June 22, 2010
Hey fellow Shipmates!
We just got home from our first day on the farm. It was Day 1 of 3 for the Science of Farming camp and we were farm scientists today! I wish you could have been there. We got to learn about the physics of farming and about simple machines. It was really cool. I also got to milk a cow and play with the animals. Tomorrow we will learn about Organic & Sustainable farming. Yay!! We are sooo tired. My mom says she is way out of shape. LOL. Plus, tomorrow we are going to get really dirty. I can’t wait. Oh and guess what… on Wednesday we are going to dissect a cow eye and a sheep’s heart. Yukkk! I am only going to do it for the love of science.
I will write a full report when we finish our farming camp. I just couldn’t wait to tell you all about our exciting first day. Thanks for reading my blog.
Alana G
"Science Rules"
Posted by: Alana G
June 21, 2010
I’d like to introduce Alana G, a fifth grade student and our special environmental reporter on the Seymour Science Blog this summer. She’ll be telling us about her environmental activities in her own community and also about her thoughts as we go through the summer of the Gulf Oil Spill. As I said before, “Welcome Aboard Alana. It’s great to have you as a shipmate on Planet Earth.”
—- Seymour
Hey fellow Shipmates,
I am so excited! This is going to be the best summer vacation ever thanks to Seymour’s words of inspiration. I never would have imagined that I would become Seymour Simon’s new Youth Environmental Reporter, but here I am. 
One of the luckiest 10 year old kids there has ever been. I get to work with and write for my favorite children’s author, Seymour Simon, while doing what I love the most. Helping to “Save the World!” Yes, you heard me right…I am going to “Save the World,” well, at least I’ll be doing my part by trying to. I want to know that I have made a difference on our planet because this is OUR PLANET and OUR FUTURE. We share this planet with all of the other creatures that live here including the Earth itself, but for some reason humans continue to destroy this beautiful world.
So this summer I will be setting out into my local community to do environmental research and reporting. That might sound boring, but it’s totally not! I am going to have such wonderful adventures this summer. Oh, I forgot to mention the coolest part. I have started a group called “KIDS TODAY FOR A BETTER TOMORROW.” This group includes all my friends and a ton of other kids from Southern California. (That is where I am from) We are going to have a blast. Not only will I get to hang out with all my friends this summer, we are actually going to be doing something amazing…we will be out improving our community and saving the planet at the same time. Isn’t that so cool?
So you might be wondering how this all came about. Well, I was really sad about the Gulf oil spill. My mom and I had been watching the daily updates. It broke my heart to hear about what was happening. All those poor sea creatures and the beautiful ocean were being ruined because some adults...
read morePosted by: Alana G
June 16, 2010
No, it’s not the purple monster from the deep. Or maybe it is. The purple or ochre sea star is common on rock shores and rocks on beaches along the west coast including the Malibu, California coast where I took this photo earlier this morning. This purple sea star (pisaster ochraceus) is on a rock covered by mussels, which is a kind of unfortunate thing for the mussels. The purple sea star is a major predator of California coastal waters, eating all kinds of mussels, barnacles, limpets and snails.
A sea star opens a mussel by latching on to the mussel’s shell with hundreds of tiny tube feet and then simply tugging with steady pressure until the mussel shell opens. Then the star extrudes its stomach into the opened shell and digests the mussel. A mature sea star will release dozens of millions of eggs when it spawns. The eggs turn into tiny larvae which became part of the sea plankton population as they grow into mature sea stars. Even though most of the larvae are eaten before they grow into mature stars, that still leaves a LOT of purple stars to feed on mussels.
Purple Sea stars are attractive animals (at least I think so), but they are a major pest to mussel and clam gatherers. I remember a story that I heard when I was a kid about how difficult it is to get rid of sea stars. The story goes that clam gatherers were collecting sea stars from the clam beds and trying to kill the stars by cutting them up into two or three pieces and then just throwing the pieces back into the ocean waters. The problem was that sea stars are able to regenerate a lost leg or two. So each piece of sea star thrown back into the waters regenerated into another whole sea star!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 16, 2010
OIL ON THE WATER: THE PHYSICS OF OIL SPILLS is a can’t miss interactive unit published by MSNBC.com this week. Using data from NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), they have created a series of graphic illustrations which explain "the physical and chemical processes, collectively known as weathering, that change oil’s properties and behavior after it is spilled into the ocean."
This is truly a "must see" article if you really want to understand the why of what is happening, and the complexity of the ongoing containment and cleanup efforts.
Applause for MSNBC.com and the producers/writers/researchers who put this together. It breaks a complex topic down into (tragically) simple, comprehensible pieces.
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 14, 2010
We are very pleased to announce that we are going to have an Environmental Reporter on the Seymour Science blog this summer. Her name is Alana G, and she is a ten-year-old, soon-to-be fifth grader from Southern California.
Readers of this blog are already familiar with Alana - I recently published her touching letter about her distress at the effect the Gulf Oil Spill is having on the region’s wildlife. In my response to her letter I urged her to become an environmental activist in her daily life by talking about it to your friends, reading about it in books and on the web, and remaining committed to the idea that it’s OUR planet and we need to protect it from being abused.
