It all started with the Orbeez that came into class...Then we expanded our investigation to the water-holding capacity of diapers.  No wonder today kids are so much happier than anyone the age of Mrs. Pisani's grown sons could have been; they had cloth diapers while today we use disposables.  Of course, the landfills take the brunt of all those millions of diapers going into the trash.

This is what we have found so far. A mere 5 grams is diaper filling ( the mass of a nickel), so far has aborbed 275 milliliters of water.  That's about 1 1/4 cups of liquid. We think it will absorb even more since there is still a "cottony" look to much of the material.

posted 1/25/2012 4:11 PM | comment | view comments (0)

Today K brought in the deer jaw she found in a wooded area.  Now we have the jaw of a rather large freshwater fish, a small rodent-type mammal, and the DEER in the classroom.  The deer, however, brought us more than numerous molars well-attached in their sockets.  The bones had not been very long on the tray before we noted tens of tiny wriggling maggots.  More evidence- though unexpected today- of nature's constant recycling of the universe...from galaxies and stars to continents and mountains to the smallest living things.

Be assured that we securely wrapped the tray in plastic.  We had a good view then, but kept the critters from leaving the tray. 

 We were surprised by their vigor and activity.  We were amazed at the distance one could cover in a short period of time!

posted 11/30/2011 4:38 PM | comment | view comments (3)

I got all of us pretty excited about the total lunar eclipse on December 10 and then, when I hunted for the particulars of time, discovered with dismay that we will NOT see it because we live too far east.  The west coast, however, will see a total lunar eclipse.  Nonetheless, we will have the full moon ( or a very nearly-full gibbous moon) to see on Friday night and will know that the eclipse is in progress Saturday morning.  Actually, I am hoping that we may see just the beginning of the eclipse as the  moon sets.

That picture of the coppery moon on our homepage IS a moon in  Earth's shadow during a recent eclipse.  No, I didn't take the photograph.

In the past weeks there have been several notable sky events- the Soyuz space craft made it to the International Space Station with three new astronauts ( from Russia, JApan, and the USA) so the space station will not be left abandonned,  an Atlas V rocket built by United Launch Alliance took off for Mars with the new roving lab, Curiosity on board.  It will arrive there in August 2012. And the CME ( coronal mass ejection) from the sun on Saturday left us all in high hopes of seeing the aurora  borealis/ northern lights on Monday night, November 28.  Alas, it was cloudy off and on.  M and K think they saw a bit of the geomagnetic storm around 7 PM ( I was outside then, too!) as soft, greenish patches in the sky.

posted 11/29/2011 11:45 AM | comment | view comments (3)

It has been a long time since we have had tomatoe horn worms crawling around!  I took this picture in August!  It seems so long ago and I suppose it is.  What a surprise today to have an email from a former student- now a 6th grader- who looked at our website and responded to the blog!  I am new to all of this and didn't recall or know that I would get an email notification of a response to the blog. So you'll find _____'s response to the photo and question as the third comment to the blog.

To answer the questions and verify all your quesses, yes, it is a caterpillar.  It carries on it's back the eggs of a moth that will parasitize the horn worm for food as the young larvae hatch.  It sounds gruesome, but it is nature's way of feeding the predators and keeping  the horm worm population in check.  The large adult moth of the horworm is one we rarely see since it is active at night, but the quickly growing "worms" or caterpillars can tunnel right through a large tomato or munch all the leaves on stems on a tomato plant.  It is hard fro us to miss seeing them and their damage. So we are happy that they are easily removed by  human's hands, spotted by hungry birds, and function as nannies to care for waspy little ones. 

 Isn't this a fabulous planet?

posted 11/16/2011 5:27 PM | comment | view comments (1)

posted 8/17/2011 12:59 PM | comment | view comments (5)