Snow Ice Cream

Yesterday's snowfall in northeast Kansas was perfect. A couple inches of dry powder. Just enough to cover everything, but not enough to make getting around difficult. (And with apologies to my students...not enough to close school during finals week.) I mentioned to several people during the day that I couldn't wait to get home and make some snow ice cream with my 3-year-old son. Many of them didn't have any idea what I was talking about. So I thought I'd share with you my own recipe for making it.

Start with whipping cream. You can use milk or half-and-half in a pinch, but cream will give you the most authentic ice cream taste. Add vanilla extract and sugar to taste. Slowly add the cream mixture to a large bowl of CLEAN snow (be sure the snow doesn't contain grass, dirt, leaves, or anything yellow). Fold the cream and snow together until the entire mixture takes on a creamy consistency.

You can either serve it immediately or freeze it so that it hardens. Serve it as you would ice cream, either straight-up or with your favorite toppings. (For me it's chocolate. For my son it's chocolate and sprinkles.) Enjoy!

Johnny Got His Gun

"He was a dead man with a mind that could still think. He knew all the answers that the dead knew and couldn't think about. He could speak for the dead because he was one of them. He was the first of all the soldiers who had died since the beginning of time who still had a brain left to think with."

Dalton Trumbo's 1939 anti-war novel titled "Johnny Got His Gun" tells the story of a soldier who gets hit by a mortar shell during battle. The soldier wakes up in a hospital bed and realizes that he has lost both arms, both legs, his entire face and jaw, and both ears.

In anatomy class today we discussed the three general functions of the nervous system: sensation, integration, and response. In this story, the protagonist has retained the integration (thinking, feeling, learning, perceiving) function, but is limited in the other two. Because of this, he is trapped in his own body and has to learn new ways to sense and respond to what's going on around him.

This novel was made into a movie (never seen it, sorry). It was also the inspiration for Metallica's song One.

Bronze Medal School

U.S. News and World Reports has published their annual ranking of America's "best" schools. In those rankings, they have recognized Eudora High School as a bronze medal school.

While I continue to be very skeptical of these ratings, I don't think a little recognition is ever a bad thing. So congratulations to the faculty, staff, students, and community on making our little school one of the best in the state.

How Much DNA?

Here's a question for you: How much DNA is in a human cell? How much is in the whole human body? To figure this out, we need to do a little math.

One base pair of DNA is about .34 nm long (.00000000034 m). There are about 6 billion base pairs (6,000,000,000) in the human genome. By multiplying these two numbers, we can figure that there is about 2 meters of DNA in a single human cell. By multiplying this number by the 10 trillion (10,000,000,000,000) cells in the human body, we can figure that there is about 20 trillion (20,000,000,000,000) meters of DNA in the human body.

By dividing this very large number by 1000, we get 20 billion kilometers of DNA. (Remember, this is DNA at it's regular microscopic size. We haven't enlarged it at all.) For the sake of comparison, the distance from the Earth to the sun is 150 million (150,000,000) kilometers. This means that each of us is carrying around enough DNA in our bodies to stretch the the sun and back over 65 times!

Pretty cool, huh?

One of my all time favorites:




In honor of today's Great American Smokeout. Almost 50 million Americans smoke. Half of all adult smokers were regular smokers by the time they turned 18. Every day, 4000 adolescents aged 12-17 smoke their first cigarette. 1300 of these will become lifetime smokers, and half of those will die from a smoking related condition. (Do the math, that's 650 adolescents per day who are taking their first steps down a road that will eventually kill them.)

If you haven't started, use today as a reminder of why you haven't. If you have started, today is a great day to stop.

We Can Dance

I need to thank my 4th period anatomy and physiology class for reminding me of that sometime you just need to stop what you're doing and dance.

Points of a Compass

One of the books I'm currently reading is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. During the first part of the book the protagonist, Edgar, witnesses a disturbing scene between two family members. Afterwards, he goes into the kitchen and describes the silence there. During his description of this, the author, through Edgar, refers to the chairs arranged around the kitchen table as the points of a compass.

