In Which I Test Antacids and pH Levels

     Heart burn is a common effect in the body. The pain of heartburn is caused by high acidity content in the stomach. Acidity is measured with a pH unit on a scale of 0 to 14. The scale measures how acidic or basic a substance is. Let's have a illustrative representation of that shall we?

Obviously the pH scale is super dope.

     Acid has a very high hydrogen ion concentration while alkaline has a very low hydrogen ion concentration. If you were to put pH paper to your stomach acid, you would get one of these colors, which would direct you to how acidic or alkaline it would be. So when you're feeling the effects of that spicy enchilada what do you do? You reach for your favorite handy antacid!

    During this procedure, I sort of ended up with a hybrid question; "How much more effective is each level of tums, and where does one lone off brand antacid stand?" Since I wasn't able to use real stomache acid, I substituted it with vinegar, which registers around 3 on the pH scale. From the cart of supplies I gathered some pH paper, 4 beakers, 4 stir sticks, and a mortar and pestle set. The test subjects I chose were Tums Ultra 1000, Tums Regular Strength, Tums Extra Strength 750, and Equate Antacid.

Oh yes... Look at that artistic angle! Shaken' it up!

     I crushed 2 Tums Ultra 1000 tablets with my fancy grinder and added them to 20 ml of vinegar. After an immediate stir, I let it sit for exactly one minute. After the alotted time passed, I tested the mixture with a small strip of pH paper. The Result was a 6 on the pH scale.

    I repeated this step with Tums Regular Strength, which also received a 6 on the pH scale, Tums Extra Strength 750, which fell short with a 5, and Equate Antacid, which scored another disappointing 5. The object was to get as far from a 3 on the scale in order to prove the antacid's effectiveness.

The information can be viewed in this amazing graph.

     I assumed Tums Extra Strength 750 would have a more profound impact than Tums Regular Strength... it seemed fairly obvious, but Tums proved me wrong... Shame on Tums for not understanding how logic works. The tablets were all very closely matched, but if you're feeling the extra burn, reach for the Regular Strength or Ultra 1000. So in answer to my original question, they're all basically the same.

     On a side note, the equate brand worked the same as Tums Extra Strength 750, but it came out like a thick foam... It's kind of extremely unsettling. So although it does the trick and you save a dollar, I don't think I'd be comfortable having this happening in my organs-

                

                     On the left is normal, on the right we have sea foam.         See? Unsettling. Alarming. Ew.

In Which We Learn the Properties of Water

     Water is a basic need for every living thing (err mah gerd, i herd ner erdea!) Aside from being a very small fraction of today's favorite beverage, water has more to it than I thought; Something I thought I knew so well shows up with his whole life story at my doorstep and I think "Dude, I had no idea you were this complicated." But I digress- during this Lab, I attempted to test and understand 4 key components to the properties of water: 'cohesion', 'surface tension',  'adhesion', and 'hydrogen bonding'. Surprisingly, I found myself revisiting some middle school tactics in my spiritual journey to understand our friend, water.

That's some crazy water you guys.

     Real quick, I'd like to explain the anatomy of a water molecule. You of course know that it's proper name  is H2O. 'H' is the representation of Hydrogen, while 'O' represents Oxygen (not the Oprah Winfrey logo). Put together it looks much like a Mickey Mouse head (thank you Walt Disney!), with the H's being the two ears, and the O being the face. 

Aww Yiss, water molecule!

      I began the lab using penny and a pipette (great name for a band), to experiment the effects of cohesion. We all did this in middle school to see how water 'sticks together', which is basically the definition of cohesion. So, you can see that the water collected in a massive bubble, balanced carefully on the surface of the penny. I found that you can fit any number of drops on it, but commonly, I got around 60 droplets. The reason water clings to itself, even when you think it should spill right off, is because each water molecule can link to four others... yet those four others can link to yet again four more. Cohesion: It's an infinity loop.

Look at that talented photoshopping.

     My next stop in my spiritual journey was the town of Surface Tension-e`. But seriously, surface tension is a liquids' ability to resist an external force. This can be easily explained by asking you to apply a drop of water to a waxy science paper ( which decreases the waters adhesion powers, which I'll get to soon), and instructing you to cut the drop in half with a toothpick. Of course it only molds around and absorbs the toothpick, which is the effect of cohesion. So what I'm trying to say is that water has no armor to resist any outside forces, water is forced to take on the full blow of the toothpick and let it sink into it's body... Surface Tension, everyone.

