MAKE YOUR VERY OWN SCENTED ERASER

On Sunday, I made Japanese erasers. Step one is to spray the molds so that the clay comes out easier. Step two, mix the colors together so that  you have more colors with which to make the erasers.  After you finish putting the clay in the mold, carefully take out the parts of your ice cream parfait and put them in hot water for 5 minutes. Then put them in cold water for 6 minutes. Voila! homemade erasers to erase away your cares.

Making Erasers (my mom's trying to save money)

The kit came in this box, which you use to microwave the clay once you shape it in the mold.

These are the three colors. They smell of strawberry, vanilla and I don't know what but sweet-smelling. I combined them to make other colors too.

I got the "Parfait" molds. It makes erasers that look like ice cream treats. Yum!

My mom says I need to talk about the science behind erasers. I'm going to save that for another day, except to say that people used moistened breadcrumbs until rubber was accidentally discovered to be more effective.  I also know that erasers work because graphite is more attracted to the eraser than the paper. That is why an eraser can lift the pencil marks off of your paper. Neat!

Nim's island

Nim's Island is about a girl who lives on an island. She is very brave. For example, when she was alone and there was a storm, instead of freaking-out the way I did when the power went out, even though my dad was in the next room, she grabbed the cover for her dad's computer and put it on. I like how brave, strong at heart, and friendly she is. I also liked how she was able to teach herself simply through books. She reads and learns from her animal friends.

Your Heart Stops Beating...

I am a member of a Speakers' League and this was my speech this week:

I wore a lab coat and used lots of cool images with my speech.

Your heart stops beating.

Your body cools down from 98.6  to  room temperature.  

This is called algor mortis. 

In Latin, “algor” means coldness  and   “mortis”  means  of death.  So, Algor Mortis  is known as “THE DEATH CHILL”.

The next stage is Rigor Mortis.   Because your heart is no longer moving your blood through your body, your blood changes from liquid to semi-solid.  This is called coagulation.

Your  blood has thickened in your veins, arteries and capillaries.  So, your whole body stiffens.  That is why dead bodies are nicknamed  “STIFFS”.  

Your will experience rigor mortis, 2 to 6 hours after you die.

Gravity causes your blood to drain to the lowest part of your body. Since you died here, in this room, sitting up, your legs and feet and hips are the lowest parts of your body.  The blood in your torso drains and settles around your hips.  And, the blood in your legs drains to your feet.

Your hips, legs and feet will turn blueish purple. This stage is called  “Liver Mortis”.  In Latin, Liver Mortis means blueish color.  

Lividity is observed 2 to 4 hours after death.

Next, your body  PUTREFIES.

Your stomach turns green.

Bacteria in your digestive tract eat the protein that make up your body.

The bacteria releases gases, which smell similar to rotten eggs. The gas builds inside you causing you to expand like a balloon.

This causes your eyes to bulge out of their sockets.

And your tongue is forced out of your mouth.

A week passes.

Your skin blisters so much that if someone touches you -- Your skin falls off.

A month later, your hair falls out.

Your nails fall out.

Your organs liquefy.

The bacteria inside you continue to feast. They excrete more and more gas until 

-         POP!  -   You burst open.

The rotting gases in King Henry the VIII’s  gut caused his coffin to burst open. 

In a coffin birth, built-up gas pressure within the putrefied body of a dead pregnant woman can force the dead fetus to burst from the body of the mother.

Instead of letting your body decompose until bacteria feed on your rotting corpse, leaving nothing behind but your skeleton, maybe you want to donate your organs to people who need them.

You can donate tissues such as your corneas, skin, bone marrow, and even heart valves even 15 hours after your last breath.

Or maybe you want to donate your body to science? 

The best way for a doctor to learn is by using a real body, also known as a CADAVER.

Leonardo da Vinci dissected dead bodies stolen from freshly dug graves. 

He would draw what he saw. He identified not only muscles and bones, but also their functions in the body.

Today, doctors can use your body to learn how to perform surgeries.

Different parts of your body will be sent to different doctors.

While your headless body might be in one room with a doctor learning how to crack open a rib cage to perform heart surgery.  Your head might be in another room with a plastic surgeon.  Maybe you’re getting a face lift or a nose job.

Another way scientists’ can use your body is at a body farm.

At the University of Tennessee Medical Center, scientists study how bodies decay.

They do this to help the science of  Forensics.

If a dead body is found, police are called to the crime scene.

FORENSICS  experts examine the body to discover how the person died.  The University of Tennessee’s body farm puts different cadavers in different situations.

For example, they put Body #1 in the Sun, they bury Body  # 2  in a pond and they put Body #3 in a plastic bag.

The bodies all decay differently and these experiments help solve crimes.

A man who claimed his wife died of an epileptic seizure was arrested for her murder when Forensic scientists determined she actually died of hypothermia.

He had trapped her in freezing cold water knowing that an epileptic seizure creates the same effect as shivering in icy water.

Your brain and heart need a constant core temperature to function. 

As the brain detects a fall in blood temperature, it automatically protects itself by shutting down the blood supply to the hands and feet.

You lose feeling. 

If you keep losing heat, the brain shuts down blood circulation over a larger and larger area of your skin.  

Your brain has now shut down circulation to your hands and feet, your skin, and then organ by organ until your brain must choose between blood for itself and blood for the heart.

Your heart stops beating. 

Beach

Yesterday,  I went to the beach. It is so interesting how the ocean works. For example, I put my rocks high up the beach and 15 minutes later when I came back they seemed to have moved. I know the beach didn't move. It was the tide. Gravity from the moon pulls the water making it rise and fall. I think the reason the moon doesn't pull us away with the water is because of the earth's gravity.

