Science Experiments

Archive for April, 2008

Question: What are the best ways to have fun with balloons?

Party tricks, Science Experiments, practical jokes, whatever… as long as it’s with balloons!

Answer: Water Balloons, get up 2 no good!

even better if u use guacamole

FIGHT!!! (enjoy)

david letterman kids Science Tricks experiments

Question: Is this an okay measurement…?

For a science experiment, I was working on the greenhouse effect. I used Earlynmeyer flasks and dry ice.

Basic Procedure:
I put dry ice in warm water to acquire the CO2.
Then, I used a syringe to transfer the CO2 to the flasks, putting different amounts of gas into each flask.
Then, I placed the flasks in direct sunlight.

Is this an okay way to acquire the data? Would the results be or be close to accurate? Could I get any suggestions for this?

I only have dry ice to use for a source of CO2. Nothing else.

Answer: It sounds to me like this is a pretty good way of doing it. The gas could possibly come out of the syringe though, so cover the end of it when doing the transfer, and do it as fast as possible. Another possibility could be putting different amounts of the solid dry ice directly into your experimental flasks, if that is possible for your experiment (I don’t know the nature of the data you are collecting). If you needed another source of CO2, you could always just breathe (different numbers of breaths) into the flasks. This would not be very accurate though, and you would also breathe water into the flask (which may or may not be okay for your experiment).

Greenhouse effect (in a bottle) explained

Question: The “natural selection” experiment on the TV show “Defying Gravity” – am I stupid, or is it?

OK – according to the “biologist” on the show, the experiment uses rabbit DNA (gametes, I supposed) and produces test tube embryos. So far so good.

Then, DNA is harvested from the embryos after 10 days and the experiment repeated.

But, how can DNA from the embryos be used to test natural selection? Embryos don’t have gametes!

1) Are they using embryo DNA to form artificial gametes?

2) Are they just re-doing the experiment over and over with gametes brought from Earth – with only one generation? (I thought they mentioned testing over multiple generations).

3) Are they just seriously in need of someone with a middle school science education to help them out on the details of procreation?

Jim

Answer: Most TV shows’ attempt at science just make educated people cringe and grind their teeth.

The latest example I saw was during an episode of Mental, which is supposed to be a drama about people working in the psychiatric ward of a hospital. So they talk about real psychological issues, but then last week, they happily diagnosed one lady’s problem as Mad Hatter’s Disease (mercury poisoning) from her old fillings… Problem is, that’s just an urban myth, and one that’s been proven to be false. Many times.

Earth History-Hommocks Earth Science Department