Growing With Science Blog

Any idea what this alien-looking creature is?

Cicadas are large insects with bulging eyes. This one is whitish because it has a fungal disease.

Father’s Day marks the beginning of the cicada season here in the Sonoran Desert. The emergence of these noisy insects predicts the beginning of a change in the weather, with higher humidity and the onset of the violent rains called monsoons. Unlike the spectacular periodical cicadas, our cicadas emerge every year. They sing on and off for a month or so.

Ever wondered how the cicadas produce their loud buzz? On the sides of the male cicadas (although some females have them, too) are two thin areas called tymbals. When muscles inside pull on the tymbals, they collapse causing a click. When the muscles release, the tymbal clicks again as it snaps back.

The video of the tymbal moving in slow motion at Discovery Channel’s Time Warp: Cicada Sounds is very cool.  The tymbal is the white area that is moving in and out. Too bad there isn’t any sound to go with it.  Note: the short advertisement at the beginning of this video may not be appropriate for young children.

According to the schedule, the entire Time Warp episode with the cicada footage (it is called Stuntmen) is being aired on the Discovery Channel on Monday June 21 at 9:00 am. It is rated TV-PG. It might be a fun way to start summer.

Want to do some last minute science fun for Father’s Day? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Bake your dad a cake.

You might wonder how baking a cake can be science, but a lot of physics, chemistry and even a little biology go into cooking.

Visit Food Science 101 at the Leaping From the Box website to find out how to make a simple cake and how science is involved.

2.  Make a science-themed book to share with your dad.

You can either make recycled paper or use regular paper to create a book. Think of your dad’s favorite animal, plant or science-related activity.

The MakingBooks with Children website has a lot of information. Go to the free projects page for ideas.

Vicki Blackwell has a number of concrete instructions for projects that could be adapted.

One Heart Arts also has instructions for making books with children.

For future reference, you might try
How to Make Books with Children: Science & Math by Joy Evans

3.  Take a nature hike or trip to the beach with your dad.

You might want to look at the clouds and try your hand at cloud classification.

Or do a critter crawl and see what is in the soil.

No matter what you choose to do, I hope everyone has a Happy Father’s Day!

Our family just got back from an awesome trip to Upstate New York and Pennsylvania, where we got to see many incredible insects. Our favorite is the Pennsylvania state insect, the firefly.

Fireflies or lightning bugs are actually beetles.

There are many different species of fireflies.  This is a common one in upstate New York. Others may be brown, or brown with red markings. The fireflies in Arizona don’t flash, but are similar in appearance to this one.

I had always wanted to take a picture of fireflies flashing at night. This time I was able to take some long exposure photos (thus the blurriness) of fireflies in flight. See if you can spot them.

I can’t wait until next year. I’m going to try it with a tripod in a better spot.

Do you have any photographs of fireflies? We’d love to see them.

For more information, see:
Absolutely stunning photographs of firefly beetles at Firefly Forest

In a previous post, I answered some questions about fireflies, including what they eat.

Most of you probably already know about the Firefly Watch project, first brought to our attention by DNLee at Urban Science Adventures.

On a similar topic, see:  How Many Fireflies Can You Count in 10 Seconds? at On Living By Learning Blog

http://www.onlivingbylearning.com/2009/06/15/how-many-fireflies-can-you-count-in-10-seconds/