Biochemistry

Everything about biochemistry!

 Starflower794 (biochemistry)

Sugar Cubes: Sweet and Scientific!

        This past week in science class, we did an interesting lab with sugar cubes.  There were two different parts of our experiment.  In Part A, we had to perform and observe physical changes while in Part B, we had to do the same with chemical changes.  

PART A:

        First, we had to just take two sugar cubes and observe them.  They were cubed, white, and kind of looked like Styrofoam.  Next, we used a mortar and pestle to crush them into a powder.  It had no shape and felt much lighter and softer than the untouched sugar cubes had.  After this, we took the crushed sugar and poured it into a glass of water.  We found that we could see minuscule pieces of the sugar floating about in the water even though most of the sugar had settled down at the bottom of the glass.  Soon, the sugar started to dissolve.  If we weren't allowed to taste the water to see if the sugar was still there, we could look in a microscope or perform an experiment (leave the glass of water to evaporate so that we could see if the sugar was at the bottom).  

PART B:

        In this part, we received two new sugar cubes and placed them in a test tube.  As the test tube heats up, a yellowish substance starts to form.  I was surprised since the yellow was a mushy kind of color that I didn't think would come from pure white sugar.  Soon enough, the substance bubbles until it changes to a mostly black color (there is some brown and yellow, though they are sparse).  It smells like marshmallows at first, but then a burnt aroma is in the air.  We take the test tube of the Bunsen burner, break it, and observe the new substance.  It had no definite size anymore and the hardened liquid was mostly flat against the glass.  However, I can still see some of the sugar cubes (at least one of them).  I can tell because it is pretty much the only part that juts out, has a significant corner (like an untouched sugar cube), and is a light brown color. 


My Thoughts and More:

          I thought that this experiment was a good way to reinforce what we learned about physical changes, chemical changes, and chemical reactions.  This is because we were told to determine what the difference between Part A and Part B was and we had to describe what made them different.  We discovered that Part A was a physical change because we changed the sugar cubes in only a physical way by crushing them.  On the other hand, Part B was a chemical change because we were burning the sugar and burning a substance is a chemical change (found in our T-chart in our notebook).  The process of actually doing the experiment hands on and using what we already learned to identify scientific concepts by ourselves has definitely helped and built on the way we do experiments and take notes on them.  
         In our textbook, it describe chemical changes, chemical properties, and physical properties.  A physical property can be things like mass, weight, volume, density, texture, and many other things that describe what a substance is like.  A chemical property is the property that describes how a substance changes into one or more other properties.  A chemical change is process or changes that a substance undergoes to turn into other substances. These three are closely related, however, they are different in their own ways.  
          Now, to be more general, I'm going back to the original substance: sugar.  Sugar can be used in many ways.  As we already learned, it can be burned and crushed.  Sugar is mostly used to sweeten foods (or products). Also, I learned that sugar, when dissolved in water, can be made into a syrup. Even though we did exactly this in Part A, I hadn't realized that it had turned into a kind of syrup until now.  In addition, today, I learned that any food related word that ends in "-ose" is likely to include sugar in it. Though I partly knew the previous fact, I found these two facts to be very interesting for the reason that I didn't really know them before and they seemed to be extremely simple - which is why I was surprised that I hadn't realized them.
        After participating in this lab, I'm sure that I'm speaking for everyone when I say that it was enlightening and fun to take part in.  I think that this experiment helped reinforce what we learned a few weeks ago.  Hopefully, we will do a lab just as fun or even more than this one was soon!


Two Sources:
Matter: Building Block of the Universe  (textbook)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar


This is the link to the picture I used:
click here


~Starflower794

Science Found in Books!

