Watch out! Today’s Think About it Thursday may have you on pins and needles!

Have you ever thought about…

• Why does my foot fall asleep?
• What do your nerves do?
• What is paresthesia?

Did you know?

You know the feeling. You’ve been sitting down, reading or possibly watching something on tv for half an hour or so, one leg tucked underneath you. You get thirsty and jump up to grab a drink of water. As soon as your foot hits the ground, though…ugh! It feels like you’re walking on pins and needles.

What’s wrong? Your foot has fallen asleep! Was your book or television show that boring? Or did your foot not get a good night’s sleep last night? What’s the deal?

Some people believe that paresthesia — the heavy, dull, tingling, burning or “weird” pins and needles feeling when your foot falls asleep — is caused by not enough blood circulating to your foot. In reality, though, your foot falling asleep has more to do with your nerves. 

Nerves are like tiny wires that run throughout your body. Like the electric wires throughout your house that carry electricity to outlets, your nerves carry messages back and forth between the many parts of your body and your brain. If you sit on your foot long enough, you compress the nerves in that area. Of course, this can happen to other parts of your body, too. People might experience legs, arms and hands that fall asleep from time to time.

When you compress the nerves in a certain area, communication from that part of the body to the brain is disrupted temporarily. As a result, that part of your body doesn’t feel anything because it’s not communicating with your brain. If you also happen to be compressing arteries in that area, blood flow to your nerves may be reduced, too. This can contribute to the mis-communication with the brain.

When you change position, the nerves begin to return to normal and start communicating again. While those connections with the brain are being established again, you feel some weird sensations. They usually don’t hurt, though, and they don’t last very long.

Everyone experiences these feelings from time to time, and they’re completely normal. They don’t hurt your body, but they sure can feel really strange for a short time until your brain and your body start “talking” again!

Think about it a little more…

A limb that’s fallen asleep can sometimes feel like dead weight. Test your knowledge of the body with the Human Body Quiz.

The Maryland Court of Appeals recently deemed pit bulls and pit bull mixes “inherently dangerous,” but many animal experts and dog advocates believe the court’s ruling may have been too extreme.”Inherently dangerous” implies that all pit bulls are, through genetics or their environment, born with a vicious streak. But studies are showing that the science does not seem to support this.  

For example, a University of Pennsylvania study on dogs found that the top three biters of humans were actually smaller dogs: Dachshunds, Chihuahuas and Jack Russell terriers.

Pit bulls didn’t always have such a bad rap. In the early part of the 20^th century, this breed was in fashion and became quite popular as a family pet. “The Little Rascals,” a series highlighting child actors, even featured a spunky pit bull. Have the dogs then changed over the years? Some have with the help of their owners & genetic science. 

She said that studies on foxes suggest that a trait possibly affecting personality can appear in just two to three generations. Pit bulls & any other breed of dogs that are bred using this genetic science seem to be more aggressive against other dogs, but not necessarily humans. Scarlett, said that countless pit bulls nationwide are highly socialized and well trained, never hurting anyone. Much then comes down to the owners, and therein lies the real problem.

Scarlett indicated that at least one study is underway to see if certain factors predict if a segment of the population is at greater risk for being attacked by a dog. Anecdotally, socioeconomic factors, whether or not a dog has been spayed or neutered, and whether or not a dog has been socialized and trained, appear to predict attacks.

Read the full story on Discovery.com

May 15 is Chocolate Chip Day! There is no better way to celebrate this wonderful chocolate holiday than with FUN science. If you are wanting to experiment with chocolate chips that is a little less traditional than chocolate chip cookies, how about using them in the bath to wash away the dirt & grime from your day. Yep, that’s right…you can use chocolate chips as a moisturizing soap! The Chocolate is full of oils that will moisturize your body and leave you smelling yummy too. Learn how to sweeten up your bath-time with this FUN, at-home experiment! 

Chocolate Chip Bath Cookies!

What You’ll Need: 

1/2 cup Baking soda 2 cups of Sea salt or rock salt 

1/2 cup Cornstarch 

2 tbs of Almond oil 

1 tsp Vitamin E oil 

1-2 eggs 

6 drops of Vanilla essence

How To Do It:

Mix it all together and then cut out with cookie cutters or flatten balls to form a cookie shape. Add the chocolate sprinkles into the mix or simply sprinkle on top.

