May 25, 2011
Every year I go to a conference called the International Reading Association. It is a place where publishers show all of their books (and introduce their authors) to teachers from around the country.
I was there last week with my wonderful colleagues from HarperCollins.This is me, signing books. There was such a long line, it wrapped around the booth and down the next aisle! These women do such a good job coordinating a very complicated schedule, and they always make sure to showcase my books and organize a signing.
So, I want to say thank you to Patty Rosati, Laura Lutz, Robin Tordini and Stephanie for all the work they do to prepare for IRA. It is a pleasure to join you guys each year.
Teachers, they also write a fun blog called The Page Turn, "an inside look at books for Teachers and Librarians." Check it out for lots of great inside information about authors and the latest books from HarperCollins.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 24, 2011
There is no such thing as being completely safe inside a tornado. And this is a very bad year for tornadoes in the United States. So far, nearly 50 deadly tornadoes have touched down in the United States in 2011. That’s more than twice as much as the yearly average of killer tornadoes in years past. And it’s only May.
Photo: Charlie Riedel / AP
The deadliest tornado in nearly 60 years and the second major deadly twister in a month struck Joplin, Missouri on Monday, May 23. The half-mile-wide twister blasted through the Missouri town killing more than 100 people and leveling thousands of buildings. The devastation was so complete that the city’s south side has been nearly destroyed.
There’s not much that you can say about safety in a tornado that big and that strong. But MOST tornadoes are much weaker and CAN be survived. Listen to tornado forecasts and pay attention to the warnings.
Here are some things to look for before a tornado arrives:
- The sky turns dark or greenish-black during the day.
- Dust or debris whirls on the ground under a cloud.
- Hail or heavy rain followed by either dead calm or a fast wind shift.
- Night: Small, bright flashes at ground level during a thunderstorm. This means power lines are being snapped by the winds.
- Funnel-shaped clouds may appear-but not always.
Here’s what to do:
- In a house with a basement, avoid windows and go to the basement.
- Get under a workbench or heavy table.
- Cover your whole body with a mattress of sleeping bag.
- KNOW where heavy objects are on the floor above (like a refrigerator) and don’t go under them. They may fall through the weakened floor.
- In a house with no basement, avoid windows and go to the lowest floor to a small center room like a bathroom or closet. Cover yourself with some sort of padding.
- In a large building, go to the center of the building on the lowest floor possible. Then crouch down and cover your head. Stay off elevators.
- In a mobile home, get out! If your community has a tornado shelter, go there. Otherwise lie flat on the ground away from your home away from trees and cars. Cover your head with your hands.
- At school, follow the drill. Get to an inside hall or room. Crouch low, head down with your arms over your head.
- Cars and trucks are NOT safe during a tornado. Get out! Either seek shelter in a strong building or lie flat on the ground, face down, arms over your head.
Remember that the best protection from most tornadoes comes from receiving and acting upon an early warning and knowing what to do in advance.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 24, 2011
I received a letter this week from Hickory Hill Elementary School in Papillion, Nebraska. The third graders are asking a very good question, and I thought other readers might be interested in this, too.
Dear Mr. Simon,
My third graders just finished reading the book Giant Snakes in a guided reading group and they had a question regarding the book. On page 16 it states, "Anacondas are the largest snakes on the world" and then on page 19 it says, "The Reticulated Pythons of Southeast Asia are the longest snake in the world." They are curious as to which one really is the biggest snake?
We really appreciate your books and love the pictures! Thanks in advance for your help with our question!
Hello, Third Graders! Good question. Anacondas are generally the largest (meaning heavier and wider, foot for foot) than pythons. But the Reticulated Pythons are the generally the longest (but not the biggest or largest) snakes in the world. So it all depends upon what you mean by big.
To give you an idea of just how long these snakes are, look at this photograph of kindergartner Faith Hackett holding the head of a Burmese python at Wildwood Park and Zoo in Marshfield, Wis., during a presentation on rescued exotic animals.
