Working in the Laboratory and More New Friends

Thursday's Post:

We spent most of the day helping with lab work on the soil samples that we helped collect on Monday. We worked on setting up an electrophoresis (how's that for a BIG word?) and prepaing some samples for PCR. Electrophoresis is a way to be sure we found living microbes in the soil. PCR makes thousands of copies of DNA from the bacteria. Here are a few pictures so you can see what the lab looks like.

I also ran into a new friend. Maybe you have heard of him. His name is Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley is also a world traveler - just like me. Stanley has been traveling around the planet for many years and has had many, many adventures. I asked him if he had any advice for me as I begin to travel to many of the places he has been around the world. Flat Stanley's advice was simple: Be yourself, be polite, take your time to be safe, and everyone has been on a great adventure!

This last picture is silly. I decided to put on a disguise for fun. I put on a purple glove from the lab so that I would look like a chicken. I got comments about it from several people. Some said that it was 'udder'ly ridiculous, while others told me I had a bad 'comb'-over.

Hiking and Lava Tubes

Wednesday’s Entry:

Today was all about hiking in the desert and lava tubes. This is what I imagined a scientific expedition to the desert to be all about. The first thing this morning, the teachers participated in a webcast to describe some of the experiences we have been having. I hope you had a chance to see it. If not, it will be on the Spaceward Bound archive soon. Dan and I kind of just watched from the sideline since we already are doing so much communication with all of you. We wanted other teachers and monkeys to get a chance to connect with all of you and other students as well.
After the webcast, we had a couple of hours before lunch. We joined a small hike up the tall mountains (hills, really) near Zzyzx. Even though we scrambled up and back down in less than 2 hours, the views were really great. This particular mountain was also interesting, geologically. It was composed of metamorphosed intrusive igneous rocks. Let me explain. Igneous rocks are rocks that form when magma (melted rock) cools. It is intrusive if this cooling takes place underground. This makes the cooling process take a long lime so that the crystals in the cooling rock get very large. Metamorphosed means that after the magma cooled slowly underground so that large crystals formed, then great pressure and some heat smashed the crystals so greatly that the crystals actually changed shape! That is a lot for young bears to learn, but it is so interesting to learn about the processes of our planet.

After the hike and a quick lunch, we took off for the lava tube. This lava tube was formed when a river of lava formed a channel or trench but then the top of the flow cooled so that a crust of rock was formed over the whole trench. The lava down in the tube continued to flow as liquid lava and when the flow stopped, a hollow tube was left. This particular lava tube has a nice big entrance where the roof has collapsed and also has some “sky-lights”.

NASA scientists are thinking about having astronauts live in lava tubes on the moon and on Mars if there are any there. Some of those scientists are here this week trying to develop ways of detecting and exploring these tubes if they can find them.

Dan and I think this picture

looks like a scene from Indiana

Jones and the Lost Polar Bear.

It's just me in a lava tube 'sky-

light'.

Afton Canyon

Tuesday’s Second Entry:

This afternoon, we went on a hike through a place called Afton Canyon. It is where the Mojave River flows. For much of the year, there is at least a little water in the river. Part of the year, though, the river dries up completely. Today, there was enough water that we couldn’t drive all the way back into the canyon. So instead we hiked through part of the canyon and climbed a couple of gently-sloped canyon walls up to the mesa at the top of the canyon. The views were spectacular. It was so great to take a few minutes break from thinking about science and to just enjoy the Grandeur of nature.

But, back to the science….

In this region of the Mojave, the geologic features are sedimentary. We could see the layers of sediment in the canyon walls. That means that some time ago these canyon walls were most likely at the bottom of the ocean or at least a big lake! It is a little hard to understand how you can climb through an area that was the ocean floor.

This area, Afton Canyon, is also undergoing significant weathering and erosion so that the pieces that flake off will become sediment all over again. Dan says he teaches about the rock cycle at school and he was obviously excited to see a portion of it in action.

Robots and Teachers and Polar Bears, Oh My

Tuesday’s First Entry:

Today was so filled with fun that I will separate it into two posts. The first thing we did after breakfast was to get involved with the Robotics session. What fun! NASA has a robot that has cameras on it so that a person, or a polar bear, can sit at a laptop computer and control the robot's functions remotely (from a distance). On the computer is a screen where you can see what the robot is “seeing” (you know that the robot doesn’t really see, at least not yet!) By using the laptop and a joystick, the person at the controls can drive the robot around and not run into anything or it can find and chase a person or an object. Since I don’t have opposable thumbs (thumbs that can grip a joystick) I sat on Dan’s shoulder to coach him. He called me a back-seat driving bear, but he did a lot better when I was coaching him!











Before we started operating the robot, it all had to be connected and inspected. Since I was the proper size for seeing all the parts, I got to perform the inspection. It was so much fun that I gave the robot a good old-fashioned Lube, Oil, and Filter treatment free of charge.




In the end, of course, I got a short ride on the robot. It was great and only got a little scary when Dan was driving without me there to coach him.

A Transect in the Desert

Monday’s Entry:

Today, I joined the team that was performing an experiment called a Soil Transect. Here is what that is. We gathered samples of soil (small baggies of dirt) from seven sites across the Mojave Desert. We drove in vans for about 400 miles in order to gather the samples. We got the soil from places that the scientists had already selected based on the average rainfall in each region.

The scientists are now going to study the soil samples to look for what is living in the dirt. They are going to find out how many kinds of microscopic life forms (microbes), and how many of each, are in the soil. Then the scientists want to compare soil microbes from the 7 different sites to see if there is a pattern they can find. The techniques they are using are also being studied to see if this could be done by robots on Mars.

While we were in the field, driving all across the Mojave Desert, we also saw may different ways that people in California are making electricity without burning fuels. NASA is also always looking for alternative energy sources so Dan and I spent some time taking pictures and researching these programs. If you want to know what we learned, then I will direct you to look at Dan’s blog at http://www.nasamojave.blogspot.com/There you will find some of what we learned.

What a Ride!

After exploring around the area for a while, some of the scientists began to set up their hot-air balloon. They brought it to study caves and cave entrances from above the ground. NASA wants to be able to detect caves on Mars by looking from above, so these scientists are going to figure out how to do that.

Anyway, it was pretty exciting to watch the balloon inflate. Then, Jim, the pilot, said he would take a couple of small travelers up a few feet for practice. Since I was the smallest traveler in the area, I got to go up in the hot air balloon!



It was so exciting! And so much fun! I hope I can go for a longer and higher ride some day!



Dan Wray took this picture. It is one of my favorites so far on this trip. It shows the balloon which was the first way the men flew a long time ago. It also shows the moon which is the goal of all the scientists, teachers and polar bears here. We want to help find processes that will help astronauts live and work on that moon. Beautiful.

Zzyzx, the Desert and Some Teammates

Finally, we have arrived in the desert. It looks a lot more like pictures of the moon than I thought it would. The station where we are living this week is situated along a dry lake bed. It looks very much like the pictures of the moon that the astronauts took when they visited a long time ago.

Zzyzx is an unusual place. It was built in 1944 to be a Health Resort. I am sure that at one time, it was beautiful. In 1974, it was changed over to become a desert research station. The rooms and facilities of the old Health Resort are still around but they clearly haven't been used as a resort in a long time.

Dan found the coffee station right away and had me hold his place in line.

Here is Dan Loewen with me sitting on his head. Dan just likes to show off how flat his haircut is.

Dan Wray and I joined Doug Porter and Christy Garvin on a little hike on the rock piles near Zzyzx. This is the view from the top.