The Sun's Heat...

Today, I was remembering about the time when I went to one of my friends house and her brother, who wears glasses, used the glasses to make a fire just with a leaf and his glasses. So I found a magnifying glass, put a piece of rock down, put some dry grass and a paper towel on it, and I held the magnifying glass in front of the sun, which made a tiny dot right on the stuff, which started it on fire. If you are going camping and you forgot a box of matches but did bring a magnifying glass, this is an easy way to start a fire.

Here's a good explanation of why it works, from a website called campfiredude.com.

"When you look through a magnifying glass, an object appears larger because an area 1/32 inch in size at the focal point is spread across an area 2 or more inches at the lens, making something look 60x its real size. By having the sun's rays hit the lens all across its face, each of those rays will be redirected to the focal point. Instead of making something look larger, all the light and heat from the 2 inch surface are will be condensed into 1/32 inch area. making it 60x as hot. If the sun's rays are normally adding an extra 15 degrees to the surfaces they hit, 60x that would easily be enough to start tinder burning. "

Who Are You?

Dear People,

I want to tell you that some grown-ups think that children are just a piece of clay being formed and added to each day, but I can prove that wrong. This is a poem that I wrote when I was nine, but I am nine right now anyway.


Do you see the stars in the sky?
Ask yourself this question- who are you?
Do you trust in men, or something else?
Are you sure that dinosaurs are not alive,
or are you sure that we are not alone in the world?
So ask yourself this question, my friends...
Who are you?

The Tools For Paleontology

If you are going to go to a dig, these might be the tools you might need.

You are going to need a bandanna, safety goggles or sunglasses to not get the dust in your mouth or nose, or little shatters of rock in your eyes. This is how it might look.

If you are going to do it, the stuff that you might need after you've found a fossil- a paint brush and a magnifying glass. Make sure the paint brush isn't used for painting.

Junior Paleontology

If you truely want to do paleontology when you grow up, or when you are a child, before you do any digging or anything like rock hounding, you must study what there was during the triassic, jurassic and cretacious periods (in the Mesozoic era). You cannot take any dinosaur fossils, but you can take any fossils without backbones. Plants are fine, too.

When I was six, me and my sister went out to a lake. We weren't expecting anything to be found, but my sister found a shell fossil. This fossil was from before any of the dinosaurs. This is my drawing of what it looked like when it was alive. It was called an ammonite.