penn

Spoons

Matt's family loves a good practical joke. With three boys at home, that's not surprising. Apparently, the best one ever came from his parents. When Matt was little, they bought a new car that's main selling point was its excellent gas mileage. After a month, Matt's mom still hadn't filled the tank despite driving the car every day. She touted this feature to friends and family in amazement.

Then, one day, she headed out to the garage to find Matt's dad topping off the tank with a gas can! Little did she realize that he'd been slyly adding a half gallon of gas or so each day to keep the fuel meter level.

Since then, she's been more skeptical, but they still get some good tricks in. This is entirely different from my family. I don't ever recall a practical joke, but witty reparte and punning are regular features in conversation. I tell you this because of the phone conversation as I drove home today.

Matt called me to talk about dinner. Then, he hesitantly said, "so, are you playing a joke on me with the spoons?"

I burst out laughing as I realized that I'd forgotten to tell Matt about my day's activity. I had grabbed all our spoons that morning to use in a class activity for my freshman intro to science class where we investigated friction and vibrations with dry ice. Not a practical joke, but it sure played like one. Maybe his family is rubbing off on me more than I realized.

A few pics

Another test post - just trying ways to post from my phone. This is a pic of me dressed up for "where's Waldo?" day at school. Freshman through juniors wore black, and seniors plus staff were Waldos or Wandas.

The next photo is a onesie I made for a friend. It is full of nerdy goodness.

 

A little look

Outside of our apartment/house, there are a number of lovely old trees. Our house was built sometime in the late 1890s, and many of the trees around are just as old. We have massive oaks, maples, and cottonwoods providing delicious summer shade.

My favorite tree, however, is much younger. It's a curious tree, and before I had looked closely I thought it was perhaps more than one tree.

It certainly looks curious, doesn't it? The dark parts, the light parts. I must have edited the photo, right?

Nope, that's just the way that tree looks. I don't know if the tree has always looked that way, but it has definitely had this phenotype since it leafed out this spring. Once I took a closer look, some wheels started turning in my head.

Those white and green leaves have quite a distinctive pattern. And they remind me of an activity I did in genetics this past semester. We raised up plants with both mutant and normal chloroplasts. Chloroplasts are an organelle within the cell of a plant (a little piece that does something but can't live on its own). Normally, chloroplasts have a lot of green chlorophyll inside, and that green chlorophyll performs photosynthesis for the plant. This is how the plant gets its energy.

However, in some plants, there are mutant white chloroplasts instead. They don't work as well, so the plant doesn't get as much energy. If there are just white chloroplasts in the plant, the plant stays white because there's not much the plant can do. But if there are both green and white chloroplasts, the plant might stay variegated, or the green only leaves might out-compete the variegated leaves.

I don't know what will happen here to my variegated maple. There certainly are variegated and green-only leaves on the same branch.

Only observation and time will tell. Amazing what you can see when you open your eyes, look around, and truly watch the world.

If Only

Silly

I saw a silly "street art" type of thing during finals week that I never got around to sharing. Someone decided to do a little rogue advertising.

Feathered Friends

A week or so ago, Matt and I picked up a shepherd's hook and a finch feeder. We've had quite a bit of action from chickadees, gold finches, chipping sparrows, and more. The bird book is getting plenty of use. Matt thinks we may have seen a purple finch a time or two.

Surprisingly, Matt and I are not the most avid birders in the household. That award goes to Lucy, who spends hours each day sitting on the back of the couch while observing the wildlife.

She seems content to sit and watch. Lucy does prefer an open window. When she isn't sitting there and hears the birds chirping, she comes running. So far, she doesn't seem to faze the birds. We're hoping to get another type of feeder to attract a wider variety of birds. We live right next to woods and a ravine, so there is plenty of wildlife to go around.

Do any of you feed the birds? What is your favorite bird to watch?

biology!

A great biology-related comic in xkcd (one of my favorite comics but typically more physics or computer science related)!

The extra text says "According to a new paper published in the journal Science, reporters are unable to thrive in an arsenic-rich environment.

