Science Buddies Blog (Page 117)

Gearing Up for Pedal Power

May 13, 2009 11:17 AM

The month of May is national "Bike to Work" month, and this week the League of American Bicyclists is encouraging people to leave their cars parked and get on a bike for the morning commute to work or to school! The environmental and energy benefits of a pedal-powered commute are obvious, and you might save a few dollars when you puts your pedals to work instead of your engine. There is, of course, a bit of a trade-off in terms of speed. You'll need to allow a little extra time, depending… Read more

A Closer Look at Saturn's Rings

May 11, 2009 3:47 PM

The May 11 successful launch of the space shuttle Atlantis marks NASA's fifth repair trip to the Hubble Space Telescope. This trip is listed as Atlantis's final servicing trip for Hubble, and slated repairs and upgrades include installation of the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, which will enable observation of "light put out by extremely faint, far-away quasars and see how that light changes as it passes through the intervening gas between distant galaxies." The Hubble's wide-field camera… Read more

Recognizing Clever Scientists

May 7, 2009 11:11 AM

This year, Seagate and Science Buddies teamed up to sponsor and award the Seagate-Science Buddies Clever Scientist Award at various science fairs. At each fair, the "Clever Scientist" award honored the two most innovative science fair projects which used low-cost experimental techniques to answer challenging scientific or engineering questions. "Doing more with less is one of the classic measures of creativity," says Science Buddies founder and CEO Ken Hess. The following projects were… Read more

Smart Hand Washing

May 5, 2009 11:09 AM

It's no secret that good hand washing is important in stemming the flow of germs and reducing the transmission of viruses and bacteria. My preschooler knows that the first thing he's supposed to do when he gets to school is wash his hands. That rule was adopted last year in response to a stomach virus that almost shut the school down at one point in the winter. Kids are particularly prone to touching things they shouldn't and putting fingers where they shouldn't, but all of us pick up and carry… Read more

Pass the Bacon: Swine Flu Not Food-Based

April 30, 2009 2:54 PM

With news of H1N1 flu, more commonly known as "swine flu," spreading like wild fire through the fibers of every communication and networking stream we use day to day, levels of fear and panic about this strain of influenza are on the increase, arguably with good reason. On Thursday, April 29, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the swine flu to level 5 on the pandemic alert scale. In response to this assertion that a pandemic outbreak is "imminent," school systems and school communities… Read more

Renewable Energy

April 30, 2009 10:45 AM

PG&E recently asked the state of California to approve plans to turn to space-based solar systems as a source of clean energy. With plans for the satellite which would relay the solar energy to be designed and completed by Solaren Corp by 2016, it sounds far off, but, as reported by Scientific American, the promises of such a near-constant source of renewable energy are abundant. Analysis of renewable energy sources takes center-stage in the Science Buddies science fair project idea: Free… Read more

Swine Flu: BLASTing viruses

April 28, 2009 10:31 AM

No matter what you open, turn on, or tune into, chances are you'll catch a headline about swine flu. The outbreak can be tracked at HealthMap or with their newly launched Twitter stream, which, according to Discovery News, was created in response to swine flu to enable more frequent updates than the hourly ones on the official HealthMap website. A respiratory illness once limited to pigs, with occasional transmission to humans, the strain of swine flu that has appeared today and in cases… Read more

DNA Day!

April 24, 2009 11:55 AM

In celebration of the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003, today is National DNA Day. The following Science Buddies project ideas offer an excellent point of entry for DNA discussions and an introduction of relevant concepts. Do-It-Yourself DNA Design a DNA Extraction Kit and use it to purify DNA from strawberries Extracting Onion DNA Extract DNA from onion in sufficient quantity to be seen and spooled. A Magnetic Primer Designer Test how matches and… Read more

Earth Day Project Idea #5: Phantom Power

April 24, 2009 9:42 AM

Appliances may be the largest objects in a house and the most visible signs of electricity consumption, but today's typical household uses a constant flow of electricity to power all the gadgets and conveniences that have become, for many of us, a way of life. There has been growing awareness and discussion of the continuous drain on electricity that happens even when you think you've turned a system "off." Many standard items go into a low-power or standby mode when you click "off" - which… Read more

Earth Day Week Project Idea #4: Making Paper

April 23, 2009 11:14 AM

How much paper do you throw out each week? Are you good about using both sides? Is your recycling bin overflowing? Despite the ways in which technology has changed traditional paperflow, paper is ubiquitous. We use paper day in and day out. Not surprisingly, one of the biggest categories of solid waste in the U.S. is paper, and statistics regarding the percentage of landfill taken up by paper, paper products, and packaging materials are eye-opening. Testing alternative methods and approaches… Read more

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