Crafty cuteness...with lots of sciencey possibilities

It's gonna be a rainy school holiday-crafty idea with kids #1

Love this! Too bad I don't have any kids to make one with. I may just need to make one for myself.  8:)

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: Fun resource about plants updated monthly

Carol of May Dream Gardens blog hosts a monthly feature for other garden bloggers to post what's blooming in their gardens. On the 15th of each month (even the cold winter months), bloggers from around the world post links to their blogs on the May Dream Gardens website. The Garden Bloggers Bloom Day has attracted an international following, so there's always something in bloom no matter the time of year. The last two months have been particularly interesting for some of the U.S. bloggers because plants are blooming much sooner than normal. Carol and many of the other gardeners keep meticulous notes each year about many aspects of their garden: what they've planted (Latin names, not the common names), how well the plants are doing, what fertilizers they use, weather conditions, etc. So, it's very easy for them to compare their results in the garden across multiple years. Blogging gardeners are a great example of amateur scientists who use the tools of science  in their hobby.

I highly recommend that you check out Carol's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day as well as the rest of her website. She is quite humorous and has created garden characters to share some of the goings-on in her garden that might appeal to children.

http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/search/label/garden%20bloggers%20bloom%20day

Blue jean chemistry becoming Green chemistry

Imagine thinking that you think you can find a way to improve a a chemical reaction that's been used for over 100 years and completely changed the accessibility of colorful clothing to the masses. Before a method was created to synthesize dyes, only the wealthy could afford things made from dyes, particularly blue and purple. It had to be extracted

Related websites:
Wiki about indigo dye; includes structure of indigo
Improving a 100 year old chemical process

A perfect comic to accompany yesterday's Easter egg post

FoxTrot by Bill Amend Foxtrot is a great comic for lovers of science.  I miss when it was a daily strip. :( The link leads you to the main FoxTrot site. You'll have to look for April 8, 2012.

An Easter activity that you could connect with pH and indicators

Dyeing Easter Eggs the Natural Way | Food & Think

Food dyes can be used to explore the effect of pH on the color of the dyes. Because most food dyes can also behave as indicators, it would be easy to set up an experiment to determine why egg dyeing instructions always recommend that you add vinegar to the water. You could make the egg dye at three different pHs. 1. Water plus vinegar  2.  just water  3.  water with something basic that can be easily handled, such as sodium bicarbonate 

Questions to ask:
Are the dyes different depending on the pH?
Are some food dyes more sensitive to pH?
Which dyes have the most intense color?
Could the vinegar serve more than one purpose when dyeing eggs? Hint: Egg shells are made of calcium carbonate. How does an acid react with calcium carbonate?

The best chat I have seen that shows the colors of foods at different pHs (thereby, acting as indicators) is Chemical Demonstrations, vol. 3 (the green one) by Shakhishiri. It's a great volume but a bit pricy for most teachers.

Web resources
Here's a free website that has descriptions of some of the food indicators. http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/acidbase/faq/household-indicators.shtml

Video clip that shows food indicators in use
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/food-as-an-indicator-of-ph/122.html

Shakhishiri's website of chemistry resources
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/

Geek, Nerd, or Dork?

Have you ever had a debate with your friends over which is better: a geek or a nerd? Well, I have, and usually we all agree that a geek is someone who is passionate about one or more subjects, usually science, engineering, math, computers, and all of the things that stereotypically go with those, like comic books, games, reading (especially sci fi), etc. Geek friends often fit in well at Gen Con, or they at least know people who would blend in with the Gen Con crowd. I think that nerds can be geeks with the added social ineptness. Nerds would be extremely awkward in a crowd or a party. So, I've never been offended by being grouped with other geeks, but I've never been called a nerd, and I think that's a good thing! About a year ago there was a test floating around on Facebook to determine your level of geekiness, and I only scored a 4 out of 10! I was surprised and a bit bummed. My score was really hurt by me not liking board & role playing games or reading sci fi. But I'm totally a science geek, and I don't think anyone would disagree with that. :P

So, I thought it was funny to find this Venn diagram of difference between nerd, dork, and geek, courtesy of Great White Snark. I've never put "dork" even remotely in the same category as nerd and geek, but the diagram shows what I've always articulated but never thought to put in pictures. (I imagine pictures in my head a lot for data relationships, but I'm lousy about putting those images to paper. It's something I'm working on. See Dan Roam's site for an interesting study of using simple pictures (yes, even stick people!) to illustrate challenging topics Calling all visual thinkers: The Napkin Academy is here!.

Since Geek Chic seems to be popular right now (Thank you, Big Bang Theory.), I can finally wear all of my dorky science shirts out in public and not get looked at like a total nut. I've even gotten compliments on a few of them. Weird, right?

So, what do you think? Is there a difference between a nerd and a geek? Which would you rather be? Do you have a story to share about a particularly geeky moment in your life?

Have you heard all of the buzz about Rare-Earth Elements?

Chemical & Engineering News Digital Edition - April 2, 2012

C&E News had a nice story describing the economic battle between China and the rest of the world, especially the US, over the cost and availability of the "rare-earth" elements. In the past, the US mined these elements here, but China strategically decided to find ways to mine these elements at such a low cost that other countries could not compete. It's becoming a major policy issue between the US and China. NPR also did a story recently about how we got into this crisis and why these elements are so important to modern manufacturing. 

Click here to go to the issue.

If you cannot click on the links, paste this link into a browser:

http://www.cendigital.org/cendigital/20120402/?pg=16&pm=2&u1=friend&sub_id=BzqVvXut4pW5r