July 9, 2010
Today we’re adding another entry to our "Summer Vacation Science" series. This one is adapted from an early book of Seymour’s called SCIENCE PROJECTS IN ECOLOGY. It is long out of print, but it is full of exciting opportunities that you can do with your kids during the summer, when you want to keep them engaged in learning and exploration.
A rotting log is far from being dead. Even after a tree dies and falls to the ground, it is host to a large community of living things. What kinds of things you’ll find depends upon what kind of tree it was, how long the log has been rotting, its location, and the time of year.
Materials You Will Need:
- A pencil and notebook
- A small shovel or trowel
- Small plastic bags
- Several wide-mouthed jars or an aquarium tank
- Fine screening to cover the jars or tank
- Vaseline petroleum jelly
What to Do:
Find a rotting log and look it over carefully. If it is hollow, look inside. Poke a stick and see if anything comes out. Small mammals often make homes inside these logs. You may find some larger animals such as mice, chipmunks, a rabbit, or perhaps a snake. Snakes like to hunt for food in logs because of all the living things there. Most snakes are very shy - they’ll hurry away as soon as you see them. But be careful. Even though the vast majority of snakes are not poisonous, many kinds will bite if cornered or handled.
Look on the outside of the log for plants growing there. You’ll often find different kinds of fungi and mosses. You may also find small seedlings of trees and wild flowers growing in decaying spots along the log.
Do you see any insects on the outside of the log? If you strip away a piece of loose bark, you’ll see that most insects live inside. Look for dusky salamanders, small frogs, or toads. You’ll probably see ants, millipedes, centipedes, slugs, land snails, spiders, sow bugs, and beetles of all kinds.
Use your shovel to dig into the rotting wood of the log. You’ll probably find passageways and tunnels of all kinds, some still in use, some left over from previous tenants. Examine the different degrees of rotting. Some parts may crumble away at a touch, while other parts will still be firm. As you dig down, you’ll come to the part of the log that is changing into soil. Here you’ll surely find earthworms, mites and springtails.
Look around you. Do different kinds of trees provide habitats for different creatures? Do logs that receive sunlight seem different from those that do not? Can you tell which ones have been dead for a long time and which ones recently fell? Be sure that you don’t take apart all the logs in one area - remember that these are homes for living things.
Take notes on all that you find and what you observe.
Questions to ask and things to try:
You can observe a rotting log community (and the living things that make their homes in this habitat) in your own home. Break off two or three chunks of the log with your shovel. Place the chunks in plastic bags, sea them and bring them...
read morePosted by: Liz Nealon
July 7, 2010
We have a new post today from our 10-year-old environmental reporter, Alana G, who took advantage of the July 4th holiday celebration to bring her message to her community. What an inspiration she is!
—- Seymour
Hello fellow Shipmates,
I hope that everyone had a wonderful 4th of July holiday. I definitely did. My friends and I from my "KIDS TODAY FOR A BETTER TOMORROW" group attended an old fashioned 4th of July picnic in the Southern California city that we live in. There was all kinds of really cool stuff for us to do there. We got to play all day long, but the coolest thing we did was to create an environmental theme for the decorated wagon parade.
My friends and I had a great time decorating our little wagon on Saturday. We were very proud of our finished wagon. We tried to use as many recycled materials as possible, even the wagon we bought had been made from recycled materials. Anything that we used that was not made from recycled materials will not be wasted. We are going to do the next best thing….Re-use! And we are saving the decorations so we can use them next year. 
Anytime that you recycle or reuse products you help to reduce your carbon footprint, which is an awesome thing to do.
My friends even decorated their scooters and bicycles to follow alongside our wagon. We received many very nice compliments and smiles as we walked by and even got a thumbs up. That made my day. While we were there we ran into our city councilwoman, Gwenn Norton-Perry, who was so happy about all of the wonderful things we have been doing to help save our planet (that’s her in the photo on the right). 
She was amazed by how much our group has already accomplished in such a short amount of time. As she congratulated us on a job well done…I felt my cheeks turn red. Well…I guess it was more like a rosy pink. LOL. My friends were so excited and very proud to have met a city councilperson. We kept walking around with our wagon and passed out flyers for KT4BT. We have even teamed up with a local Cub Scout troop that has asked if they join us on our next environmental volunteer trip. Isn’t that great?
I can’t wait...
read morePosted by: Alana G
July 2, 2010
As we all head off for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, there may be a few mishaps as weekend sailors attempt to bring canoes, kayaks and sailfish neatly into the dock. When it comes to docking, NASA has started its holiday weekend off with a bang!
