Dust Particles

Hey guys!

Have you ever wondered why dust 'appears' on your coffee tables or TV screens after you clean it with a cloth? Well, it's actually really interesting!

You see, there are three sub-atomic particles: Electrons, Protons and Neutrons.
Protons = positive charge
Electrons = negative charge
Neutrons = neutral charge

There are also 3 ways of 'charging' an object to give it a charge: Conduction, Induction and Friction.

Friction is the act of rubbing 2 objects together. When you rub the 2 objects together, a charge is transferred from the object you are using to rub and the object being rubbed. REMEMBER: ONLY ELECTRONS MOVE! So that means electrons are being transferred from the cloth to the screen you are cleaning.

Here is another important fact: OPPOSITE CHARGES ATTRACT, and LIKE CHARGES REPEL. That means the positive charges and negative charges come closer together, while 2 negative charges would go away from each other. So since the dust is negative and the screen now is negative, the dust gets attracted to the screen!

Wasn't that cool? I'll get more in depth with the words used in this article next post. Until then, stay green!

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Halloween Is Just Around The Corner!

Hey guys!

       Everyone must be excited, halloween is fast approaching! Everyone will be out trick or treating, having a good time, and all that good stuff. But this year, let's try and make this halloween a treat for mother nature too, how does that sound?

       As always, it's the little things that  impact the environment the most. So this halloween, try and go green. For example, you could use re-usable/recycable bags to store all your candy and such. Those bags will go a long way, they will be good for mother nature as they will be re-used again, and not to mention they will be good to satisfy your hunger!


       Instead of driving a car from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, just walk. It not only saves you money (from not buying gas), but your also not releasing any greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, so it's a win-win situation.

      Also, try to make costumes yourself out of eco-friendly material. Consider the following for a moment. You go to a store and pick up a really nice looking costume that you think is really going to bring the 'Trick' out of trick or treat. Now, have you ever thought of what made up that costume? Chances are, it's a plastic, a non biodegradable plastic that will not break down into the soil. I suppose you can re-use that costume over and over again if you like it, but making a costume yourself out of mother nature friendly material will be fun for the whole family (or just you :), it will give you a real sense of accomplishment, and it will help nature out a lot as well.


Thank you for reading, hope everyone has a really fulfilling and safe halloween!

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Cool Campaign

Hey guys!

       I was just reading the newspaper 'The Globe and Mail' where I found a really cool campaign. Basically, it's a recycling project, where the newspaper gives you facts on recycling certain types of material. Today's fact was really interesting, it says:
 "You can make an XL size T-shirt by recycling 5 plastic bottles."

...And another fact:
"If you recycle fibres of plastic material, you can make many items, such as tissue boxes, other bottles, and many more!"

It just goes to show that if your recycle, you are helping the Earth, so recycle, you never know what your creating by doing so!

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Cool Scientific Terms!

Hey Guys!

       I just wanted to share with you all some really cool science terms that I learned in school over the past few weeks. There're all related to biology, so if your looking for physics or chemistry terms, sorry! Anyway, here they are:

Salinity: Salt

Oligotrophic: Low in nutrient content (refers to a water body)

Eutrophic: High in species richness, biodiversity and nutrients (refers to a water body)

Primary Succession: A type of ecological succession that starts in a virtually lifeless area, where soil has not formed yet. For example, if a volcano erupts, the lava and smoke would kill off all the eco-systems around it. So if a new eco-system is born out of that kind of situation, it would be called Primary Succession.


Secondary Succession: The second type of ecological succession. Basically, this starts with an event such as a forest fire or hurricane (an event that weakens or damages an eco-system) and a new eco-system emerges out of an already established but weakened eco-system.

Biodiversity: The variety of life in an ecosystem.

Species Richness: The number of species in an area.

Thanks for reading, contact me if you want to learn more cool terms via Twitter, Facebook or Email.

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Impact of The Food Chain!

Hey guys!

        Have you ever thought of the food chain before? Basically, the food chain consists of many different food webs that are connected with each other. It has many levels, starting with:

Autotrophic Level: This is the producers section, the starting point of the food chain, excluding the sun. This level is mainly green plants and trees, anything that can carry out photosynthesis* and cellular respiration*.

Photosynthesis is the process in which plants absorb sunlight and use it to make food for itself.
Cellular respiration is, to put it simply, the process where plants take the energy and nutrients from the food it made and use it towards other processes.

Primary Consumer: Then we get to the primary consumers. These types of consumers are herbivorous, meaning they eat only plants. So primary consumers eat organisms from the trophic level to obtain energy.


Secondary Consumer: This type of consumer is called carnivorous, which is basically an organism that eats  primary consumers or other animals to obtain energy. Carnivorous species cannot eat plants for food. For example, a tiger (secondary consumer) eats zebras (primary consumer) for energy.


Tertiary Consumer: Then we finally reach the point where humans are involved. Tertiary consumers are consumers that are omnivorous, which means we can eat both plants and other animals. An example would, of course, be humans.
(If you have a mirror, look at one, and you will see a very cool human :)

The sun is what starts and keeps this cycle going, believe it or not. Without sunlight, photosynthesis couldn't be carried out by the autotrophic level, and if that's not there, then there would be no primary consumer, and if that's not there...well, you get the picture.

That's just a brief description of the food chain, hope you guys enjoyed it!

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How Hurricanes Are Formed!

Hey guys!

      I'm sure most of you following this blog know about hurricane Irene. It wasn't as bad as hurricane Katrina, but it certainly did do a lot of  damage, tearing up trees, even causing a few deaths. A lot of you might be wondering, how are hurricane formed?

      Basically, hurricanes are formed when warm moist air from the ocean start rising up from the water to the sky, leaving less air near the water, thus creating a low air pressure gradient near the water surface. The air cools as it rises, and it can't hold all the moisture it contains. The water then condenses out of the air, which is a natural way for water to produce heat. That heat fuels the winds that start to pick up to faster and faster speeds, feeding of more warm moist air to go even faster. That is what triggers and starts hurricanes, but as soon as it comes to a point where it reaches cold water areas or land, the hurricane starts losing the wind speed because of the lack of the warm air.

Fun Fact: For a hurricane to be official, it needs to have the wind speed of 119 km/h (74 miles an hour)

Earthquake!

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted here in a while, I just wanted to share some important breaking news.

An earthquake struck Virginia (Washington D.C) with a 5.8 magnitude measured by the Richter scale. The quake was felt across the East coast, as far as places such as New England . Places like the White House and the Pentagon were evacuated because of precautionary measures. What was strange was that earthquakes with that magnitude don't usually happen in places in the East. The last known terror to hit Virginia happened more than a 100 years ago.

The good news is that no damage was reported, atleast on the Canadian side, so that was a relief. Hope you readers out there are in good health, and I will update my blog as soon as I can. Thanks guys!

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