In England, when the Industrial Revolution started, pollution covered the area around the factories. So the surrounding forests became dark with soot. Before the forests became dark with pollution, the trees had a light color brown of bark, and there was a whitish moss with black spots growing on the trees. Peppered moths look exactly like this moss, white, with small black spots. The moths were camouflaging with the moss to protect themselves from predators. Once the Industrial Revolution started, the moths started to die easily because they were easy to spot  in the dark polluted forests. The moths started to fly away to other areas that were not polluted. But something extraordinary happened. Something that just further proves Darwin's theory of evolution.

Animals have competition to live, eat, and drink. Why is there competition amongst animals? Because of overpopulation and limited resources. These play a role in natural competition for various reasons. Overpopulation has many reasons. When there is an overpopulation, there are too little resources for everybody to live off of. An overpopulated species in one area get aggressive and fight for food, water, and to survive to not be food. Overpopulation in one area also makes it crowded, making animals, or people, very angry and unhappy. Overpopulation also, like I mentioned earlier, makes the population have limited resources.

Limited resources also play a role in natural competition. Limited resources make animals fight for food and water. If there was an abundant amount of resources, then animals would not be so aggressive towards each other. But with only a small amount of food and water, any type of species would get angry and fight for survival. Even humans would fight for food and water to make sure that they live. All this competition amongst animals is called natural competition. This is how overpopulation and limited resources 

Recently we dissected a sheep's eye, a frog, and a squid. The question now is do I appreciate what surgeons have to go through when performing surgery and what would surgery be like without simple dissections. I definitely have to say that I have grown an appreciation for surgeons when performing surgery. From experience with the dissections, I've realized that doctors have to cut precisely, or else they could do some damage, not be inappropriate for the time (Who wants a doctor who will be laughing and saying,"Ewww, look at that gut and all of the nasty blood!" ), and the surgeon has to carefully stitch the person they are performing surgery on (I have no experience with that because we didn't stitch the frog back up, instead, we just through him away). Because of all these reasons, I've grown an appreciation with surgeons.

After I did some research, I found out that my below post is completely wrong!!! After reading a chapter in our science text book, I realized that my below theory is incorrect. This is what I learned.

White light is made up of all of the colors of the rainbow, right? And everything reflects or absorbs those colors. When it reflects a certain color and its shade, it's the color we see. When it absorbs it, we don't see that color. So, for example, a strawberry is red for what reason? Because it absorbs all of the colors, but red, which it reflects. If you've ever played with a flashlight before, you would know that pointing it at a far distance usually doesn't give you much light, and that is because the light scatters, and it becomes dim. 

In Computers and Science class, we've been doing research and creating different multimedia projects for our Madagascar Tree Boa webpage on Computech's zoo website for this year. We have been working on this project for about 2 months, and we worked hard to find and teach information about my group's animal, the Madagascar Tree Boa. Yesterday was the due date of that project, and it was also the Zoo Day for 7th grade Computech students. On Zoo Day, we went to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, did assignments at different stations, watched the Bird Show, and found our animal. After doing all of that research, I've finally realized something about our animal, and other zoo animals for that matter.

Have you ever wondered how and why a rainbow forms? Well, this is your lucky day, because I'm about to tell you. I'm sure you have already observed that rainbow form after it rains, or when water is sprayed into the air on a sunny day. What do both of these observations have in common? They both include tiny droplets of water being in the air, with the sun shining on them. 

I have recently learned that light has these different colors in it: Red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, blue, and violet. The colors of a rainbow. All of these colors mixed together creates white light. When there is water in the air, like the water from a hose, or mist after a rainfall, the tiny water droplets separate the white light, showing the rainbow. That's how a rainbow forms. 

So, why is the sky blue? Well, from what I have learned in Science class so far, the sky is blue from the reflection of the ocean. I'm sure your parents have told you this before, but it is a little more complicated than you think it is. Light from the sun is not just one color ( Even though it may seem that way), but instead all of the colors of a rainbow. So when all of these colors hit an object, the object either absorbs or reflects certain colors. When it absorbs the color, the color disappears and is not shown to the human eye. If the color is reflected, the human eye now sees the object as that color. Pigment controls reflecting and absorbing.

So from what I know, the sky is blue because the water absorbs all of the colors, and reflects blue. Since oceans are so vast, they reflect to the whole sky. I'm not sure, but I believe the atmosphere has something to do with all of this too. This is why I think the sky is blue.

In Science class recently, we created a DNA ornament. It was pretty cool and easy on how to make it. The first part, Ms. Poole told us, is the hardest. And she was absolutely correct about that. The rest of the project was easy. It was just that first part. I don't remember exactly how to do the first part anymore, but the link at the end will help you. After you've got the first part down, you make sure you clearly can tell what color bead is which of the following: Adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. Once you do that, you make sure all adenine beads are going on at the same time as thymine, same for cytosine and guanine. You also need beads for sugars and phosphates. You then, after the hard part, put a phosphate in the pipe cleaner, then adenine ( If you want to) then a suger. You do this for the other side also. Make sure you don't get any knots in your wire or else you'll have trouble with the project like me. Here's the link for more detailed instruction.

Quizlet is a website where you can create virtual flashcards for yourself or your students. It also offers to types of games that uses the flashcards and the information you have provided to test you on the curriculum. We use this website in science class to create flashcards for our vocabulary. We are supposed to use these flashcards to help us study for the science test. Do we use them? Well, from what I've heard and the evidence of 75% of the class getting vocabulary questions wrong on the science test tells us: No, we don't actually use them. 

Quizlet is a great tool to use for studying vocabulary, but it's a tool not taken advantage of by many students. i myself confess that I do not use Quizlet to study for my tests, but that's because I rather go over old papers and the textbook with the vocabulary. I don't know why, but that's just how I am. I know that other students don't actually use Quizlet because of complaints and confesses I hear from friends of mine, mostly about why we have to do these because we don't even use them. Sadly I don't have any suggestions on other types of study ways for vocabulary.

I do recommend Quizlet though. It is definitely a good site to use to study for vocabulary, if you like studying online. If not, and you're like me, then Quizlet is probably not for you.

Last semester there were some pretty tough units in science class.One of the easy ones was DNA. But today I'm going to blog about what was truly the hardest unit for me and how I finally learned the curriculum. The hardest unit for my brain to wrap around was probably the unit on cell division. Some of you are saying right now, Oh, that was such an easy unit! And some of you might be saying, Yeah, I know why you feel that way. The content of that unit just confused me, especially mitosis. It was very hard for me to finally remember what order the phases are in and what happens in those phases. It took a while, but I finally got it.

It wasn't easy, but after doing some pretty simple activities like these, I finally understood it. The first thing I did was I wrote a blog post on mitosis. It really helped me remember the phases by writing a blog post about it. Another thing I did to help me understand and memorize mitosis was a worksheet Ms. Poole gave us. It had boxes on it, with little descriptions of what the phase of mitosis is supposed to be put in there. Then you cut out the little stages of mitosis, and glue them in the boxes they go into. The last one wasn't fun, but it helped. It was to take out the big book of er, and study the diagrams and paragraphs in it. After all this I finally understood how  the process of mitosis works.