Thanks for writing, and happy reading!
Photo: Dan Young / Marshfield News-Herald via AP
READERS: Are you wondering how to add your own "comment" to this blog? Click here for exact directions on how to add a comment so you can become one of our Seymour Science writers! We also want you to be safe and not share too much information when you write on this blog, so please take a minute to read about how to stay safe on the Internet. We love to hear from you, so give "comments" a try!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 23, 2011
Look at this amazing photograph of the volcanic eruption in Iceland over the weekend. The plume of ash when the Grimsvotn volcano erupted on Saturday shot 12 miles into the air! (Photo: Egill Adalsteinsson / EPA).
Iceland is one of the most active volcanic regions in the world, because it Is located on both the Iceland hotspot and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which runs right through it. This location means that the island is highly geologically active with many volcanoes, and eruptions occurring on average roughly every three years. For example, in the 1900s there were 39 volcanic eruptions on and around Iceland.
The Grimsvotn volcano lies under the uninhabited Vatnajokull glacier. It began erupting Saturday for the first time since 2004. This is a different volcano than Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull, which erupted in April 2010. When that happened last year, large parts of Europe’s air space were closed for five days, because of the danger that the volcanic ash could harm jet engines. Some 10 million travelers were stranded.
This one doesn’t seem quite as disruptive. So far, airports are closed in Iceland, and they are keeping a close watch on the ash in nearby Great Britain.
Eruptions often cause local flooding from melting glacier ice, but rarely cause deaths. Police closed a main road near the volcano Sunday as heavy ash fell.
There have been some amazing photographs taken of volcanic eruptions in Iceland over the years.
You can see photos like this one and read about some of the earlier eruptions in my book VOLCANOES.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 20, 2011
When the space shuttle Endeavour blasted off this week, it was carrying an unusual cargo: baby Bobtail Squid (Euprymna scolopes). Squid are cephalopods, a group of relatively intelligent animals that also includes octopuses. These baby squid are the first celaphods to travel into space.
NASA hopes the squid will help us understand how "good" bacteria behave in the microgravity of space. As Jamie Foster of the University of Florida in Gainesville, who is running the experiment, puts it: "Do good bacteria go bad?"
We already know that disease microbes ("bad" bacteria) grow faster and become more dangerous if they are sent into space. Salmonella bacteria were sent up on a space shuttle in 2006, and when they returned to Earth they were almost three times as likely to kill mice as normal.
So far, we have only studied harmful bacteria in space. This time, the astronauts are going to run experiments that will enable us to look at good bacteria.
The reason Foster chose these animals for his experiment is pretty interesting. Bobtail shrimp carry a whole colony of bacteria, called Vibrio fischeri in their bodies, stored in their "light organs." The squid use the bacteria to create light, which they shine out of their bodies and onto the ocean floor below. That way, they don’t have a shadow, which makes it harder for predators to see them. Isn’t that an interesting camouflage tactic?
The experiment is simple. Newly hatched squid that don’t yet have the bacteria in their light organs were placed in test tubes filled with seawater and sent up on the shuttle. Yesterday, an astronaut added the bacteria to their seawater. When they come back to earth, Dr. Foster and his research partners will study the squid and see if the bacteria grew normally, if they grew faster in a good way, or if there were problems.
People often think that the space program is only about exploration. Of course, that is an important part of why we travel to space. But an equally important aspect of space travel is the opportunity to do experiments that we cannot do here on Earth. Science that we learn in space has many spin-offs back on our home planet. We have learned all kinds of new technologies. We have learned things that have helped us to learn about diseases, to better understand the functioning of the human body (including what causes "malfunctions"), and to develop new vaccines. These little squid will take us one step further in our understanding of the nature of life, and the interaction between different species.
