How Jellyfish Work

   For the 8th Grade class trip, we went to Corpus Christi to go on the USS Lexington, the beach, and the aquarium. There were many jellyfish on the beach and I got really curious about them so that is why I am doing a blog about them. Jellyfish are some of the most unusual and mysterious creatures. They have been around for more than 650 million years. Did you know that there are thousands of different species of Jellyfish? I didn't know that! Something else that surprised me was Jellyfish are actually plankton. They can range in size from less than an inch to nearly 7 ft long with tentacles up to 100 ft long. Jellyfish are about 98 percent water. That is crazy! If they were washed up on the beach, the jellyfish would dissapear as the water evaporates. Most of them are transparent and bell-shaped. They don't have bones, brains, or a heart. Jellyfish detect smell and orient themselves to see light. They have rudimentary sensory nerves at the base of their tentacles. Jellyfish have 6 basic parts which are the epidermis, gastrodermis, mesoglea, gastrovascualr cavity, orifice, and tentacles. Jellyfish are some really interesting animals! 

Citations:

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/jellyfish.htm

http://www.sportdiver.com/files/imagecache/enlarged_image/_images/201301/jelly.jpg

The War of Salt

   To be honest, I didn't even know that many people argue over having too much salt in foods or not but I am here to tell you what the people have researched about salt. Policy makers have tried to get Americans to eat less salt. American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces risk for heart attacks, strokes, or death of people with high or normal blood pressure. Did you know people started fearing salt over more than a century ago? That is crazy! French doctors said 6 of their patients who had high blood pressure were salt fiends. In 1977, the US Senate's Select committee on Nutrition and Human needs released a report saying that Americans cut their salt intake by 50 to 85 percent, based largely on Dahl's work. Studies that have explored direct relationship between salt and heart disease have not fared much better. A 2006 American Journal of Medicine study compared the reported daily sodium intakes of 78 million Americans to their risk of dying from heart disease over course of 14 years. It found that more sodium people ate, it is less likely they were to die from heart disease. For every study that suggests that salt is unhealthy, another does not. Some physicians argue that although tiny blood pressure drops will not have a big effect on individuals, they may end up saving lives at the populaton level, in part because a small percentage of population seem to be hypersensitive to salt. This topic was very fun and interesting to learn about and I hope you learned some things from this blog like I did.

Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/

Photo Credit: http://blackgirlsguidetoweightloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/salt.jpg

Why Does Helium Make Our Voices High?

   It is so fun to suck helium out of balloons but I have always wondered why helium makes our voices so high. Well now I know why! Helium is less dense than air which means sound waves travel much faster than usual. It can travel to around 900 meters per second. Wow that's fast! Fast moving, higher frequency sounds have more power as they float in the throat but lower frequencies get a bit lost. When we suck helium, it's actually making our voices just squeaky and flatter. I know it's fun to suck helium out of balloons but it can kill you. If you get light-headed from blowing in too much helium, it is your body telling you that you need more oxygen. This can lead to asphyxiation. If you do have a habit of sucking helium out of balloons, you should stop. 

Here are the links from the websites and the picture: http://ilovebacteria.com/helium.htm 

http://www.howitworksdaily.com/science/question-of-the-day-why-does-helium-make-my-voice-sound-high-pitched/ 

http://img.medscape.com/news/2012/ts_120315_balloon_helium_teen_300x225.png

Making Gold

  The process of making gold is so interesting! A lot of gold can be found in mines. You can dig it up by exploding & blasting holes. Sometimes, gold is intertwined with silver and other metals in the mines. Then, you crush up the big pieces of rocks into small pieces. After that, a grinder in the factory grinds up all the small pieces of rocks into mud. The mud flows into large settling tanks which separates the liquids from the solids. To get gold into bars, a chemical mix of magenis dioxide, fluoride, Cilica flour, borax, and sodium nitrade are poured into a smelter. Then, wait for the smelter to be gold-free. After that, cast the gold into bar shapes. Gold can be pressed to make it extremely thin and you can make gold into anything! That's so cool! Finally, gold is cleaned from any residue. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=apD5cPVsDjc 

The Sun

    I think the sun is a very cool & interesting thing. The sun is a star and it is by far the largest object in the solar system. The Greeks called it Helios and the Romans called it Sol. The sun is about 70% hydrogen, 28% helium by mass everything else amounts to 2%. This changes slowly over time as the Sun converts hydrogen to helium in its core. The outer layers of the sun exhibit differential rotation: at the equator the surface rotates once every 25.4 days; near the poles it's as much as 36 days. This happens because the sun is not a solid body like the Earth. The differential rotation extends considerably own into the interior of the Sun but the core of the Sun rotates as a solid body. The temperature of the Sun is 15.6 million Kelvin and the pressure is 250 billion atmospheres. At the center of the core, the Sun's density is more than 150 times that of water. http://nineplanets.org/sol.html 

Albert Einstein

   Albert Einstein seems like a very interesting man and I want to learn more about him so that's why I am writing about him today. Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879. He took violin and piano lessons when he was younger. The year of 1905 was his "Miracle Year" which was when he came up with the famous equation "e=mc2". In 1915, Einstein completed his General Theory of Relativity. He emigrated to the United States in the autumn of 1933 and chose to live in Princeton, New Jersey. The practical applications of Einsteins´s theories today include the development of the television, remote control devices, automatic door openers, lasers, and DVD-players. He was recognized as TIME magazine's "Person of the Century" in 1999. Einstein left the world with infinite knowledge and pioneering moral leadership. Here is the link to the website. http://einstein.biz/biography.php

Here is the link to Albert Einstein's quotes if you want to look at them:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein.html

The Planet, Earth

   Earth is the planet we live on. It is the third planet in order from the sun and is about 150 million kilometers from the sun. Earth makes one complete orbit around the sun every 365.27 days. It rotates on its axis about the same speed as Mars and completes one rotation in about 23 hours and 56 minutes. 75% of Earth is covered by water. That's a lot of water! Earth also has a total of 1 satellite which is the moon. This is the link to the website: http://www.frontiernet.net/~kidpower/earth.html 

   Did you know that Earth is the only planet whose English does not derive from Greek/Roman mythology? Well it is! Earth is divided into several layers which have distinct chemical and seismic properties. The layers are crust, upper mantle, transition region, lower mantle, D'' Layer, outer core, and inner core. This is the link to the website: http://nineplanets.org/earth.html