 tablespoons flour. Mark this bottle.

3. Secure a balloon on top of each soda bottle with a rubber band.

The balloon on the left is the one without flour, the green one has the flour in it.

Links
-FoodSub - Yeast Types: http://www.foodsubs.com/LeavenYeast.html
-Red Star Brand Yeast: http://www.lesaffreyeastcorp.com/SoY/story_2.html

Biology Online

2009-04-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a site I found today when I needed information on photosynthesis for a book I'm working on:

Biology Online is the number one website for biology content and information on the web. The site aims to educate and promote awareness of all things biology, offering free and easy access to information in the biological sciences.

Created in 2001, the site provides a wealth of information in the diverse field of biology offering a forum for discussion, an editable-dictionary with thousands of terms, links to external resources, tutorials, articles and a biology book catalogue with user reviews.

Hey Homeschoolers! I Need Your Help...

2009-03-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

A commenter over at GeekDad (where I am now one of two homeschooling mom contributors!) wanted to know if there were any geeky (science and tech oriented) homeschooling blogs. What are your favorites? Please comment!

Taxidermy at the Pember Museum

2009-03-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

I've got a post up at GeekDad today about our trip earlier this week to the Pember Museum of Natural History in Granville, NY. It's a tiny one-room exhibit atop the public library, but I thought of its taxidermy collection when we were doing all that Darwin stuff. Links and more details at GeekDad.

Growing Fungi, Part 2

2009-03-18T09:18:00.000-07:00

We researched some more questions about mushrooms:

#1 – How long can a mushroom live?
Source- Australian National Botanic Gardens, Wikipedia.com

The mushroom has a lifespan ranging from a few days, to hundreds of years. The lifespan depends heavily on how many neighboring mushrooms there are, the more neighbors, the longer the mushrooms live. The log that we bought says that the Shiitake mushrooms can last up to 4 years.

#2 – What are the symptoms of being poisoned by a mushroom?
Source-Wikipedia.com

Poisonous mushrooms contain a variety of different toxins that can differ markedly in toxicity. Symptoms of mushroom poisoning may vary from gastric upset to life-threatening organ failure resulting in death. Serious symptoms do not always occur immediately after eating; often not until the toxin attacks the kidney or liver, sometimes days or weeks later.
The most common consequence of mushroom poisoning is simply gastric upset. Most "poisonous" mushrooms contain gastrointestinal irritants which cause vomiting and diarrhea (sometimes requiring hospitalization), but no long-term damage. However, there are a number of recognized mushroom toxins with specific, and sometimes deadly, effects.

#3 – How many types of mushrooms are poisonous?

Wikipedia.com

Of the many thousands of mushroom species in the world, only 32 have been associated with fatalities, and an additional 52 have been identified as containing significant toxins.

Disney Hydroponics

2009-03-17T19:39:00.001-07:00

This picture of hydroponic veggies in a fish tank is from the Homeschooled Twins blog. The family took a behind the scenes tour of a ride at Disney World in Florida called Living with the Land. Looks like a lot of fun!

Growing Fungi

2009-03-16T08:37:00.001-07:00

The Mushroom-growing kit from Lost Creek Mushroom Farm

A couple weeks ago, for biology, we sent away for a Shiitake-mushroom-growing kit. We have since grown (and eaten) a cluster of mushrooms. Some Q&A about mushrooms:

How can I tell which wild mushrooms are poisonous?

Contrary to popular belief, there is really no discerning characteristic that all poisonous mushrooms share. Since only about 5% of wild mushrooms are edible, I wouldn’t recommend eating a wild mushroom unless you are a hundred percent sure that it isn’t poisonous.

The log with the fully-grown mushrooms.

What is the life cycle of a mushroom?

(From ArticleClick.com)
Most mushrooms reproduce asexually by releasing thousands of spores through their gills into the open air for dispersion into the environment. Every spore is capable of germinating to create a new hypha. Hyphae are masses of intertwined filaments of cells which are the morphological unit of the fungus. When a thick mass of hyphae forms it is called mycelium or mycelia. Mushroom mycelium is usually white in color with a rough, cottony texture. Root like growth is called rhizomorphic.

When spores germinate they consume the water and nutrients from their environment and begin to reproduce. The medium that mushroom mycelium grows on is usually called substrate. Before the mushroom can start to form fruit bodies the mycelium colonizes the substrate fully and when the environmental conditions are right the mushroom emerges to produce more spores.

The mushrooms after we harvested them.

What different kinds of mushrooms are native to what areas?

Probably the most common edible mushroom, the Button Mushroom, is native to Europe (and North America.) The Portobello is also native to Europe and North America. The Shiitake is native to East Asia. The deadly Death Cap is native to Europe, North Africa, North America, Australia (SE), and New Zealand.

A delicious Shiitake-mushroom-and-lettuce pizza.

Mushroom Links:

Mushroom Life Cycle
Cornell University Virtual Library: Mycology
Lost Creek Mushroom Farm (supplier)
Fungi Perfecti (supplier)
Diagram of the mushroom life cycle.

More Hydroponics-Starting to Harvest

2009-02-26T17:29:00.001-08:00

We had some lettuce on our sandwiches today. The tomatoes are getting bigger, but nowhere near flowering or fruiting. Here's an update on our indoor water-based gardens:

1. The original containers and the paper cups we were using to hold the seedlings became moldy. We moved the plants back into the plastic cages and changed the containers.

2. We have been testing the pH of the water regularly. After our visit to a local hydrofarm (to be described soon), we've been trying to keep it to 5 or 6. We have been adding vinegar or aspirin to bring it down. This seems to be working.

3. Both lettuce and tomatoes continue to grow rapidly. However, they are kind of floppy.A look at the nutrient mixture we are using (Formula X) found no calcium among the listed ingredients.

Important Nutrients

Plants need about 16 different essential elements for optimum growth. Macronutrients, which are ordinarily found in soil, are needed by plants in rather large amounts. (Hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon are also necessary in large amounts, but are available to plants from the air and water.) The following are essential macronutrients:

nitrogen (N)–Promotes development of leaves

phosphorus (P)–Aids in growth of roots

potassium (K)–Helps plant resist disease

calcium (Ca)–Helps promote new root and shoot growth

magnesium (Mg)–Contributes to leaf color and helps absorb sunlight

sulfur (S)–Contributes leaf color

We called the company and was told that "not everything is listed." But given how weak the plants are, we are going to look for a calcium supplement to add. Calcium nitrate -- saltpeter, which I didn't manage to find when doing chemistry last year! -- seems to be what we need. We'll have to try the hydroponics shop again...

Planning Biology Labs

2009-02-23T09:18:00.000-08:00

In the coming weeks I am hoping to do more regular biology labs in conjunction with some of the topics I would like to cover, including cells, biological processes, and anatomy. In preparation, I'm looking at some of the books I already own and teaching plans and activities online. I'll be adding to the list of Biology Education Links in the sidebar and mentioning sites that look interesting as I come upon them. And of course as we do them we post step-by-step descriptions of labs here as well.

Here are some of the new resources I've found so far:

The Biology Project is an interactive online resource for learning biology developed at The University of Arizona. The Biology Project is fun, richly illustrated, and tested on 1000s of students. It has been designed for biology students at the college level, but is useful for high school students, medical students, physicians, science writers, and all types of interested people.

CELLS alive! represents 30 years of capturing film and computer-enhanced images of living cells and organisms for education and medical research. The site has been available continuously and updated annually since May of 1994 and now hosts over 4 million visitors a year. All text, images, and layout are provided by me, Jim Sullivan.

