Science for kids: Parallel vs Series Circuits

It has been awhile since I last sat down to type, but hopefully I can get back to my rambling.   We are finally getting settled down into a new home and I can start looking at a computer more than boxes!  What a good feeling!

We are heading into Christmas and the holiday period.  So maybe you have some time off work with your  kids or just to be a kid yourself. This is an easy project I did with the scouts a couple weeks ago for one of the Adventures in Science requirements.  The boys had to understand the difference between a Series and Parallel circuit and build each circuit.

There is a very easy way to build these circuits and understand the differences using the following supplies:

1. 2 pieces of paper
2.  Glue and Scissors
3.  Aluminium foil
4.  9 V battery
5. 2 small wattage bulbs:  I used a 6 W indicator bulb, but make sure they are only 12 V bulbs and not      120 V bulbs

Have you been putting up lights on a Christmas tree and one light goes out followed by all the lights going out?  This is a fun project because it will be easy for the kids to grasp why that happens.

Here are the circuits  my son made.  Just cut the aluminum foil into strips and glue them down on the paper.   The foil should be making very good contact with other piece of foil in places where you are connecting pieces so don't use too much glue.   For both the series and the parallel circuit leave a small gap at the top for the 9 V battery.    These circuits are set up to light 2 bulbs at a time.  The pictures below just show 1 bulb lighting up because you need a second person to hold the other bulb and I was being lazy.  .

The series circuit is how many Christmas lights are set up.  Looking at the pictures below you can see that if one light is removed you break the circuit which makes all the lights go out.  Using one light at each of the 2 gaps will make both lights work, but remove one light and they both go out.

The Parallel circuit is better because the circuit is still complete even when one light is removed. The top gap is again for the battery.  Then one light is used for each of the two gaps.  Removing one light will not affect the other light.

In order to make the lights work you need to make a strand of aluminum foil.  The socket part of the light should be wrapped tightly.  The bottom of the light should make contact with the circuit aluminum foil and the opposite end of the foil wrapped around the light should span the gap of the circuit you created and touch the aluminum foil.

To get light, make sure the battery is on the foil where you made a small gap at the top of the circuit.  With the light wrapped with a strand of foil place the light firmly on one side of a gap.  The other end of the strand attached to the light should cross the gap and make contact with the foil.  You can place another bulb at the bottom of the circuit to light two lights at a time.  Play around with removing either light.

The series can be set up the same way. In the picture below I added a "switch" instead of a second light by placing a small piece of foil across the second gap.  Remove lights or the switch to see what happens.

Have fun playing with electricity in a safe manner.  Once you place the battery down on the foil, it will start discharging and can become pretty hot. Just watch how hot it gets and don't leave it discharging too long. It will run the battery down pretty quickly as well.

Fireworks Galaxy

It was back to galaxies for my next target.   I wanted to try to image the Fireworks Galaxy or NGC 6946.   It amazes me how these interstellar bodies were found so long ago.  William Herschel first documented this galaxy in 1798.  Wow!

The target is somewhat difficult for my set-up because you have to image it through some interstellar matter of the Milky Way.  It took approximately 1.4 hours of light gathering to finally get the final picture.  However the work was worth it.  The intermediate spiral galaxy is full of some beautiful color and really does look like a firework bursting in the sky.  This firework is only about one-third the size of our own Milky Way galaxy and is only 18 million light year away!   My brain has a hard time comprehending that distance. It has an even harder time realizing the light my scope is gathering from this galaxy took millions of years to reach the Earth.  We are literally looking back in time and it is beautiful sight to see.

.

The Firework galxy take with my Celestron 8 inch SCT

The details of the final picture of the Galaxy

Location of the Fireworks Galaxy in our sky

1783 GMO studies = ZERO Hazards

Are you looking for the facts to help convince you or other's that GMOs are safe?   Check out:

http://www.foodinsight.org/biotechnology-gmo-food-safe-who-infographic?utm_content=23166078&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter#sthash.SHtiPPZq.LMghjZZZ.dpbs


The main allure of the shot article on this website is the info graphic:

There is one thing to point out that is not always obvious with GMOs.  Some people chose not to eat GMOs, but up to 90% of the feed fed to farm animals in the US is derived from biotech crops.   So GMOs are being used extensively whether you know it or not.   The animal also provides scientists another population to study effects of GMOs.  Researchers at UC Davis looked at health trends of animals before and after biotech feed was introduced and found no significant differences in animal health.   With the thousands of animals being fed GMOs we would see effects if there were some.

There also have also been many other studies on GMOs over the years.  The University of Perugia has recently analysed 1783 studies on the safety and environmental effects of GMOs and so far there are ZERO hazards found.

