DNA Infographic--Guest Post

Oh, wow.  This is my first blog guest post.  I'm both honored and humbled at being invited to contribute to the Catlin Coverslip.  My first thought when Dan invited me to post was what on earth could a social studies teacher contribute to a science blog?  Then I began breathing again and remembered how much fun I've been having the past few years sending Dan, Becky, and Veronica science related tidbits I felt were in keeping with the Coverslip's intent.  Today, I offer two infographics for thought.  I suppose they are related in a way.  My daughter, Noa, is currently studying genetics, so I thought this dna related infographic might be of use to her and her sophomore classmates.  Now that Earth's population has passed the 7,000,000,000 (numbers are so much more impressive than words) milestone, revisiting Per Square Mile's density infographic also seemed appropriate.  I also promise to return to the spirit of the Coverslip with a much shorter post next time.

Teenage Brain Roundup

All sorts of interesting tidbits in the news lately about the teenage brain:

Paul Monheimer points out that this month's National Geographic features an article on the teenage brain, which is available online here.

Dan Griffiths points out the recent study, "Online social network size is reflected in human brain structure" that yes, shows a positive correlation between number of Facebook friends and gray matter density in certain areas of the brain involved in social perception and associative memory.

Finally, check out the recent report from British researchers on how verbal & non-verbal IQ can fluctuate throughout the teenage years. Here's a summary of their work:

"The mental ability of teenagers can improve or decline on a far greater scale than previously thought."

Happy reading!

Ocean Salinity Mapping

Paul Monheimer shares this BBC article about mapping ocean salinity via satellite with us. The article has details about how the map is created via data gathering probes in the oceans.

It's neat to look at the map and see that the Pacific is apparently less salty than the Atlantic. Any oceanographers out there have an explanation for this?

Here's the full article:

Aquarius Satellite Comes Of Age - BBC News

Water Fountain Physics

Paul Monheimer shares this Wired post about a hi-tech water fountain in a Japanese mall that can make complex pictures and words with the falling drops - "Happy" is spelled out in the photo.

The article has some great video of the fountain running, as well as some neat video and graphs to explain how the separation between drops as they fall can be predicted by kinematics equations. Check out the videos!

Slow Motion Videos: Deformation and Motion

Gelatin Cubes, by Modernist Cuisine



Water Balloon To the Face, from Discovery Networks



Hat tip to Ben Rimes

Middle School Science Olympiad Success

Submitted by Larry Hurst, 6th grade science teacher:

Great news from the 2011 National Science Olympiad in Madison, Wisconsin:

Middle Schoolers Eve Maquelin and Andrew Park competed against 118 students in grades 6 through 9 from 47 states to win 1st place in the nation for the Science Olympiad event “Write it, Do it”.

Andrew and Eve’s gold medal performance is stunning when you consider that “Write it, do it” is one of the most challenging of the tournament’s 23 events. For a pair of novice 6th and 7th grade students to beat 59 other schools in teamwork, abstract expression, logic, and concise writing is an impressive achievement and indicative of the strength of our science and language arts programs at Catlin Gabel School.

This was the first medal earned by an Oregon team since Calapooia Middle School got both a gold and a bronze medal in 1997. Prior to that, Whitford Independent School got gold and silver medals in 1993, gold and bronze in 1992, and a gold medal in 1989.

Bravo, Eve and Andrew!

Vignesh makes the final!!!

From Andrew Merrill, our Computer Science teacher:

Google is running a world-wide science fair for the first time this year. Out of over 7500 entries from around the world, they have narrowed it down to 5 Finalists in each of three age ranges (13-14, 15-16, 17-18).

Vighnesh Shiv was just named today one of the 5 Finalists in the 17-18 age category. The finalists will all be flown to Google HQ in July for a science fair with judges that include “Nobel Laureates, tech visionaries and household names.

Check it out at the link below:

http://googlesciencefair.blogspot.com/2011/05/votes-are-in-for-google-science-fair.html