A Science Blog for Families

Fueling discussions about science in families.

The fireflies are out, the smell of grilling is in the air and the sounds of the Little League game are echoing off the trees in the park.  Summer is here.

It’s almost here, Leap Day! When? On Wednesday, February 29. That will give us 366 days in 2012 instead of 365. Why do we need that extra day, anyway? Believe it or not, without a leap year about every four years, we would lose days.

There are primarily three different ways to measure temperature: Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvins. In the United States, we use Fahrenheit. In Europe, they use Celsius. Scientists use Kelvins. These are three very different scales.

For Valentine's Day, we made Science Valentine's Day Cards!  (We know, they are corny!)

Have you ever see a sea urchin? The word sea urchin comes from the Old English word that means spiny hedgehog -- that is a pretty good description! It looks like a plant, but it's not one. It is an animal, specifically an invertibrate, that lives in salt water. An invertibrate is an animal without a backbone. If you look closely, you will see that it does not have any eyes. So how does it see?

Right now a strong storm is taking place on the sun that is releasing solar flares and photons that are bombarding the Earth. On Sunday night, the sun released a coronal mass ejection which is magnetic energy stored in the suns atmosphere. This eruption caused electromagnetic radiation, radiation in the form of protons and finally plasma to be released into space, some of which is hitting Earth. The plasma may cause some problems on Earth by interrupting satellite communications and affecting some aircraft traveling near the poles.

Plankton are tiny living creatures that we never think about, yet they are extremely important to our Earth as a source of almost 50% of our oxygen and a major source of food for sealife. Plankton are tiny plants and animals in oceans and lakes. Sometimes they are so small, you cannot see them with your naked eye. When they mass together, they can make oceans look green or cause dark spots in the water when seen from above. There are two main categories of plankton: phytoplankton and zooplankton.

We were at the Shedd Aquarium and came across a tank of beautifully colored fish called anthias and were intrigued by the caption that said "...these colorful fish have the ability to change sex". We were determined to learn more!

We were at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and encountered a really interesting fish: the paddlefish. Paddlefish are aptly named as they have a long, paddle-shapped snout. The snout is about one-quarter of the paddlefish's total length of five feet.

Look at this picture - it looks like a dinosaur, doesn't it? Do you see the spikes, plates around its legs and powerful tail? Actually, this is a Grand Cayman Blue Iguana, the rarest iguana on Earth. There are only around 350 left in the wild.