This passage is really sticking with me. I think it speaks to the way that this young man orients his view of the world. His direction...that part of his life that provides orientation for everything else...comes from the family that shared meals around that table. The family unit is what Edgar depends on to guide him through the rough spots in his young life.

When I pass a stranger on the street, or a student in my classroom, or a co-worker in the hallway...what serves as their orientation point? What is their compass? What guides them?

What guides me?

Biology Lab (continued)

Results from our photosynthesis lab were mixed. In a lot of cases, both test tubes turned blue. This is easy to explain, since in both treatments a living plant was placed in the bromothyl blue solution. Plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. As carbon dioxide is used by the elodea plants in the test tubes, the BTB solution gradually turned from yellow back to blue. We hypothesized that if we surrounded one of the tubes with foil then photosynthesis would stop and the BTB solution would stay yellow (since the carbon dioxide wasn't being absorbed). For many of the groups, this wasn't the case...photosynthesis still occurred in spite of the darkening treatment. The question now becomes what other changes could we make that might keep photosynthesis from happening, or might give us the results that we expect?

There were several groups, however, that did observe results that supported their hypotheses. The darkened tube still had a yellowish tint to it, while the tube in the light was completely blue.

This illustrates two important points: First of all, failure of results to support a hypothesis is NOT failure of the experiment or of the scientific process. As long as we are able to look at our results critically, learn from them, and use them as a springboard for new testing, then this can actually be one of science's greatest moments. We're going to learn in the next couple of weeks about a man named Oswald Avery who, although he never achieved the results that he dedicated his life to, managed to make one of the most profound conclusions in the history of biology.

The second point here is the importance of repeated trials. By having many groups doing the same experiment, we were able to get data and record observations as a class that gave us a much better idea of what was happening in those tubes than we would have been able to by looking only at any one group.

Biology Lab

Today in biology we set up a classic photosynthesis experiment. Bromothyl blue (BTB) is an indicator chemical that turns yellow in the presence of carbon dioxide. So we started with a beaker of (blue) BTB. Using a straw, each group blew into their beakers of BTB until it turned yellow. We figured out that the color change was due to the carbon dioxide in exhaled air reacting with the BTB. Each group then poured the (now yellow) solution into two separate test tubes, and added an aquatic plant to each.

Question: What will happen to the BTB? After some discussion we decided that the plants, through photosynthesis, will use up the carbon dioxide in the water and produce oxygen. This should result in the BTB color changing back to blue.

Question: How do we know that any color change results from the plant and not from something else? Through discussion, we figured out that oxygen in the air might affect our results, so we decided to seal up the test tubes with parafilm so that they'd be airtight. Now if the color changes, we know that it's from the plants sealed inside and not from the gases in the atmosphere.

Question: How can we make sure that photosynthesis is what produces oxygen, and not some other process in the plant? We thought about this for awhile, and decided that, by keeping one of the test tubes in the dark, we would prevent the plant inside from doing photosynthesis. So each group enclosed one of their two test tubes with aluminum foil to block out all light.

Our working hypothesis, then, is that if a plant is exposed to light, then it will absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen which will turn its BTB solution from yellow to blue.

Good news for Kansas BOE (Part II)

Okay, so with the history of flip-flopping that has taken place on the Kansas Board of Education during the past decade, you would expect to see conservatives cut into the 6-4 majority that the moderate/liberal coalition currently holds.

Well in the words of Lee Corso, "Not so fast." Of the 10 seats on the board, 5 were up for grabs. These seats were held by 2 conservatives and 3 moderate/liberals. Only one of the five incumbents chose to run for re-election. (I can't understand why...it seems like such a rewarding position...)

In districts 2 and 10, pro evolution (moderate) republican candidates won their primaries, resulting in two pro-evolution candidates running in the general election for each seat. Knowing that, the worst that could happen would be a 5-5 split when the election was over. Sue Storm (D) won the district 2 seat, and David Dennis (R) won the district 10 seat.