Photo: GenomeNewsNetwork.org
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 19, 2011
It’s Thursday, so it is time for our favorite video of the week. Take a look at this highly unlikely, very special friendship between a black cat and a barn owl. They clearly love to play with each other!
(Teachers and Librarians: This video is hosted on YouTube, which I know is blocked in many schools. Perhaps you can prescreen at home before recommending that students do the same? We try to avoid YouTube in general, but this video is just too wonderful to pass up! Thank you for understanding. Seymour)
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 17, 2011
This is a Three-Toed Sloth (Bradypus tridactylus). Sloths are arboreal, which means that they live in trees. They are built to hang, using those long claws to get a good grip on branches.
They are among the slowest moving creatures on Earth, spending about 18 hours a day hanging from a branch, sleeping. In fact, sloths move around so little that green algae grows on their furry coats! The algae works as camouflage because when a sleeping sloth is hanging from a branch, it looks like a bunch of leaves.
Sloths even mate and give birth while hanging in the trees, and their babies travel by hanging onto their mothers for the first nine months of their lives.
The three-toed sloth is an herbivore (a plant-eater) that eats at night, and it is about the size of a cat. They are endangered, due to the destruction of their tropical rainforest habitats in Central and South America.
You can read more about Tropical Rainforests in my latest book, which is now also available as an eBook for the Nook Color and iPad.
Photo: Christian Mehlführer
READERS: Are you wondering how to add your own "comment" to this blog? Click here for exact directions on how to add a comment so you can become one of our Seymour Science writers! We also want you to be safe and not share too much information when you write on this blog, so please take a minute to read about how to stay safe on the Internet. We love to hear from you, so give "comments" a try!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 16, 2011
I visited my friend Max and his family this weekend. Max is a first grader who loves to know everything he can about arachnids…..that is the scientific word for spiders. I thought he (and probably lots of my other readers!) would like this science news story about Tarantulas and how they climb safely.
Tarantulas are quite heavy, at least for spiders. They can weigh up to 1.75 ounces (50 grams), and their bodies are very delicate. So, climbing is possibly one of the riskiest things an adult tarantula can do. "They wouldn’t survive a fall from any height," explains Claire Rind, an arachnologist from the University of Newcastle, England. Rind ran a series of experiments, putting tarantulas into an aquarium, tilting it straight up, and then using slow motion microphotography to film the spiders’ feet as they held on. She also used a microscope to look at the moulted exoskeletons from her Mexican flame knee tarantula, Fluffy (yes, she saved them all!), and discovered tiny, silk-producing openings all over the spider’s feet.
She discovered that when a tarantula slips, it saves itself by shooting silk threads out of its feet to grasp the surface it is climbing. Sound like anybody you’ve ever heard of?
Photo: International Society of Arachnology
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 14, 2011
Have you ever seen a baby hawk being fed its breakfast? You can watch live footage right now on the hawk cam. Only one fledgling has survived, but it is growing so quickly that I find myself keeping the window open on my desktop so that I can watch. If you click on this photo, it will take you to the live webcam.
Sometimes you have to wait a little while, if the mother is sitting on the baby to keep it warm. But, the wait is worth it, I promise. What a cutie!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
May 13, 2011
I’m excited to tell my readers that one of my favorite books, ANIMAL FACT ANIMAL FABLE, is now available as an app in the Android Marketplace! This is a book that I did some years ago with a talented illustrator named Diane deGroat. I bet lots of you have read her books about Gilbert, like No More Teachers, No More Books.
Can you believe this was the first book she ever illustrated? I remember that when she came to meet with me and my editor, she brought her cute little baby in a stroller!
Anyway, I have always really loved this book, and I am so happy to be able to introduce it to a new generation of readers. It is both funny and full of real facts about animals. Anyone who has an Android phone can buy this book, which has "read to me" narration.
It will be in the iTunes store soon, hopefully next week, for those of you that have an iPod Touch or an iPad.
Happy reading!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
