Glacial park field trip

This is brushweed. Brush weed is a common plant found in wetlands.  We took the seeds of brush weed in an already established wetland and spread them in a potential wetland.  This will benefit the environment by making another wetland which creates organism homes, filters water, and helps prevent water runoff by acting as a reservoir.

In the picture below we are removing buckthorn from the area to give oak trees room to grow.  This improved the environment in an assortment of ways. Buckthorn is an invasive species and dries up the ground.  With an oak tree thriving, homes are created, there is another source of food, and the ground is more hydrated and protected from extreme heat and droughts.

Is this paper cup inflammable?

Why is this paper cup not bursting into flames? Well the reason is because their is water inside it.  The temperature that paper needs to get to to ignite is 218 degrees Celsius.  The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius.  When water is boiled the hydrogen bonds that are created with partial charges break and the water goes into a gaseous state. When it does this it takes energy away from the system and into the air that it went into.  So when this cup has water in it, the water boils away and keeps the system below 100 degrees Celsius so the paper cannot ignite. 

Paperclips floating?

How is this Paperclip floating in water? Isn't it more dense?  Yes, a Paperclip is more dense than water, but the Paperclip isn't really floating, it's more like resting on the water.  It is very tricky to get a Paperclip to "float". You have to put it on the water flat and gently. The reason it can work is because of  the hydrogen bonds between molecules, but what are those? The reason that hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms bond is because they fill each other's electron circle so that there are no valence electrons left.  When this happens, hydrogen loses an electron so it becomes partially negative, but oxygen gains 2 electrons so it becomes partially positive.  Since opposites attract, hydrogen bonds from between molecules of H2O.  This makes the water wanna stay together so it doesn't let the Paperclip fall.

Water can sink in water?

Yes, water can in fact sink in water.  Since sinking or floating is a matter of density, water just had to be more dense than water... But wait how can something be more dense than itself!? Well differences in temperature is the answer.  When a substance is cold, it comes closer together and the molecules move slower to make it more dense, as opposed to being hot and more spread out.  The green water in this picture is ice water and the clear water was kept at room temperature. What we did was put some of the dyed cold water into the clear room temperature water and it settled at the bottom.  This means that the cold water must be more dense than the room temperature water which makes perfect sense because when a substance is cold, it becomes denser.