Archive for the ‘Biology’ Category

GED Science: Dancing Dinosaurs!

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

Hey GED dudes! Yeah, you know I like dinosaurs. Like, in Jurassic Park, when the big T-Rex starts comin’ at them, and it’s so big its footsteps make the water shake… ba-boom! ba-boom! It’s comin’!!! Well, imagine that dinosaur dancing! Dudes! Hilarious! (more…)

GED Science: Nobel Prize Winners!

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Hey, GED studiers! Anyone out there who wants to be a scientist? I think it’d be totally kewl… like, I could be like Dr. Jeckyl, all in my secret chemistry lab, with mysterious equipment, putting together a secret formula…. Well, I guess real science isn’t quite like that, but still. Like, you could work on a space ship. Or in a laboratory, with microscopes and exploding chemicals and stuff. Or on secret work for the government! And maybe you’d win a Nobel prize! (more…)

GED Science: Naked Flying Space Critter!

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Dudes. Dudes! DOODZ!!! Totally. I love this weird GED science stuff. I read this article, it’s really kewl. So, no one can live in space, right? Like, if you go out without your space helmet, your head will explode or something. Not to mention you can’t breathe. There’s no air or nuthin. So, it’s impossible to live in space, right? RIGHT?!?! WRONG!!1!11! Okay, here’s the science stuff… (more…)

GED Practice Question: Osmosis

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

Ready for GED science? Are you? ARE YOU?!?! How about testing out your GED skills. So, last time you read about how osmosis is used to make MUMMIES!!! Basically, you put salt on the outside of a dead Egyptian pharaoh, and the salt sucks out the water. Why’s that? Well, there’s water inside all our cells, and the outside of cells is a MEMBRANE… and water can go in and out of it. So, what happens is, water tends to go to whichever side has the most of something dissolved in water. So, you pour a bunch of dry salt (something that dissolves) on the outside of the mummy…and the water says, “Hey! That salt doesn’t have any water dissolved in it. But we’ve got a lot of water in this cell here. We better balance it out by sending more water out into that salt!!!” And the water all goes out to dissolve with the salt. Ugh! A dried-out mummy is the result.

So, here’s a question that was on Yahoo answers. With everything you know, you can solve this question, easy.

“How does osmosis explain the fact that a watery syrup forms when you put sugar on strawberries?”

You’re using a GED skill called application. You’re applying what you know to a different problem. Can you solve it? CAN YOU? Click here to see the answer: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080219200533AARCjin&show=7 

Did your answer say it better? Add your answer to the question on Yahoo!

And keep studying that science for your GED!

Kewl GED Science… Osmosis and the Mummy!

Monday, May 5th, 2008

Okay. I was reading about this really kewl GED science thing… OSMOSIS! Doesn’t it sound like one of them Egyptian Pharoah guys… yeah, All behold the Great Pharoah Osmosis! Hail Osmosis! Maybe that’s not exactly what osmosis is… but speaking of Egypt, did you know that the Egyptians used a kind of salt called Natron to dry out dead bodies and make them into MUMMIES!?!? And guess what? That’s some GED science…OSMOSIS! (more…)

GED Science Conspiracies… Does the Government Want Your Hair?

Monday, February 25th, 2008

Want to learn some GED science, and find out how the government’s gonna invade your privacy in the future? One single strand of hair… and THEY can tell where you were all last year? Can they tell what planet I was abducted to, that’s what I wanna know! Yeah, it’s true, a new science study can figure out where you were by lookin’ at your hair. (more…)

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

Monday, December 24th, 2007

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?

Monday, December 17th, 2007

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…)

Autumn Leaves… an Alien Message? Cont.

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

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?

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

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.