Science is nothing more than the continual pursuit of new knowledge to challenge the current way of thinking.  Science cannot definitively prove that GMOs pose no threat at all.  And that is why people keep doing studies because science could  show the potential of health threats.  Even a couple of legitimate findings could really change the scientific dogmas associated with GMOs.  And science can get things wrong.  That is why in science. findings must be repeatable by multiple scientists. We are our own worst critics.  If s an experiment told you something, well it is not a real result unless I can repeat it and get the same results.   This is what makes science work.  We will eventually get to the truth.     Yet after 1783 studies showing no health effects isn't it time to start believing a little that  it is OK to eat them?  In the next 30-40 years we may not have any choice as the population continues to grow.

Let's teach our kids Science

We love to give tests and use those scores to make all kinds of comparisons.   That is a can of worms for another day.  But the fact is test scores are used globally to compare kids, schools, states, and even countries.  A fairly recent study took school tests and ranked countries on how kids are performing in science and math.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32608772?nl=nytnow&em_pos=large&emc=edit_nn_20150513

Notice the US doesn't even make the top 12 list.  They are ranked 28.  I have two kids in school and they are getting a good education.  However the fact remains that other countries are starting to really compete with the US.  Asia is becoming a power house in science and math scores.  So if you believe test scores are an indicator of sucess, the the US has some room for improvement.  

I bring this up because science can be fun, and I love to try and get kids involved in science.   I stumbled across a resource for teaching kids about a part of science I hold dear to my heart:  Biotechnology.  The PDF has many different lessons from DNA to GMOs and there are some cool hands-on activities like extracting DNA from a strawberry.  These are exercises you can do with your kids and even share this resource with your kid's teachers.  Let's get more science out to our kids while also making it fun.  

Bring Biotechnology to Life PDF (ages 7-10)

Photopsia

I apologize for the lack of blogging lately.  We are in the process of moving and selling and that process has kept me quite busy over the last few weeks. Hopefully by the end of the year we will be all settled in and things will be back to normal.

However I did have a story to share with a little science thrown in.   It all started on a camping trip with the boys.   Everything started like a normal trip. The boys were playing and having a good time.  We cooked supper, roasted marsh mellows and went to bed.  Everything we good until about 5:00 in the morning when the little one woke me up saying he was was seeing things in the tent.  I just thought he was having a bad dream and had him get a little closer to me in the tent.  That worked until about 5:30 when he woke me up again and said he was still seeing things.   I put him in the sleeping bag with me, but again that only worked until about 6 AM when things really went downhill.  He woke me up saying he was seeing red bugs and they were everywhere.  He said they were coming out of my skin and going into his skin.  He started swatting at them and freaking out.  I could not console him.  He stated to scream to get him out of the tent.   We were were camping on a lake, so at this point I picked him up and walked him down to the lake where I tried to console him for a while and after about 45 minutes had calmed him down.  The rest of the day he was fine and playing just like any other day.

I attributed these visions of "red bugs" to a really bad and vivid dream.   But then we came to night time and no sooner had he gone to bed than we heard crying.  He was seeing the bugs again.  And he was definitely seeing something.  He was shaking and would physically try to push them way from him.  The only thing to remotely calm him down was him sitting on the couch with me downstairs in the light.  At this point I was starting to get concerned.   I knew better than google hallucinations but dit it anyway and of course and it says things you don't really want to hear.   The next night ended up being the same.  We could only get him sleep by putting him in the bed with us.  We had him draw what he was seeing and once we did that, the drawings were very much in line with what a floater might look like.  This all started to make a little sense.  Floaters move and it could easily look like a bug coming out of your skin or going into someone.  Over the next couple nights he started to realize that even though he was seeing these things, they were not hurting him and he would at least go to sleep now.

We took him to the doctor to get his eyes checked out and sure enough he was seeing floaters which is called photopsia. There are different reasons to see these, with one of the most common being retinal detachment.  In his case, everything looked fine with his eyes.   But in some people, photopsia is caused from actually seeing the shadow of the blood vessels in your eyes.  They can appear as red, clear, purple floaters.  In some people they can be very bad especially against certain backgrounds and the person will need to stop what they are doing to focus on a different landscape or background.
He says he still sees the floaters but now that he can rationalize what is going on he lives with it wtih no problem.  The doctor says they may eventually go away or he may see the floaters off and on the rest of his life.  In either event, it is a harmless phenomenon, but one that gave us quite a scare.