BioWeb exists to aid teachers of Biology in New Zealand schools. All activities can simply be down loaded and used in the classroom and include general strategies which can be adapted to many topics and links to further resources at the end of each section.

The Structures of Life, an online school publication from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Hands-on Activities for Teaching Biology to High School or Middle School Students: Ingrid Waldron and Jennifer Doherty from the Biology Department at the University of Pennsylvania have developed hands-on, minds-on biology activities for grades 6-12 in collaboration with colleagues at Penn and K-12 teachers.

NYS Living Environment Regents Exam Prep from Oswego City School District

Online Resources to go with Glencoe's text Biology: The Dynamics of Life 2004, including practice tests, links to virtual dissections, etc.

Bird Feeder Myths

2009-02-16T11:33:00.000-08:00

We've never put out a bird feeder (although we had some that were given as gifts). At out last house the squirrels were too fierce. At our present house we do get the occasional stray cat in the yard, but that's about it. Maybe we'll try a hummingbird feeder this spring.

In the meantime, here's a list of bird feeder myths that I had always taken at face value. It comes from the Great Backyard Bird Count website:

Myth: If birds eat uncooked rice, it can swell up in their throats or stomachs and kill them.

Fact: Plenty of birds eat uncooked rice in the wild. Bobolinks, sometimes called "rice birds," are a good example. While rice is okay for birds, many wedding parties now throw bird seed instead.
Myth: Birds can choke on peanut butter.

Fact: There is no documented evidence for this. However, mixing peanut butter with grit or cornmeal will break up the stickiness if you are concerned.

Myth: Birds become dependent on bird feeders.

Fact: Birds become accustomed to a reliable food source and will visit daily. However, birds search for food in many places, so if your feeder goes empty, most birds will find food elsewhere. During periods of extreme ice, snow, or cold, the sudden disappearance of food might be a hardship; if you are leaving town during freezing weather, consider having someone fill your feeder while you're away.

Myth: Birds’ feet can stick to metal perches.

Fact: This is not likely. A bird's legs and feet are made up mostly of tough tendons that have little blood flow during cold weather. However, we've heard rumors of feet sticking to perches: if you observe this unfortunate circumstance, please take a picture and send it to Project FeederWatch.
Myth: Feeding hummingbirds in late summer can stop their migration.

Fact: Some people believe they should stop feeding hummingbirds right after Labor Day because the birds' southward migrations will be interrupted. However, a bird's migratory urge is primarily triggered by day length (photoperiod), and even a hearty appetite won't make a bird resist that urge. In fact, your feeder might provide a needed energy boost along a bird's migration route.

Our Great Backyard Bird Count

2009-02-15T14:19:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned on GeekDad, this weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count. Because they ask for positive identification of the birds you report, we brought out cameras so we could verify our sightings. Which were not all that impressive. We saw but did not photograph a woodpecker and a few small birds which were too far to ID. Near the outlet of the Fish Creek into the Hudson River we saw a flock of mallards. And after a walk up and back along the canal, we came across this specimen. I don't think it's native to this area, and not usually seen this time of year. But in the interest of completeness, we'll report it!

Devolve Yourself

2009-02-13T06:03:00.000-08:00

As Darwin Week draws to a close, here's a little evolution fun. The Open University website has a tool that lets you devolve yourself back to your primitive ancestors. Here's what one of my kids looks like millions of years in the past.

The British-based online university also has more Darwin information put together in conjunction with the BBC. If you're in Britain you can even order a free Tree of Life poster.

Enjoy!

Darwin Week at GeekDad

2009-02-09T14:04:00.001-08:00

It's Darwin Week at GeekDad, the Wired.com blog for which I am privileged to be the token mom. When I suggested the theme week I hoped to contribute a few posts about my family's exploration of opposition to teaching evolution. However, the final consensus was to leave out any mention of creationism/intelligent design. Of course, the commenters have brought it into the discussion anyway. Unlike last year's post on the topic, the comments to the post I contributed this year have at least been coherent. But it's still upsetting that people want to "let kids decide what to believe." Here's my reply to that suggestion:

We should teach evolution to our kids because:

1) It is the basis of all modern biology;
2) It provides the best explanation of how living things came to exist in their present form;
3)It fits the observations of thousands of scientists working over hundreds of years (Darwin used earlier discoveries to formulate his theory);
4) It makes predictions which have been verified (for example, that transitional -- "missing link" -- fossils will be found between one species and another);
5) Like the laws of physics and facts about the Earth's place in the Solar System, it is somewhat counterintuitive -- meaning it is not something kids will necessarily figure out on their own from direct observation;
6) After a certain age it is difficult to correct inaccurate ideas about the world. (Go to the article Unlearning Bad Science by John Merrow to read about the study which asked graduating Harvard seniors why it's warmer in summer. Nearly all said it's because the Earth is closer to the sun!)
7) We want our children to have accurate information about how the world works, so that they can make good decisions about how to run it when it's their turn.

Hydroponics Update

2009-02-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

What happened to the first crop:
For our project this month, we've been growing more hydroponics plant (lettuce and cherry tomatoes this time.) Unfortunately, after the second day growing them, all the plants grew moldy, and we had to throw them out and start over.

Starting over:
We've been growing them in plastic cups now, and we use cocoa fiber soil. The new ones haven't grown any noticeable mold, and have been growing pretty nicely. We have noticed that the tomatoes aren't growing as fast as the lettuce, though.

Improving our set-up:
On day 18, we moved the lights closer to the plants, so they would absorb more light. Also, we moved the shelf closer to the heating vent.

Moving to bigger quarters:
We also recently moved the tomato plants into some empty milk cartons we cut holes in, and they've been growing at a faster rate now. They should be ready to harvest in about a week. So, the project has been going pretty well so far.

Saratoga Organics, a local hydroponics store, where we bought some of our supplies.

PBS Evolution series

2009-02-01T15:02:00.001-08:00

We have had great success this school year using documentaries (and some fictional movies) to learn about history. And despite the number of print resources I've found on evolution, I'm having trouble finding a way to go over this material together with the kids. So I did a quick search for a document series and came up with the 8-part DVD set from PBS. I've got it on reserve at the library, so after we watch it I'll put a quickie review on the link at my Amazon store. But from the reviews I've already read, it looks perfect for our purposes.

In the meantime, there's a companion website at PBS with web activities, video clips and more.

Teach Them Science

2009-01-30T08:29:00.000-08:00

A new website called Teach Them Science was mentioned in stories about the recent defeat in Texas of anti-evolution statements some school officials wanted to insert into the state's textbooks. This threat is bigger than just Texas, because textbook publishers cater to the Texas market -- which buys in bulk for the entire state. Here is what the National Center for Science Education says about the new website:

As the Texas state board of education prepares to vote on a revised set of state science standards, two organizations — one secular, one religious — have joined forces to produce a new website, Teach Them Science, in order to advocate for a twenty-first-century science education for the students in Texas's public schools. Sponsored by the Center for Inquiry Austin and the Clergy Letter Project, the Teach Them Science website is intended to empower parents, educators, and concerned citizens to rally in support of the new standards, which treat evolution as the central and unifying principle of the biological sciences that it is.

