Sara Davidovic

8A

Robot+ Coffee

Source: http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20101117/Note1.asp

Author: Stephen Omes

Date written: November, 17, 2010

               

If you think coffee is only for drinking, well, you’re wrong. Coffee has one of the most important uses that will benefit our future. Coffee is made up of one of the smallest particles. And as you know for small particles its easy to absorb, and copy the shape of another object and be able to perfectly fit in, just like Play-Dough. Coffee helps robotic arms work the way they do. An example is if you put sand or coffee in a bag and put the bag down on a cup it will slowly fits around the object, somewhat holding it, that is the way a robotic arm simulates. Now with this information scientists were capable of interpreting this into the newest robotic arm. How does this work your asking? Simple, this robotic arm has a very strong rubber material that is contained with coffee particles. These particles as I said before form and fit around a specific object and than a vacuum contained inside the metal part that keeps the rubber bag together sucks and pulls the object. Scientists have tested this and it has worked on many different objects. Even a glass cup was picked up by this arm. Scientists have created this because they believe there are some objects we are not capable of picking up in the correct way unlike this robotic arm that was specialized to pick up an object at a perfect height and perfect pressure. Because people at times tend to put on much pressure on an object and on some to little pressure, but this robot can pick it up without damaging the object.  Right at the moment this robot is small, but because they made so many tet they have decided to make a bigger one and be capable of picking up on object of even 2,000 pounds! But to fill up thi rubber balloon and pick up that weight, there is going to be a whole lot of coffee!

Reflection:

Many of you should already get the impression that this can be very useful for us and our future. Mythbusters, Brainiacs etc. they are all showing how we should improve our life using robots. Imagine having a useful hand like this with you, if something heavy and big comes in your way, well no problem all you need is a rubber bag, a vacuum and some coffee, and the 2,000 pounds are out of your way. This is also very important in emergencies where help can be nowhere to be found you can always use this to move things around in case of a weak or broken hand. I chose this article because I never knew our world can become so advanced with a simple bag filled with coffee and a vacuum, can do everything [and more] then we can with our own hands. This current event was my favorite of favorites!  Seeing our world growing up seems it will never get old…

Current Event6 =]

Sara Davidovic

8a

14/November 2010

Hot Temperature!

Author: Anonymous

Source: http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20100303/Note3.asp

Date Written: March 3, 2010

Today, many people have different interests. Sports, business jobs, and breaking records! In the book ‘Guinness World Record 2011’ this temperature rate was included. But not all the records are about the hairiest man on earth, or who has created a 6 ft. tall cheeseburger in a short amount of time, but a record pulled off not so far ago, meant a lot to scientists! They have reached to the point of the highest temperature in their lab! This is amazing, something that should be written down as part of history. Because, record keeping can always help us compare to our past. We can tell how much we improved over the years, and how it can help that we have made this discovery! As I heard that’s what most successful people do when they get a job like a lawyer, scientists, archeologist etc. Now you’re probably asking yourselves, so give it away what is the highest temperature? Well, ladies and gentlemen, the magic temperature is 7.2 million degrees Fahrenheit!!! This is an amazing discovery! Another question you might ask while reading this is-so what can this do to help the world? Scientists for a long period of time had been trying to discover how our earth was actually created. Many of us believe in the theory of the super nova, or big bang. Both of these “bangs” need high temperature, in order to melt off and create something. By this “hot temperature discovery” so to speak, can help us understand about how planets were created. The temperature our scientists have created is 250,000 hotter than our sun. What actually creates the hot molecules? This plasma is called quark-gluon. This plasma creates the warmth of this ‘mini explosion’. This is in a way a type of explosion, these atoms inside have so much energy that they disperse and they create enough heat to melt; this might reveal  the creation of our earth known to us.

Reflection:

I think that this event will affect us as a whole mostly from all the other current events I write about. I mean after all these years we might’ve finally found out the truth of human creation! Imagine it, that we were all born from an atom, it is amazing. The info that we are getting from these scientists is crucial, and they might be experiments we might not be able to try again in the future. But since this is a reflection I do have a couple of questions: what can this really lead to? How big was the actual energy [plasma] explosion? With this are we capable of creating another planet? With this can we predict when a new planet or universe is made? But I believe I will be researching  this theory for a long period of time, I am avid to know if this info is valid, and if it is true, and I will see if I can get these answers to my questions!

Current Event5 =]

Sara Davidovic

8a

Science Class- Mrs. M

A Material can Remember!

