GED Science: Glow-in-the-dark cats… Good science?

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Yeah. This is totally something I want to see on the GED test… Cats that glow in the dark. How can the GED make something so interesting into boring multiple choice questions? So, did scientists make these cats to sell them to millionaires for big bucks? To write funner GED practice questions? Or can glow-in-the-dark cats really help scientists cure diseases and save endangered species? I thought about it a lot, cuz it seemed weird to me. I think the answer’s in how they do the cloning, tho, and that’s GED science thinking. (more…)

Glow-in-the-dark cats?!?! Science fiction or GED life science?

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

Okay. Have you seen these cats!?!? Scientists in Korea cloned these kitties that glow in the dark. Yeah! No more tripping over the cat in the middle of the night, right? No need for a night-light, cuz you got a glow in the dark kitty! What do you think??? (more…)

GED Science: What’s So Great about Mummy Dinos?

Friday, July 15th, 2011

Here’s the article I found about mummy dinosaurs…sweet!Dinosaur Mummy Found with Fossilized Skin and Soft Tissues

We all know it’s kewl… but how come scientists care that this dinosaur’s a mummy? I guess the answer’s gotta be in this paragraph:

The fossilized remains, discovered in 1999, included not just bones, but fossilized soft tissues like skin, tendons and ligaments. Most importantly, it was the first-ever find of a dinosaur where the skin “envelope” had not collapsed onto the skeleton. This has allowed scientists to calculate muscle volume and mass for the first time. The fact that the skin is mostly intact allows for the exciting possibility that some of its original chemistry is still present.

Did you make anything out of all this science mumbo-jumbo? I know what “not just bones” means! There’s all sorts of icky dinosaur bits sticking to it… like skin and stuff. “Tendons,” “ligaments,” those are other gooey stuff inside your body, right? Can’t see that stuff if all you got is bones.

And it says the skin didn’t collapse, so they can see how much muscle those dinosaurs had… like how big around they were. More stuff you can’t see just from bones.

What about that part about “original chemistry”? What’s that? I bet it means dino DNA…. yeah, Jurassic Park time, dudes! They can get that mummy dino’s DNA and then make a whole army of mummy dinosaurs… hey, maybe being a scientist would be pretty kewl…

Mummy Dinosaurs Attack! (not really… just more GED science…)

Friday, May 27th, 2011

But wouldn’t it be kewl?!?! Like, say you opened the tomb of the great Tyrano-Tut and there… instead of an Egyptian king… was a mummified T-Rex, and he’d be real hungry, too after all those years in a tomb. So he comes to life right there and eats three graduate students in one bite! Kewl. Totally. (more…)

Chocolate Covered GED…

Friday, April 15th, 2011

Dude, I’m so needin’ some chocolate, like, right now! I bet that aliens gave us chocolate. How do I know? Well, cuz it’s kewl, duh. And cuz you know how aliens liked to hang around with ancient people. I found this article about how ancient people ate chocolate…mmmm…chocolate….

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119103540.htm

Here’s the first paragraph:

The earliest known use of cacao––the source of our modern day chocolate––has been pushed back more than 500 years, to somewhere between 1400 and 1100 B.C.E., thanks to new chemical analyses of residues extracted from pottery excavated at an archaeological site at Puerto Escondido in Honduras. The new evidence also indicates that, long before the flavor of the cacao seed (or bean) became popular, it was the sweet pulp of the chocolate fruit, used in making a fermented (5% alcohol) beverage, which first drew attention to the plant in the Americas.

Yeah, it’s all about chocolate, but isn’t that just the kind of thing that would be on the GED? That’s right, I said it! Chocolate covered GED! So I thought I’d make up a practice question… like this one…

The “new evidence” mentioned in the second sentence is…

1) A recipe for chocolate liquor

2) Chemical analyses of stuff from old pots

3) Sweet pulp of chocolate fruit (mmm….chocolate fruit…)

4) None of the above

What do you think? I’ll clue you in next time…now, I gotta get me some CHOCOLATE!!!1!!1!!!!111!

GED Practice Question…ANSWERED!

Friday, April 1st, 2011

Here’s the question:

The earliest known use of cacao—the source of our modern day chocolate—has been pushed back more than 500 years, to somewhere between 1400 and 1100 B.C.E., thanks to new chemical analyses of residues extracted from pottery excavated at an archaeological site at Puerto Escondido in Honduras. The new evidence also indicates that, long before the flavor of the cacao seed (or bean) became popular, it was the sweet pulp of the chocolate fruit, used in making a fermented (5% alcohol) beverage, which first drew attention to the plant in the Americas.

The “new evidence” mentioned in the second sentence is…

1) A recipe for chocolate liquor

2) Chemical analyses of stuff from old pots

3) Sweet pulp of chocolate fruit (mmm….chocolate fruit…)

4) None of the above

See that “new evidence” phrase there? What’s it mean? That’s the real question… so I look at the sentence, and it says the evidence shows that people drank fermented chocolate fruit… mmmm… chocolate wine!! I bet everyone’d buy that…

Anyways, so I look at the answers. I gotta think all logically, like Curtis or someone. Which one of these things would show that people drank chocolate wine? D’oh! They all would… a recipe, or leftover stuff, or maybe they found some chocolate pulp? So, I gotta read again.