The unmanned Progress 38 cargo ship, packed with 2.5 tons of supplies for the International Space Station (clean clothes, fresh food, etc) lost its telemetry lock while it was attempting to dock and flew right past the ISS today. NASA says the crew was never in any danger and the supplies were not critical. There were, however, reportedly some little personal treats included for each of the astronauts resident on the space station - a classic "Wait, come back!" kind of moment.
Have a great Fourth everyone. We’re taking the long weekend off here at Seymour Science and will be back blogging on Tuesday.
- Seymour
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 30, 2010
Every year, Nikon hosts a photomicrography competition called "Small World." ("Photomicrography" is in our Science Dictionary if you’d like to look it up!). Wired.com just published six incredible super-closeups of bug eyes (like this one, which is the eye of a common house fly). Click on the link and check these out - they are both creepy and really gorgeous.
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 26, 2010
Last night, June 25th, we were wandering among the stars. Well, actually we were looking at the night sky with a pair of binoculars waiting for a satellite flyby of the Space Station. We knew the direction it was coming from and the exact time it would appear (WSW, 10:08:08pm). We knew that it would be very bright (-3.9 magnitude) rivaling that of Venus (a bit brighter at -4.2 magnitude). While we were waiting for the moment that the satellite would appear, we looked at the stars coming out as the sky darkened. The moon was so bright that its light washes out the dimmer stars, so only the brightest stars appear. Venus was very bright above the western horizon, appearing even before the red colors of the sunset had faded. I took this picture of Venus just to the left of the trees and you can see the last colors of a very beautiful sunset.
As the sky darkened, Liz looked up at the sky with the binoculars at two other bright stars and proclaimed them planets. I looked at them and thought that she was probably right about one of them and maybe not about the other one. The one I thought she was right about turned out to be Mars, the red planet. And indeed, it looked red. The other one she was also right about. It was Saturn. All three planets are visible in the early evening these nights, be sure to take a look!
Then, right on time, the Space Station rose and sped across the sky. It was magnificent, bright and fast moving (much faster than the high-flying ligts of planes that we saw). It took only a few minutes to travel across our viewing area and then sank below the horizon to the the NorthEast. I have to say that I did something silly. I started to cheer and applaud and Liz joined in with me. It is a beautiful sight and not to be missed. You have more chances this weekend to see. Check the times in your local area (look at the preceding blog entry for where to check).
I cheered not only because the satellite flyby was so beautiful (it is), but because the thought of humans flying by in space made me think of myself as a small boy reading science fiction stories. I always wondered and hoped that we would get to explore in space and we have. Maybe not as far as I wanted (I wanted for us to go to the stars), but at least it’s a first step for humankind.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 26, 2010
I used Google’s Sky Map app on my Droid last night for the first time. Wow! They describe this app as "the universe in your pocket," and they’re not kidding. All you do is point your phone at the sky, and it shows you what you are looking at (this is how I proved to Seymour that I was indeed looking at Mars throught the binoculars, he he). You can choose different layers (see only planets, see only constellations, etc), or you can just see them all at once.
I haven’t had much experience with Astronomy - just an amateur love of the night sky. Last night, with Google Sky Map I was able to easily find Polaris (the North Star) and for the first time I learned about 1st magnitude stars like Vega and Arkturis (the fourth brightest star in the night sky), and knew what they were.
It is a wonderful app, intuitive and easy to use (I didn’t read any instructions, just turned it on and started using it). I can’t even describe how exciting it is to be looking at a disk that you are pretty sure is a planet, turning the Google Sky Map on it and having Saturn with its rings pop up on the screen. What fun!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 25, 2010
This is a great weekend for seeing the International Space Station with the naked eye. For the next few days, the International Space Station (ISS) will be orbiting Earth in constant sunlight, which means that at times it will be almost as bright as Venus. Because the ISS is constantly reflecting light, it shines brightly in the night sky every single time it passes overhead - in some places, that may be as many as three or more times per night. SpaceWeather.com has set up a this webpage where all you have to do is enter your zip code, and it will tell you what time the Space Station is passing overhead, and which direction to look. Grab a flashlight and head out to see this remarkable sky show!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 24, 2010
Richard Pough, founder of the Nature Conservancy, died on this day i 2003. Pough’s efforts as a nature conservationist led to the establishment of numerous wildlife sanctuaries across the country. He also wrote the Audubon Bird Guide, and led the fight to ban the sale of the feathers of endangered birds (whose feathers were prized in those days as ornaments for women’s hats).