Astrophotography: North American Nebula

The next target on the list is the North American Nebula.  This nebula is an emission nebula approximately 1600 light years away from Earth,  An emission nebula is basically just a big cloud of gas that is being excited by a nearby star and thus glowing.    The most prominent gas being ionized in this nebula is Hydrogen.  The nebula is huge, approximately four times the size of the moon, but its surface brightness is pretty low meaning you need binoculars or a low powered telescope to see a foggy patch in the sky.  That didn't stop William Herschel from discovering the nebula on Oct. 24, 1786.

The nebula is called the North American nebula because if you use your imagination you will see North America.  Canada is at the top with Florida jutting out as you follow the East coast.  Mexico rounds out the bottom of the nebula.  My photo is not the best out there and in the hands of more experience photographers the features of North America are even more prominent.

The location of the North American Nebula:

• 

The technical specs of the photo I took are:

A good story at the expense of GMOs

Its hard not to get frustrated with some of the journalism out in the world.  Here is one that I came across this weekend entitled "Genetically modified food: Worries outstrip science."   As a scientist this is the kind of article you read and can do nothing but just scratch your head.

This is a an emotional article and I don't want to take away from the worry and hardship these parents have gone through with an autistic son.  I have 3 kids and fully understand that you will do anything to protect them them even when it may not seem rationale to those looking on.  It is just what we as parents do.

However, I will not be as kind to journalism that uses a parents hardship to pursue an agenda of Anti-GMO sentiment.  The parents in this article as just much a victim as the public in that the story is just using them to further plant doubt and fear.  If you read this article you may easily link GMOs to causing autism.  Just like there are all kinds of articles that will link vaccines to autism even when science says the contrary.   How about this quote from the article:  "It’s just another change the Gioscias have accepted as they prioritize parental instincts and their children’s future over unclear science."  Really?  There is study after study showing the safety of GMOs and absolutely no evidence of GMOs as causing autism.  Even if you have gone to all organic, do you really think the crops you are eating have not gone through genetic modification?  Conventional breeding over years and years is rearranging genomes more than any GMO.  Just look at the pictures below.  Does corn look like that anymore?  The reason it or many other crops you eat on daily basis do no look this way anymore is because of a huge manipulation of the genome through genetic modification.   Yet he public is fine with the concept of conventional breeding even though in reality all our food is GMO whether from conventional breeding or using nature's on tools to insert genes into food quicker than conventional breeding can do.

Water on Mars!!

Lat week, NASA had an announcement and most of you probably heard it.  So even though this is not breaking news anymore, it is still an exciting discovery.   We have been studying Mars for years and it has seen like a desert planet.  There is evidence that there was water on Mars in the past and even that water could be hiding on Mars under the surface.  So who would have ever thought that a planet only 9 months away with current technology could harbor water.

The new evidence shows dark streaks on the planet's surface that come and go depending on the season.  The evidence suggests this is water on the surface.   Many of the headline may make you think water is flowing on Mars, but the truth is that there are probably still not any oceans or even ponds on the surface of Mars.  The water that is showing in these recent pictures is more of a seeping to surface and only when the temperature reaches a balmy negative 10 degrees Celsius.  The water is not flowing like you might imagine a stream, but just getting enough of the surface wet enough to darken it.  The water also appears to be a little salty.

Even though we are probably not going to go to Mars and drink water from a spring, I honestly never thought there was any liquid water near the surface of Mars.  The pictures we see looks like a barren desert of rocks.  Where there is water there could be life even if only microbial life.  The discoveries we are now seeing in space keep coming.   If we are just starting to uncover mysteries from one of the closest celestial objects to Earth, just imagine what else is out there!

Add captionhttps://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia19918/recurring-lineae-on-slopes-at-horowitz-crater

The GMO war

An article came out this summer that I had meant to post, but then I was rambling about other things and almost forgot about it.   I really think everyone should read this article no matter which side of the fence you are on about GMOs.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html

The article covers a gamut of things I have blogged about, but it is a  deep dive into GMOs and written very eloquently.

I often come across blind and uneducated opinions on GMOs.  That is fine.  I have some opinions that are founded on social trends or here say without truly knowing the true facts.  We are humans and assumptions are going to made.  However, when we can educate ourselves and find that facts it is a good thing for all of us.  This is a paper that does a nice job educating with facts and is a great one to share to people who just don't know the truth about GMOs and the fact they are safe.

The hardest battle is against those that have seen the facts, but still refuse to change their beliefs.  Hopefully those small groups will one day be outnumbered.  This quote from the paper summarizes my own view on those who have completely closed their minds.