The National Center for Science Education's own site has some interesting information about the why the controversy is important:

The new standards last for ten years. The SBOE voted on the new standards during their January 2009 meeting, and barring a reverse vote in March, the new standards will apply for ten years.
Evolution is science, not politics. Anti-evolutionists argue against evolution using rhetoric, but it takes new evidence to change science. They are teaching students that science works like politics. Evolution is one of the most strongly confirmed theories in science.
God and evolution get along just fine. Many people of faith accept evolution, including both clergy and scientists.
Science is our children's future. If we teach students that science works in ways that it does not, we risk their future in science. We also risk our country's future in science.

About that site:

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit, membership organization providing information and resources for schools, parents and concerned citizens working to keep evolution in public school science education. We educate the press and public about the scientific, educational, and legal aspects of the creation and evolution controversy, and supply needed information and advice to defend good science education at local, state, and national levels. Our 4000 members are scientists, teachers, clergy, and citizens with diverse religious affiliations.

Triops 2.0

2009-01-22T07:37:00.000-08:00

About two weeks ago, we found that the triops tank, which we never emptied, has gotten a new resident. Apparently, our old one laid some eggs and one managed to hatch. The remarkable thing about this guy is that we didn't do anything to help him hatch. [Mom's Note: In other words, we didn't keep him under a warming lamp, or put in a conditioning pack with special microscopic nutrients, or any of the other stuff we did for Triops No. 1!] After the old triops died, we just let the tank sit on a shelf and he hatched a few days afterwards.

We haven't gotten many photos of him yet, but we do have this:

He is now sitting on a table next to the fish tank and the hermit crab jar. Without the heat lamp, the water isn't getting murky with algae or whatever living goop we had in the tank with his predecesor. In fact, he seems to be cleaning the algae off the side of the tank! We will update on him as more happens.

Do You Have Your Darwin Action Figure Yet?

2009-01-17T10:46:00.001-08:00

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I am VERY busy for the next two weeks, but I will be sure to have the kids update some of our ongoing projects.

More Evolution Resources from Nature Magazine

2009-01-11T19:52:00.000-08:00

To add to the post a few days back, I just found this full page of Darwin resources at Nature Magazine. You'll need a subscription to read most of them, but there is a free a 15-point evolution cheat sheet you can print and keep in your purse (or, I guess, download to your PDA) for when your creationist friends gang up on you. And you can scroll down for a slideshow on the evolution of the eye.

(Everyone's working their way through the nifty Scientific American issue on The Evolution of Evolution, by the way.)

We mourn our friend the Triops.

2009-01-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, on December 21, our triops passed away during the night. He lived to be 53 days, more than half the age of the longest living triops.

We took some photos of his lifeless body and noticed that he (or she, or it) had some egg sacs, we didn't see him lay any eggs, but it's possible. So we're going to let the tank dry out. (The eggs need to be dry before hatching) So far, the tank hasn't been drying very fast, but we've moved it to a warmer place which will hopefully work.

The top two photos show his egg sacs that are filled with eggs. The bottom left is his underside, and the bottom right is a close-up of his tail.

Some more parts of the triops. The upper left photo shows the algae on his shell, the photo on the right is his back legs, and the bottom two show his eyes.

Nature Magazine's Evolution Piece (via Wired)

2009-01-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! Just wanted to save the link to 12 Elegant Examples of Evolution
by Wired.com blogger Brandon Keim. It has some interesting examples of evolution.

(You have my permission to skip the debate in the comments.)

More Hydroponics - Sprouts

2008-12-23T08:27:00.000-08:00

We've done a small side project to the hydroponics project. This one is about sprouts. It wasn't that hard to do since all that had to be done was rinsing the seeds. It took us about 5 days to do this project, and we managed to get great results. After using them up in sandwiches, we started another jar.

These are the sprout seeds, the bigs ones are radish seeds, and the smaller ones are alfalfa.

This is us setting up the jars, first we just some pantyhose to make the top of the jar, then we added water and the seeds and put them in the cabinet to dry.

Make a sprouter jar. (Source)

Cut a piece of pantyhose or cheesecloth to fit over the top of a quart jar. It needs to be big enough to drape over the edge at least an inch or so.
Keep it in place by stretching a rubber band around the outer edge of the jar. If it is a canning jar, you can also use the rim from a canning lid.

The seeds after they finished growing. We rinsed and dehulled them. Then we dried them and put them in bags to be eaten.

Sprout alfalfa or radish seeds (Source: SproutPeople.com)

1. Put 1 tablespoon of alfalfa sees or 3 tables of radish seeds in your sprouter jar. Cover by stretching your fabric over the top and fastening as described above.

2. Put jars someplace out of direct light where they won't be disturbed. Allow seeds to soak for 6-12 hours.

3. Drain off the soak water.

4. Rinse thoroughly with cool water. Drain thoroughly.

5. Set your sprouter anywhere out of direct sunlight and at room temperature between rinses. This is where your sprouts do their growing.

6. Rinse and drain again every 8-12 hours for 3 days.

7. Greening: On the 4th day relocate your sprouts to a brighter location. Avoid direct sun - it can cook your sprouts. Indirect sunlight is best but virtually any light will do. Experiment - you will be amazed at how little light sprouts require to green up.

8. Continue to rinse and drain every 8-12 hours.

9. Finishing: Your sprouts will be done during day 5 or 6. The majority of sprouts will have open leaves which will be green if you exposed them to light.

10. De-Hull: Before your final rinse remove the seed hulls. Transfer the sprouts to a big (at least 3-4 times the volume of your sprouter) pot or bowl, fill with cool water, loosen the sprout mass and agitate with your hand. Skim the hulls off the surface. Return the sprouts to your sprouter for their Rinse and Drain.

11. Harvest: Your sprouts are done 8-12 hours after your final rinse. After the de-hulling and the final rinse we need to drain very thoroughly and let our sprouts dry a bit. That will help them keep longer in the refrigerator. Let sit for 8-12 hours OR use a salad spinner.

12. Refrigerate: Transfer the sprout crop to a plastic bag or the sealed container of your choice.

Why Everyone Should Learn the Theory of Evolution

2008-12-16T19:07:00.000-08:00

An opinion piece in the January 2009 issue of Scientific American focusing on "The Evolution of Evolution" has this to say about Darwin:

Darwin’s genius—and, yes, genius is the right word—is manifest in the way his theory of evolution can tie together disparate biological facts into a single unifying framework. Evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky’s oft-cited quotation bears repeating here: “Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.”

Read the rest of SciAm's features -- including Testing Natural Selection with Genetics, Putting Evolution to Use in the Everyday World, and The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom -- here.

Hydroponics!

2008-12-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

Note from mom: I take no responsibility for the captions, or the exclamation mark overdose. The project we are working on here comes from this elementary school website from Hawaii.

This week for biology, we decided to start a hydroponic garden.We decided to grow some lettuce and basil. So we poked holes in some paper cups, put them in a metal tray full of water, added sphagnum moss and seeds, and waited a week. We also put plastic tops on the tray to keep the water from evaporating.
Yesterday we looked at the seeds with our digital microscope. We saw that the basil was growing mold, so we threw it out. We noted that the lettuce seeds are starting to grow.

Setting up the cups.

Sphagnum!!!

Sphagnum in a cup.

Sphagnum magnified 60 times.

The trays chillin' on their shelf.

Xenomorph egg, or basil seed? you decide.

Roger Ebert's Review of Expelled

2008-12-03T18:09:00.000-08:00

Movies are big at my house, and no mention of a title can pass without a certain child announcing how many stars it was given by Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert.

Ebert lost his ability to speak after an operation not long ago. But he has more than made up for it by creating a wonderful blog that touches on every subject under the sun, not just movies.

