January 2011 Archives

Are you tuning in to the Super Bowl? Are you participating in your school's science fair? Both are exciting. One can change the future.

Students in the middle of experiments and trials and data analysis for their science projects may or may not have been listening earlier this week when President Obama delivered the State of the Union address. But there were four students on hand and sitting with the First Lady when President Obama said, "We need to teach our kids that it's not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair."

On the First Lady's guest list for the evening were four outstanding students, including:

• a high school junior who won first place at the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with her work on a photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy (PDT), a cancer drug
• a high school junior who leads a team that participated in the global Progressive Automotive X PRIZE competition, an investigation into better fuel efficiency
• a college freshman who was part of a high school team that designed a motorized chair for physical therapy patients, which led them to win a grant from Lemelson-MIT Program's InventTeams initiative


• a high school freshman whose team won the National Science Bowl for its solar car design

Those students heard firsthand the President praise science education and scientific achievement. But the President was talking to the country as a whole—to students and parents and educators and everyone else—when he drew a parallel between science fair and Super Bowl winners.

At Science Buddies, we agree that the value of scientific inquiry, of the spirit to test and understand and explore, needs to be celebrated.

Right now, many schools in the U.S. are in the middle of "science fair season." There will be many winners, and yet there will be many, many more "participants"—students who, as part of a class or just because they wanted to, took part in a local or school science fair. We think it's important to celebrate and support all of those students—each and every student who conducted an experiment, who studied the scientific method, who asked a question about how something works or what makes something happen, who sat down to formulate a hypothesis, and who then put their research to the test with an experiment. Whether the hypothesis was proven or not, participating matters and is worth celebrating.

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Students: Remind your parents that science projects are important! It's important for your parents to get involved and to make science a part of your family's "quality" time. We've even got project suggestions for your family to do together!

The first Google Science Fair is happening this year!

Designed to be an all-inclusive competition, Google Science Fair 2011 open to students ages 13-18, worldwide. Students are eligible to participate either as individuals or in teams of up to three.

Submissions will be accepted until April 4, 2011. In May, 60 semi-finalists will be announced, and their projects will be posted online for public viewing. The public will have the opportunity to vote for the "People's Choice" award.

Great Prizes Up for Grabs!

At the end of the competition, Google will name 3 finalist winners, one in each age bracket (13-14, 15-16, 17-18). One of these winners will then be named the Grand Prize winner. The grand prize winner will be awarded a National Geographic Expeditions' 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands, a $50,000 scholarship from Google, and additional prizes, including a "once in a lifetime experience" prize from CERN, LEGO, Google, or Scientific American. Finalists also receive a scholarship, a "once in a lifetime experience" opportunity, and a range of other prizes from Google and the fair partners. There is also a $10,000 scholarship for the "People's Choice" winner. For more details, a full list of prizes, and complete contest rules and guidelines, visit the Google Science Fair website.

Great Goldberg

By the way, we at Science Buddies like the Rube Goldberg-styled apparatus the Google team created to highlight the Science Fair on the home page. It's a great example of Goldberg-style engineering—and a lot of fun! The Google team kicked off their launch of the 2011 Science Fair with a live Goldberg-styled display. You can watch it for yourself in the opening seconds of the kickoff video at YouTube!

[For more information about Rube Goldberg and the engineering of simple machines, check this past blog entry: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/blog/2009/10/everyday-tasks-simple-machines-and-engineering-projects-1.php]

In December, Science Daily ran an article with the headline, "35,000 New Species 'sitting in Cupboards.'" The 35,000 species under the microscope of that article account for approximately half of the species of flowering plants that scientists estimate have yet to be described and cataloged.

There are 70,000 species of plants—flowering ones—that haven't been tackled by scientists, but that we know exist and, as the article suggests, half of them are probably sitting on a desk somewhere or in a jar or maybe even pressed between the pages of an old dictionary. The report goes on to suggest that it can take 30-40 years between the time a new specimen is collected and the time it gets fully processed and described and included in the list of known species.

That's a staggering time delay! Think about it, the specimen collected by one scientist and shelved for later study may not be found or picked up again until years later—and by someone else!

