Swartz,+Hadley

I thought this article was pretty interesting. It was about floating balloons with helium. The first interesting fact was that pressure will alter things that float and what happens when pressure changes. Second, that there's a formula to try to find things that would float. The third was that density is closely related to the floating of objects and that's why it is the most interesting fact, anything that affected density affects things that float.
 * Helium Balloons:**

Hadley, OK. Pretty basic but you hit the major points. 5 stars. MW

An interesting thing i found in this article was that is the sugar u use in your home was cut into fine enough pieces and the dust went into the air and hit a spark, there could be an explosion. That really surprised me because every day you could go through life thinking what other fine particles could explode around me with one single spark. I also thought that there were many other explosions like this but this is the first time I have noticed it. I also thought it was interesting how there has been over 350 more situations like this before but no one is trying anything to prevent it, they think, oh it's just dust it can't hurt us, but in fact it could if it was a high energy dust like sugar. My relation to class would be that we discover different reactions that happen in the labs and we would come up with sucrose. It sort of scares me that any one of my classmates reactions could create dust and we could create an explosion.
 * Sugar: an Unusual Explosive:**

Hadley, It always pays to play it safe in lab. I'm sure no one really gave the sugar dust much thought! 5 stars. MW

Where do chemical elements come from:

Elements are formed by a supernova exploding and it releases chemicals and billions of neutrons that combine and break down until it can't any more.

Hadley, OK. 5 stars. MW

Lead Poisoning:

I thought that this article was really interesting.I thought that lead poising would only make people sick for a while but i never knew it could cause mental retardation in children. I knew that lead could be in paint and that paint could end up on kid's toys but. what i didn't know was that it tasted good. What crazy scientist would just sit in their lab and taste lead. Another thing that I didn't know was that lead could get into candy. For a while I thought that it could get into regular old candy in every store but then I kept on reading and I noticed that it was only in Mexican candy. Supposedly the lead comes from the chilies that they put into the candy but the lead could totally be prevented. The workers stick rocks. dirt and glass into the bags that they package the chilies in to make the bag weigh more, thus getting more money for it. The is so wrong of them because what if a member of their family could buy that piece of candy. Also the people who crush the peppers need to take precautions for cleaning the peppers because all they do is use a magnet to get out the iron. The only reason they don't clean them is to save money for their business and the are not thinking about everyone else buying those candies.They also packed the candy in jars that are painted with lead based paint. You would think if someone can write about what you are doing to their candy, you would think that they would try to do more so that they don't lose business because of lead poisoning. I know one thing is for sure, I'm not going to be buying Mexican candy any time soon.

Hadley, Yes it makes you think twice about eating candy from a foreign country. 5 stars. MW

Redefining the Kilogram:

This article was quite confusing because of all the big equations and scientific terms used, but the interesting things that I got from the article were that first of all the actually considered taking away the only SI left that wasn't being measured by the physical properties of nature. If they can find a way for the kilogram to not lose weight then they should do that so the scientists can still have the satisfaction of the kilogram still there in their presence. The fact that losing the weight of a finger print, as I learned in class, is very crucial to the part of measuring. Most people would just dismiss this issue but if the measurement is off by a little then your calculations will be off and in some case that can be the difference of keeping or losing your eye sight. The most valuable interesting point to me would be that there are people in this world who would dedicate their lives to try and solve the kilogram losing weight problem, and the fact that they are even smart enough to solve this problem is just amazing in itself. They must have spent years perfecting their formulas and calculations. My hat is off to them and all of their hard work.

Hadley, Well written. It's amazing the number of things that have been carefully, painstakingly measured by scientist over the years! 5 stars. MW

Crude Oil

This video was sort if complicated to understand but I could pick out a few of the key points. The most interesting thing that I thought was cool was that the boiling point is the main variable of distillation. But the first fraction has to be collected by putting the tube into warm water. Then you can heat the oil with a Bunsen burner. The fact that all the different hydrocarbons were different colors made it even cooler to see the different boiling points. I learned that the more molecules that are present the higher the boiling point have a higher density so the sink to the bottom. I would like to try something like this and have it be noticeable like the hydrocarbons.

Hadley, It's not the more molecules it's the larger molecules that boil at higher temperatures. We do a lot of this kind of thing in an Organic Chemiistry course. 5 stars. MW

Motion Detectors

This article was pretty interesting to me. I found that I already knew that there where different kinds of detectors. What I didn't know was that some read the reflection of light and then when that reflection changes the light comes on. I did know that there were infrared sensors because they can be used for hunting like the motion detector cameras. I knew that the detectors had to have some scientific reason for working but I never really thought about it. I found out that it has to deal with photons and the frequency. I also didn't think about how the light beams can activate a motion detector. That way you wouln't need energy to activate it.

Hadley, Well you actually do need energy to set them off but we don't think of Infrared waves as being very strong - but detectors can easily pick them up. 5 stars. MW