City Science Kids will be taking a little break from video-making for summer. But be sure to check in with us once in a while! Because we'll be posting photos of the science we run into while we're having our school-break adventures. Like this one:
This is a special red-eyed cicada—the kind that hatches only once every 17 years! In Brooklyn, we waited and waited for the ground to get warm enough (about 64 degrees) for them to emerge onto our streets. We read reports of them swarming in droves all over Staten Island. And we even heard about a woman who had to travel to her mother's house in the South to help her clean up after the enormous cicada eruption in her town. But we never did see them in Brooklyn.
However, last weekend, when we got to the city of Poughkeepsie, about and hour and a half north of Brooklyn, what should we find? This beautiful and weird specimen. It flew onto the porch of our house and sat around for a few minutes. Only the one cicada, and it didn't make a sound.
Happy trails to all of you science lovers this summer! Make sure to write in and tell us about any cool things you see out there on your travels!
Mushrooms and fungi aren’t plants. They belong to the
Kingdom Fungi. Plants have their own kingdom (Kingdom Plantae). And so do
animals (Kingdom Animalia). And so do three different kinds of tiny life forms:
Bacteria, Protozoa, and Chromista. Kingdoms are a way that scientists organize
the different kinds of things that are alive on the Earth. Think about all your
toys. How would you organize them into categories? One way might be: Board
Games, Puzzles, Things You Can Stack, Things With Wheels, Dolls, and so on.
These categories are like Kingdoms.
Fungi are so important to life on Earth. As we learn in this video, they break down (decompose) dead things like plant matter and
wood. But there are also fungi that specialize in eating a dead tree’s twigs,
others that specialize in eating its leaves, and others that specialize in its
seeds, bark, and dense heartwood. Fungi also eat hooves and feathers and skin
and other parts of once-living animals. They turn nature’s garbage into nutrients
that can be used by other things in order to thrive.
Some kinds of fungi aren’t decomposers at all; they are plant
partners. They attach themselves to the roots of certain trees, to help them
reach water and nutrients in the soil. In return, they feed on sugars produced
in the tree’s roots. The fungi and the trees have a symbiotic relationship—they
help each other.
The main part of a fungus lives under the dirt, or inside a
tree, or in a pile of leaves. It’s called the mycelium, and it's made up of tiny hairs called hyphae. Mushrooms
are the part of a fungus that reproduces. They contain spores, which are like
seeds. When the fungus is ready to expand, it sends up mushrooms to the surface
of the dirt or the tree. The mushrooms release their spores then die, but the
mycelium lives on and continue to grow.
There are many more fascinating things to learn about
mushrooms. Here are a couple of websites to get you started, with lots of
pictures to look at:
If there’s a mycological society in your area, ask your
parents to take you on a mushroom walk, with experts! Here is the website for the
New York Mycological Society.
Most importantly, NEVER EAT a mushroom that you find. Some
of them are deadly poison and even the experts can have a hard time telling the
difference between those that are safe and those that are not. Look only, and
take pictures, and if your parents say it’s OK, pick a few to make spore
prints.
Don’t forget to write in to this website to tell us about
any mushrooms you find! And send us your pictures!!