Pough was one of the first people to raise the alarm about a pesticide that was threatening the wildlife in a way never seen before. According to a 1945 article in the New York Times, Pough reported on tests by the Audubon Society and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service showing that forests in Pennsylvania had lost their birds after being sprayed with DDT. ‘‘If DDT should ever be used widely and without carewould have a country without freshwater fish, serpents, frogs and most of the birds we have now.’’ Rachel Carson’s more widely recognized book on this same subject, ‘‘Silent Spring,’’ was not published until 1962.
Pough began his conservation career in 1932 when he heard about a hunting spot called Hawk Mountain near where he lived in Philadelphia. He went to investigate, and was horrified to find hundreds of dead hawks. He eventually stopped the hunting when he persuaded a wealthy New Yorker to buy 1400 acres of the land on the mountain, establishing the country’s first sanctuary for birds of prey. If you have ever seen one of these glorious raptors soaring in the wind drafts and thermals over a verdant valley, you will know why he was moved to action.
Richard Pough is also very close to my heart because later in his career he became the Chairman of Conservation and General Ecology for the American Museum of Natural History. 
While in that position he oversaw creation of the Hall of North American Forests, which includes a realistic diorama of Stissing Mountain, in the Hudson Highlands in Upstate New York. As a little boy growing up in the city I used to sit in front of this diorama and imagine living in a place with a big lake, soaring hawks, supple white birches, and leaping bass. Many years later, I am fortunate to own a house not 20 minutes from that very spot. I have always strived to be an active conservationist and environmentalist, and I was inspired by the work of people like Richard Pough.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 24, 2010
After a recent visit to the world-renowned St. Louis Zoo (one of the top conservation and research zoological facilities in this country), I chatted with my friend, Dr. E. Wendy Saul, an expert science educator, about how parents can help their kids get the most out of a visit to the zoo.
Her answer surprised me. I thought that she was going to suggest that parents take the time to read all the information that is posted near the animal habitats, discuss aloud what they are reading, etc.
In fact, Wendy enthusiastically said, "Oh, one of my favorite things to do is have a ‘theme day’ at the zoo. One day, just go and look at ears. Talk about all the different ears you see, why you think the animal has those ears, how well you think they hear, etc."
What a great idea! Enjoy not only the animals but also the game, and get kids thinking, talking and speculating aloud.
I must say for the record that I still love taking my time and reading all the information that is posted. 
Do you know why hippopotamuses have ears and eyes that sit high on their heads? That is so they can be mostly underwater and still hear what is going on above water. And this wonderful creature’s jawbone also conducts soundwaves, so a hippo with his jaw submerged can hear sounds above and below the water at the same time!
Visit a zoo with your family this summer, and take advantage of all the different ways to talk about animals, conservation, protecting habitats, and even EARS!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 23, 2010
What a day! I had an amazing time on the farm today and man am I tired. Today we studied all about Botany, which is the science of plants. We even got to dissect a flower today so that we can study its inside parts. You’re probably thinking "Dissect a plant?? Why, if there is nothing to see?" Some of you are thinking that it’s weird but a plant actually has many interesting parts inside that form the plant’s structure. Do you know why plants turn green? If not, I’ll tell you. Plants turn green because they are filled with Chlorophyll which makes them green.[1] Cool huh? We also got to harvest vegetables from the farm’s garden. We picked a ton of green beans for a B.B.Q. dinner that they are having for us tomorrow. Yummy!!! I am getting hungry just thinking about it. We also got to plant Black-Eyed Peas, not to be confused with the group. LOL…although we did sing a few of their tunes as we worked. : ) It was fun getting dirty.
Well, tomorrow is the big day and I am sad to say our last day of the Science of Farming Camp. We get to dissect the cow eyeball and the sheep heart that I was telling you about yesterday ...Yukkk!! But I am sure it will be a lot of fun. Like I said, I will fill you in more when I write my report for you. Yep, I am writing a report just for you so I can share all the wonderful stories and information I have learnt at camp with you. If you want to hear more about it, please make sure to check back in and read my blog. 
Oh and one more thing…don’t believe the hype…Farming IS COOL!!! Thanks for reading my blog, Fellow Shipmates!
Alana G
"Science Rules"
[1] Note from Seymour: Alana is right; chlorophyll does make plants look green. Not only does it make plants green, but chlorophyll is important for life on Earth, even for us non-green types, like you and me. Chlorophyll is a substance that plants use to make carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water in the presence of sunlight. That’s called photosynthesis. Plants use photosynthesis to make the food they need and animals eat plants (or eat other animals that eat plants). So that stuff that turns plants green is the same stuff upon which life on Earth depends.
Posted by: Alana G