In district 4, Carolyn Campbell (a pro-evolution democrat) defeated Robert Meissner. Meissner claimed to support the current standards until "scientific consensus" indicated that other theories of origins should be taught. He reiterated this point to me persanally when I had the chance to ask him. I have no doubt that he would have been evolution-friendly. But he was endorsed by the ultra-conservative Kansas Republican Assembly (KRA). Sorry, Mr. Meissner. You can't have your cake and eat it to.

In district 8, Walt Chappell (pro-evolution democrat) defeated Dennis Hedke (creationist republican).

The only incumbent to run for re-election was also the only conservative to win. Kathy Martin (who was famously quoted, in front of international media, as admitting that she hadn't actually read the science standards that they were supposed to be voting on) won another four year term. Her opponent, Christopher Renner, ran a good campaign and had a chance at one point to win. Unfortunately his homosexuality became an issue late in the race when one of Martin's supporters sent a letter to several newspapers in the district. As embarassing as it is for me to admit, that's the kind of thing that wins elections in the heartland of America.

In the intrest of full disclosure, Kathy Martin is one of my least favorite people in the world. She is ignorant, incompetent, and has made a mockery of the Catholic faith that I share with her.

At the end of the day, though, the pro-evolution moderate/liberal coalition added another seat to their majority. Final score: 7-3 in favor of the good guys. Not bad for a red state.

Good news for Kansas BOE (Part I)

Lost in the excitement of Tuesday's Presidential election was some good news for the Kansas Board of Education. For those of you unfamiliar with the history of this board, we are currently operating under our 5th set of science standards since 1999. If you do the math, you'll see that we have been changing our standards, on average, every other year. And it's not coincidental that we have state school board elections every other year as well. The critical issue in each of these elections is how we treat biological evolution.

In 1999, a conservative majority on the board voted to adopt standards that de-emphasized (that's a euphamism for ignored) the theory of evolution. Of course, our great state quickly became the laughing stock of the educated world, and in 2001 an newly elected moderate/liberal majority undid the damage by adopting a fresh set of standards that once again included biological evolution.

But His truth was marching on, and after two more elections the board once again had a conservative majority and once again (in 2005) changed the standards. This time, instead of completely ignoring evolution, the board included language to call the validity, or "truth" of the theory into question. It was during this time that the board held their infamous "Kangaroo Court" and invited "experts" in (at taxpayers' expense) to testify for and against the theory. When pro-evolution scientists (rightfully) refused to testify, the whole ordeal became and exercise in silliness, highlighted at one point by a conservative board member admitting that she hadn't even fully read the standards that were being quesitoned. In a later post, I would like to introduce you to the three uber-conservatives who chaired these "hearings"...but for now I need to return to my main focus.

Two years ago, the flip-floppiness continued when the moderate/liberal coalition regained their power on the board and approved new standards that fall in line with mainstream science. So that's where we are now...after all the Kansas jokes are told, and everyone has a good laugh, we've got a very robust and respectable set of science standards in place for our state.

Quote of the Day

From the "Voices" call-in opinion line at the Kansas City Star:

"The Democratic presidential win is a victory for the media and proof positive that a free press can control the thinking of America."

Umm...really? You really want to go there? I can understand that it's tough to swallow when your candidate doesn't win. But you REALLY want to blame it on the First Amendment?

Pronunciations

By the way, my name is pronounced [muh-jet]. It's like the bastard child of Magellan and Juliette. Its French (although my ancestors are from much more exciting places like Belgium and Luxembourg) and means something like "little wise man". Or something like that.

Day 1...Here we go

I've been playing around with this idea for a couple of years...I guess we'll give it a shot. For those of you who don't already know me, I teach high school science at a small high school about 30 miles outside of Kansas City, Kansas. I suppose this blog is an attempt to connect with the students that I teach, and the colleagues that I teach with, in a new way. I think it's unfortunate that, while we spend so much time together during the course of the school year, we rarely get the opportunity to really get to know each other. Maybe this will work, maybe it won't. I guess we'll see...