A few weeks back he ran a puzzling blog post that seemed to be favoring creationism. I immediately Googled him to find that he is indeed a staunch proponent of evolutionary theory. And he did later explain the post was intending to make a point.

Today he has posted a review of "Expelled," the documentary by Ben Stein which claims American schools are unfairly censoring creationist theory. You can read "Win Ben Stein's Mind" here.

Triops Part 2

2008-12-02T08:04:00.000-08:00

(This is a follow-up to the November 6th post about our pet Triops)
In our last post (about the Triops), we talked about how to grow a Triops, and what to feed it, plus a log of what happened in the first nine days we had one. Since then, our Triops has doubled in size, and has molted several times, and she seems to be getting ready to molt again. Also, she has gotten so large that we've started feeding her carrot peels and frozen brine shrimp. And, (possibly due to the fact that we leave the light above her tank on 24 hours a day) her tank has started getting much murkier (possibly from algae.)

Physical features that we can really see now include her legs and her antennae. Her tail is longer and you the third eye is less pronounced.

Micronaturalist's Notebook

2008-12-01T11:12:00.000-08:00

BioMEDIA ASSOCIATES produces multimedia programming for life science instruction for middle school, high school, and college students that captures the diversity of the living world. You can purchase their videos on their website, or just take a look around at some of the interesting images and information.

Being into microphotography, I am planning on taking a closer look at the MicroNaturalist’s Notebook by award-winning biological photographer, Bruce J. Russell.

Image courtesy of BioMEDIA ASSOCIATES

Hippocampus- Free Online AP Biology Course

2008-11-24T07:41:00.001-08:00

From the HippoCampus Teaching Biology blog:

November 24, is the 149th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, a book that launched a scientific revolution and forever altered our understanding of who we are. In the last century and a half, both the book and its author have become icons, household names that most people recognize but many only know in a superficial and caricatured way. Charles Darwin, morose old man with a big white beard, who took a boat ride one day and got hit in the head with a finch, thus discovering evolution. The theory of evolution, aka survival of the fittest, except it must not be true because it’s still only a theory after all this time.

HippoCampus is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education whose is to provide "high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge." According to their website, HippoCampus content has been developed by "some of the finest colleges and universities in the world" and contributed to the National Repository of Online Courses, which makes editorial and engineering investment in the content to prepare it for distribution by HippoCampus.

The HippoCampus Biology home page has links to the blog, other interesting-looking biology content -- and a complete, free, online AP Biology course.

Although AP (Advanced Placement) courses are a useful way to earn some college credit while still in high school, I've decided not to pursue them for my kids. In school-school they indicate that the student is willing to work harder on what is billed as a higher level course. But for us as homeschoolers, it just means more hoops to jump through and another test to teach to. I'd rather devote my energies to hands-on activities, a variety of books and resources, and focusing on a few topics of interest to me and the kids.

On the other hand, who knows what we'll want down the road.

My quick impression the AP Bio course is that it consists of a fairly pleasant young voice reading a textbook, accompanied by related graphics. Despite the idea that AP classes are supposed to be for the creme de la creme of high school students, the content and its presentation seems to be at a middle school level (at least the introduction). In other words, it sounds more like learning software you'd see in the earlier grades than a college lecture.

If you try this Hippocampus AP course (or any other) I'd be interested in hearing what you think!

2008-11-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

The winners of the 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition are up at olympusbioscapes.com.

The Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition recognizes outstanding images of life science specimens captured through light microscopes, using any magnification, any illumination technique and any brand of equipment.

Images are judged based on the following criteria:

Science - Uniqueness of the specimen or processes shown, importance of work, new information revealed, "story" told.
Aesthetics - Beauty or impact of the image, balance, composition.
Technical merit - Challenge of specimen itself - difficulty of capturing structures or data shown, photographic excellence.

Entry deadline for next year's competition is September 30, 2009, and First Prize is the winner's choice of Olympus microscope or camera equipment valued at $5,000. Nine additional winners will also receive valuable prizes from Olympus, and many more will receive recognition as honorable mentions. Winners also are displayed at museums around the country. This year's museum tour will go to:

BioScapes Museum Tour Schedules

March 1, 2008 - May 30, 2008 - DaVinci Science Center, Allentown, PA (2006 Tour)

March 17, 2008 - May 9, 2008 - University of Rochester Med Ctr, Rochester, NY (2007 Tour)

April 7, 2008 - July 1, 2008 - St.Louis Museum of Science, St.Louis, MO (2005 Tour)

May 19, 2008 - July 25, 2008 - MBL, Woods Hole, MA (2007 Tour)

June 2, 2008 - August 29, 2008 - Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, MD (2006 Tour)

July 7, 2008 - October 1, 2008 - Dallas Science Center, Dallas, TX (2005 Tour)

August 1, 2008 - October 31, 2008 - NY Hall of Science, New York, NY (2007 Tour)

November 1, 2008 - December 21, 2008 - San Diego Science Center, San Diego, CA (2007 Tour)

Wayne's Word Online Textbook of Natural History

2008-11-19T18:49:00.000-08:00

I'm currently working on a children's activity book about the desert for Nomad Press. My research is turning up a lot of great websites, among them Wayne's Word, an online Textbook of Natural History written by Wayne. P. Armstrong. The website is a supplement to Professor Armstrong's general biology and botany courses at Palomar College in California.

Armstrong is retired, but continues to teach two of his courses -- Plants and People (Botany 115) and General Biology (Biology 101)-- online, with no meetings on campus. He writes that both courses are based on the thousands of pages of lecture notes that were laboriously placed on blackboards and whiteboards for more than thirty years, along with more than 2,300 photo images and illustrations.

That's a lot of material, all available online, for free. While I've only skimmed the site and read a few articles (about desert micro-organisms), it seems to be accessible, well organized and nicely illustrated. Check it out!

Triops!

2008-11-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

THE TRIOPS PROJECT
For science this month, we decided to grow some Triops longicaudatus (Sold in stores as Triops.)

Information:
Members of the order Notostraca (colloquially referred to as notostracans, called Triops, tadpole shrimp or shield shrimp) are small crustaceans in the class Branchiopoda. Triops have two internal compound eyes and one naupliar eye in-between, a flattened carapace covering its head and leg-bearing segments of the body. The order contains a single family, with only two extant genera. Their external morphology has apparently not changed since the Triassic appearance of Triops cancriformis around 220 million years ago. Triops cancriformis may therefore be the "oldest living animal species on earth." The members of the extinct order Kazacharthra are closely related, having been descended from notostracans. -Wikipedia

The tadpole shrimp (scientific name = Triops longicaudatus, which are in the order Notostraca in the class Branchiopoda) inhabits freshwater, ephemeral ponds ranging from 50ºN latitude in western North America through Central America and into South America. In the U.S., Triops are found in desert habitats (see Figure 1). They live in small pools that accumulate after flash floods in the summer. Since these pools are rather short-lived, the Triops consequently have short lifespans, completing their life cycles in a mere 20-40 days! -The Triops Information Page

Set Up

The first thing is to get all the items you need- If you have a kit, you should only need a light (for keeping the water warm) and container. (Some big kits come with one.)
For the light, we used a desk lamp with a 50 watt bulb; you should check your instructions as too how hot the water needs to be though. (Mom's note: we used a reflector bulb, which threw more light/heat on the tank and less into the room.)
For the container and water, start with a small one (you'll need to switch to a bigger one when they get larger) and fill it leaving 1 inch at the top with spring water. You also want to cover some of the tank with some aluminum foil to give them some shade.
Before you put the eggs in, you need to put nutrients in. Most kits come with them, but if not, you can make your own with leaves.
After 24 hours, put the triops in the container.
The triops will hatch 18 hours after you put them in. When they do, you shouldn't feed them for another 24 hours.
On day 2, start feeding them the food pellets. (These will come in the kit.) Give them 1/2 of some crushed green and brown pellets, and continue until you think they can eat a whole pellet on their own. (Usually by day 4.)
When the start eating whole pellets, switch between green and brown.
By this time you should switch them to a bigger container, as they won't be able to grow in the small one. We got a container that was three times bigger than the smaller one, which has worked. (If you want them to lay eggs, put 1/2 an inch of sand at the bottom.)
Just keep feeding them until they die. If they laid eggs, let the water evaporate and start over with the new batch.