"Some people, to this day, believe GE papayas are dangerous. They want more studies. They’ll always want more studies. They call themselves skeptics. But when you cling to an unsubstantiated belief, even after two decades of research and experience, that’s not skepticism. It’s dogma."

Pluto again!

In this case the pictures say everything.  Take a minute and go to NASA's website and see the new pictures coming in on Pluto.  The crazy part is that it will take a year to get all the data back on Pluto.  The New Horizons spacecraft is transmitting data back at almost old dial up modem speeds and then it takes 4 hours for the data to go 3 billion miles.  So it may be October of 2016 before we see everything, but that doesn't mean the new pictures that are here aren't dazzling.

Who would have ever though a "dwarf" planet could be so interesting. The pictures below show the beautiful dwarf planet and an even closer up picture shows 11,000 feet mountains beside flat plains.  I find it amazing that there is still so much we don't know about our own solar system.  And yet there are thousands if not millions of other solar systems out there.

We tend to think we are pretty smart, and as a race we are, but just think about the things we don't know.  Pluto puts it into perspective in a beautiful way!

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/perplexing-pluto-new-snakeskin-image-and-more-from-new-horizons

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-rich-color-variations-of-pluto

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/closer-look-majestic-mountains-and-frozen-plains

Moving Genes

Gene transfer is common place in our world.  When a baby is born there is DNA from both the mom and dad that made a unique human.  When the wind blows pollen from one plant to another there are new genes genes being incorporated with the outcome of a seed.  That seed and resulting plant will be different from its parent plants.  This is nothing new and we all know the basics of the birds and the bees.  Plant breeders do this for a living. By the simple means of  manually moving pollen from one plant to another they have turned the food crops into what they are today.

Most people are at ease with this process or at least take it for granted.  More unease comes when we take a gene from one organism and move it to another.  For example when we take a gene from bacteria (Bt) and move it into soybean.     I have talked in a past about agrobacterium which is a bacteria that transfers its DNA into another organism's genome (grapes, trees, shrubs, etc.) in order to form a crown gall or tumor.   There is  a study that shows that the sweet potatoes we eat today have genes from this bacteria.  So even in nature there is a mechanism by which genes are transferring from one organism to another and STAYING there from generation to generation.

The question really becomes how common is gene transfer from one organism to another in nature.  It may be more common than we though.  Another paper has come out that details the relationship of caterpillars and parasitic wasps.

In college I did a lot of research on tobacco and I remember seeing the tobacco hornworm for the first time.  What is that thing!   They get huge and will "click" at you when they get mad.  Then I remember seeing the the first horn worm with white things sticking all over it.  The guys in the field explained that a wasp comes, paralyzes the insect for a short amount of time,  and lays its eggs in the insect.   The larvae use the insect to feed and grow, usually killing it and then hatch out.  Wow. 
And kinda gross.  Just Google images of parasitic wasp and see what they can do insects. You might want to not have eaten yet though.

http://spalbert.wpengine.com/2012/06/parasitic-wasps-beneficial-insects/parasitic-wasp-eggs-on-hornworm/

The crazy thing is that when the wasp injects its eggs it also injects a virus called bracovirus.  Normally if you get a splinter in your finger your body knows something is not right and mounts an immune response to try to get it out or take care of it.  The caterpillars have mechanisms to mount their own immune response for something like an alien growing inside of them, but the bracovirus specializes in keeping the caterpillar from mounting that immune response so the wasp's eggs can grow and not be affected.  These wasps are pretty smart!

That brings us to the climax of the story.  When scientists have looked at the genome of these caterpillars they found genes in the caterpillars from the bracovirus.   In some cases when the caterpillar did not die, some of the virus genome was incorporated into the caterpillar genome and has been passed down from generation to generation.  The more astounding fact is that sometimes the virus picked up wasp genes and then once the virus passed into the caterpillar, they picked up both wasp genes and virus genes. 

What does this even mean?  The scientists found that the genes from the bracoviurs that are active and have been incorporated in the caterpillar actually inhibit another virus called baculovirus.  So the caterpillar still can have a nasty death from parasitic wasps.   But the silver lining is that through the generations they have become Genetically Modified Organisms (without any human help) with genes from other species and these genes actually help them against another pathogen.  It truly is a transgenic world.


Sources:

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/09/wasps-have-injected-new-genes-butterflies

Astrophotography: Pinwheel Galaxy

I had taken a trip to my parents in rural Virginia and had some darker skies than I was accustomed to North Carolina.  .  So it was a good opportunity to try for a new target.   This picture was taken on July 16, 2014.  

