Pippins question box (again)

After last weeks answer, I just couldn't resist the question! I had some free time because I am really not sleepy, so I thought it would be a good time to take a whack at the question. This time it was a hard one........but I found some answers.

It turns out that Jell-o is a gelatin and an amorphous solid. An amorphous solid is a substance that is sometimes a solid and sometimes a liquid. Jell-o in its powdered form, is an amorphous solid, but when you add hot water and dissolve the powder, it becomes a hydrogel. if your wondering what a hydrogel is, it is "a gel composed usually of one or more polymers suspended in water". That is the technical definition of it. I also looked in a couple articles and it didn't mention the way Jell-o solidfies as in bottom-to-top or top-to-bottom or sides-in or etc.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hydrogel
http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/ask/index.html?quid=1116

As for heat transfer, it is simply the transition of heat energy from a warmer mass to a colder mass. In other words, it's heat traveling. Free convection is convection when the motion of the fluid rises only because of the temperature differences in the liquid. Forced convection is when something external is forcing the motion of the fluid.

http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/co/Convection#Free_and_Forced_Convection

Wow! I definitely learned a lot from this. Another benefit is that now I am a little tired, too. Good night everyone!

Pippins question box

I was browsing around and I happen to pass Pippin' blog. I had a couple spare minutes so I tried her question box. I clicked on the link and chose drug effects (because I just finished Health class) and then caffeine because it is a very familiar name. When the page came up the first line I read was "In massive doses, caffeine is lethal.". That was enough to scare me! Of course, after I thought about it, I realized that massive doses of a lot of things can be lethal. The site defines a lethal dose as about 80 -100 cups of coffee, one-after-another. That is a lot of coffee! It also says that caffeine causes physical dependency. I already knew this because I have had a few teachers that used to walk in cranky and blame it on the absense of expresso powder in their house. But, the thing that shocked me was that the withdrawal symptoms (headache, fatigue and muscle pain) can show up in 24 hours of the last time you consumed caffeine. That means if you are depending on caffeine and you don't have caffeine in 24 hours since the last time you did, you are not going to have a good day. I really thought that caffeine was basically harmless, but I got proved wrong (BIG time!) .

links :
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/caff.html

The fox and the goat

I think the moral of this story is that if you put something in a certain way that attract people, they will believe you, or follow you. Mark Twain wrote something similar to this in his book about Tom Sawyer. Tom was stuck whitewashing a fence, but when his friends came by he made it seem fun and didn't allow his friends to try. That made all his friends want to whitewash the fence and Tom got out of work. In this case the fox made it seem as though he was preparing for a drought so the goat believed him and the fox got out of the well. That is the maxim of the story, to me.

The crow and the pitcher

I think the moral of this story is to not give up and think outside of the box. If the crow had given up, he would have died of thirst. Since he thought outside of the normal realm of thought he came up with a solution, that ulitimately, saved his life. In this case, the difference between life and death was his style of thinking. In my mind, this is the moral of the story.

The fisher and the little fish

I think the moral of this story is that you should be conten with what you have been given. Something small is better than having nothing at all. This, in my mind, connects to greed. When people get something, they are so obsessed with the size or worth of it, that they don't feel happy for getting it in the frst place. That, in my opinion, is the moral of this story.

The wolf in sheep clothing

I think the moral of this story is that something is not always what its seems to be. I think that is a problem with people, because we believe anything we hear as long as it makes sense or helps us. Also people can be untruthfully about their identity. We have heard countless (literally) speechs on my not to trust strangers on the internet/real life so I need not go into detail. That is what I think is the moral of this story.

the four oxen and the lion

I think the moral of the story is that there is strength in numbers. Also in my mind I connected it to the political cartoon draw during the revolutionary times. It was depicting each of the 13 colonies as a piece of a snake. It showed that together they stand strong, but seperated they can be defeated easily. I think this is because when a threat is looking for "prey" they prefer to go after the easier option. When you stand all alone, it is easy for that threat. On the contrary, when you stand in a group, the threat would have to fight through more obstacles which poses a greater risk of defeat for the threat. This is my understanding of the moral.

Wooden Bowl response

After reading the story "Wooden Bowl", my imediate reaction was annoyance toward the son and daughter-in-law. I was thinking how they could so insensitive toward the grandfather's feelings. It's not like he chose to become old and frail. I think that the story really relates to empathy because the grandfather's son didn't give a single moments thought to how his dad must be feeling. When the grandson made the parents recognize their mistake in my mind I said "It's about time!". I think the lesson taught by this story is to always look at things and/or situations from other peoples point of view before you judge them or exclude them because you could be really causing them saddness.

"Ask a Geneticist"

As I was scroling throught the links SunnyD gave us, I found a couple of interesting facts. The fact that was very interesting to me was that there are generally 10 trillion chromosome pair possibilites. That number by itself is mind-blowing! Then, I found out that if we only have one pair of chromosomes, that number drops down to 4 possibilities. That is a huge difference! Then, after those facts, it says that 'genetic diversity' is very important to our survival. We definitely have the diversity part covered! I always had a feeling that there were a ton of possbilites but ten trillion is a lot!

Basic Genetics

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/tour/

I went to the website given to us by SunnyD and I learned a lot of new things about genetics. For example, one thing I learned was that all humans have DNA that are 99.9% similar. Only that small remaining percentage creates all the diversity we see. I thought that was really interesting because when you think about all the different eye color-hair color- skin color combinations that you have seen, its mind-blowing to realize that only 0.01% of everyone's DNA creates all those different possibilities. Another thing I learned is that environmental factors can change one of our traits. I always assumed that once you get a trait, that is the one that you are stuck with. I also didn't know that dying your hair counts as environmentally altering you trait. I thought that because even though you dye your hair, the hair that grow out f your head is still your natural color, so the hair color change isnt permanent because your hair will grow out. Those are the things that I learned from this website.