CO2

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/09/handheld-carbon-dioxide-sensor-can-help-identify-classrooms-with-unhealthy-ventilation-rates/

By Sid Perkins  

September 14, 2012 

As we all know, air is made up of:

And in that 1% of other lies CO2, also known as carbon dioxide making up 0.003965% of that1. Even thought making just such as small part of the air, CO2 is very important for the environment, plants take it in and produce oxygen which every human needs.

Invisible and Odorless C02 comes from: 

• volcanoes
• rotting vegetation
• gasoline
• natural gasses
•  coal
• and even animals

1 average person breathes out 20-25litres CO2 per hour, and when many people are closed up in one small classroom all the CO2 escalates to a high level. This is why scientists have created a portable device to identify elevated amount of carbon dioxide.Sometimes the solution might just be to open the window.

 If:

Classroom air--> bad-->could mean poor ventilation 

When the amoutn of CO2 is elevated it makes the students become sleepy or give them headaches, " notes Roger Hedrick. He’s an environmental engineer at Architectural Energy Corporation in Boulder, Colo. Elevated CO₂ levels can be a sign that ventilation is poor, he notes. And that means that other gases — including noxious, or harmful, ones — might be building up as well. What types of other gases? It could be something as simple as body odor. Or it could be something as potentially dangerous as solvents and other volatile organic chemicals, often referred to as VOCs. These can be emitted by furniture, carpets or paints."

Schools from 15 years ago

Air in class would be replaced 4-6 times each hour

New Schools

Air is replaced only 1-2 times per hour this is due to the fact that the buildings are energy efficient; tightly sealed to make sure hot/cold air doesn't exit the building, however this also prevents the unhealthy air to exit.

This new device that measures the amount of carbon dioxide was presented for the first time the 22nd August 2012, it basically measures the amount of infrared light absorbed by the air sample at 2 different wavelengths. If the CO2 is too high, it is recommended to either check the ventilation or open the window for fresh air to come in . "According to those guidelines, CO₂ concentrations in a classroom should not rise above 1,025 parts per million. That’s about 2.5 times the average concentration of CO₂ in outdoor air."

Throughout studies scientists found out that:

Better Air-->Better Score on Tests!!

I found this article very interesting because it is something that is in our air at this very moment just as much as it is in our classes, and I wouldn't mind getting through my test easier :)

In science class we are currently learning about elements, the periodic table etc. Today we all had our own element where we had to draw the valance electrons of it(in the shells) and then create a formula for it when it mixes with other elements. My element was Iodine, a non-metal:

You can see that it has 7 valance electrons in the 5th shell, so when it meets with a metal, it will gain 1 valance electron so it can become like its noble gas.

When it met with K:

Since K only had 1 valance electron, it was trying to get rid of it so it could become a noble gas, and since I needed to gain 1, they attracted.

Next was NA, these 2 attracted as well since NA needs to loose one electron and I gain. 

The last element Iodine bonded with was Li(lithium) 

Here is a table to demonstrate the formulas:

As you can see,  the elements that give away the electrons(cations) are now positively charged and the anions(the atoms that gained electrons) are now negative but have a complete valance shell.

 

So after all, atoms attract when they are positive/negative and when they can complete their valance shells.

Water vs. Oil

An Oil filter for Water
 By Stephen Ornes
September 13, 2012
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/09/an-oil-filter-for-water/

What do you do when your water that you were about to drink gets into contact with oil? There is a saying that water and oil don't mix but what if they do?

As a matter of fact the surfactant chemical --> brings them together making it hard for them to come apart. Filters have already been created, however those were the ones that take oil out leaving the water, these filters use up much more energy and are hard to clean after, when this new filter relies on gravity and and separates the water from the oil. This new filter could be used to  "help clean water at treatment plants or mop up oil spills" but it is too soon  to know for sure if it could help for big disasters. Anish Tuteja led the experiments, they tested different liquids and chemicals in the tube, still extracting the water and each time it worked making the water go into one tube and the other liquid into a separate.

"The scientists created the new device by dipping a base material — like a mesh or a net — into two chemicals. One of those chemicals loves water; the other repels oil. When a water-oil mixture now hits the filter, water — the heavier of the two liquids — gets pulled through, but oil does not."

