Adventures of Water Woman...better late than never.

Below is the animation I did on some of the properties of water.  I have been meaning to put this post up for a while, but like I said, better late than never.
 So here you go, THE ADVENTURES OF WATER WOMAN #1! Enjoy!

GoAnimate.com: Adventures of Water Woman #1 by MinnieMouse1

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

A little follow up...on pH levels

Yesterday, I posted the presentation that myself, Sidney Buhr, and Chapin Galena made on our acids in your stomach lab. From this I learned a little bit about bases and acids, and what make them bases and acids.
One of our best friends along this study on bases and acids was the pH scale. The pH scale measures how acidic or basic a substance is. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14. If the pH level of a substance is less than 7 the substance is considered an acid. If the level is greater than 7 the substance is basic. And if the level is exactly 7, it is considered neutral. Now what decides the pH level of a substance? What makes it a 3 or an 8, etc, etc? It all has to do with the concentration of H+ ions and OH- ions in water. If the pH level is increasing, the H+ ions are decreasing and the OH- ions are increasing. Water has the same amount of H+ and OH- ions, so they cancel each other out. And there you go! Water is neutral.
This lab that we did, was to test which antacids would be the best at stomach relief. The best antacid would raise the pH level of the gastric acids in your stomach. It was much easier to understand what the whole "pH levels" were about, when I knew exactly what they were.

Is It Really Worth It: Lab Write-Up

A Little Bit About Water

As of late, water has been our focus in biology. I have enjoyed this because I love being in the water, I often wonder if in my past life I was a fish. So learning about all the little things that make water act the way it does has been a fun task. Today, I read an article about a new way to see the structure of the molecules of water. The article was describing the process in which researchers were getting to take a more developed look at the water molecules. It did honestly fascinate me, researchers found that since water molecules are everywhere, they happened to get trapped under a sheet of graphene on an atomically flat surface of Mica. The water would get trapped in between the sheet of graphene and the Mica, the graphene would than act kind of like shrink-wrap. It forms itself around the water molecules so tightly that it shows the atomic structure of the molecules. So in turn, making it easier for the researchers to see those molecules and study them. What they found was that the first layer of water on the mica was actually two water molecules thick, and that it has the structure of ice. In my opinion the finding of this new way to conduct molecule research is astounding. We are finding out more about our world, the big and the small parts, everyday!

Placebos, Double-blind, Clincal Trials- OH MY!

                 This past week in biology we studied something pretty interesting. CLINICAL TRIALS! I spent a fair amount of time on a website called clinicaltrials.gov, this little site provided an interesting glimpse of what clinical trials are and how they work. We spent time focused on clinical trials that are double-blind and include a placebo. I chose to take a look at a clinical trial focused on a drug to help with depression. Like I mentioned before, the study included a placebo. 

Placebo Receiver

Treatment Receiver

                      "What in the world are placebos?" Is what I bet you are asking yourself at the current moment. Well I'm gonna let you in on a little secret...they are NOTHING. Yeah, you heard me-nothing. In a clinical trial, once you go through the initial screening visit and are accepted into the clinical trial. You are randomly sorted, among the other participants in the trial to either receive the drug under study or a placebo. So lets say Mickey Mouse and Spongebob Squarepants are participants in a clinical trial. Mickey receives the real drug and Spongebob receives the placebo. Spongebob is taking what he thinks is the real drug. But is really the placebo, that does nothing and has no effect on him whatsoever.  
               This brings us to our other key word, double-blind. If a study is double-blind, neither the patient or the people administering the drug/treatment know which patients are receiving the drug/treatment or which patients are receiving the placebo. Clinical trials offer a lot. Clinical trials take a treatment or drug and put it through stages. Check it over and  make sure it is safe to put out there on the market. To participate in a clinical trial, you have to meet certain requirements for that trial. Age, sometimes gender, and health conditions are somethings among others that are taken into account when you are accepted into a clinical trial. Overall, clinical trials are pretty interesting...and every once and a while, a little helpful.
(Mickey Mouse Picture found on www.free-extras.com)
(Spongebob Squarepants Picture found on www.frederatorblogs.com)