- Bake at 350′F (180′C) for 10-12 minutes. 

- Allow to cool. 

- Use 1-2 per bath.

Wrap these in air tight packaging or seal them in an airtight container as with time these cookies do go moldy. The picture above is of chocolate chip bath cookies.

Did you hear that loud BOOM? It was today’s Think About it Thursday blasting off!

Have you ever thought about…

• What is a sonic boom?
• How fast does sound travel?
• Can you create your own sonic boom?

Did you know?

Have you ever seen a plane fly overhead at a supersonic speed? If so, you may have heard a loud “boom” as it passed by. Did it explode? Nope! You can still see it flying. Then what was that sound? It was a sonic boom.

A sonic boom is a loud sound kind of like an explosion. It’s caused by shock waves created by any object that travels through the air faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms create huge amounts of sound energy. When an object moves through the air, it makes pressure waves in front of and behind it. Have you ever seen a boat move through water? The bow waves (front) and stern waves (back) are similar to the invisible pressure waves created by an object as it moves through the air. 

These pressure waves travel at the speed of sound. How fast is that? Pretty fast! Sound travels at different speeds through different types of materials. It also varies by altitude and temperature. At sea level and 68° F, the speed of sound through air is about 761 miles per hour. At an altitude of about 20,000 feet where the atmosphere is thinner and colder, sound travels at about 660 miles per hour.

Austrian physicist Ernst Mach developed a method of measuring airspeed relative to the speed of sound. If a plane if flying at the speed of sound, it is said to be going Mach 1. A speed of Mach 2 would be twice the speed of sound. As an object, such as an airplane, travels faster and faster, the pressure waves can’t get out of the way of each other. They build up and are compressed together. Eventually, they will form a single shock wave at the speed of sound.

The sonic boom we hear caused by an airplane flying at Mach 1 usually takes the form of a “double boom.” The first boom is caused by the change in air pressure as the nose of the plane reaches Mach 1, and the second boom is caused by the change in pressure that occurs when the tail of the plane passes and air pressure returns to normal. As long as an airplane travels at Mach 1 or faster, it will generate a continuous sonic boom. All those in a narrow path below the airplane’s flight path will be able to hear the sonic boom as it passes overhead. This path is known as the “boom carpet.”

If you’re wondering about how pilots handle sonic booms, they actually don’t hear them. They can see the pressure waves around the plane, but people on board the airplane can’t hear the sonic boom. Like the wake of a ship, the boom carpet unrolls behind the airplane.

Try it out!

Do you need an airplane to make a sonic boom? Not necessarily! Head online to watch a video of Chris Giorni from Tree Frog Treks making a “sonic boom” using a few common household items. 

You might also be able to make your own sonic boom in your yard if you’ve been to the rodeo recently. Do you have a bullwhip? Bullwhips are common on farms, and they also make great souvenirs at the rodeo.

If you’ve ever used a bullwhip, you’re probably familiar with the loud cracking sound it makes. That sound is actually a tiny sonic boom. When a whip is swung, energy travels from your hand through the whip to its end.

By the time all that energy travels to the end of the whip, its tip — called the “cracker” — is traveling faster than the speed of sound. Like a supersonic airplane, the end of the whip surpasses the speed of sound and the bunched-up sound waves make the cracking sound you hear!

Scientists believe the bullwhip may have been the first human invention ever to break the sound barrier. So, if you have a bullwhip at home, give it a crack. You probably never knew you could create a sonic boom in your own yard!

Think About it Some More!

Check out Science NetLinks’ Sprinter Advantage resource to learn more about how the speed of sound may give Olympic runners closest to the starting gun a slight advantage.

Today, Google visually unveils some wonderful things itself to celebrate the 138th birthday of archaeologist, Howard Carter. Carter was a celebrated Egyptologist, who gained lasting fame with the 1922 discovery of the tomb and the subsequent, laborious excavation. The homepage Doodle depicts just a few of the thousands of objects that were removed from the tomb — a process that took the better part of a decade and stirred the public imagination.

The famed explorer is known for his discovery of the 18th-dynasty of Tutankhamun’s tomb, more than 3,000 years after the boy king was laid to rest. Tutankhamun’s tomb is the most intact pharaoh’s grave ever found in the Valley of the Kings.