Ordering the Daily Special
The problem plant scientists face, and the fact that plant specimens may be among the most documented of organisms (compared, for example, to insects), helps to explain how an undocumented species of lizard, Leiolepis ngovantrii, was on the menu—daily— in Vietnam last year without scientists even being aware that "lunch" for many diners at local restaurants was actually what amounts to a scientific delicacy—a new species of lizard, and not only that, but an all-female species that reproduces by cloning.

The story, reported by CNN in November, is worth reading. That by the time scientists arrived on the scene, a "mishap" in the kitchen had resulted in the current tank of lizards being grilled for lunch underscores how easy it can be to overlook (or eat) something new without even realizing its value to the scientific community.

The scientists who had rushed to Vietnam to investigate the lizards did, apparently, get to have lunch and found out that, contrary to popular wisdom, not everything tastes like chicken!

The Tip of the Biodiversity Iceberg
What these stories underscore is the fact that what we know is most likely far less than there still is to know in terms of identifying and measuring the biodiversity that surrounds us. There are millions of species still to be tracked and described and cataloged by researchers in all areas of science.

A recently-completed international Census of Marine Life took a decade to complete, but at the end, the census resulted in a list of 190,000 species of marine life, including approximately 6000 potentially new species. Based on the data collected, scientists involved estimate there may be at least a million marine species throughout the oceans, and at least tens of millions of types of marine microbes.

There's a lot of work to be done, and a lot of room for emerging scientists. Just remember, tracking biodiversity doesn't always mean a trip to an exotic location. Sometimes, it means simply looking around!

Look Around: The Next New Species May Be in Your Own Backyard
Students can begin investigating issues related to biodiversity with projects like these from the Science Buddies library of free Project Ideas:

• Making Species Maps (Difficulty: 1)


• Finding Phyla (Difficulty: 1)
• Bug Vacuums: Sucking up Biodiversity (Difficulty: 1-2)
• Making Species Maps (Difficulty: 1)
• Worm Hunt: Isolating Soil Nematodes from Your Backyard (Difficulty: 4)
• Germ Invasion (Difficulty: 6-8)
• Investigate Native Plant Evolution with Chloroplast Sequencing (Difficulty: 10)

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The video from the September 22, 2010 Science Buddies Teacher Development Webinar is now available for online viewing. If you were unable to attend the webinar—or had to leave before the webinar ended, you can now watch the entire virtual tour of the Science Buddies website. The webinar, conducted by Science Buddies Vice President, Courtney Corda, will walk you through our resources, helping teachers (and parents) better understand what Science Buddies offers and how to best get started using our full range of free K-12 science education resources.

(Note: The video is approximately 55 minutes long.)

To browse our Teacher Resources, visit: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/teacher_resources.shtml

In my house, if it can be launched through the air, it probably will be. I'm constantly listening for the sound of a crash because once it's discovered that "x" can be propelled through the air, it will be launched over and over and over again... until something (or someone) gets hit. Just last night, it was discovered that a "koosh" ball from the dredges of the toy bins has a loop inside that can be used like a sling shot. Back and forth through the air and across the room and up and down the hall the little spikey ball went.

Are you that way? Do you love throwing things through the air and seeing if you can get just the right angle, just the right amount of pullback, just the right release motion to send something flying farther than it has before?

If so, you won't want to miss the new Make Monkeys Fly in the Blink of an Eye aerodynamics project (Difficulty: 3-4). In this science project, you can explore the science at work with each launch of the monkey.

When you pull back the rubber band mechanism, you create potential energy which is stored in the stretched band until the moment you let go. When you let go, the energy changes to kinetic energy, and the monkey flies. How far will it fly? Manufacturers say "flingshots" can travel around 50 feet. Can you reach that? What you'll explore in this project is how you can maximize your flight—using science.

Not feeling the monkey love? There are a range of screaming, flying animals out there. Frogs. Chickens. Pigs. Cows. Ducks. With a bit of searching, you can probably find the right animal for you.

This project can be fun, but you'll also learn a lot about energy and motion!

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