When we started the triops, we also started a log of what they were doing. This is it:

Day 1:

11:00 AM: We added our Triops eggs to the water we prepared in a plastic container.
5:00 PM: We added more water to replace the water that evaporated.

Day 2:

10:30 AM: Our first Triops hatched!!
8:00 PM: we spotted another Triops swimming around (We never saw him again, and presumed that the bigger one ate him.)

Day 3 :

9:40 AM: We fed the Triops. (A quarter of one of the green and brown pellets that came with the package.)

Day 4: (We forgot to take notes on Day 4.)

Day 5:

10:20 AM: Fed her. Same as before.

Day 6:

8:50 AM: Fed her (same as Days 3 & 5) We noted that at this point, our remaining Triops was 3/4 of an inch long.
11:30 PM: We used a pipette to suck up some sludge that was growing inside her container.

Day 7:

3:00 PM: We fed her (2 crushed pellets this time)
3:40 PM: We moved her to a bigger container.
Also, on this day, she molted!

Day 8: (We forgot to write down the time)

Fed the Triops (We started feeding her twice)
We noted that her movement has slowed down a bit.
Day 9: (We didn't write down the time today either.)

We fed her a green pellet. (We're not sure what the difference between a green pellet and a brown pellet is.) (Mom's note: green is vegetable, brown is meat. Mmmm.)

We also took an awesome video of her swimming around with our new digital microscope!

That's all we've done so far, but we'll have regular updates as things progress.

Links:

ToyOps: made the kit we bought
A Triops Classroom Guide: Lots of useful info and experiments (PDF)
My Triops: Hobbyist Stuart Halliday's site from the UK
Microscope Projects with Triops: Good general microscope site!

Microphotography (and Photomicrography)

2008-11-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I forgot to cross post this really cool How-To I wrote for Wired.com on taking photographs with your microscope! (There's also a related GeekDad post with some helpful links.) It spawned an email argument with a reader over the proper term; here's what Wikipedia says:

A micrograph, microphotograph or photomicrograph is a photograph or similar image taken through a microscope or similar device to show a magnified image of an item.

We'll be doing a lot more of this, whatever you want to call it, in the near future. We're still trying to find out exactly what the wiggly guy up top is.

Open Courseware Resources

2008-10-31T20:44:00.000-07:00

Just got a tip about this post collecting 100+ Incredible Open Courseware Resources for Science Geeks. The courses are college level, of course, but often they include links, lesson plans or experiments that are useful for teaching younger kids at home. Among the biology topics are genetic modification and natural selection.

Human Anatomy Books Old and New

2008-10-24T07:53:00.000-07:00

My review of David Macaulay's new book The Way We Work is up at GeekDad. Although ostensibly for younger kids, at 363 pages it's definitely suitable for middle and high school students. Macaulay spent 6 years laboring on this book, four of them just learning anatomy through means that included attending operations and dissecting corpses. You can find out more about Macaulay's techniques at his website.

For lower grades I heartily recommend the book mentioned a few posts back, The Human Body Book and See-Through Model by Luann Colombo. While the "visible man" was rather chintzy, it was helpful to put the organs together while learning about the related system ... plus it wasn't too gross looking sitting out on a shelf.

Another book we liked a lot when they were little was
From Head to Toe: The Amazing Human Body and How It Works by Barbara Seuling. The illustrations by Edward Miller are much more stylized than anatomically correct (so to speak), but probably just enough for really young kids. The book includes several projects, including the robot hand (example here) I later borrowed for a Home Education Magazine column. If you go to Miller's website and click on "Activities for Kids" you'll find an additional project that lets you print out and paste the organs on a drawing of the human body. My boys enjoyed doing that one as well when they were small.

Life Science Illustrators

2008-10-21T07:39:00.001-07:00

You may have noticed the lovely illustration of Bryozoa a few posts back. Today on GeekDad Daniel Donahoo posts about the artist, Ernst Haeckel. As Daniel points out, you can find a whole gallery of Haeckel's work on Wikipedia. Donahoo prints them out in color as posters for his kids' rooms. Of course there are many other wonderful life science illustrators to check out as well. Here are a few:

Carl Linnaeus, also known as Carl von Linné or Carolus Linnaeus, is often called the Father of Taxonomy. According to the University of California Museum of Paleontology:

His system for naming, ranking, and classifying organisms is still in wide use today (with many changes). His ideas on classification have influenced generations of biologists during and after his own lifetime, even those opposed to the philosophical and theological roots of his work.

John James Audubon is famous for his bird portraits, of course. Says Wikipedia:

Audubon's influence on ornithology and natural history was enormous. Nearly all later ornithological works were inspired by his artistry and his high standards. Charles Darwin quotes Audubon three times in The Origin of Species and also in later works. Despite some errors in his field observations (e.g., he thought an immature bald eagle to be a separate species), his notes were a significant contribution to the understanding of bird anatomy and behavior. Birds of America is still considered one of the greatest examples of book art.

Although not primarily known as a naturalist, Albrecht Durer's watercolor of a hare is one of my favorite nature illustrations, and he has many more. Dürer believed that "…art must be based upon science—in particular, upon mathematics, as the most exact, logical, and graphically constructive of the sciences." In his Treatise on Proportion, he commented, "Life in nature makes us recognize the truth of these things, so look at it diligently, follow it, and do not turn away from nature to your own thoughts…. For, verily, art is embedded in nature; whoever can draw her out, has her."

Beatrix Potter -- author of Peter Rabbit and many other children's books -- was not only a writer and an artist; she was an accomplished, if not acknowledged, scientist. As Wikipedia relates:

An uncle attempted to introduce her as a student at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, but she was rejected because she was female. Potter was later one of the first to suggest that lichens were a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae. As, at the time, the only way to record microscopic images was by painting them, Potter made numerous drawings of lichens and fungi. As the result of her observations, she was widely respected throughout England as an expert mycologist. She also studied spore germination and life cycles of fungi. Potter's set of detailed watercolours of fungi, numbering some 270 completed by 1901, is in the Armitt Library, Ambleside.

In 1897, her paper on the germination of spores was presented to the Linnean Society by her uncle Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, as women were barred from attending meetings. (In 1997, the Society issued a posthumous official apology to Potter for the way she had been treated.) The Royal Society also refused to publish at least one of her technical papers. She also lectured at the London School of Economics several times.

There's more about Beatrix Potter, scientist, at The Scientist.