The main galaxy you see is called the Pinwheel Galaxy.  It is also know as Messier 101 (M101) and is located right beside the Big Dipper.  It is a spiral galaxy, but appears asymmetrical.  There are actually 5 total galaxies in this picture, but my scope did not resolve them very well.  The interactions of these other companion galaxies with M101 cause the the asymmetry.

My picture stats:

Other facts about the Pinwheel Galaxy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_Galaxy

Kid Science: Understanding DNA and RNA with Candy

One of the coolest things about my job is working with so many smart and innovative people.  And those people all have a passion for science they want to share.   Just recently a co-worker shared a cool way to teach kids about DNA and RNA.   And the kids get to eat the project at the end. :)

DNA is the building block of life and it is some pretty amazing stuff.

Here are some amazing facts (http://www.sciencecentres.org.uk/projects/handsondna/4.8%20-%20Amazing%20facts%20and%20quiz%20questions.pdf):

• Each cell contains roughly 2 meters of DNA.
• Humans have roughly 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion cells).
 • If you unraveled all of your DNA from all of your cells and laid out the DNA end to end, the strand would stretch from the Earth to the Sun hundreds of times (the sun is approximately 98 million miles away from Earth).
 • You could fit 25,000 strands of DNA side by side in the width of a single adult hair.
 • The DNA is tightly coiled up and structured into 46 chromosomes.
•  Our chromosomes are arranged in pairs. We inherit one copy of the pair from our Mum and one       from our Dad.
• There are approximately 3 billion (3,000,000,000) chemical letters (otherwise known as bases) in the DNA code in every cell in your body.
 • This is a massive amount of information. It would fill 200 yellow pages in small type font.
 • If you tried typing the whole genetic code out (typing at 200 letters per minute) it would take 29 years (without taking any breaks!).


The pictures below were put together by a colleague and it is very easy way to have fun with your kids visualizing what DNA and RNA look like.   Have fun!

Smart Drugs: Modafinil

It is late at night and I was reading random stuff on the internet when I stumbled across some news that is now letting me ramble instead of just getting in bed like I really should.

In some ways it seems like science fiction to take a drug that will improve brain function.  I think of the move, The Matrix:

You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." The term redpill refers to a human that is aware of the true nature of the Matrix.

Cognitive enhancement means increased creativity, better memory, better decision making, increased focus, etc.  The truth is that we already have a cheap drug that most of us use everyday that some would claim have limited cognitive inducing properties.  I know I consume way too much of through coffee and sodas.  Caffeine has become a staple drug for many of us to get through the morning.  It may also be a very weak cognitive enhancer, but your body becomes very tolerant of it in as little as 3 weeks.   then you are just maintaining or going through some simple withdraw that many of us have felt in headaches or drowsiness.

But there are other smart drugs that enhance cognitive functions to a larger degree than caffeine.  Conditions such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson;'s, and ADHD affect cognitive ability in a negative way and we have developed drugs like Adderall and Ridelin to improve cognitive function of the brain that are hampered due to these conditions.  While these drugs are on the market and prescribed for very specific conditions, many healthy people want to the take the "blue pill" and in essence make their brain work more efficiently.

A quick Wipedia search on the topic quotes may sources including this one:  One survey found that 7% of students had used stimulants for a cognitive edge, and on some campuses use in the past year is as high as 25%.^{[dated info][7][10]} The use of prescription stimulants is especially prevalent among students attending academically competitive colleges.^[10] Surveys suggest that 3–11% of American students and 0.7–4.5% of German students have used cognitive enhancers in their lifetime

Students especially want an edge, but the problem is these drugs have some bad side effects.   That brings us to the recent news found in this article:  http://io9.com/sleep-drug-modafinil-affirmed-by-scientists-as-a-safe-a-1725355210

The drug the article talks about is Modafinil, a drug prescribed for people having trouble adjusting to shift work, or with sleep apnea among others condtions.  However it also appears to be a very good cognitive enhancer with very little side effects.

Only time will tell if this drug or any drug will ever be as common and accepted in society as caffeine, but with a much bigger cognitive enhancing impact.  You can think of all kinds of questions drugs like this raise.   Will only the rich have access to drugs like this and have even more of an edge in school just due to financial status?  Is is OK to take these drugs before sitting down for an SAT or GRE test?  How about in academic competitions?  Is it doping to make your brain work more efficiently?  Caffeine is accepted in society as a way to potentially be more alert during a test, but on the flip side its impacts are not as big as these other smart drugs may be.

