Remembering Grandpa Dick

Friends of City Science Kids may have noticed that it's been a while since we've uploaded a full  episode. We haven't run out of ideas. We've had a death in the family.

Grandpa Dick passed away a few weeks ago. He wasn't a scientist—although he certainly was a big fan of science. For over 30 years, he was a 4th, 5th and 6th grade teacher. Listening to him talk about his time in the classroom, you could tell it was a lively and happy place. A place where kids could explore their own ideas and be encouraged to figure out how they all fit together.

Once he retired from the classroom, he was a busy Grandpa! He worked to conserve the habitats of ducks and other water birds. He volunteered at the county fair, demonstrating how to make old wood tools and shingles. He taught us how to use tools—even super-scary ones, like the bandsaw:

He tended a bird-feeder that was full of birds that he was always able to identify, and a garden that was well-loved by all sorts of butterflies:

He could make Windsor chairs and replace roofs and put hinges on doors, and he could build the most amazing dollhouse, with windows made of thin slivers of shaved mica:

He arranged trips to make prints of dinosaur footsteps:

And to excavate Herkimer diamonds (here he is, about to bang a bunch of the crystals out of a piece of rock with his sledgehammer):

And just to walk and see what was what:

Sometimes the best visits were to his woodshop—like this one, where he passed on his lifetime's collection of rocks and fossils to us:

Grandpa Dick was a fan of City Science Kids—even though he always had trouble navigating the internet and needed help to watch the videos. And starting sometime last year, he had big plans for it. We joked that he was plotting a takeover! He was eager to introduce us to a friend in the Adirondacks who made some sort of traditional Native American basket. Over the summer, after a birdwatching expedition to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, he took us on a detour to meet the man who runs the American Littoral Society. He wanted us to interview him about the upcoming fall migration of raptors (that is, birds of prey like owls and hawks). 

We never did manage to pull off Grandpa Dick's suggested episodes. But City Science Kids is still not the same without him. We'll plod along the best we can, and hope to get an episode out to you soon that would have made him proud and pleased.

The Sound of Not Silence: Jamaican Tree Frogs

The first night we arrived in Jamaica, we were startled to hear an incredibly loud and persistent sound. Not quite croaking. Not quite whistling. More of a high-pitched pulsing coming from the bushes and flowering plants in the courtyard of our hotel. We'd never heard anything like it!

"Tree frogs," one of our traveling companions told us. We researched a little and came up with the species Hyla marianae, Jamaican Treefrog. They look like this:

The sound was probably made by male frogs that were trying to attract mates. And although every night we heard them calling, we never could spot them, no matter how still we stood or how hard we looked. To have a listen for yourself, follow this link.

Seaweed in Jamaica

Everyone who's been to the beach has seen seaweed—both drying on the sand and floating in the ocean. Especially, after a storm, seaweed that's been churned up by wind and strong waves lands on the shore in giant clumps. And since November is storm season in Jamaica, we weren't surprised to see a lot of seaweed on the beach on our first morning there. Mostly it looked like the little patch shown here on the chair—only it was BIGGER and there was A LOT MORE of it.

Why can't you see it in the background of this picture? Because the lifeguard had just spent the last hour raking it all up. And—here's the thing that did surprise us—burying it in this hole:

When we asked him why, he looked at us like we were bananas! "To get it off the beach—it's a nuisance!" he said. He claimed that if he buried seaweed in this hole, in 2 or 3 weeks time the seaweed would be completely decomposed. 

His timeframe may have been a little on the fast side. But it turns out, burying seaweed is a good idea for a couple of reasons. For starters, if it's buried, you can't smell it as it rots and releases hydrogen sulfide gas—which can make you feel sick to your stomach. Second, if it decomposes in the sand—instead of on top of it, where it would also get washed away in addition to being extra-smelly—it provides nutrients to beach plants. (Not seen here: a coconut palm, which was growing right next to this hole.) It turns out, seaweed contains every important plant nutrient there is. They help the soil (or in this case, sand) hold more water for plants to drink. And they also stimulate the stems and roots of the plants so they grow bigger and faster. Hurray for seaweed!

Reporting from Jamaica!

This week, City Science Kids is reporting from the Northern Jamaican town of Ocho Rios. Here's a map, showing where in Jamaica Ocho Rios is located:

We've learned all kinds of amazing things on our trip, and discovered all sorts of trees, plants, wildlife, customs we had never encountered before. Like this:

This is the unripe fruit of the ackee tree (scientific Latin name: Blighia sapida). The ackee tree is an evergreen (that is, it stays green all the time) that was brought to the Caribbean from West Africa in the 18th century. The ackee fruit is the national fruit of Jamaica and shows up in the national dish, ackee and saltfish. (We actually tried it at breakfast one morning and it tastes plenty like fish but nothing like fruit. In fact, we thought we were eating a plate of salty, fishy scrambled eggs until our waitress set us straight.) 

But the most surprising thing about ackee is: it's poisonous! That's because it contains a chemical called hypoglycin. In unripe ackee fruit, hypoglycin builds up and if it's eaten, it causes Jamaican Vomitting Sickness—we're sure you can guess what that is! The way to get rid of this chemical is to let the fruit ripen all the way, until it looks like this (drawn here with the national bird of Jamaica, the swallowtail hummingbird):

Then, you discard the big black seeds and any part of the fruit that's colored red, and boil the flesh (making sure you throw that boiling water out, because it will be full of poison). Then you cook it up and eat it with saltfish. Yum!

The Wild Cranberry Harvest

October is cranberry season! And in the dunes of Cape Cod, you can find wild cranberries growing in abundance. They grow in the swampy, boggy valleys between high dunes. And they're one of 2 crops native to the salty, sandy soils of New England (blueberries are the other one).

A 19th century ship captain was the first person to grow cranberries for his own use. Why would he want to do that? Because the berries are high in vitamin C, which prevents a disease called scurvy—something a lot of sailors used to get because they didn't have access to fresh fruits when they were out on long sea voyages. The ship captain grew cranberries, and brought them aboard his ship in barrels.

Most people buy cranberries at the supermarket that are harvested from giant commercial cranberry farmers. But we picked them wild in Provincetown, MA two weekends ago. There were so many of them we could hardly carry our full baskets out!

You can read more about wild cranberries in my article in Odyssey magazine:

City Science Kids Reporting from Provincetown, Cape Cod

Last weekend, we found this absolutely massive mushroom in the sand dunes of Provincetown, Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where we were picking wild cranberries (more about that later).

This mushroom looks like some kind of bolete (although we don't know for certain). Surprised that mushrooms can grow in the sand? So were we the first time we encountered them—last year, in fact, when we were picking wild cranberries in this same spot. It was our guess that some of the mushrooms we saw were fungal partners for the cranberry bushes. That is, mushrooms that help the cranberries to grow and in return, get sugars and other nutrients from the cranberry bushes.

There's so much scientists still don't know about mushrooms, even scientists who study them all the time. You can learn a little about mushrooms from this past episode of CSK. And from this article I wrote for the magazine Odyssey about mushrooms that glow. Check them out!

Summer is Over! Time to Think About...Your Garden?!?

With gardens in both city and country starting to die back for the oncoming winter, let's revisit this City Science Kids episode from the archive: A Garden Gets Ready for Winter.

What are you and your family doing to get your garden—and yourselves—ready for the cold months ahead?