Powerful words to a born activist, which Alana clearly is. In the three days after we wrote this letter and then asked her to consider reporting for my blog, 
Alana a) recruited a large group of kids from her school to form a group called KIDS TODAY FOR A BETTER TOMORROW, b) set up a Facebook page {with her mother's permission and guidance} to promote the activities of her group, and c) spontaneously went to her local city council meeting and spoke to them, asking for their support for her environmental group! She is not only a very good writer for a ten-year-old, she is clearly a powerful community organizer in the making.
KIDS TODAY FOR A BETTER TOMORROW
In the next week or so we will have a first post from Alana, and she will tell you herself what she is planning to do over the summer. In the meantime, share her story with other young people in your own communities - maybe we can start a movement!
—- Seymour
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 11, 2010
Is there life on Mars? Is it possible for living things that we know on Earth could survive the extreme conditions on Mars? The answer to the first question is that we don’t know if there is life on Mars. So far, we haven’t found any. But the answer to the second question seems to be yes. As reported on Space.com, a new discovery of a form of bacteria on Earth seems to suggest that some of Earth’s living things could possibly survive even in the tough conditions on Mars. Researchers on Earth have found a kind of bacteria in extreme northern Canada that survives in very low temperatures and doesn’t need oxygen to live. Instead of oxygen, these bacteria may use a gas called methane instead. And recent data from Mars suggests that Mars has methane and frozen water on its surface. Lyle White, a microbiologist at Canada’s McGill University, says that "There are places on Mars where the temperature is relatively warm…and…If you have very cold salty water, it could potentially support a microbial community."
The Lost Hammer Spring in Northern Canada may be even more inhospitable than some places on Mars. Yet it hosts microbial life, according to scientists at the Dept. of Microbiology, McGill University, Montreal.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 10, 2010
Last week something crashed into Jupiter and it was caught on camera - by two amateur astronomers! Anthony Wesley of Australia and Christopher Go of the Philippines each recorded an impact event on Jupiter.
This is Anthony Wesley’s photograph, and if you click on this link, you can see a short video that Christopher Go made using his photographs of the event. The strike occurred at 20:31 UT* on June 3rd and produced a bright flash of light in Jupiter’s clouds. No one knows what crashed into Jupiter - it was probably an asteroid or a comet. In either case, a charcoal-colored circle will probably develop around the debris field; that’s what has happened after previous Jupiter impacts. Astronomers are watching to see what happens next!
* Astronomers often mark events in UT, which stands for Universal Time. It is the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. GMT is five hours ahead of the East Coast of the US and eight hours ahead of the West Coast. UT is almost always uses military time, or the 24-hour clock. So, 20:31 is what we would call 8:31 pm.
Photo credit: Anthony Wesley, Broken Hill Australia
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 9, 2010
We received a photo from last Saturday’s appearance at the New York Aquarium, along with this note from his mother:
"Conor met his favorite author at the NY Aquarium for the special events. He was shy, but he was glad to meet him. He learned so much about sharks and other creatures from him. It was a great experience."
Thanks to Conor and everyone, children and adults, who came out to the FISH TALES day at the Aquarium. I enjoyed meeting all of you! Happy Fish Tales!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 8, 2010
I read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid. It was reading science fiction that made me so interested in science. In fact, I began writing because of science fiction. I wrote my first book when I was in 2nd grade. It was a book called SPACE MONSTERS. It was about taking a trip to a distant planet, far out in space, and having adventures with the living things on that imaginary planet. I even drew the pictures for my book. Most of the pictures were of what we science fiction fans called BEM’s. Bug Eyed Monsters. I remember that my teacher stapled the pages of my hand-written and illustrated book together and made me read it to the class. That was my first book. Ball players don’t pick up a ball or kick up for the first time in their lives when they’re adults. They begin playing ball when they’re young. The same thing is true of artists, musicians and writers. They begin when they’re young.
Many years after I wrote SPACE MONSTERS in 2nd grade, I wrote it again (a bit differently) and it was published. It’s a kind of history of my reading Science Fiction stories in books and magazines and also watching SciFi on television and in films. Are you becoming an author? What are you writing about? Write a note to me on my site and tell me. Best story I get from an elementary school student by the end of the summer gets a free copy of a book of mine (your choice) and gets his/her story published on my blog!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 7, 2010
I surprised myself with the answer to a question I was asked at a recent conference. The question was: What is your favorite animal? My initial instinct was to say that it’s impossible to say which is my favorite animal…..it’s like having favorites among your own children.
Then I realized, to my surprise, that I do have a current favorite animal. It’s the BUTTERFLY! And why are butterflies my favorite? Because I’m writing a new book on butterflies. The manuscript is finished, I’m now researching the accompanying photos, and the book will come out early in 2011 as part of my Collins/Smithsonian series. My editors really pushed me to write about butterflies, and I must confess that at first I resisted. But, as I started to learn about them I became fascinated by these gorgeous creatures that children can observe in the wild, right in their own neighborhoods.
So I suppose the answer to the question regarding "what is my favorite animal" depends on what I am writing at the time. The truth is, the more I learn about a particular species, the more interested I become. That’s the fun of being a science author and also a science reader- constant exploration!
—-Seymour
Posted by: Seymour Simon