Author: Anonymous

Source: http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20100331/Note1.asp

Date of Article written: March 31, 2010

A very unpopular material called Nafion is one of the most used materials in the world. We have been using this material from the ‘60’s. A chemist named DuPont was the founder of this very useful material. This material uses fuel cells. A fuel cell is a cell producing an electric current directly from a chemical reaction. These fuel cells are often used to power up satellites and produce energy for hydrogen. But now in Michigan they have recently discovered the real quality of Niforn. Nifron can supposedly imitate three different shapes. For example if you twist this Nifon material into a oval shape, later on it will remember this and make the same shape that you have shaped it into before. Nifon can’t be tested anywhere, its memorization all depends on the temperature of the place it has been bended, twisted, etc. This material is called what the synthetic polymer and this material cannot be found in nature, this is a man-made material that is made up of different molecules that connect . The molecules contained in this synthetic polymer are found in various weights and sizes. A scientist named Tao Xie has reported that Nafion is a scientific version of Silly Putty. Now, you might ask yourself how has this proven to be valid. Well, as I said the scientist named Tao Xie has reported that this was another scientific version of silly putty, not quite. Xie had tested his hypothesis. The first step he had made to his new discovery was that he heated this material to 140 degrees Celsius. Once the material was heated he made a shape out of it, cooled it off, then did the same thing two more times, but with different shapes. He let it cool of after changing the shape three times .Then he finally decided to test it again, he  heated it back to 140 degrees Celsius and noticed that the material Nafion  changed back to all three shapes slowly. It combined the three shapes together and created a new shape. This brings us to the fact of exploring, and discovering new shapes. What if maybe one day we discover that the shapes we think are impossible to create are easy to make with Nafion? Maybe one day we will actually  create a Penrose triangle! Overall nafion is not the only material that is capable of remembering the shapes it was formed into, but it is one of the latest ones.

Reflection:

This is a very important material we have discovered. It’s funny though, how this material is over 40 years old and we have only discovered its use in the year of 2010. This year has definitely been a successful year for scientists and architects. As we make new foundries and we improve our technology we are capable of discovering new things. This can take us to the top and we might get to our goals that we probably never thought we would be able to accomplish. Now that we have found a material like Nafion, we can discover new shapes, make impossible objects possible, and maybe even come to the discovery of its possible daily use. Maybe this material can be used in our daily lives. Foundries like these can lead to new discoveries! 

 

^^^^The molecules this Nafion is made up of!

Current Event4 =]

Frog Mutations
Source: http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20100324/Note2.asp
Date Written: March 24, 2010
Author: Anonymous

Recently there has been a discovery that is related to frogs. They have tested and observed many different reactions of frogs in different substances. This all started out as a college experiment, with a group of students testing different substances and different hormones on frogs. Many of there hypothesis were correct, and as they suspected, but there was one substance that reacted just a couple of days after it was hypothesized to react. In fact one day a college student had found out that something very unusual was happening in the tank that a hormone called atrazine was put in. Definition: A weed killer used on most corn crops, atrazine can cause organ and cardiovascular damage and is a suspected hormone disruptor. It is also suspected to cause deformities in frogs. See Hormone-Disrupting Compounds. As the students observed they have thought back to what they put into the tank to made sure they have not put in any harmful chemicals. They have figured what was going on. All the tank had was: water, atrazine, and *male* frogs, but the unusual happening was that the male frogs had female frog behavior. Now, since they only had these three parts in the tank they have found out that the reason that is causing these frogs to act female was because of the atrazine. Now some of you might wonder: how do they now they have acted like females? Well first of all these males were attracting frogs the same gender, which is a female feature, it was confirmed that they have found 30% of the males that were put into the tank had adapted female behavior.
As I said, atrazine is used as a weed killer, you might expect these weed killing chemicals in some streams, rivers and lakes. This is very harmful for our environment, now the affected male frogs, now some male frogs are *becoming* female! It is not affecting only the frogs behavior in these lakes rivers and streams, but it is also affecting other animals that live in the water. Being raised in a highly polluted river lake or stream of atrazine it lowers the males’ level of testosterone, which causes them not to attract females. Not only do males loose there hormone but also gain a female hormone called estrogen. These students took to two male frogs and examined them. It happens to be that the male frogs had also produced female reproductive organs, which cause them to mate with other male frogs, and produce baby male frogs.

 Reflection:

            This is very shocking news. To know that so much pollution can cause such a mutation in our eco-system. Some day frogs might become extinct because there will be too many males mutated into females, and not enough males available for reproduction. As I said extinction might be on its way. I found this article very interesting, to think that only a chemical can change a whole frogs life into another direction. When I am older I wish to examine some animals, and find out what the causes of there mysterious extinctions and mutations. Hopefully gaining more knowledge of mutations, and pollution it will help prevent further extinction!