There are 20 books in the Education section, and while many of the books in the other sections are quite technical, there are some gems among the 4,000 available titles.
The … organic materials in [some] meteorites probably originally formed in the interstellar medium and/or the solar protoplanetary disk, but was subsequently modified in the meteorites’ asteroidal parent bodies. … At least some molecules of prebiotic importance formed during the alteration.
Amino acids are the building blocks of life as we know it. They can be formed from abiotic (non-biological) chemical reactions (in a jar with electricity for example). It’s been known for a while that amino acids can be found on comets and asteroids, but now this fascinating article suggests that a lot of the chemical reactions that created these precursors to life happened on the asteroids themselves. Then when the asteroids bombarded the Earth, the seeds of life were delivered. More details here.
Leonid meteor shower seen from orbit. Image credit: BMDO/APL via NASA JPL.
This, of course, is just one of several hypotheses about the origin of life on Earth: livescience.com outlines seven.
This video from NASA (via physorg.com) includes a nice little section showing the movement of charged particles (cosmic rays) through the Sun’s magnetic field. What’s really neat, is that the Voyager spacecraft (now 33 years old) have discovered magnetic bubbles at the edge of the solar system that make the particles dance a little. It’s a wonderful application of the basic principles of electricity and magnetism.
After the joy of playing around with microscopy and staining last fall, it’s no surprise that someone has taken the science of staining and specimen preservation and turned it into art.
Iori Tomita has done an amazing job at making visible the internal organs of the specimens.
Using a method that dissolves an animals natural proteins, Tomita is able to preserve these deceased animals with striking detail–highlighting the finest and most delicate skeleton structures.
To further enhance the visual appeal of these ornate skeletons, Tomita selectively injects different colored dies into hard bones and soft bones to create a 3-d effect. Without the addition of the dye, the animals remain translucent.
Transparent specimen by Iori Tomita. Note the exquisite detail (via Stinson (2011)).
Tomita’s website has some excellent photographs, and there appear to be two books available from Amazon.com.jp. More pictures can be found online here and here. Lisa Stinson at Wired has more pictures and details on the method.
I try not to post things with anything approaching obscene language, but sometimes, as in this piece, called “Storm” by Tim Minchin, it’s a small part in the service of a much bigger, more significant idea. Anyway, this one might not be for the kids.
To follow up my own attempts at a fish anatomy lesson, I asked the people at the Gulf Coast Research Lab’s Marine Education Center to include a dissection in their program for our Adventure Trip. They chose squid.
Squid are nice because they’re mostly soft tissue and the organs are fairly easy to identify. They’re also quite charismatic, which piqued the students’ interest. These squid were going to be used as bait, so I didn’t feel too badly about using them for science.
Squid and reference diagram.
Once again, our guide, Stephanie, was an excellent teacher. A good time was had by all, even though it was a bit gruesome.
An excised beak.
I would have liked to have a little more time to draw some diagrams, but I don’t think my students would have had the patience. It was the Adventure Trip after all, and they’d much rather spend the time outside.
As for the future, I like this note about squid dissection:
… this … is a tactile experience. You may want to explore this aspect through sensory activities, written descriptions, poetry, and/or artwork. Encourage students to experience the many textures found inside and outside the squid’s body. Moving fingertips along the suckers is suggested as well – the suckers do not scrape or hurt if you are gentle with them.
–Center for Educational and Training Technology, Mississippi State University: Squid Dissection
This quote comes from a Mississippi State website, which also has a great set of calamari recipes in addition to dissection instructions. I’m always in favor of an interdisciplinary approach; food-preparation rather than purely dissection.
Finally, the University of Buffalo’s Biology 200 class has some excellent, labeled pictures, for reference.
In seeking their identity, adolescents try out a wide variety of different personas. These are often closely associated with changing appearance and style. What I find interesting is how the different styles increasingly cross cultures and other traditional divides (like race). This is evident in Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek’s photographic series Exactitudes.
There’s something sad about the loss of local cultural uniqueness to globalization; it’s a bit similar to the feeling you get when you hear about another interesting species becoming extinct. Curiously, however, when Versluis and Uyttenbroek tile together photographs of different people from the same subculture striking identical poses, they not only highlight the similarities between very different people, but also the minute variations that individuals employs to make the subgroup’s “uniform” their own.
All 128 pictures sets are thought provoking and worth a look. I think they would make useful subjects for students to reflect on (though, warning, there is a little nudity in one of the sets).
