Yesterday in science class Mr. Kirste informed us about a challenge from the Kleenex company.  The challenge is to come up with an experiment that can be run, and that tests things like the strength or absorbency of a Kleenex.  This is a really good chance for our school because only ten schools in the country were chosen to be part of it.  I forget exactly what you win if your experiment idea is chosen, but it is a lot of money, plus the company pays for all the materials needed for the experiment.  I think I have a pretty good idea, and I am excited to see what my teacher and group think.


The experiment that I thought of tests the absorbency of Kleenex tissues. The materials needed are some type of a mechanical blower, some type of goop, and three different brands of tissues, one being Kleenex. The experiment will be the blower blowing goop into the Kleenex, and then timing how long it takes for it to break. Then I would so this on the other tissue brands. The goal would be to find out how Kleenex brand tissues compare to other brands. I think this would be a good experiment.
 
I bet you didn't know that there have been fossils of tropical plants found deep within the ice of Australia.  Well there have, and this has caused scientists to do a lot of thinking about the history of Earth and what it might have been like before humans were here.  Now we have a whole new idea about what Earth was like, and have come up with the theory that all of the continents were in one large mass called Pangaea.


Pangaea was a landmass that consisted of all of the continents and other land masses.  The theory of continental drift explains how Pangaea broke up and was separated into the continents as we now know them.  This explains why Antarctica has tropical fossils on in.  It was once part of Pangaea, and was closer to the equator so it would have had a warmer climate.  Then it moved to the South Pole and became much colder, which preserved those plants.