Bluegills are coming: Next meeting October 12 at 2 pm

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Lepomis_macrochirus_photo.jpg

This year, the Whiteford branch's Let's Do Science Club will be raising Bluegill Sunfish for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.  Miss Linda will be going to pick them up on October 7 and we will spent some time learning about how to take care of these fish at our Oct 12 meeting.

Also, we hope to have some feedback from School of Ants about the types of ants we found this summer.

See you there!  Bring your friends.

Next club meeting: July 20

Hi everyone,

Our next club meeting is on July 20 and we will be building an electric motor.  The best way to learn about motors is to build one.  Check out the video on the right to see what we will be doing.

Meet the Ants: June 15 Club meeting

We now have an ant farm at the library.  The blue gel in the ant farm was designed for NASA to do experiments on ants in space.  Not only can the gel withstand the g-force of a rocket blasting off, it also provides all the water and nutrients for the ants.  These are Harvester ants from west of the Mississippi.  We got them in the mail.

NEW CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECT  

We also did a Citizen Science Project on ants for the Let's Do Science Club meeting on June 15.

We collected ants from around the library grounds--some from the grass and some from the sidewalk.  (We used Pecan Sandies as bait--Who knew?)  We found three different kinds of ants:

1. Tiny red ones (Thief ants?)
2. Little black ones
3. Big black ones.

Then, we sent them to some scientists at North Carolina State University who will help us identify them.  We will then be placed on the world-wide map of ants. 

http://www.schoolofants.org/map

Keep checking the map to see our results.  You can do the same experiment at your own home.  All you need is some zip lock bags and some Pecan Sandies.

 At the next Let's Do Science Club meeting, we will review our ant results and do some experiments with electricity.

NEXT MEETING: July 20 at 2 pm

The Horseshoe crabs are free!

Thanks to Paige, Austin and Collin for coming to the Horseshoe Crab release at Sandy Point Park on May 27.    We got to handle some adult horseshoe crabs and were recognized by the DNR as the first ever library to participate.  Our team was awesome at Horseshoe crab jeopardy and we met many other students from around the state who raised horseshoe crabs this year.

Although we were not sure if there were any left in the tank, we released them anyway.  What happened?  Theories include borderline high salinity, pH changes.  

We'll discuss this in more detail in the Fall when we begin to raise BLUEGILLs for the Department of Natural Resources.  Here is the website for a preview.  http://www.dnr.state.md.us/education/are/Sunfish_Students.asp

We will be reporting out to the Paleontological Research Institute on Saturday

Hi Science Club members!

 We will be finishing up the Mastodon Matrix project on Saturday April 20 by looking for bone and ivory fragments in the last bit of matrix. After that, we will enter our data into the PRI database so the scientists can record it. Then we will be sending our findings and the matrix back to them. Here are some of the things we found.

 If you would like to participate in the Mastodon Matrix project, the Aberdeen branch will begin the process with a new kilogram of matrix on April 24 and we will be repeating it in Whiteford this summer. Here are a few of the things we found.

Dec 17 Let's Do Science Club

The Let's Do Science Club met on December 17. We did Chemistries on the Horseshoe Crab tank and found that the Ammonia levels were a little high again. Here is our Action plan 1. Clean filter 2. Add good bacteria 3. Reduce Food 4. Change water. We decided to do these steps one at a time to see if we could find what was out of balance in the tank. Miss Linda reported that we received a response to our email about what may have caused the buoy to have abnormally low salinity readings just when we looked at it in October.

Here is Mark Trice's response:

The data you show is from the Annapolis buoy, which is NOAA’s. We help manage the water quality aspect of the buoy, however, and post data on our website. Water quality data on the buoys is collected once every hour. Since the salinity dips for just one reading, it is likely an error with the sensor. It is unlikely the sensor would have left the water since it’s mounted on a sturdy buoy. This would be more likely to happen on some of our continuous monitoring sites where waters are more shallow. I hope this helps. Best regards, Mark Trice Program Chief, Water Quality Infomatics

We will take another look at the salinity level at the Annapolis buoy during our January 17 meeting. Learning how to weigh things Scientifically

We also practiced weighing things scientifically. Mr. Paul showed us how to use a knife edge balance and Miss Linda and Miss Debbie explained how to use the "tare" function on the electronic scale to remove the weight of a container from our measurements.

Club meeting Nov 17

Today, Samantha, Emma, Paige, Isabella, Eden, Naomi, Nathan, Nathan, Jonah and Brennan attended our Science Club meeting.

First, we did the Horseshoe Crab Tank Chemistries. Last meeting, we were concerned about the higher levels of ammonia in the tank which could make the horseshoe crabs sick. Happily, we found that the ammonia, nitrate and nitrite levels were all 0 ppm so reducing the feed, changing the water and adding some good bacterial all helped.

We also looked at the Salinity experiment that we did last month. Miss Linda was surprised at how low the salinity was when we got data from the NOAA buoy in Annapolis. When she looked before, the salinity converted to ppt was about 22. But, when we looked on Oct 20 we got a reading of about 9.3. When Miss Linda looked at all the readings from that day, she found this.

At the very time we looked at the data, salinity levels dropped! We took a look at the type of equipment on the buoy to see if we could figure out why the salinity was so low just for that one reading. Here is what the equipment is like on the buoy.

This is from the website buoybay.noaa.gov

Mr Paul then showed us how the buoy measures salinity using conductivity. Saltier water is more conductive (more electricity passes through it) than less salty water. We experimented with this using the following set up.

Using a measuring cup with aluminum foil electrodes, we measured the conductivity of deionized water (12.5 microamps) and tank water (27 microamps). The salty tank water conducted significantly more electricity than pure (deionized) water.

We then listed all the things we could think of that might have caused the drop in salinity over such a short amount of time.


Here are our hypotheses:

1. Equipment malfunction
2. It was raining causing a decrease in salinity
3. Tides pushing against water coming down from the Susquehanna River.
4. A sea creature got stuck in the probe.
5. Trash got stuck in the probe
6. A ship going by raised the probe out of the water.
7. Something hit the anchor causing the probe to come out of the water

We decided to send an email to the Eyes on the Bay "Ask an Expert" to see if they could help us narrow down our hypotheses. Our next club meeting is Dec 15. See you there!