Carter secured his place in history when he made the monumental discovery on November 4, 1922. The finding was a long time coming; Carter had worked as an archaeological excavateur for 30 years prior to stumbling upon the four-room chamber that contained the pharaoh’s mummy.

The unearthing of the entrance to the burial chamber took months, and the recovery of the more than 600 groups of precious treasures took close to a decade.

After the finding, Carter retired from working in the field and chose instead to work for museums and private collectors. He died of lymphoma in 1939 at 64 years old.

The First Person Account:

The Discovery:

The Tomb

Today’s Think About it Thursday explores why you might not want to blame a dog if it runs a red light!

Have you ever thought about…

• How can we know if an animal is color blind?
• Can dogs and cats see any colors?
• What are some of the causes of color blindness in humans?

Did you know?

Have you ever noticed that you don’t see many dogs and cats wearing glasses? Of course, most of them don’t have the types of ears that would make wearing glasses very easy!

Many people believe that dogs and cats are completely color blind and can only see in shades of black and white. In fact, scientists believed this, too, for many years. But how could they know? It’s not like you can give a dog or a cat a vision test and ask them to tell you what colors they see, right?

Scientists actually use sophisticated tests involving food and colored panels to test whether animals can sense different colors. For example, if a dog could tell the difference between colors enough to choose a light-colored panel, it would receive a treat. These tests showed scientists that dogs and cats can indeed see colors — just not all the same colors that humans can see. Scientists now believe that dogs and cats can see blue and green. This means that a dog, for example, could tell the difference between blue and yellow but not red and green. So, if you see a dog run a red light, it’s not his fault! He might have thought it was green!

Like dogs and cats, humans can also have color blindness — also called color vision deficiency. This doesn’t necessarily mean that color blind people only see things in black and white. It usually means that they can’t see certain colors and therefore have a hard time telling the difference between those colors.

Being color blind can make it difficult to match your clothes, but it’s rarely a serious problem. Most color blind people can do everything they want to do. Sometimes they just have to come up with special adaptations. For example, people who can’t tell the difference between red and green can still drive, because they know that the red light is usually on the top and the green light is usually on the bottom. 

Color blindness is caused by problems with the cones in your eyes. Cones are special cells on your retina that sense color. People with normal color vision have three types of cones: red, blue and green. Cones send information to your brain, which decodes it so you “see” those colors and combinations of them for full-color sight. When these cones don’t work right, your brain doesn’t get the proper messages from your eyes. The result is that you can’t see certain colors and can’t tell certain colors apart. For example, a blade of green grass might look gray. This is what doctors call color blindness.

Color blindness is nearly always an inherited trait that’s passed down through genes from your parents. Boys tend to be more likely to be color blind than girls. In fact, one in 12 boys is likely to have some form of color blindness. If the cones in the eyes are damaged through physical contact or chemical exposure, color blindness can also occur.

Try it out!

Ready to try some fun science experiments? Learning about colors, light and how the eyes work is more exciting when you try some hands-on experiments that let you see with your own eyes how some of these concepts work.

Ask a friend or family member to help you with one or more of the projects below. Make sure you have all the items you need on hand before you get started. Have fun and keep on thinking!

• Not Just Black and White
• Make a Kaleidoscope
• Discover Hidden Leaf Colors

Think About it Some More!

Explore ReadWriteThink’s Color Poems? Using the Five Senses to Guide Prewriting lesson to learn about color poems, imagery and symbolism. Children will learn to use their five senses as a prewriting tool to guide their poetry writing and create a color poem.

That GPS unit on your car sure is fancy, but pigeons have got you beat: they have GPS built right into their brain! Researchers have spotted a group of 53 cells within pigeons’ brains that respond to the direction and strength of the Earth’s magnetic field. The question of how birds navigate using – among other signals – magnetic fields is the subject of much debate. These new “GPS neurons” seem to show how magnetic information is represented in birds’ brains.

There have been some interesting developments in learning how birds navigate. It was thought that birds had tiny chunks of metal in their beaks or inner ears that enabled them to detect the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field. But more research has thrown doubt on the existence of these so-called ‘compass cells’, saying that they were just a type of white blood cells.

