Dwayne’s Study Zombies

Know what I always thought was totally enlightening? A lava lamp! Yeah, they’re so kewl. I don’t know if you’ve got one, but you turn it on and the stuff all flows all meditative like through the water… and the whole thing glows. Totally trippy!

Seems like, lava lamps is really science! Who knew? Here’s how it works. So, the lava lamp’s got two things in it, right? There’s the liquid, and then there’s the thicker stuff that goes up and down. How’s it move? It looks like magic! But it’s really science, see?

Here’s the physics: Heavy things sink, and light things float. Sounds really non-scientific, right? Cuz like a rock will sink, but a leaf will float. Science guys say, “Dense things sink, and less dense things float.” That’s cuz a really tiny rock and a really gigantic, humongous leaf might weigh the same… but the rock is smaller. It’s got more weight for its size. So it’s dense.

Anyway, heat makes things expand… they get bigger. So when the thick stuff in the lava lamp gets hot, cuz of the bulb at the bottom of the lamp heats it up, it expands. That means it’s less dense. So it goes up…. then it gets to the top, cools off, gets more dense again, and falls down. Up and down, up and down, as it gets hotter and colder. Kewl!

You can even make your own lava lamp at home. That’s one thing I like about science, is you can build things with it. Here’s a link that shows you how: http://www.oozinggoo.com/howto.html

And if you want to know some cool non-science stuff about lava lamps, here some info about the guy who invented them! He sounds like a bit of a wacko…. like me! http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa092297.htm

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?

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.