Freckles by Ian

In science class, we are learning about skin and what it does for us. We have gotten topics about skin, so I will share with you what I have learned about freckles. Freckles are small dots of melanin pigments in your skin. Melanin is what makes your skin darker or lighter. The more melanin have, the darker your skin is. There is a book by Judy Blume called Freckle Juice about a young boy who buys a formula that apparently grows freckles, but with a disastrous outcome even though there is no way to get rid of freckles for a while. In the winter, there is a lot less sunlight. Your skin cells don't have enough sunlight to generate melanin, making your freckles either go away or fade. In the summer, it's always sunny, so your melanin is reacting to the sun, bringing your freckles back.

Acne as you Age by Connor

Acne is what the little red pimples are called on pre-teens/teens faces. It can also be a whitehead or blackhead. If one of your pores is clogged with sebum or even dead skin cells, it can cause acne. Washing your face once or twice a day with warm water and soap or a cleanser can help prevent acne. This connects to our class because it's a connection to skin. I chose this topic because it was my topic in science class. (Information found at kidshealth.org)

Skin by Seth

This year we are doing an awesome study of skin. We did plant/animal cells and right now we are studying skin. The most interesting parts about skin (in my opinion) is that there are 3 layers of skin: the epidermis, dermis and the subcutaneous fat. There are many things that are happening on/under our skin. One of them being that dead cells rise up to the epidermis. You shed 1 million skin cells in 1 second. But you will never run out of cells. You will never run out of cells because your body keeps on producing more cells. Skin is the biggest organ in your body! It literally keeps your body from falling apart.

Blisters by Ty

In class we have been working on projects that are about skin. My topic is blisters, so I decided to write about what I've learned. Blisters are small pockets filled with fluid that form in the upper layers of skin. They form because of friction, burning, freezing, or chemical exposure. They form to protect the damaged tissue underneath. They are normally filled with clear liquid but can be filled with blood or pus if infected. Most blisters form on the hands and feet. Blisters heal naturally after 3 to 7 days. To treat cover the blister and try to make sure it doesn't get punctured, though if it's large and painful use a sterilized needle to puncture the edge of the blister and slowly drain it.

My information came from these sources: Source #1 and Source #2.

Skin and Birthmarks by Tori

Did you know that every 30 seconds your skin sheds about 30,000 dead skin cells? In class we are working on skin. My topic in class is birthmarks. This is what I learned.

          Facts about birthmarks

• Birthmarks are caused by abnormal blood vessels under the skin.
• Pigmented birthmarks are caused by clustering of pigment cells.
• Usually birthmarks go away by themselves.
• Rarely people need surgery to get rid of birthmarks.
• Birthmarks are usually purple, red, pink and brown.
• Birthmarks usually appear at birth.

Here are some facts about skin.

• Your skin is the biggest organ in your body, for an average person it covers about 2 square meters.
• Skin that is badly cut heals itself by forming scar tissue, which is different from skin tissue because it lacks hair and sweat glands.
• Skin is approximately 15% of your body weight.
• Every square inch on your body there's about 19 million cells and up to 300 sweat glands.
• Skin is home to 1,000 species of bacteria and contains over 11 miles of blood vessels.

Skin by Keegan

Today in science we started our skin unit. We watched a video about the layers of the skin, it showed us what the job for each layer of skin is. We learned that there are three main layers of the skin, the epidermis, dermis, and the subcutaneous layer. After that we got a diagram and we had to label the diagram on what we knew about the skin. After that we each got assigned a topic about skin to learn about, like freckles, birthmarks, and sunburns. I got birthmarks. We had to do some research on our topic and go to certain websites to learn more. I think that this is going to be a lot of fun!

What are Microscopes? By Phoebe

Microscopes are tools that magnify things that are too small for the naked eye to see. They have helped us make huge discoveries such as cells. In the late 17th century Zacharias Jansen made the first real compound microscope. To see your organism under the microscope you have to make a wet mount slide. When you make a wet mount slide it will depend on what cells you want to see: for the cheek cells you will place your organism on the slide, you will stain it with a blue stain, and you will carefully place a coverslip on! And that's how you make a wet mount slide.  What would you like to see under a microscope?

Cheek Cell Lab by Eva

This week, we have been working on cheek cells. What we did was put methylene blue stain on a slide, take the dull end of a toothpick, rub the inside of our cheek, then, roll the toothpick around on the slide. After doing that we placed the cover slip on and put the slide under the microscope. Honestly, it was like making a wet mount slide. The cells are super small meaning you had to look under high power to really see them. It was really cool to look at your own cells. Here's my labeled picture of my cheek cells.

Elodea Cell Lab By Julia

In class, we are doing science labs. We have done labs on onion cells, elodea cells and cheek cells. I am going to blog about the elodea lab. For this lab, we needed to make a wet mount slide of the elodea leaf, look at it under low power, medium power, and high power, and then we took a picture of the cells. We used an app called Skitch to label all the parts of the cell. I chose to blog about the elodea lab because I liked discovering all the cells and its parts. I liked all the labs but the elodea lab was my favorite because it was so colorful (the reason it is colorful/green is because of the chloroplasts) to look at through the microscope. Below are pictures of the elodea leaf under the microscope and not under the microscope.

The elodea plant 

The elodea leaf under the microscope

The Mysterious Tomato Cells By Liam A

I did my blog post about tomato cells. Tomato cells start out with large amounts of a  green pigment called chlorophyll (inside of chloroplasts) when it first starts to grow. This explains why tomatoes start out as a green color. There are tons of cells inside tomato skin. They seem to be a lot more of a circular shape which is different from the onion cells which are more like a brick shape. When tomatoes get older/riper other pigments like lycopene start showing up. Lycopene is the reason why a tomato becomes red. Lycopene is like a stain for the outside cover of the tomato. It makes all red fruits and vegetables red. Lycopene begins to dominate other chlorophyll pigments and that is why tomatoes become such a red color. I think that it's interesting how the tomato cells change color.

I got my Information from this link: click here.

This is a comparison between onion and tomato cells.

Onion Cells

Tomato cells