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Science Fact

Inbreeding causes 3 out of every 10 Dalmation dogs to suffer from hearing disability.

Weird Science

Laughing can kill you? Fatal hilarity is death as a result of laughing too hard. In the third century B.C. the Greek philosopher Chrysippus died from laughter after watching a donkey eat a fig (yeah, we don't get it either). A recent case occurred in 1975 when Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer in England, died after watching a television show called The Goodies. Alex laughed for over 25 minutes until he finally collapsed on the couch from heart failure. His wife later sent a letter to the TV show thanking them for making his last moments of life so pleasant.

Graffiti !!!

We hear it time and time again. Reeko, you talk to much. Why can't we talk back? Well now you can. Reeko's Message Board let you ask science and experiments questions, post interesting science news, slap up some graffiti, or just yak with your buddies.

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Stats/Scores

Scientists online:133

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Puzzle pieces found:

Total fires in lab today: 3

Number of new lab rats: 22

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Track Reeko!

Using new RFID technology, you can now track Reeko as he moves about the lab! The "blip" is Reeko and will move from room to room as Reeko moves about the lab (he moves from room to room every couple of minutes or so). Hover over the map below for details on each of the rooms in the lab..

Did U Know?

The world's smallest winged insect, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the eye of a housefly.

Lab Reports

Lab Monkey Report We are cranking out experiments for the little scientists as fast as we can and have rolled out several new (advanced) experiments during the past two weeks. Still, Reeko will not increase of banana quota to more than 12 bananas per day which we feel is highly unfair. The rats are fed several times a day and being the superior species, we feel we deserve as many bananas as we want. Reeko says the potassium in the bananas causes a chemical overload in our brains which results in us repeating ourselves over and over again. We of course, know that is not true. We of course, know that is not true.

Lab Rat Report There have been some strange noises coming out of Top Secret Section F. As usual, the monkeys won’t tell us what is going on but we heard them talking about some sort of "row bat" that Reeko is working on. We listened at the doorway and hear clanking noises coming from inside and see very bright lights flashing from under the door. Sometimes we hear Reeko talking to himself. Stay tuned – something big is coming!

Lab Cat Report Zzzzzzz.....

Wisecracks

How to get electric power from hamsters - Convince hamsters they're really lemmings. Show cliff to hamsters. Install turbine halfway down cliff.

More Info

Reeko’s tweetting on twitter and twittering around on Facebook! Check out Reeko on twitter.com for snippets on Reeko’s unusual escapades and be sure to sign up as a fan on his Facebook blog. While you're there, check out the encrypted messages and inside lab news.

Extracting life from a plant

Plants are living creatures just like Dad (OK, so plants are a little smarter). Plants need food and water just like people. But how do plants get food? Plants get their nutrients via the water they take in. Nutrients from the soil get mixed up with the ground water. The plant takes in the ground water with the sneaky nutrients concealed inside. OK Reeko, so how do plants take in water, I've never seen them slurping it up with a straw? This experiment should shed some light on this question.

Fill the bottle with water.
Take a freshly cut leaf or flower, wrap clay around the stem and place the stem into the bottle. Make sure the clay fits snugly around the mouth of the bottle.
Poke a hole in the clay and stick a straw through the hole. Make sure the clay fits tightly around the straw so that no air leaks will occur. Make sure the straw is not touching the water!
Stand in front of a mirror so you can see the bottle. Suck the air out of the bottle (unless you're ready to skip ahead to the CPR lesson, make sure the straw is not touching the water!). This experiment will not work if there are any air leaks.

Heh, heh - pretty odd, huh? There are holes in the leaf called stomata and tiny tubes called xylem which run down the stem. The leaf and stem act as a straw for the plant. The stomata act as the straws hole and the xylem act as the straw itself. As you drew air out of the plant, more air was drawn into the bottle through the stomata and xylem. This is the same system that water moves in a plant.

Help Reeko Solve the Equations! Enter Answer Huh???

X + 2 - 1 = 9

Parent/Teacher/Advanced Notes [click to expand]

Carbon dioxide enters a leaf from the air. The epidermis (outer surface) of the leaf has many tiny pores. These openings, called stomata, enable carbon dioxide to enter the leaf. A leaf has many stomata. For example, a cottonwood leaf may have 1 million stomata, and a sunflower leaf nearly 2 million. However, the pores are so small that they make up less than 1 per cent of the leaf's surface. In most plants that grow in full sun, the majority of the stomata are in the shaded lower epidermis of the leaves. In many other plants, the stomata are about equally divided between the upper and lower epidermis.

A leaf obtains water that has been absorbed by the plant's roots. This water travels up the stem and enters the leaf through the petiole. Tiny tubes in the leaf's veins carry the water throughout the blade. These tubes make up the vein's xylem (water-transporting tissue).

Experiment Supplies

Supplies: Clay, Straw, Glass bottle, Flower

Other experiments that use some of the same supplies as this experiment

The homemade pen cap sinker
Principles of Flotation
Marshmallows making funny faces
A sucker's bet
Sucking an egg into a bottle
Magical Attracting Tape
Vibrating pennies
Can we please lower the pressure in here?