Now, the interesting thing is that the new bacteria are not naturally arsenic based. Here's more info from the NYTimes, for those who are interested. In a nutshell, there are some bacteria that will incorporate arsenic into their DNA when grown in the lab. This is neat because arsenic is a poison to us, but it's apparently not a poison to everything. The bacteria are using the arsenic in place of phosphorous in their DNA. The molecules are chemically similar, so it's not entirely a crazy proposition.

Still, the implications are that life can form from different molecules, so there's more than one possible paradigm for life. This doesn't guarantee that there's, say, silicon-based life out there . . . but it is definitely possible, and researchers have now shown this empirically. An exciting step forward for science, for sure.

Xmas

Apparently, there is a strong historical convention for writing Xmas in place of Christmas. It is not an abomination to Christ nor an attempt to take Jesus out of Christmas. Rather, this abbreviation relates to the Greek letter chi and the use of this letter by printers as a way to save money. Xmas has been in use for several centuries! It should still be pronounced "Christmas."

Good history lesson there. Always fun to learn new things. Now, back to studying physics; I've got a killer final tonight. The semester of craziness is almost done! Finals wrap up by next Friday, and then I get a month of fun break where I can catch up my backlog and hopefully share a lot of pictures and stories from the last few months.

The power of small things

I'm an advocate of little things adding up to big things when enough people care. In the realm of public education, this plays out through the work of an excellent charity, Donors Choose. I've supported their works for a few years now. In a nutshell, teachers write up requests for various supplies or materials, the site posts them, and we get to choose what is funded. It's one of my favorite forms of voting with my dollars. I've supported many programs, most of which are environmental or scientific in focus. But it is a book request that has brought me to tears.

A few months ago, I donated to a request to purchase a set of classic books for a school library. I have read many of the books, and it is so tragic that a school can't even afford to replace books that are an integral part of literary history. I didn't donate a lot, but I think I must have been the last donor who completed the project because I received a great packet of thank yous in the mail today (donors who donate over $100 OR finish a project get packets). The letters from these students were heartfelt and thoughtful. My favorite came from a gal named Shannon:

Dear Leah,

My name is Shannon. One of my favorite things to do is read. I know that must be heard to believe because you don't hear that from many teenagers. One of my favorite books to read is classics. One of the classic books I saw in the school library was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

My mom and I saw the movie with Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon. I fell in love with the story line and when I found out that it was a book, I had to get it. I went to the library in my school and got it.

I wanted to write this note to say thank you for donating these wonderful classic books like Little Women. I hope my school library will be able to get more. Thank you!

Shannon

This was one of MY favorite books as a child. In fact, I have a really old copy of this book that sat next to my alarm clock for years (when you get an urge to read Little Women, you've just got to have it right there).

I love this site because it allows anyone to help out a classroom anywhere. You can pick to just support high poverty, high needs classrooms, and you can pick a school right in your backyard. You can pick projects you love or fund desperately sad needs (the last project I funded was asking for whiteboard markers).

I believe so much in this project that I'd like to ask the help of my readers. First of all, please pass along the word. Even if you can't donate, I hope you can re-blog my project page to get these deserving projects funded. Second, if you're able to donate, I'd truly appreciate it. Here's my giving page!.

As a thank you, if you donate to a project before 2011, let me know. I will send you a photograph I have taken! You can let me know color/theme/etc or choose a specific photo from my flickr page. I have photos from all around the world and lots of cool nature ones. Just let me know what you're interested in and where to mail it, and I will be happy to get out a photo to you. You can contact me at lapenn (at) gmail (dot com).

Thanks for your support!

I am a master

of the unintentional pun. My latest transgression, in a facebook status update:

I learned about floods in geology. Water is lots of fun :-) can I run off and be a hydrobiologist?

It took my cousin to point out: "Oh I thought that was just a play on words. Floods and runoff. But I guess you are serious."

And here I was talking about actually going back to school to study hydrobiology. I know, I know, I am already in school to study education and get my teaching license. But I am sorely tempted to move to Colorado and study water and biology.

There are too many fun things to do in life.