First, I think about the recipe. Nowhere does the paragraph say anything about finding a recipe! Whatever the answer is, it gotta be in the article!

Then, I think about the second thing… a chemical analysis, like with a mad scientist in his laboratory, no doubt. Talks about that in the first sentence… “thanks to new chemical analyses of residues extracted from pottery.” Then, in the second sentence, it says the new evidence ALSO says… so it must be the evidence they talked about before. Who knew? There’s like scientists, who go around figuring out what the icky stuff on the bottom of old pots is. Man, they’d like to see my kitchen.

Yeah, the answer’s gotta be B. Did you get it?

GED Practice Question Answer: Lava Lamps

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Did you figure out the answer to this question about lava lamps?

What would happen if Dwayne (that’s me!) made a new kind of lava lamp with a light on the top as well as one on the bottom?

A) When the lamp was on, the lava stuff would move twice as fast.

B) When the lamp was on, the lava stuff wouldn’t move at all.

C) When the lamp was on, the lava stuff would go to the top and stop.

D) The lava stuff would keep moving even when the lamp was off.

E) The lamp would overheat.

The answer is… drumroll please…… C! The lava would go to the top of the lamp, then stop. How come?

Well, as we figured out, the lava rises up because the lamp at the bottom get hotter, kind of like how a hot-air balloon rises because the air is hotter, and hotter stuff is lighter.

So, if there was a lamp on both top and bottom, the stuff would still get hot, and it would rise to the top… but it wouldn’t ever cool down, because the lamp at the top would keep it hot. So it would go up to the top and stay there!

Make sense to you? Ask me if you don’t get it. And I promise, next time I’ll talk about something new! Even though lava lamps are really kewl…

GED Science… Extraterrestrialpolation

Monday, February 21st, 2011

What does extraterrestrialpolation have to do with the GED test? Yeah, I know, the real word is “extrapolation.” But I like really long words. What “extrapolation” really means is taking things you know and seeing what you can figure out from them. So you make your knowledge bigger by like, expanding it into new things. And that helps a lot with GED preparation. Cuz that’s one of the things they want you to do on the GED.

So, last time, I told you how a lava lamp works. Basically, the light at the bottom makes the waxy stuff get hot. When it’s hotter, it’s less dense than the liquid, so it floats up. When it gets to the top, it cools down, gets more dense, and sinks down… makin’ kewl psychedelic lava lamps.

Here’s the extrapolation:

What would happen if Dwayne (that’s me!) made a new kind of lava lamp with a light on the top as well as one on the bottom?

A) When the lamp was on, the lava stuff would move twice as fast.

B) When the lamp was on, the lava stuff wouldn’t move at all.

C) When the lamp was on, the lava stuff would go to the top and stop.

D) The lava stuff would keep moving even when the lamp was off.

E) The lamp would overheat.

Hehehehe… I’m turning lava lamps into GED preparation! Good luck on this one! Let me know what you think…

Autumn Leaves… an Alien Message? Cont.

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

Dude! Did you look at that article at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071012104737.htm? You know, the big problem with these science stuff is the long words. Like “pigments.” What’s that? Mr. W says it’s what makes something a particular color. So why don’t they just say “colors”?

Anyway, I guess my idea about trees being aliens is bust. I looked over that article, and if you remember, I had two questions…

What makes tree leaves change color?

I guess trees start out with stuff that colors them, that pigment stuff. And “chlorophyll” is what makes them green. (I thought chlorophyll was what they call the pool guy, Phil, who puts chlorine in the pool…) Anyway, chlorophyll takes light and makes it into food for the plants. Kewl!

Then, there’s something else in leaves called “auxin.” (Hmmmm… sounds like an alien name to me…) This stuff keeps the channels to the leaf open… I think of it kind of like keeping blood vessels open. You know how leaves got little lines in them? Like little blood vessels, right? Except with no blood… weird. So, I guess auxin keeps those things open so the leaf stays connected to the tree.

When the tree stops making auxin, everything closes off, and it doesn’t get any food. Then the chlorophyll dies… and the green goes away. Then, you can see the other colors from other pigments in the leaves.

Why does it happen in the fall?

I guess all this stuff happens when it gets cold and the days get short… but how does that stop the auxin? The article doesn’t say. Maybe it is aliens after all…

What do you think?

Autumn Leaves… an Alien Message?

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

You are traveling to another dimension… a dimension not of sight and sound, but of mind… next stop… Dwayne’s Twilight Zone… doo, doo, doo, doo… doo, doo, doo, doo…

Seriously. Did you know science was so freaky? I never thought of it until I started studying for my GED. So I decided to keep you up to date on the weird and wild world of science…

Like, I was looking out my window, and I noticed that the leaves on the trees are starting to change colors. They do that every year, yeah, sure… but how come? I started to think how the trees are probably really aliens who traveled to Earth millions of years ago, and have been quietly waiting for the right moment to take over! And changing the colors of their leaves is a secret signal to each other and to their master ship that’s rotating the Earth.

Okay, Curtis says when I get ideas like that in my head, I should look up what’s really true. So I decided to look up about leaves. First I thought up my questions.

  • What makes tree leaves change color?
  • Why does it happen in the fall?

Here’s a link I found to start looking up my answers:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071012104737.htm

What do you all think? Are autumn leaves a natural process? Or signs of alien communication?

I’ll let you know next time what I found out.