Mr. Syracuse's Fossil-collecting Field Trip

We went all over this part of New York on Saturday collecting fossils. I have some that I brought back to show, and here are some pictures of where we went. I'll have more soon. We saw mainly brachiopods (which are clam-like creatures), clams, and crinoids (commonly called sea lillies, they are animals that lived at the bottom of ancient seas and were filter feeders). Exciting stuff! We were looking at rocks that were about 359 million years old, which dates back to the end of the Devonian. Back then, most of the continents were in the southern hemisphere. There was a mass extinction at the end of the Devonian, and we were looking at the possible causes and effects of that. Good times!

HUGE Wolf (?) Spider

This little bugger was hanging around outside the Bio lab, and naturally we had to go out and investigate. The ever-intrepid Mike got in close to get a picture. The never-intrepid Mr. Syracuse stayed far back with his camera to take the pictures and video above. Don't worry, we put the spider outside after we photographed it so it wouldn't get trampled during passing time!

The Dehydration of Sucrose!

Our Frivolity this Friday involved dehydrating sucrose -- standard table sugar. We took about 400 cm^3 of sugar and added about 250 mL of concentrated sulfuric acid. The results are what you see above! The acid dehydrated the sucrose, taking out all the hydrogen and oxygen (water). All we were left with was the black carbon! The column of carbon rose out of the beaker due to the pressure of the water that was vaporised to steam by the heat of the reaction. Nifty business! We did it in the hood so that the sulfuric acid fumes wouldn't make us all dead and stuff.

IT'S NATIONAL METRIC WEEK!

Happy National Metric Week! NMW is celebrated every year during the week that contains the tenth day of the tenth month -- 10/10 -- to honor the simplicity and whimsy of the metric system! Check out the link below for more ways to celebrate and spread the joy and wonder of the metric system!

National Metric Week

The USMA -- US Metric Association!

Spheres-O-Mystery!

Today we discovered some interesting properties of our Spheres-O-Mystery! Check out what happened in Tiffany's Petri dish...can you explain it?