As always it will be interesting to watch things that that seemed like science fiction just a few decades ago, have the potential to come true.  Will we all have the ability to take a drug and recall long buried memories in just an instance or pop a pill to quickly come up with the next new invention?  Or will the next Jeopardy champions have an asterisk beside their name because they were doping like baseball players but with mind stimulants instead of steroids.  It is an interesting world we live in and only time will tell if drugs like Modafinil are truly side effect free with cognitive enhancing properties and if so will society even accept them as ethical?

Kid Science: Silly Putty

Today is a holiday and what better way to spend it than doing science with the kids.   The fun science today is homemade silly putty.  It is easy and quick to make, but will provide entertainment for the kids and you while showing off some chemistry in the process.

Here is what you need:

1.  1 bottle of 118 mL Elmer's Glue-All (not the school glue)
2.  118 mL of water
3.  1/2 teaspoon of Borax
4.  1/4 cup of hot tap water
5.  Food coloring
6.  Bowl to mix everything up
7.  Zip-lock bags for storage

Now the fun part.  To make the silly putty just follow these steps.

1.  Pour the 118 mL of water into the mixing bowl along with the entire bottle of Glue-All.  Stir the mixture until you have a glue soup.

2.  Add some food coloring of your choice so your silly putty has some color.

3.  In a separate measuring cup, measure out 1/4 cup of hot tap water and add the 1/2 teaspoon of Borax.  Stir well until the Borax is mostly dissolved.

4.  Now pour the Borax solution into the Glue soup.

5.  Take a spoon (or your hands for some messy fun)  and mix everything up.

As you mix everything up, you will get a big blob of silly putty to play with.  Once your done playing with it, just store the putty in a zip-lock bag.

Step 1:  Mix the glue and water

Step 2:  Add the food coloring

Step 3:  Dissolve Borax into hot tap water

Step 4:  Pour the Borax solution into Glue soup

Step 5:  Mix everything up

Silly Putty!!

Store in a zip - lock bag

So what is the science behind this experiment.  The Borax is the key.  It hooks the glue molecules together to form the putty.  Glue is already a liquid polymer and with the borax we have made a more solid like polymer.  A polymer is just a long molecule that is mostly made up of repeating units.

For the chemists, the glue is made up of polyvinyl acetate.  Since it is a polymer each repeating unit contains an acetate group.  Borax is mode up of sodium tetraborate and reacts with the acetate molecules of the glue.  One molecule of borax bonds between to acetate molecules and as more and more of these bonds are formed the glue becomes more solid like.

Scouting: Foil Cooking

School has started back and with two boys that means cub scouts is back in full swing.  For those of you who like camping and want your little ones to help with some of  the cooking here is a super easy dish.

Just take some aluminum foil and place it on a flat surface with the shiny side up.  Place a hamburger patty on the foil.  You can break it up into quarters if your want it to cook a little faster.  On top of the burger place some of your favorite vegetables.  We added carrots, sliced potatoes, and peppers.  Add any spices along with salt and pepper and then it is time to wrap everything up.  Just grab the ends and connect them.  The vegetables are supplying the dish the water source that is needed to get some steam.  The steam is what is going to help cook the dish.   So when you wrap the dish up, leave a little air pocket in the top between the food and the foil.  This is to give the steam a place to hangout and cook your food thoroughly.  Then fold the other ends together.  Once it is wrapped up, then you can just place the food packet on some coals for about 4-5 minutes on each side.

This is a great way to get the kids involved in preparing their own food on a camping trip.  There are many other things you can cook this way.  Several different books are out there to give great recipes for foil cooking if you do a quick search.

GMO: Grape Nuts

Life has been a little busy and so I am cheating a little on this post by keeping it so short.  But sometimes a picture is a thousand words.

The news seems always to be abuzz about some company or some brand deciding not to use GMO ingredients.   Yet here is a perfect example of the repercussions customers don't see.  And remember most consumers who don't support GMOs do so because of health concerns.  These Non-GMO cereals don't look like they are getting healthier to me.





Another great article that digs a little deeper into this issue is here:  Article on Grape Nuts and Cheerios 

Source of picture::
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/08/24/so-what-happens-when-gmos-are-removed-from-grape-nuts-less-benefits-higher-costs/

Astrophotography: Some good Books

There are some great resources on the web about getting stared in astrophotography and even more advanced knowledge on the subject.  But sometimes there is no substitute for a book.  There are few books I still use all the time and highly recommend if you want to learn more about astrophotography.  Even if astrophotography is not your thing, but you like to use a telescope for visual use you will learn a lot about general astronomy as well.

The first great book to start out with is The Backyard Astronomer's Guide.  This book is a great stater book.  It goes over all the different types of telescopes out there. You will read about mounts and eyepieces and how to start atrophotography if you wanted.  Even if you just want to use a telescope for visual use only this is a great resource.