A horrific moment of battle for Water.

     As promised I will now address Sir Adhesion. Adhesion is water's ability to stick to other things... Not itself. This could be sticking to your windshield, your umbrella or the petals on a flower (another of water's attempts at being artistic). 

 Just a picture of water trying to be all artistic by clinging dramatically to this guy's hipster glasses.

     Now I was told that Hydrogen Bond could very well be the 42 of the science universe, but I don't know how well I trust this source. In hindsight I probably should've put this paragraph somewhere closer to cohesion. I say this because cohesion is possible through hydrogen bonding. A hydrogen bond is formed when the mouse ears become attached to the head of a different water molecule, turning it into a strange Siamese Side Show act. This is more scientifically explained in this picture.

Sciency Wiency, yeah.

     In closing you might wonder how all of this information could matter to the universe. Well we all know how important trees are to the universe, and how trees need water to live. Thanks to hydrogen bonding, water can endlessly stick to itself in a chain, allowing it to pull strands of itself through the ground, roots, trunks and leaves of trees. Awesome, right? Thanks for reading this exciting episode of Splash Gordon! Does he defeat the evil Evaporator?  Find out next week, here on this blog!

Sources:

ga.water.usgs.gov

johnkyrk.com

http://www.appstate.edu/~goodmanjm/rcoe/asuscienceed/background/waterdrops/waterdrops.html 

In Which We Relate The Scientific Method to Corn!

     Upon hearing the words 'scientific method' in school, I would finally feel confident and comfortable with an assignment. It was so easy to just punch in information to a box in a certain order. It was totally awesome.

     But then it all changed when this blog was assigned.

     The classic method did get one thing right- the epicenter of scientific theorizing is testing ideas with evidence.

     True evaluation of a scientific problem/question will never have a definite answer, it will always be open to further interpretation and change. Multiple testing could provide mew insight or raise new questions, not to mention webbing put into many other slightly unrelated theories and questions. Aside from the web that truly represents scientific study, why should it be a one man army attacking the endless possibilities? A full theory should be shared with fellow scientists as well. It's said that two heads are better than one, why not fifteen? Having other viewpoints allows a different way of thinking  or providing information you may have missed or possibly misinterpreted. Topics and processes thought experimentation often circle you back to the main problem you were first presented with.



     So with a small portion of understanding aside, why don't I explain how I got to test put my new understanding of the scientific method through virtual corn.



     In my virtual corn palace, I basically experimented with the effects of infestation on types of corn and its final kernel output.  The infestation is the independent variable because it is the thing that changes the outcome of each experiment (such as high infestation yeilds few kernels in Corn Type A, low infestation yeilds same amount through Corn Type B, which must be some pretty weak corn...) All other variables such as lighting, water, temperature and soil is assumed same, therefore constant, and truthfully just means those are things I can ignore because they (for this particular experiment) have no effect... so forget about those things. Now for a simplified layout, since my plans of having tables absolutely will not work with this program!

•  The Corn crop BT123 with low infestation:
• 1.  164.0 kernels
• 2.  162.6 kernels
• 3.  168.3 kernels
• The Corn crop Golden Crop Non-BT with low infestation:
• 1.  177.9 kernels
• 2.  171.2 kernels
• 3.  170.6 kernels

From this particular set I believe that BT123 is slightly weaker and is effected only slightly more by a low infestation of ECB.

•  The Corn crop Golden Crop Non-BT with high infestation:
• 1.  135.4 kernels
• 2.  139.6 kernels
• 3.  138.3 kernels 
• The Corn crop BT456 with high infestation:
• 1.  157.3 kernels
• 2.  157.0 kernels
• 3.  159.0 kernels

So, again the Golden crop comes out superior, yet this experiment can be redone a thousand different ways just by changing the infestation amount from none to high with several different crops at different rates (i.e. Golden crop at high infestation vs. BT456 with no infestation). And then later you can change the constant variable to test the effect on corn when the soil, water, or light is altered. Isn't corn fun?





Sources:

• http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/howscienceworks_01
• http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/virtual_labs/BL_01/BL_01.html
• http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/jullian-smith?before=1338529559