Free Science Texts from Amsco Publications

2008-10-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

Go to the AMSCO School Publications website and you'll see a link for free textbooks available for a short time as downloadable PDF files. The current offering is marine biology, but for some reason the PDFs weren't viewable. However I not only found links that do work, I found other PDF files as well. They may not be available for long, so grab them if you want them. Here they are:

Marine Science: Marine Biology and Oceanography

Marine Science: Marine Biology and Oceanography/Teacher’s Manual with Answers

The Living Environment: Biology/Teacher's Manual

EARTH SCIENCE: The Physical Setting

Contemporary Chemistry THE PHYSICAL SETTING

Contemporary Chemistry THE PHYSICAL SETTING/Teachers Manual

Lesson Planning

2008-10-19T08:03:00.000-07:00

Although I haven't really done any "planning" or "teaching" up to this point it is encouraging to see that we've already begun several of the activities I was hoping to get into as we study biology this year:

Project	Activity (Purpose)	Date	Results	Further Activities
Cricket	Pet care	Aug 08	Released into wild
Hermit Crab	Pet care	Aug 08
Goldfish	Aquarium maintenance	Spring 08
Backyard Field Survey	Enter and analyze data	Sept. 08		Learn Excel to record data
Studying Bryozoa	Using the microscope	Sept. 08	Discovered exotic life form	Microphotography
Pond Water	Using the microscope	10/8/08

I made up this chart so that I can post it downstairs by our homeschool work area. The idea is that the kids can see what upcoming projects we can do and take charge of doing them. The chart continues with:

Growing Triops
Brewing Root Beer with Yeast
Making Yogurt (live bacteria)
Cheese making?
Separating out DNA
Testing Antibiotics
Luminescent Bacteria Lab
Hydroponics

I got most of these experments from The Science of Life: Projects and Principles for Beginning Biologists by Frank G. Bottone, Jr. The last time we covered biology, in 2003, I was shocked to discover that the Plant/Animal classification system I had been taught (and which was also used as an organizing principle in the homeschooling guide The Well-Trained Mind – with the addition, as I recall, of humans as a separate category for those uncomfortable with the idea that humans are animals) was completely outdated. Instead, there were (depending on who you read) at least five “kingdoms:” Monera, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia. The Science of Life had all kinds of interesting and do-able projects for each classification. We did a few, including watching mold grow (systematically, not on the stuff in the back of the refrigerator) and growing carnivorous plants. When I pulled the book out again this summer, though, I found Post-its on many pages for projects we never got to. Happily, the book is written at a high enough level that it still looks like a good guide for high school.

Oh, about the kingdoms above: apparently scientists don’t use that way of classifying living things anymore, either. According to Wikipedia, modern taxonomy systems generally begin with a three-domain system of Archaea (originally Archaebacteria), Bacteria (originally Eubacteria), and Eukarya, depending on whether the cells have nuclei or not and categories of cell exteriors.

Anyway, on our first go-round we covered taxonomy, biomes (for which we put together different terrariums and aquariums), and the human body. There are a lot of websites about biomes; I’ll post the ones I’ve found as time allows. The human body resource we used was a book and see-through model combo from Andrews McMeel. (Out of print but available used.) While the model was on the flimsy side, the book was short but well-written (elementary to middle school level), nicely illustrated and had do-able activities for each body system (for instance, testing muscles or optical illusions).

I seem to have gotten off the topic of what books I am in the process of using now to develop this year’s teaching plan, so look for more soon.

Books and Movies for Biology Students

2008-10-04T20:17:00.001-07:00

Just a reminder that over in the sidebar I've been adding books and movies that I am recommending or hope to get to look at this year. The kids and I just watched The Andromeda Strain, a sci-fi classic by Michael Crichton (a medical doctor and author of Jurassic Park) about an alien organism. Although it's 30 years old, one Amazon.com reviewer says the techniques used by the scientists in the film are the same ones used today.

If you have a decent library system, like ours, you may be able to find most of the books and movies I'll be listing. But if you do order something from an Amazon link on my blog, I get a little kickback. Feel free to browse the "store," either way.

And add your suggestions here, too!

The Map(s)

2008-10-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

As the weather grows colder and we wrap up the observation portion of our 100-Species Challenge, we now need to start organizing the information we have gathered. A week or two ago the kids created a fantastic map of the backyard on which to mark the species as we found them. This morning they updated it with numbers corresponding to our list. The list isn't ready yet, but I just have to show you the map(s).

To the left is a map of the Old Champlain Canal Towpath, where we found a lot of great stuff, including our alien pods. To the right is our yard, marked off in sections to indicate lawn, unmowed "meadow," vegetable garden, fish pond, etc. The boys created the image in Corel Draw. I think it came out great!

Bryozoa (not aliens)

2008-10-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

If you walked down our local canal, you would see strange growths on some of the sticks underwater. Before you hit the panic button, you may want to know out that these are non-alien animals called Bryozoa.

Bryozoa are small coral-like animals that build the strange pods in order to filter out the food they need in the water. The majority of bryozoans are marine, consisting of several thousand species. But one class, the Phylactolaemata, is found exclusively in fresh water. (These are the strange pods that you would see in your streams.) Bryozoa have also been seen in fossils dating back to 354 million years ago.

Recently we got one from our local canal to study, though we had some trouble getting it out. We had to find one that was small enough to fit in our jar, and close enough to shore to reach. (We didn't know how deep the canal was!) The colony we picked was one of two attached to a loose branch that we were able to pull on shore. Then we had to break it off to fit it in the jar. (Mom forgot her Swiss Army knife.) We made sure to fill up the jar with the water it came out of -- plus an extra container -- and carried it home carefully.

Up close, we could see that the pod was made up of clear jelly-like substance with spots all over the surface. The next day we took samples from our jar and looked at them under the microscope. First we looked at some jelly that was stuck to the stick, where the larger colony broke off. It was yellow and cloudy, but we couldn't see anything moving or otherwise interesting.

Then we used a pipette to suck up one of the small, dark green dots around the edge of the jar. (See slide on left.) Under the microscope we could see a dark center, a lighter ring, and little hooked feet sticking out all around. (Closeup on right.) This is a statoblast, which is used by the Bryozoa for reproduction. The statoblast can survive the winter and grow a new colony in the spring. According to this site, the jelly and everyone attached dissolves in cold water.

We also took scrapings from the pod itself. We saw all kinds of things moving around. Here are some of them:

We're wondering if the yellow things in the middle are the actual polyps. Here is a website with great microscopic photos and videos of Pectinatella magnifica. What do you think?

Our Teeny Tiny Hermit Crab

2008-09-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

Our hermit crab is so cute!

We visited friends on Long Island this summer, and I finally got to add a hermit crab to our collection. Our 12-year-old host was kind enough to fish this fellow out of the depths for us. We've kept him alive on frozen shrimp (brine shrimp from Petsmart, that is). If I can find some brine shrimp eggs, I will try to provide him with live food (and us with ever-smaller pets!).

I am totally impressed that he has managed to survive this long, in just a jar of sea water with some playground sand and a few pebbles thrown about for an environment. I stuck in a few larger shells -- he does seem to have grown in the weeks we've had him -- but I suspect they are a little large, and he shows no signs of being ready to move.

As for our other pets, we have released the worms and the cricket back into the wild. The worms because I found their box crawling with gnats: harmless but annoying. And the cricket because his keeper seemed to be slacking off in supplying him with fresh grass, which will be hard to find in another few weeks anyway.

Squash Blossoms

2008-09-25T04:25:00.000-07:00

A visiting friend saw our pumpkin flowers and mentioned that her Aunt Lena used to love to cook them. I'd heard of sauted squash blossoms, so -- since our pumpkin plants are still spreading across the lawn, even as the nights dip down into the 40s -- I looked up some recipes.