Now a new article in the journal Science suggests that birds have clusters of certain cells dubbed ‘GPS neurons’ in their brains that enable them to navigate.

Every neuron had its own characteristic response to the magnetic field, with each giving a sort of 3-D compass reading along the familiar north-south directions as well as pointing directly upward or downward. In life, this could help the bird determine not only its heading just as a compass does, but would also reveal its approximate position.

Each cell also showed a sensitivity to field strength, with the maximum sensitivity corresponding to the strength of the Earth’s natural field. And just like a compass, the neurons had opposite responses to different field “polarity” – the magnetic north and south of a field, which surprised the researchers most of all.

Read more about this fascinating new research from the NY York Times

Memorial Day is just around the corner and many families are preparing to spend the holiday with a little fun in the sun. The long weekend is one of the most popular times for getting out on the water! Whether it’s swimming, sailing, or fishing – the warm weather & clear blue skies make this the perfect time of year for splashing up some fun.

For those that are thinking of setting sail for the holiday weekend, remembering the rules of boating safety can ensure a fun & memorable holiday for everyone. You can keep your holiday excursion filled with excitement by making safety a priority and incorporating it into your regular boating routine. Experts from the National Safe Boating Council suggest practicing these 5 guidelines when out on the water: 

1. Always wear your life jacket from the time you step onto the boat until the time you arrive back on land.
2. Make sure you file a float plan with a responsible adult so they know where you are going and when you should return.
3. Study and know the rules of the road so you are aware of which boat has the right of way.
4. Keep a good look out for other boats. Even if you know the rules others may not, so you have to operate defensively.
5. Always operate at a safe speed, at a safe distance from the shore and other boats, and in a responsible manner.

For more tips & safety guidelines, visit the National Safe Boating Council’s website!

The long Memorial Day weekend means there’s lots of time to get out, get active, and have some fun during the traditional start to the summer. This year, we encourage you to be a smart Skipper! Have fun out on the water, and don’t forget your sunscreen!

Looking for more resources? Check out these great sites:

BoatSafeKids.com: Get summer safety tips, great learning activities & experience all things nautical. This site teaches kids about personal flotation devices, distress signals, storm warnings, and many other aspects of boating safety. Find answers to questions, how to’s, boating checklists, life jacket tic-tac-toe & more!

The U.S. Coast Guard: If you aren’t able to teach safety hands on, there are lots of other ways you can teach your kids about safe fun in the water. Find coloring books and activity books to teach kids about water safety.

We use navigation in almost every aspect of our lives and most of the time don’t give it a second thought. Unless you found this article by chance or good luck, you are probably familiar with navigating your way around the world wide web on a regular basis. We all have experienced navigation on land as well – finding your way through a town or from one place to another. In both cases, we utilize signs, markers or Google to guide us through step by step directions and tell us where we are & where we are going. Before there was Google Maps, people relyed on science to help them navigate their way. From astronomy to geology, science has paved the way for a variety of navigation techniques for thousands of years. 

Navigation is the art and science of determining the position of a ship, plane or other type of vehicle, and guiding it to a specific destination. Understanding latitude and longitude is vital in understanding the science of navigation. Latitude is a north-south position which is measured from the Earth’s Equator and longitude is an east-west position measured from the prime meridian. Navigation requires a person to know their relative location, or position compared to other known locations such as the Equator or Prime Meridian.

The earliest navigation methods involved observing landmarks or watching the direction of the sun and stars. Few ancient sailors ventured out into the open sea. Instead, they sailed within sight of land in order to navigate. When that was impossible, ancient sailors watched constellations to mark their position. This method eventually became known as Celestial Navigation. By using the stars, moon, sun and horizon, sailors would calculate their position out in the open ocean.

The Big Dipper

Celestial Navigators were required to be familiar with the seasonal constellations as well as those constellations that are unique to the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Sailors would use specific constellations as their known location in order to calculate their position. One example would be the constellation “The Big Dipper” which can only be seen when in the Northern Hemisphere. When using celestial navigation, sailors would use a sextant tool to measure the angle between objects in the sky and the horizon. They also used an almanac which listed the positions of celestial bodies.