Nightwatch is another one that I still pull out all the time.  You will find all kinds of general information, but this book really shines with the sky maps it provides.  This is book to use to learn the constellations as well as well as finding the location of any object you would want to view.

And finally whether you are just looking at targets or trying to take a picture, there are certain times of the year that each target is at a great location in the sky.  The 100 Best Astrophotography Targets has great pictures of each deep sky object from galaxies to nebula.  The book also gives information about CCD imaging which is a step above using you DSLR camera.  I don't do any CCD imaging yet and the book is an awesome guide of when I should photograph an object, not to mention the photos of each object are stunning.

These are some great books for your bookshelf if you love looking at the hidden treasures in our sky.  They are also books that I sitll pull out and reference still.

GMO Answers

Run a Google search on "GMOs" and you will get all kinds of info from facts to unscientific propaganda.  So is there a site where you can actually ask questions and get an answer?  There is one really nice site that is available for you submit your questions and get an answer.

Check out the GMO answers site.   This site is funded by Council for Biotechnology Information which include Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, Monsanto, Dow, and DuPont.  I know the first reaction is of course they are going to answer the questions with a GMO friendly bias.  Yet one of the things I hear the most about GMOs is that the big agricultural companies are not transparent, they are selfish, and not to be trusted.  Well these companies are more than willing to give you answers and information if you are willing to listen  Ask questions and they will give truthful answers.  Many times the answers are given by an outside expert such as a professor from an industry.




































However, the anti-GMO groups are not just sitting around letting the public become educated with truthful information from sites like GMO answers.  They are very good at finding ways to fight back.  So some of the experts that help answer questions about GMOs on the GMO Answers site among other researchers throughout the United States were asked by a group called the US right to know to turn over all of their emails to companies in the biotech field.  They were sure that the researchers were colluding with the biotech industry.  This couldn't be farther from the truth.

Kevin Folta was one of those researchers.  He shares his story here and it is a good read.  The Kevin Folta story.  Imagine being targeted by a group like this.  You have nothing to hide, but it still turns you life upside down to have to comply with some bogus request like the ones these researchers had to do. And then anything they find can be taken out of context to smear biotech, the researcher, and even the universities.

Smear campaigns are very easy to run.  People fall for misinformation all the time just like the phishing emails that clutter your inbox but are able to steal peoples info all the time.  Check out these articles and resources and see the other side of the issue.  This is the side that is usually hard to see behind the Photoshoped pictures of food turning into monsters..

Astrophotography: Whirlpool Galaxy

I have several astrophotography posts on slowly getting the equipment to be able to take pictures of more than just the moon.  I had everything to attempt a photograph of  a Deep Space Object and my first try in 2014 was the Whirlpool Galaxy or Messier 51 by its formal name.   M51 is a spiral galaxy and besides being a beautiful galaxy it is really close to a second smaller galaxy called NGC 5195.  

Google Search info for M51

My setup for the photo was:

Telescope:  SV90T (90 mm refractor)
Mount  Celestron AVX

The basic premise of astrophotography of deep space objects (DSOs) is to take a bunch of exposures of the target and then you will stack them together.  The longer the exposure, then the stronger your signal.   I unfortunately was not yet ready to go guiding which helps keep your mount locked on the target for a longer exposure.  I will go over guiding in a future post. For now I had was just using the Celestron AVX mount to track the target.  We talked about the GEM mounts in a previous post and how they move with the Earth's rotation so you might think this should be enough to keep your target nice a centered.  The answer is it does a good job for awhile, but it is not quite good enough to hold the target perfect for the really long exposures.  For those you need a combination of the mount and a second telescope and camera to lock onto a star near the target and give the mount small corrections to stay perfect.  Since I did not have a guiding setup my mount is good for about 30-45 second expsoures before I start to see slight star trailing.

I got the mount calibrated and polar aligned (perfectly pointing to the North Star) so it will rotate with the sky correctly and then slewed to M51.  I took around 75 pictures at a 45 second exposure.  My final picture had about an hour of exposure.  The more total exposure you get, usually the better the picture detail you can capture.  this is a fairly easy target since you can pick up so detail of this galaxy in binoculars.   Therefore I could get a decent picture even with only an hour of light gathering.

Once you have the photos you need to stack them.  That process is another post and after you get one stacked image you need to process the image.  Processing is another topic I will eventually have several posts on.  Processing is its own science and you can spend hours on this step.  there are also many different software package options which are used in slightly different ways.  The very first attempt I made at processing the M51 photo I had is below in the first picture.