I only gave them a quick glance, but it looked like you could cook any kind of squash blossom, summer or winter, and do basically anything with them. I picked a handful, washed them off, pulled off the woody cap at the bottom (which came along with the stamen, covered in pollen) and threw them on top of my pizza.

The taste was interesting. The only negative is that, having eaten that pizza myself (my husband threatened to take the kids out to eat if I tried to "share" it with them, so they got squash-free pizzas of their own), my mouth started tingling. Apparently those of us with hayfever can suffer a cross-reaction with pumpkin pollen -- at least if they eat as much as I did.

Some ice cream soothed it.

Wildlife in our House

2008-09-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

I'm not talking about the mice that invade every fall. (Haven't seen the tell-tale signs yet -- probably because it's been in the 70s and 80s here this September!)

But instead of normal pets, we have tiny critters. Most live in recycled plastic jars, the kind mayonaise, pretzels and the like come in.

For instance, we've been raising minnows and other fish in mini aquariums for several years now. Most of our pets (like the goldfish which have grown to Koi size in our plastic backyard "pond") are considered "feeder fish" to real aquarium hobbyists. But the mini tanks, which we try to keep supplied with small snails, stones that harbor beneficial bacteria and aquatic plants, are easy to care for.

This past summer, for my Build a Bug House Program, I got a chance to collect some pet bugs . The basic bug house was based on the book Pets in a Jar by Seymour Simon, but I also created a butterfly pavilion, a bamboo cricket cage, and a worm bin. They made for fun summer projects.

Once the program ended we let the ants in the Two Jar Ant Farm (directions here) go, as well as the ladybugs in the vivarium. But we've still got the cricket (now in a bigger, better jar with a sand surface, a piece of bark to hide under and a stick and a leaf to climb -- see video here) and the worms.

I just checked on the worms, however, and got an unpleasant surprise: our bin (which I keep under the kitchen sink) is crawling with some kind of mites. I rushed the bin outside and looked up our problem, but apparently it's nothing to worry about: all the possible culprits are helpful to the process of breaking down the vegetable scraps in the bin, and none are harmful. So I probably will bring the bin back in before it gets dark and the temperature dips too low.

I WILL harvest the worm castings this week, however, and if I can separate out the worms I'll try keeping them over the winter.

Coming next: Our hermit crab

Where we've been...

2008-09-20T19:49:00.001-07:00

All the action the last couple weeks has been over at the Flickr page, where we've been uploading photos taken for our 100 Species project. As of Thursday we were up to 82, I believe, and I will try to get the photos up in the next few days.

But I did want to share our easy way of identifying species once we've got a decent photo. I've been bringing up the photo on our Flickr page, then opening a new tab and doing a Google Image search using the written description of the organism in question. Then I go back and forth between the tabs comparing photos. This has worked very quickly in several cases so far.

Along with its appearance, it is often helpful to add where it was found to the search words. For instance, I just typed in "green frog brown spots" and then added "New York" when the first listings to come up were in Europe and California.

(Side note: I'm still working on getting the kids to take photos that are useful for identification and look nice. They need a shot of the whole plant, not just the flower or the fruit, and they need reminding about focus, watching out for shadows and ugly stuff in the background. It would help if our lawn wasn't so unkempt, of course.)

For the time being I am saving information I find about the species, including URLs, in the photo descriptions on Flickr. (John has uploaded some of the photos, which explains some of the silly captions.) Eventually we will put photos, descriptions, etc. together in a printed report, and if I can find a good way to do it online as well.

Take a look at our page, and if you have identifications for anything that still has a generic "pink flower" kind of title, feel free to put the name and any useful info in the comments. Thanks!

Our 100 Species Backyard Survey Project

2008-09-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

This is the worksheet I made up for our inaugural Biology project. I expect it to take 2-3 weeks.

Make a map of the backyard with landmarks (trees, fence posts, etc.). (You can do the front yard too.) Divide into sections and label each section. Use these section labels in the Place column.
Take a small notebook and number the pages 1-100.
Get a pen and the camera.
Working together, covering one section at a time, go around and catalogue each different time of life form you see. Note whether it is animal, plant, fungus or simpler forms (algae, slime mold, etc.) in the Type column.
As you identify each new species:
Take a photograph of it;
Fill out the chart below;
Mark where you found it by putting a number on the map;
Write a description of it on the numbered page in the notebook.
See how long it takes to come up with 100 different species.
Microscopic species count. You can take a sample of pond water inside to observe under the microscope. Since taking photos may not work, you will have to draw a diagram.
If you don’t know the name of something, look it up later using the photo and description.
When you are finished, analyze the data. Some questions to ask:
Where were the most living things found?
Were certain types found grouped together?
Which kinds seemed to be interdependent (eg, ladybugs and corn)?
Finally, put all the information together in a book.

I also made up a chart for them to fill in. When everything's entered on the computer, we can analyze the data.

	Date	Time	Place	Type	Name
1
2
3

A note on what I'm trying to do with this year's homeschooling biology studies:

Looking at the labs required by New York State (just to get some idea of what the high schools are doing), I discovered that not all labs are done in the laboratory! Some are just simulations, or thought experiments. And of course many of the labs are designed so that data is plugged in and results extracted in an identical format for every student. So I'm hoping that our informal observations and experiments will be just as useful as what the kids would have done in school.

I am speaking here, too, as someone who stayed home "sick" from public school whenever we were supposed to do a dissection! About which more in later posts...

Tree of Life

2008-09-07T09:17:00.001-07:00

I just came upon The Tree of Life website which making up a worksheet for the kids to do our Backyard (and Frontyard -- we've got a snake living under the sidewalk, and I saw some slime mold there the other day) Survey.

It looks like a wonderful resource for studying how organisms are related, according to DNA evidence of their evolution. In the Treehouse section in particular are games, webquests, etc. for students created by teachers and as class projects.

Here's the description from the TOL homepage:

The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists from around the world. On more than 9000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics. Each page contains information about a particular group of organisms (e.g., echinoderms, tyrannosaurs, phlox flowers, cephalopods, club fungi, or the salamanderfish of Western Australia). ToL pages are linked one to another hierarchically, in the form of the evolutionary tree of life. Starting with the root of all Life on Earth and moving out along diverging branches to individual species, the structure of the ToL project thus illustrates the genetic connections between all living things.

Something to think about when creating a high school biology curriculum

2008-09-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

As I decide what I will try to present to my kids this year, I'm coming across advice and lists I've saved in the last few months. Here is something I found on a discussion list for parents of homeschooling high schoolers. The parent looking for teaching suggestions was advised by a biology professor to have the kids develop questions and then search for the answers. He wrote:

And where will the questions come from? Various sources. Here are
thoughts: go to a park; to an aquarium; to a beach; to a natural
history museum (some can be deadly dull, of course); on vacation go to
a desert, a forest, a national park; just go outdoors and look around;
get a bunch of seeds (such as cucumber or sunflower), plant them in
disposable cups (maybe in Perlite) and do things with them (tip them
on their sides, put them across the room from a window, let them grow
in the dark from Day Zero to when they croak, cut off the top of the
plant, whatever) and see what happens and question WHY/HOW it
happened; take advantage of cuts, colds, bruises, allergies, sunburn,
suntan, zits--ANYTHING--to have an excuse to learn what's happening;
ANYTHING that can lead to questions.

He also wrote a random list of questions off the top of his head to
start on if the kids had not developed questions on their own:

Evolution
Why do antibiotics stop working after a number of years?
Look at a map of Galapagos--why do same birds have diff beaks on
diff islands?
How do we know (or are learning) how different things are related?
How do new species evolve?
What IS a species?
How did life colonize the dry land?