Today, NASA and other space agencies continue to use celestial navigation for many of their missions outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The astronauts and engineers of the Apollo program used a sophisticated and more modern form of celestial navigation to chart their way to the moon and back. The Mars Exploration Rover also uses celestial navigation to communicate information back to engineers and researchers on Earth.

One of the most familiar navigational tools in the world is the Compass. The compass can be used as a navigational tool on land, at sea, and in the air. Compasses were first used by the Chinese, perhaps as early as 206 BCE and by the 1st Century CE, the compass was the premier navigational tool for explorers around the globe. With little understanding of how the compass needle worked or the science behind it, the compass was thought to be a source of magic or witchcraft. With rumors linking the tool with unearthly powers – some ship captains were forced to hide their compass from view! Modern day science tells us that the compass indicates direction relative to the Earth’s magnetic poles.

In the last century, huge improvements have been made in the accuracy and ease by which ships are navigated with methods such as long range navigation, radar, the gyroscopic compass and the global positioning system (GPS). In the early 1900′s, networks of radio waves were set up and used to plot & pinpoint a geographical location by receiving signals from at least two stations. 

Today, the GPS is the most accurate & dependable form of navigation available and has replaced almost all other forms of navigation. A GPS acts as both a transmitter and receiver by using geostationary satellites hundreds of miles above the Earth’s surface. A signal sent from your device hits one satellite which then sends a signal back to you. The signal hits three satellites and then calculates your accurate position by using the equation: distance = speed x time.  The signal of a GPS travels at the speed of light – an incredible 186,411 miles per second! Although these modern navigational tools bear no resemblance to the traditional methods, they use the same principals; an accurate measurement of time, the speed equation and fixings from different locations.

The nautical explorers & inventors of our past have forever changed the way we travel the world. Those ancient navigators’ vague attempts to avoid getting lost have been transformed into a sophisticated & calculated science. With modern GPS, we have the ability to know exactly where we are on the planet at any given moment. With the ever growing science of navigation, will we truly be lost ever again?

Make Your Own Nautical Chart

A Sailor’s Life For Me: Nautical Lesson Plans &  Teacher Resources

Exploration Through the Ages: An Interactive Guide to Navigation

Hands-On Nautical Navigation

Classroom @ Sea

The Art & Science of Navigation

History of Navigation

PBS : Secrets of Ancient Navigators

Finding Our Way: Before the GPS

Join us for Think About it Thursday today for a trip around the globe!

Have you ever thought about…

• Can you see the equator?
• Which direction do latitude and longitude lines run?
• What is the prime meridian?

Did you know?

If you’ve ever looked at a globe or a map of the world, you’ve probably noticed lots of different lines. What do all these lines mean? If you go to those parts of the world, can you see the lines? Could you trip over them?

Don’t worry! None of those lines are actual lines that you can see on the ground. They’re just imaginary lines we use on maps to help us measure and understand the world we live in. The lines you see on a globe or a map of the world are called lines of latitude and longitude. Latitude lines run east and west (side to side) and help us measure distances north and south. Longitude lines run north and south (up and down) and help us measure distances east and west. Latitude and longitude lines measure distances in units called degrees. The lines of latitude and longitude where we start measuring from have special names. The equator is 0 degrees latitude, and the prime meridian is 0 degrees longitude.

The equator is the halfway point between the North Pole and the South Pole. It runs from side to side across the middle of the Earth through parts of South America, Africa and Asia. The prime meridian runs through the United Kingdom, France, Spain, parts of Africa and Antarctica. Its position was not determined by choosing a halfway point between particular natural features, like the Earth’s

poles. In fact, although the earliest maps have the equator marked on them, the prime meridian wasn’t officially named and marked until the late 1800s. Before that time, over a dozen different locations were being used to mark 0 degrees longitude. The International Meridian Conference of 1884 chose a single line of longitude running through Greenwich, England, as the prime meridian.

The earth is a sphere and the equator and the prime meridian divide the Earth into four hemispheres: north, south, east and west. For example, the United States is in both the Northern Hemisphere (because it’s north of the equator) and the Western Hemisphere (because it’s west of the prime meridian). Because of the equator’s position halfway between the Earth’s poles, its climate is warm and sunny. Tropical rain forests thrive near the equator because of the sun and rain areas receive along the equator.