Mole Day Eve

This week is National Chemistry Week in honor of Mole Day tomorrow (10-23). One mole of a substance is 6.02 x 10^23 particles of that substance. So one mole of water would be 6.02 x 10^23 molecules of water which, as it turns out, is 18.0g of water. This can be figured out using the periodic table of elements using the atomic mass of any of the elements. The atomic mass tells us that one mole of that element is that many grams. So for oxygen it's 16.0g and for hydrogen it's 1.0g, but there are 2 hydrogens in water, so we multiply 1.0g x 2 and add 16.0g to get 18.0g in one mole of water. AMAZING!
In honor of National chemistry week and Mole Day, the PLU Chemistry Club put on "Mole Day Eve" for the PLU students and anyone who wanted to come. There was liquid nitrogen ice cream, other desserts (but who can top liquid nitrogen ice cream?) and of course . . . DEMOS! There were some stations set up for hands-on demos, but the professors also did cool (dangerous!) demos. I forgot my camera, but I did take pictures on my phone. They're not as good quality as from a camera, but you'll get the main point.

This is taken from the top of the stairs. People enjoying desserts!

That's how liquid nitrogen ice cream is made!

Liquid nitrogen everyone! It has to be stored in a special container because it's so cold. When you pour it out, it evaporates because it's boiling point is below room temperature, so the fog you are seeing is actually water vapor condensing because of the coldness of the liquid nitrogen.


Liquid nitrogen! Really you don't eat the nitrogen, you only use it to get the ice cream really cold. And the "ice cream" is milk, sugar, half-and-half and sometimes oreo cookies.

The finished product!

They put dry ice into the punch to keep it cold. The fog creates a nice effect!


Fluorescent stuff! The yellow on the sides is made with dish soap and flourenol, the blue is made with quinine and the center tube is a mix of the two. There's a fluorescent lamp that's shining on them to make them glow.


Fog! Creepy! We filled a lot of the sinks with hot water and added dry ice and viola!


Glow-in-the-dark Gak! It's made using glue, water and somethings else, plus fluorenol to make it glow in the dark. Kind of home made putty.


Ooblek! Made using starch and water! It's really cool and fun to play in! It's a liquid and a solid at the same time! Crazy! If you hit it or use force, it acts like a solid, but if you slowly work with it, it acts as a liquid. You can slowly sink your fingers in it, but if you try to pull them out really quickly, it's really hard! This happens because the starch molecules are kind of like fibers and the water molecules can ease them around something when you work slowly with it, but if you hit it, the starch molecules push out the water and become like a solid.



Elephant Toothpaste . . . coming out of a pumpkin! It's pretty cool. I think there's dish soap, hydrogen peroxide (30%) and IKI is the catalyst that starts the whole thing going. hydrogen peroxide decomposes to hydrogen and oxygen gas and makes the dish soap bubble.


The Screaming Gummy Bear! Some sort of inorganis solid was melted with a blow torch and a gummy bear was dropped into the melted substance. There was this sound (presumably the gummy bear screaming) and the purplish light and a lot of smoke! Hopefully we didn't set of the fire alarm! (We didn't)


Tinkerbell! Magnesium metal was put on a sheet of dry ice and lit with propane. It was then covered with another sheet of dry ice and the result was this really powerful light and it just went at it! It was really cool!

There were a few other demos, but it was hard to take a picture, because they were instantaneous. It was a really fun night!

Lycophytes, Horsetails, Ferns

There is something I forgot to mention in my post about the seedless vascular plants. So I am dedicating this post to the phylum Lycophyta because they are cool!
By the Carboniferous (which was over 300 million years ago) lycophytes, horsetails and ferns existed as small - herbaceous plants, or as giant woody trees with diameters of over 2m and heights over 40m! These giant plants thrived in warm, moist swamps and they created the giant forests of the Carboniferous period. They probably led to their own extinction because such huge forests reduced the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (carbon dioxide is a green house gas that is partly responsible for Global Warming). In modern times we have Global Warming because there is too much carbon dioxide, since the giant plants decreased the carbon dioxide levels, they created GLOBAL COOLING! But, the giant woody lycophytes, horsetails and ferns became extinct in the cooler and drier environment.
Isn't that just amazing?!!!!!

These are modern, small lycophytes. . . . . . . . . . . . .

And these are the giant forests of the Carboniferous period!

