Squid and Crayfish Dissection

First, we pinned the squid's body parts, as shown below.

The squid is a fine and delicate creature. Ironically, it has a part of it that is called the "pen." We used this "pen" and the squid's ink to write our name on a piece of paper.

Unfortunately, I did not have a copy of the squid's length, width, or weight. However, I do distinctively remember that our squid was a female, due to the clear gonads (aside from the fact that we opened it up and discovered eggs).

We were supposed to dissect shrimp. However, a crayfish has a lot of similarities to a shrimp, aside from the pincers the crayfish is equipped with.

Our crayfish weighed 16.9 grams, much less than the squid. It had a length of 10.5 cm and a width of 4 cm. Our crayfish, according to our instructor, was too a female.

Different Levels of Different Stuff in Our Fish Tank

Photoinception: Taking a photo of a Issac trying to take a photo of 

Stripes; he is unsuccessful with getting a clear picture while I killed 

two birds with one stone.

We used this chart; however, we encountered a problem with pH.

We had to put 2.5 mL of fish water in each of the five test tubes.

We started with Ammonia. It was yellow at first.

Left-to-right: Ammonia, pH, High pH, Nitrite, Nitrate.

Levels:

• Ammonia: 4.0 ppm
• pH: N/A
• High pH: 8.2 ppm
• Nitrite: 2.0 ppm
• Nitrate: 0 ppm

Our Ammonia and Nitrite levels were high, so we had to clean 

some of the tank for Stripes, and add a few drops of a few liquids.

Infiltration Lab

Sand doesn't do a very good job.

Sand and Soil did noticeably better...

Looks like pee, but the liquid is much more clear.

Sand plus Gravel and Soil didn't do as well as we expected.

Looks somewhat murky, right?

Sand plus Gravel plus Soil and Grass wasn't experimented on until two days later, and yet...

You could see it was much more filtered if you looked at it at the right angle.

[This lab was to see how well sand, gravel, soil, and grass filter water solutions.]

Properties of Water and Their Definitions

• Adhesion and Cohesion: "stickiness" to other substances and molecules of water, due to the bipolar nature of the H-two-O molecule. 
• Buoyancy: the upward force that opposes the weight (pull of gravity) of an immersed object. Fresh water has less buoyancy than distilled water and salt water has the most buoyancy of these three.
• Surface Tension and Capillary Action: Surface tension results due to the cohesive nature of water: water molecules want to cling together, and form a tension strong enough to hold anything that can't penetrate the surface. Water's cohesive properties also account for its capillary actions: its movement within the spaces of porous material.
• Density: The density of water is the weight of the water per its unit volume, which depends on the temperature of the water. Water has an average density of one gram per milliliter.
• Dissolved Oxygen and Temperature: As the name suggests, oxygen dissolved in water. Rapidly moving water tends to have more dissolved oxygen than stagnant water. Temperature does play a role here as well: cold bodies of water have higher concentrations of dissolved oxygen and warm bodies of water have lower concentrations of dissolved oxygen.
• Hardness: The measure of the amount of calcium and magnesium salts in water.
• pH: the measure of acidity of basicity of an aqueous solution. Water has a pH of 7, which translates to neutral.
• Mixture/Solution/Suspension: A mixture is noticeable, such as a salad; a mixture of water and alcohol would have alcohol on top and water on the bottom (due to buoyancy) and would also have a range of boiling points. A solution (such as ocean water) contains dissolves substances. An example of suspension would be water and sand due to sand being a sediment.
• Specific Heat: Also referred to as "heat capacity." Water has a high specific heat: it has to absorb 4.184 Joules of heat to raise one gram of water by one degree Celsius.
• Solvent/Solute: Water is a solvent; in fact, it's the "universal solvent." Water dissolves more substances than any other liquid, due of course to its polarity.
• Conductivity: A measure of the ability of water to pass an electrical current. Conductivity in water is affected by inorganic dissolved solids. Warmer temperatures increase conductivity. 
• Turbidity: The measure of relative clarity of a liquid. It is an expression of the amount of light that is scattered by material in the water when a light is shined through the water sample.
• Water Cycle: The continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the earth, a.k.a. the hydrosphere.
• Porosity: How much empty space there is in a material (e.g. a rock). Water likes to collect and run in and through the pores of materials and can erode, especially, rocks and earth in this manner.

Properties of Water: pH video

pH or "Acids and Bases." Pretty much the same thing.



pH is the measure of acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. Anything with a pH of less than 7 is considered an acid, and anything with a pH higher than 7 is considered a base. If the solution has a pH of 7, it is said to be neutral (e.g. water).

So this is the lab we did yesterday:

Apparently out of those 19,200 milliliters of water, 16 oz. is fresh water. 12 of those ounces are frozen; the other four are in streams, lakes, groundwater reservoirs, etc. All of it except for one drop is for plants and animals; the last drop is for human consumption.

About me

Well, I'm fond of the colors blue, red, gray, and black. I'm very open-minded most of the time. I like chess, but I don't want to join the Chess Club or whatever it's called. I like to sleep in the afternoon. Video games?
What can I say? I like video games. I seem to be the casual player, since I don't play as often. But when I do play, I'm well above average; I'm probably better than you.

I was asked to type two paragraphs; however, I seem to have a way of keeping most of my personal information a secret, even when asked to spill it out. It may seem that everything is personal to me, but that's normal for someone who's been through my circumstances in life. "You can never be too careful."