First processing attempt of M51

I was actually a little disappointed.   I wanted a colorful picture.  I was using a software package called Startools.   I talked to the owner of the software on the softwares forum site and he helped me come up with a much better image as shown below.  This just shows how important processing is.  Your stacked picture has all kinds of data including gradients, viginetting, color, etc.  Some of the data you don't even want in there like light gradients from light pollution and some you need to bring out like colors .  In my first picture you can even see a diagonal streak I had from some reflection I was getting.  The moon was out and I am gussing it was bouncing off something to cause my scope to pick up a reflection and put a defect in the image.

Processing with Startools Software

I tried the same picture with a second software call PixInsight and got a similar pciture

Processing with Pixinsight software

This post opens up a lot of questions:

How to Guide and get longer exposures

How to stack images (I did not even mention bias, flats, and dark photos)

How to process images

Hopefully these re things to talk about in future posts.  In the end I am still learning, but my first real picture of something other than the moon was breathtakingly beautiful and amazing to me.  

Cooking: Sourdough Bread

A good friend of mine got me into trying to make bread (Thanks Patrick!).  He told me that as he read about bread making he saw that it is an art not a science.  I understand science, but I am a poor artist.  So my first attempt at making sourdough bread was not a piece of art, but it sure was good to eat.

Sourdough bread making in general has two steps.  The first is to make and "feed" a sourdough starter.  After about a week or more of feeding the starter you can complete the second step of actually making the bread.

There are all kinds of recipes out there.  Like I say, it is an art and so everyone has little difference in the way they do it.  The King Arthur brand website has a lot of resources and I used a lot of info from their site. Check it out for even more resources. 

1.  The Sourdough Starter

There are a few ways to get a starter.  The starter basically consists of flour, water and yeast.  There are two ways to get the yeast.  The first way is to stir 1 cup of flour and and 1 cup of lukewarm water together in a bowl.  Then just let it sit for a day.  Every day, take one cup of the "starter," one cup of new unbleached all purpose flour, and one cup of  warm water and mix them together.  There is yeast everywhere in the environment, so over time natural "wild" yeast is finding its way into the starter and the population will slowly grow.  The other way is when you make your starter from scratch you will add one cup of flour, one cup of lukewarm water, and some yeast from the store.   This will go ahead and inoculate your starter and make things progress a little faster.  In both cases you need to feed your starter which mean each day you are taking one cup of the starter, one cup of flour, and one cup of water and mixing them together.  This also means that each day you have almost 2 cups of old starter you are throwing away.  This brings us to the third way to get a starter going.  Instead of throwing the old starter away, you can give it to someone else and then they have a starter to begin feeding each day.  There are also recipes for the discards like pretzels if you feel bad about wasting.  No matter how you get a starter going you should feed it each day, but pay attention to the temperature which is important to yeast.  The location of the starter should be at least 72 F or above, with 75-85 F ideal.  You can find warm spots in the house like on top of stove that was just used or beside an appliance that might give off heat.

Regardless of how you get your starter you are "feeding" it more flour and water each day to give it a fresh food supply to continue to grow and nourish the yeast population.  Typically you will do this at least a week, but it is ready to use a bread recipe when you see lots of bubbles, it starts to get thicker, and it seems like it has gained some volume.  The longer you let it go and more mature it gets then then more "sour" it becomes.  So you influence the taste of the bread by the age and yeast population of your starter.  

2.  Making the bread

Once you have a starter that is showing good activity you are ready to make some bread.  There are so many recipes.  I chose to use a recipe from the King Arthur site.

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/PrintRecipe?RID=91&radio=1

After adding all the ingredients, you will get a nice dough ball,

Just let the dough ball sit in a bowl for about a couple hours in a warm place to rise.

Once the dough rises, it can be carefully separated into two loaves and placed on a baking sheet.  Lightly cover the two loaves and let them rise for another hour or so until they have risen as well.

Then it is just a matter of baking the bread in the oven.  Next time I will shape the loaves a little higher so i get bigger pieces of bread when I cut it.  However the bread was really good.

The rustic was good, but I tried a second recipe the next day that as sweeter.  It contains one of my favorite ingriedients, sugar.   See below for that one.  The ingredients, cooking time, and steps vary slightly and you finish it off by brushing it with melted butter, but the overall concept is the same as the rustic recipe.   I think this is the recipe I will stick with for awhile.   It is delicious.   

 This is the fun of bread making; changes in just a few different ingridients gets you a very different tasting bread.   If you have other favorite bread recipes then be sure to share them!

http://www.food.com/recipe/light-almost-airy-sourdough-bread-322348