Am I right about this?  

Yesterday, I went to the Pixar exhibit at the Science Center. Pixar creates most of the animated Disney movies. The exhibit was about the process of making a film. I learned that once there is a story idea for a film, like Inside Out - one of my favorite animated movies - the first step of the process is drawing the pictures. Next, they make the character out of modeling clay and also as a computer image. The character then has to be programmed to be able to move like a puppet but instead of a puppet on strings, it's a puppet on a computer program.  The next step is to add color, and lights to every scene - a very big job. In one scene there can be as many as 250 lights!

In the short movie that they showed  before we saw the exhibit, it they said that the movie Inside Out was really hard to make because they had to figure out how to make Joy, the main character, glow. They ended up using points of light to create her character, which had never been done before and that in every single movie there is something new created. In the movie Cars, they created shine on cars and in Finding Nemo, they had to create water, which is very complicated. The hardest thing is making something computery that doesn't look computery - if you know what I mean.  Everything has to look real.

 I liked the exhibit because there were many computer programs to use and touch and also some physical things to make such as model robots. The downside of the exhibit was that there wasn't a way to make a short video with all of the parts. Instead, you could only explore bits and pieces of programs.

Khan

Today, I finished a math program I do called Khan.

CAKE

Yesterday I went to Urth Cafe! Usually, I get the Mixed Berry Cake, but this time I tried something new - The Earl Grey Tiramisu. Delicious. My sister got chocolate cake. She always gets chocolate cake. 

BIKING

I really like bike riding! Especially with my sister.

Lip Balm and Crayons

Yesterday, I got lip balm kit. The kit was made in Canada by Kiss Naturals - Yay, Canada! All of the ingredients were natural and it was a short list of stuff - Shea butter, beeswax, flavor and sunflower oil. I liked that it was all natural, but I did not like that there was no color. I also did not like that there were no sparkles! I mean who wants lip balm that isn't pink and sparkly?

I am really into kits, even though my mom says they are expensive for what you get, because I like that all the ingredients are right there, including the strawberry and bubblegum flavorings - Yum.

A touch of science:

Did you know that lip balm, like a crayon, is frozen at room temperature?

Lip balm and crayons both have wax in them. The lip balm in this kit was made with beeswax.  Crayons, like candles, are made with paraffin wax. At room temperature, wax is solid.  When I melted the beeswax in the microwave and added the oil, Shea butter and flavor it was in a liquid form, which is how I was able to pour it into the lip balm containers. When it warmed up, it became a solid, which is kind of funny and the opposite of what happens when you warm up an ice cube. I always thought of the idea of something that is "frozen" as something cold and not as a state of being.

I once made lip balm from crayons - and the colors were marvelous - pinks, oranges, even black was wonderful. I melted the crayons on the stove in a tin can and then added some cocoa butter and peppermint flavoring.

I also heated up a piece of aluminum foil in the oven and used a crayon to write a message to my mom.  You can do it too!

The great Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxon god Woden


Anglo-Saxons crossed the North sea. They intrepidly invaded Britain because they wanted better land. They settled in the southern part of the island. They called it Angle-land, which evolved in to England. The  Angles, who were pagans gave us the English language. The king of their gods was named Woden, and  that is where we get the English word Wednesday. In 598, a monk named Augustine came to England. He  preached tenaciously to the Anglo-Saxons, and
most of them converted to Christianity. The Anglo-Saxons ruled England proudly until 1066.

 

Last week, I watched the American Girl movie Grace Stirs Up Success. The movie is about a girl who loves to bake and helps run her grandparents' bakery.

In the movie, she travels to Paris to help her uncle run their French bakery because her aunt is having a baby and they need help. She meets her cousin, Sylvie, who is upset about the new baby.

I like how brave Grace is in the movie. For example, she would  just bike over to her grandparents bakery anytime. I also liked that in the movie Grace is not perfect, which makes the movie seem more realistic. For example she is bossy and messy.

After watching this movie, I know that I would not like to be a actor because I would not like to hug a stranger and call her my mom or dad. Yuck! As an actor, I think you are forced to hug and kiss people that you don't even know and that is what happened  to Grace!

Hand Made Gum!

The chicle that will become the gum base

Corn syrup

Icing sugar and peppermint flavor

GUM!

 Today, in the morning I made gum out of chicle. Chicle is a substance that comes from trees in the rain forest in Guatemala.

How to make gum! First melt the chicle in the microwave for 4-5 minutes. Second, soften the corn syrup and then mix it with the melted down chicle. Third, add all the powdered sugar and flavoring. And there you have it - gum!

I liked this kit because it included everything I needed to make gum - the chicle, corn syrup, cherry and peppermint flavors and icing sugar.

I also enjoyed reading the story included in the kit. It is about a boy who lives in the rain forest and is a "chiclero". A chiclero gets sap from the Sapodilla tree by climbing up near the top of the tree and making a hole in it and waiting for the chicle to drain into a bucket. He then boils it and that's how it becomes chicle.

A FORGOTTEN CULTURE

The Middle Ages was a time of knights and castles. However, it was not a glorious time for Europe. The Western Roman Empire was crumbling during the 1400's. Tribes of tenacious warriors savagely seized parts of Europe. Barbarians hated art and learning, so it is called the Dark Ages. Castles did not appear until the the 900's. The peasants humbly farmed the noblemen's land from sunup to sundown. The Roman culture was almost forgotten.