Brinicles

You learn something new every day. Yesterday, I learned about brinicles. Ooer!

Click the pic to watch the video clip from BBC Nature News which shows a brinicle forming, and time lapse footage of starfish moving about before the icy finger of death causes freezing of the ocean floor, trapping the poor stars. The footage is taken under the sea ice near the foothills of Mt Erebus, Antarctica.

Samorost 1, 2 and Machinarium

Now that most of the exams are over, I feel I can safely link to this excellent little game, Samorost. I think it wins the award for most creative use of lichen, ever.

 
Samorost 1 is pretty short. Samorost 2 is longer, but I think you have to pay money for the full game (which I did, many years ago; it's only $5, says the website).

 The producers, Amanita Design, also made Machinarium, but that's got a bit less of a biological theme. Still fun though, and lots longer. I also bought that one (now $10; no idea what currency).

Year 12 Ecology

Haven't found much!

• Ecology and grouping organisms - Ecosystems, classification or organisms, species definition. Two levels of quiz at the end.
• Primary succession on a glacial moraine - Nice description of how primary succession occurs after a glacial retreat.Watch the narrated animation.
• Coastal succession interactive - Interactive explains succession as the sea level falls.
• Mutualism interactive - Two examples of mutualistic relationships.
• Predator-prey cycles interactive - Have a play to see what happens to predator and prey population sizes when you fiddle with their reproductive rates and how many prey get eaten by each predator.
• Competition interactive - Gauses’ principle of competitive exclusion leads to zonation of barnacles on a rocky shore.
• Structure of the forest - A pdf document (so you need Adobe Acrobat reader) about the stratification in beech forest at Arthur’s pass. Text only. Boring!
• S-cool: Ecology - Ecology revision pages. Click through to the next topic. Covers: Who's Eating Who?; Populations; Adapting to Survive; Cycling Through Nature (including carbon and nitrogen). Has animations.
• Interpreting ecological data - Some graphs and tables etc. No answers.
• Predator prey interactions: graphing - Investigating and graphing patterns of deer populations, and changes with predator and prey. Don’t draw the graph; just look at the data and answer the questions.
• BBC Science: Biology: Populations and Pyramids - Food chains, pyramids, efficiency or production, competition, predator-prey cycles. Revision and a test at the end.
• BBC Science: Adapt to fit - Adaptations. Overly simple for this level.

Murmuration

Well, here's a cool thing to add to Things I Wish I Could See In Real Life.
A flock of starlings flying in formation around two girls in a canoe.

Welcome

Hello. I made this blog so I could share links, videos and articles with my students, and then comment on them.

To start with, my current favourite as to why knowing a bit about science is important. I bring you someone who doesn't understand rainbows and refraction.