        Time and time again, it has been proven that science can be found everywhere! You just have to look for it.  A few days ago, I finished reading a book by the name of The Tomorrow Code by Brian Falkner and when I thought about what I should write about for this part of the extra credit, I immediately knew that I could blog about this book.  The Tomorrow Code is a riveting story about three teenagers trying to solve the mystery of messages coming from the future.  The book starts out simple enough with two of the main characters, Rebecca and Tane, just sitting in a park, debating about time travel and communications from the future.  Rebecca, a math and science prodigy, tells Tane that even if they were able to send messages to a different time, they would only be able to send things backward, not forward since the future hasn't happened yet.  This  sprouts an interesting idea in Tane.  He wonders if the people in the future are sending messages to their time and if that would mean that if they built a receiver and just listened, they could receive a signal from the future.  Soon enough, Rebecca, showing interest in Tane's idea, goes to the local university to meet Professor Barnes with Tane.  This visit, planned  so that the two friends could get their hands on a CD full of live feeds from BATSE, a detector of gamma-rays, was successful.  Obviously, this is where the book started to get very scientific.  The information on the CD is only a series of ones and zeros, but they discover that it's in Morse code.  As they uncover the hidden message the CD contains, they see that it has Lotto numbers on it.  To be sure, they check the last week's draw and are ecstatic when they find out that their guess was correct!  Also, they see that the message is signed with "TR" and they think that it stands for Tane and Rebecca.  They tell Tane's older brother, Harley, who's nickname is Fatboy, all about their discovery so that he can help them get the money for the Lotto draw.  However, there is still more of the message to be uncovered and so Rebecca and Tane get to work on that.  Next, they find that the message is extremely cryptic.  Part of it says, "BUYSUBEONTLS."  They assume that it means that they should buy a certain submarine using their Lotto money.  After this, they fall into a fast paced adventure that is full of interesting information.  Giant, white, foggy antibodies start appearing in New Zealand and are wiping out the human race.  Antibodies are things that exist so that they can destroy an infection.  Rebecca thinks that humans are the pathogens, dangerous things that antibodies try to smother.  Meanwhile, New Zealand is in uproar.  People are trying to flee, however, this will not make a difference.  At the end of the book, Tane and Rebecca escape and hide out in their submarine.  They decide to change the messages so that they could send messages that were more clear so that no one would have to die.  
        The Tomorrow Code is definitely a must read book that incorporates a lot of science in it.  Science can be many things.  It can be anything from health and medicine to space and time travel.  I think it is extremely interesting to think about humans in a way that portrays us as a disease.  This book had a lot of scientific concepts in it.  It was very easy to find science in this book since it was a major part of it.  However, even other books that seem to be completely non-related to science can be shown to have some part of science in it.  Science is a vast subject and even if you think you don't like it, you might find something you like about it.  Basically, I think that science can be found everywhere from just outside your door to a book like The Tomorrow Code.

Reponse to the Quote

         In Science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurred.

Sir William Osler (1849-1919) Canadian physician.  

       No one will ever know how many people have ever thought of an idea but never strove to prove it for the reason that the number would probably be too big to count.  In fact, compared to the few people who went above and beyond in order to provide the world with evidence of their ideas, the number would surely be surprisingly large.  The quote, "In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurred" said by Sir William Osler is definitely correct.  It is saying that even if you think of an idea, you're not going to get recognized for it unless you offer the world proof.  In science, nothing is ever accepted without facts.  You need certain information so that the world world at large will accept and believe your idea.  Without this, you are just another wannabe famous discoverer (or scientist).  For instance, maybe one day you suddenly thought of a brilliant idea and you tried to present it to the world.  No one would believe you and everyone would just pass it off as nonsense.  On the other hand, had you worked to gather evidence to support your theory, you could have changed the world for the better.  In addition, on a slightly different note, imagine someone else thought of the exact same idea a little later and actually went to great lengths to try to provide proof to the world and succeeded.  They, not you, would get the recognition and publicity for thinking of the idea even though you were the one who first thought of it.  Basically, I think the quote is saying that you have to work to convince the world so that you can receive credit for what you thought of.

