Field Trip to the Aquarium

Okay so, on Wednesday, we went to the New England Aquarium in Boston, but I had already gone there a few months before.  Anyway, we saw many marine organisms there, such as penguins, fish, sea turtles, and they swam around artificial coral, because I guess they couldn't afford any real coral.

I saw this one creature known as the Long Fin Bannerfish.   It was white, with two black stripes.  All that it mostly did was swim, sometimes with different fish, other times with ones of its species.  There was not that much else to observe about them though.

I also some these manta rays that would swim in circles.  I was able to touch some of them when they came by and I put my hand in the water.  Their bodies felt slick and slippery.

Finally I saw this short film about this kid from the South Pacific who goes around many islands meeting some marine organisms.  He meets this whale that he was originally scared of, but when he swam down to meet it, they became friends.  It was pretty awesome.

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

Photosynthesis is when a plant of any kind takes in the light from the sun, and converts it into energy for itself in order to have it grow.  In the experiment to see live synthetic photosynthesis, I tried two methods;  one was when I put a piece of spruce cutting in a test tube of water, in a Becker, and then  put it under a light.  In this one, the water had looked like it was bubbling or boiling, if not very slowly.  The other was when I took  a test tube with a spruce cutting in it, put it upside down in a Becker of water, in which the water would be in the test tube.  The water warmed, and bubbles started coming up, one every four seconds.  In conclusion, yes.

Geologic-Biologic Timeline

The class spent a week and a half doing a project regarding the prehistoric eras of the Earth, starting from the Cambrian period, to Tertiary.  We were split into groups and had to research one of these periods.  My group was Tertiary.  I learned that the Tertiary was mostly what the Earth looks like today; the mammals were diversifying, Pangaea was splitting to make the continents known now, and halfway through there was a worldwide ice age.  This all happened between 2 to 65 million years ago, after all the dinosaurs died.  I worked well with my one partner in this project.  We looked through the books we could find, jotted down information we thought was important, and wasted no time trying to make it all look good.  The other groups in the class also did well with presenting the things they found.  The Triassic period had many forests, and saw the first turtles.