Thursday, January 15, 2009

Is Anything Alive: Day 2

Today is the second day of our lab observations with the secret materials we introduced yesterday. It has paid off because today we are starting to see some signs of life.
One of the materials we used yesterday was radish seeds. Above is a picture of one of our radish seeds starting to split and grow, a characteristic of living thing.The most dramatic change we saw in comparison from today and yesterday was the polyacrylate crystals. These crystals are able to absorb up to 300 times their own size in water. Above is a picture of these crystals in salt water and one in sugar water. The crystals in the salt water did not absorb near as much as the other.
Lastly we were able to see evidence of life in a third material, yeast. The vial on the left contains yeast and sugar water, the one on the right contains yeast and regular water. As you can see, the yeast in the sugar water is reacting to the sugar water and starting to emit a gas (look at the bubbles). We will continue with our final day of observations tomorrow.

Mr. McClung

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I CANNOT WAIT to see what happens! The experiment is really going well....Thanks for sharing....the McDairmants..