This week we are still working on the bacteria slide and wanted poster.  I just finished both so I’ll tell you more about Lyme disease.  It is not 100 percent sure where it came from but one theory is that it came from the animal disease center in Connecticut eight miles away form the city of Lyme.  The infected ticks escaped and they spread the disease very quickly.   Here is a microscopic picture of Lyme disease.  The ticks are most commonly deer ticks and though not all of them are infected a huge percent are.  Here is how big a deer tick is: A good word of advice is that after you go hiking check yourself to see if you have any ticks on yourself.

This week we are working on our projects.  We each picked a virus or bacteria and we will make a wanted poster and a slide show about it.  In the wanted poster we must put stuff like where their hideout is, if they are armed and dangerous, and how to protect yourself against them, etc.  I chose Lyme disease so I’ll tell you a little about it.  It is transmitted from deer ticks that are infected by the bacteria Boreliella burgdorferi.  They simply bite their victim and it is usually transmitted to their victim.  If you are lucky or if you see the tick fast enough you usually won’t be infected. If treated quickly, you can cure it with antibiotics.  Without immediate treatment, you can get flu like illness, have heart pains, joint pains, and get a big rash.  It takes 36 hours for the bacteria to be transmitted.

Good advice:  if you find a tick on you put it in a bag and put it in the freezer.  Then you can take it to a doctor and they will test it to see if it is infected with the bacteria.

This week I am learning about shadows.  Shadows are formed when a solid object is in the way of light.  An object where no light can pass through is called an opaque object.  The easiest example is our body.  Whenever light is not able to go through an object, it creates a dark area around the object. This patch where the light can not reach is called a shadow. Duh.  Opaque objects create clear dark shadows.  Shadows change size because the angle of light at which the light is falling on the object.  Is it longest in the early morning and the late afternoon? At noon, when the sun is overhead there is little or no shadow at all. Why?  The position of the sun changes throughout the day, thus changing the angle at which the rays fall on the ground.  A long time ago people tracked the length of shadows throughout the day to keep track of time. The world’s earliest clock was a sun dial.