Burning Bunnies in Sweden

When I first saw the title of this article (Stockholm's Bunnies Burned to Keep Swedes Warm), I was amused and intrigued by it. But, upon reading the first sentence, I was shocked and extremely disturbed by what I learned. In Sweden, there is a lot of overpopulating of bunnies going on. The author of the article even described them as "the subway rats of the suburbs." The bunnies are getting in the way of almost everything. They're crowding parks, roads, and basically all greenery. So, the Swedes came up with a solution - and a pretty innovative one at that. They have animal control authorities on patrol who are instructed to shoot any bunny they see with a special rifle. Next, the remains of the bunnies are all taken and burned. But, it's not like they're burning bunnies just for fun. When they burn bunnies, they use them to create more energy for humans. According to me, their solution is both a good thing and a bad thing.

In a way, it is kind of like recycling, but on the other hand, they are sacrificing a living thing in order to help themselves which I think seems a bit selfish. My general thoughts about burning bunnies are that it is extremely cruel to the point of barbarity. Just to sustain themselves, they are killing an animal who inhabits Earth with us and lives along with us peacefully. What the bunnies are doing (eating all the grass, disturbing parks, and walking across roads unconcernedly) are purely natural qualities. Bunnies will be curious; it's expected. I also think that all this goes right back to things like global warming and how we're running out of Earth's resources. To be more general, it is all part of something we learned about in Social Studies - Human/Environment Interaction. How we treat the environment will eventually affect us, whether it's in a positive or negative way is up to us. Like they say, what goes around comes around and after hundreds of years and maybe even less, our actions are finally coming to hit us in the back.

Anyway, going back to the bunny burnings, I think that it's probably about 1/20 a good thing because of two reasons. Firstly, the bunnies are creating more energy for us and with what's happening to our world, that is definitely a good thing. We won't have enough energy unless we come up with solutions like using bunnies for energy. But still, killing living things is too selfish for me to count it as a good solution. It is also fixing the problem with there being too many bunnies in Sweden.

All in all, I really, really hope that they stop burning bunnies in Sweden and that no other place or person decides to do anything like that. Personally, I think it is absolutely horrible. For now, they may go on, but later, I'm sure they will realize that they made a mistake.

My experience of reading the article and writing this blog has opened my eyes even more than before. I've realized now that everything is linked together in some way. The world is made of tiny dominoes and when one falls down . . . well, let's just say that the domino effect is by all means true. Even my previous blog is related to this. All our technology makes us dumber in a way. We spend hours with our eyes glued to a T.V. or a computer screen like it's our lifeline and we never going outside for a dose of the real, natural world. Plus, we spend a lot less time thinking critically about global warming, depleting energy, and so much more because of those things. If we really put our minds to it, focus, and think hard, I fully believe that we can solve all these problems, one at a time. It's possible. Believe it.

Click here for article 1. Click here for article 2. (both of them are part of the same article, but I found them separately.)

-Starflower794

40 Years After Moon Landing: Why Aren't People Smarter?

In the beginning of this article, the author, Benjamin Radford, compares what people were doing in the 1900's to what we are currently doing. Back then, newspapers and magazines were full of advertisements for instant weight loss gizmo's, miracle cures, and all sorts of things along these lines. Look in any newspaper, magazine, or just turn on the T.V. now and you'll see numerous ads for the exact same things, just a little different or as they all want you to believe, "better." The author uses this information to point out that even though we have acquired a lot more knowledge from then, we aren't, in a sense, smarter than we were a century ago.

Humans were able to land on the moon a while ago but, 40 years later, we haven't progressed much. It's not as if we haven't discovered more things or uncovered more facts, it's just that we haven't been able to apply it to our situation in the world. The author links this problem to education and, to be more specific, critical thinking. Despite all the classes that are included in school curriculum's, critical thinking classes aren't usually held and this is an important thing to learn. In order to move forward and apply our knowledge to help and improve the world, we have to be able to think analytically and critically.

I think that the author is right. In order to move forward and help make our world a better place, we have to be able to think logically. Hard times are on our world and more are yet to come. We have to be able to think of new inventions and solutions to things like global warming. We should understand and apply the new facts we learn to reality. But, since critical thinking classes are rarely ever included in school curriculum's, we have to learn to do it some other way. This is a crucial step to making our world a better place.

Click here for the link to the article.