99.9%of the oil stayed behind when the experiments were held and the water was nearly clean again.


I read about this article because now-a-days there are a lot of oil spills and people always trying to help, and here a new technology was created, sure it might not be god enough yet, but if scientists work on it then it might.

The.. Higgs Boson

Higgs — at last!

By Alexandra Witze

September 6, 2012 

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/09/higgs-at-last/

Science never stops, it continues all the time on everything no matter if what one is researching on has already been found or not. It is like when they first discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen, they thought they found the biggest treasure however when they looked around later on they discovered even more important objects and discoveries. And that is just the case of this exploration. After long investigations, scientists have finally found a particle near Geneva,Switzerland, the particle called the Higgs Boson. You may think this particle was easily found under the ground, but you are wrong. Scientists created this by slamming together other particles and the high energy explosion created this particle for a flash, but in less than a second turned into other material. 

We all know that:

Everything has molecules made of MASS

Molecules-> Atoms-> Fundamental particles

All of these fundamental particles were found except for the Higgs Boson, and after studying it and checking it in the laboratory CERN scientists were proud to announce their discovery on the 4th July.

 

 It took the biggest machine of all to find the smallest particle:

 

Scientists use math to understand particles in the universe and the forces that hold them together, this is called the STANDARD MODEL. Higgs fields are created as well, these influence any particles that go through it, it is very hard to search for them, however for the higgs fiel to exist they will look for a particle, the Higgs Boson. 

Higgs Boson:

• carries mass
• without it there would be no: mass/stars/planets/trees/computers nor you.
• 1 Higgs Boson has the weight of 133 protons making it one of the most massive particles known

Scientists however are not done studying this, they just started.

'Physicists may soon feel the same way about the Higgs. “We’re way out on the edge of understanding,” says Incandela. “This is exploration.”'

I liked reading about this article because it is new and something that they were searching for since more than 2 years now. It was also interesting because if it didn't exist there would be no mass.. and no us.

Curiosity

            By Janet Raloff / August 8, 2012 
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/08/curiosity-lands-on-mars/
             A person may just be curious by hearing the word Mars, but what about if you hear someone say "curiosity"landed on Mars.However curiosity, stands as a noun. After a journey lasting longer than 8 months, on August 5th curiosity, "a car-like rover" landed on Mars. The whole point of this sending was for the moving science lab to find evidence that the Red Planet once contained any type of life-no matter if one-celled organisms-. The vehicle landed on so called Mount Sharp where he will spend 2 years exploring the planet with its 10 research instruments it carries in its 2.8meters long "body". There are seventeen separate cameras on the vehicle (including one on the rover’s belly, to scan below it) which will record experiments and take pictures of the landscape.
Hi, my name is Curiosity:
 
"The rover’s primary goal “is to explore habitable environments,” says project scientist John Grotzinger of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. By habitable, he means an environment that can support life. His team interprets that to mean there must be water, carbon — a basic building block of life on Earth — and food to fuel an organism’s activities, he told Science News."

  The decay of plutonium, a radioactive element, will be the power source of this rover which can travel 200 meters per day, it is not the first rover to ever be sent to Mars, however it is the biggest and most sufficient from all.
 'as Curiosity moves by, it will shoot out a laser beam at the mountain and then direct onboard chemical samplers to “taste” the vaporized rock. Another onboard device can drill into rock, pulverizing it into a fine powder for the rover’s chemical samplers to taste.'-from those samplers later on it will be determined weather Mars could have been hosting living life. Scientists suspect that there one, a billion years ago, could have been an ocean on Mars leading to the fact that in that case the temperature should have been similar to Earths, this is where the questions come in, could there have been life? The landing of Curiosity was managed from Earth, making sure the landing wasn't too hard other wise the wheel could have gotten crushed and tat would make it impossible for Curiosity to obtain its main goal. 
The landing:


'President Obama has asked NASA to plan for sending humans to Mars in the mid-2030s. This week’s successful landing “marks a significant step toward achieving this goal,” NASA director Bolden says. '

I chose to read about this article because it sounded interesting that a robot has been sent to Mars to do investigation and that people are actually considering doing an exploration like this. However it was not my favorite article but it was still fun to read.