Genetics
How can you produce a calico cat? Can you just breed them with
each other?
Can two brown-eyed parents produce a blue-eyed child?
Look at those ants out there! What sex are they?

Digestion
Why is vomitus sour/"burny"?
Why don't our stomach contents digest the stomach lining?
Why does our digestive tract have so many parts?

Plants
What is pollen? What does it do?
Why do plants grow toward the light?
What happens if you tip a plant on its side? Why?
Why don't some seeds germinate right away?
Why do poinsettias bloom around Christmas?
(look at root x.s., figure it out (no refs) and ask questions)
How do some plants manage to live where it's very dry?
Could we teach other plants to live where it's very dry?
(plant seeds--cucumber, sunflower, radish--in cups and just do
things with them; design experiments to understand why interesting
things happened)

Musculoskeletal system
Why are bedridden patients likely to break bones?
Why do astronauts have to exercise while in space and
be careful when they come down to Earth?
Why is a popped Achilles tendon serious? What does it do?
How does a broken bone heal?
Whales breathe air--why can't they breathe while on the beach?
Athletes are forever tearing their ACLs. What IS the ACL,
what does it do? What is the problem if it's torn?
Why are some runners better at distance events and others
better at dashes?
Are all the joints in our body structured the same? How do
they differ? Why are they structurally different?
Why are our knees so darn complicated?

Endocrine system
We keep reading about athletes on steroids... what are
steroids, do normally have them in our bodies, what do they do,
what are steroids used for in medicine, what's the fuss
about use by athletes, are there useful artificial steroids... ?

Cardiac system
What is your doctor learning by listening to your heart?
What does your heart do? How?

Respiratory system
How can whales dive so deep and stay down so long?
What do your lungs do? How?

Excretory system
What do your kidneys do? How?
Why do some fish live only in fresh water and others only in
seawater?

Ecology
Why are there so many more zebras/etc. than lions/etc.?
What caused the Dust Bowl?
Why is the vegetation on one side of a mountain range so
different from that on the other side?
What drives ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream and the
California Current and what effects do they have?
When a pest (such as the gypsy moth) attacks an area, should
we simply try to kill all of them (everywhere) by spraying?
How does a constantly growing population (people, bacteria in
a bottle, coyotes in a city...) affect the rest of the world?
Why do so many flying insects have black/yellow striped
abdomens? What's going on there? What are the consequences?
What are corals? What are coral reefs? What will they be
like by the time I'm a grandparent?

Behavior
Why do male dogs pee on trees?
Why do puppies roll over on their backs when a frightening dog
comes along?
Why do snakes/lizards bask in the sun?
Why don't we have to?
How does a digger wasp learn the location of the hole in
the ground that is its nest?
How does an ant manage to lead her nestmates to a food source?
How does a honey bee direct her nestmates to a food source?
What do fireflies accomplish by their flashing?

Nervous system
Why does our foot move when the doc taps our knee?
How do we respond to some things faster than we are aware of them?

Micro
Why don't antibiotics work on viruses (use penicillin example)?
How do some viruses make us sick?
Are viruses alive? (note: biologists don't agree--it's a
matter of criteria, and useful to discuss)
Why does penicillin kill bacteria without hurting us?
How does (some drug taken by the child) work to make me better?

MolBiol (NA and proteins)
How did they make the green-glowing kitten?
How did "they" discover that genes are DNA?
What is the genetic code?
How did "they" crack the genetic code? (need an FAQ here
probably)
Why do I keep hearing about cracking of more organism's genomes?
What are mutations? How does a mutation (of DNA) cause a
change in the organism (or animal, or human)
What is cancer? How can we treat it?

Immunology
Why can we vaccinate against (smallpox/polio/mumps/etc.)?
Why can't we vaccinate against (malaria/HIV/etc.)?
Why/how are some people allergic to (ragweed/etc.)?

Epidemiology
The "card trick" modeling the London cholera plague [Note: Have to look that one up!]

Development
Why do different cells make different things (pigments, etc.)?
How does a single cell turn into an adult animal/person?
What is cloning?
How can I avoid becoming pregnant?
What is menstruation?

Diversity
Do all plants have flowers?
Do all plants have seeds?
Do all animals have eyes?
Do all snails live on land?
What do ... eat?
What eats ... ?
Are fungi (or molds) good for anything?
Would it be a good idea to kill all the molds on Earth?

She added: "His wife (a biology major) also suggested having the kids read the
health section in the newspaper. He said that trying to cover all the
material typically attempted in an introductory college biology course
is crazy - the end result is that the scientific process (thinking,
reasoning, making connections, drawing conclusions) is lost and that
instead it's just a lot of facts to memorize which the kids promptly
forget anyway."

Starting Off: A Field Survey

2008-09-05T20:19:00.001-07:00

Although I haven't put together my "teaching plan" for the year, I thought I'd start off with a survey of what's living in our backyard. This year I left several patches of our backyard unmowed so that they would grow into meadow. I found many of the bugs I used in my summer Bug House library program just in our meadows. There is also a wealth of plants, which I'd like to document before the autumn die-off.

I'm not sure we're up to it, but here's an incentive to find out what lives in your neighborhood. It's called The 100-Species Challenge and it comes from scsour's weblog. The rules are below, and the idea is to photograph each plant species you come across in your area, identify it, list what you already knew about it and then something new that you learned. An entry doesn't count until it's identified, which means it would take me a long time to get to 100! However, I will have the kids help me start photographing the plants we find (and probably the animals, fungi, etc. as well) and start keeping a list.

1. Participants should include a copy of these rules and a link to this entry in their initial blog post about the challenge. I will make a sidebar list of anyone who notifies me that they are participating in the Challenge.

2. Participants should keep a list of all plant species they can name, either by common or scientific name, that are living within walking distance of the participant's home. The list should be numbered, and should appear in every blog entry about the challenge, or in a sidebar.

3. Participants are encouraged to give detailed information about the plants they can name in the first post in which that plant appears. My format will be as follows: the numbered list, with plants making their first appearance on the list in bold; each plant making its first appearance will then have a photograph taken by me, where possible, a list of information I already knew about the plant, and a list of information I learned subsequent to starting this challenge, and a list of information I'd like to know. (See below for an example.) This format is not obligatory, however, and participants can adapt this portion of the challenge to their needs and desires.

4. Participants are encouraged to make it possible for visitors to their blog to find easily all 100-Species-Challenge blog posts. This can be done either by tagging these posts, by ending every post on the challenge with a link to your previous post on the challenge, or by some method which surpasses my technological ability and creativity.

5. Participants may post pictures of plants they are unable to identify, or are unable to identify with precision. They should not include these plants in the numbered list until they are able to identify it with relative precision. Each participant shall determine the level of precision that is acceptable to her; however, being able to distinguish between plants that have different common names should be a bare minimum.

6. Different varieties of the same species shall not count as different entries (e.g., Celebrity Tomato and Roma Tomato should not be separate entries); however, different species which share a common name be separate if the participant is able to distinguish between them (e.g., camillia japonica and camillia sassanquaif the participant can distinguish the two--"camillia" if not).

7. Participants may take as long as they like to complete the challenge. You can make it as quick or as detailed a project as you like. I'm planning to blog a minimum of two plants per week, complete with pictures and descriptions as below, which could take me up to a year. But you can do it in whatever level of detail you like.