Calla Lily

In my last blog about angiosperms, I forgot to add one very important flower . . . Calla Lily! It's Makara's (my best friend) favorite flower and I have been reminded of the fact. So here is a whole post dedicated to calla lily!
The genus Zantedeschia has twenty-eight species of plants and they come in a variety of colors. Here, I only have 3 represented. Zantedeschia species are very poisonous - all parts of the plant are toxic! They are even capable of killing livestock and children!
However, the calla lily is very beautiful and shows up in many paintings; they show up very often in Diego Rivera's paintings. Can you believe that in some parts of the world they are regarded as a weed?! It's a perfect wedding bouquet flower!












Nature is amazing! I mean look at the symmetry and the perfect whorls!

ANGIOSPERMS

Angiosperms - flowering plants, are both vascular and seed bearing. Their seeds are surrounded by a fleshy fruit. They also have flowers to attract pollinators. The fleshy part of the fruit is payment for the animals that "carry" their seeds to different places. So animals eat the fruits (with the seed inside) and when they poop, they deposit the seed (with fertilizer!) Plants are so smart! Angiosperms are the most diverse group of plants with over 250,000 species. They also live in varying environments and they are all adapted to survive in those environments.

Enjoy the diversity of flowering plants and if you have not thanked a green plant today. . . you need to because without them, we would die!Snowdrops grow out of the snow, they need really cold winters to sprout in the spring literally out of the snow. I tried growing them in my garden, but sadly our winters are not cold enough for them and they never sprout.


Lilly-of-the-valley! One of my favorite flowers, it blooms in the spring around May. The flower is a stem with little bells hanging off. They are very beautiful in a wedding bouquet!



Chrysanthemum. . . I think, it's hard to tell when it's so close up!



I took this picture of these bush flowers all over PLU campus. There are ones with pink flowers and ones with white flowers.

Tulips!

Christmas cactus. . . they bloom around Christmas time. We have a lot of these at home (they're house plants) and they're just amazing when they bloom!

WOW! Look at the colors!

Perfect symmetry in nature!

Lavender

Lilac . . . one of my favorite flowers! I love their smell! I have lilac perfume and I always use it when lilacs are in bloom!



The next five pictures are all of orchids - my all time FAVORITE flowers! Orchids are really amazing . . . even though they're parasites! Some species of orchids are very specific about their pollinators . . . some are species specific where they need a certain species of a certain pollinator. This is very dangerous because if the number of the pollinators decrease, then the orchids would decrease. This could potentially lead to extinction if the number of pollinators fell drastically. Very sad because orchids are sooooo beautiful!!!!!!!!!!

Pansy

Gerbera daisy

Rose

Crocus - another spring flower! First to bloom after snowdrops!

Sunflower - can anyone guess why it's called the "SUNflower"? Very obvious! This picture is really cool!

Tulips!

Tropical flowers . . . don't really know the name. . .

Water lily!

Narcissus! Different from the daffodil because it has multiple flower heads on the same stem.





Close up of a flower's reproductive parts. The Stamen is the male part and the carpel is the female. I can't tell which are which on this picture. . .

Wildflowers!

Poison Ivy

All the different colors are flower colors. It looks like grass, but they are modified flowers that are very short to keep out of the wind.

Poppy!

Hibiscus

Amazing colors! I had this as my desktop background until recently when I changed it to a picture of the yellowing moss. It's like the perfect nature scenery!

Birch - trees are flowers too!

Gerbera daisy

Tulip - up close and personal!

This next section consists of very special plants. . . CARNIVOROUS PLANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I said earlier that plants are adapted to all kinds of environments, I wasn't kidding! There's this island in the tropics somewhere where it is surrounded by cliffs, so the water is always flowing down creating the world's biggest waterfalls, but the water also carries away nutrients from the soil that the plants need. The plants in that place have adapted to trap insects for food! It's pretty cool!

Fly trap - catches flies by closing in on them

Sundew. . . looks soooooo cool! BUT all those beads of liquid are very sticky! Insect gets stuck and the flower wraps it up!

Pitcher plants. . . they have this pitfall which is very smooth. . . insects fall down and at the bottom they have a pool of digestive enzymes which break apart the poor insect and use it for food!


How can someone not LOVE flowers after this! I mean seeing the diversity, the adaptation, the genius! You HAVE TO APPRECIATE FLOWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What I have here is a very, very small part of plants and their diversity. There is much, much more out there to explore and learn!