Case of the Gasping Garbage Read online

  How does this work?

  Paper soaked in lemon juice burns at a lower temperature than regular paper. The lemon-juice letters scorch, turning brown, while the rest of the paper stays mostly white.

  All young naturalists around the globe, listen up! Nell Fossey here. We’ve got a major situation, and time is running out.

  Here’s the scoop. The world population of frogs is decreasing. That’s right, the poor little frogs of the world are disappearing fast, and it’s up to us to save them. (After all, if we don’t save them, who will?)

  Why are they disappearing? you ask. Good question. Let me think … how about ozone depletion, global warming, pollution, pesticides, habitat destruction, and acid rain for starters? Need I go on? I didn’t think so.

  I’ve made a list of what you can do to help. Even if you don’t live in a froggy area, there’s plenty on the list for you to do. It’s a desperate situation. Calling all naturalists to the rescue!

  Nell’s tips on what YOU can do

  to SAVE THE FROGS:

  1. Build a frog pond.

  FIND OUT HOW TO BUILD A FROG POND:

  www.planetpatrol.info/frogpond.html

  www.loudounwildlife.org/HHFrogPond.htm

  www.nwf.org/outside/pdfs/pond.pdf

  www.nwf.org/frogwatchUSA/content_askexpert-06-04.cfm

  2. Plant a tree.

  3. Become frog-smart regarding chemicals:

  • Encourage your family to use organic (natural) lawn and garden products.

  • Use cleaning products labeled biodegradable, which means they break down naturally.

  • Dispose of hazardous wastes, such as paints, solvents, motor oil, etc., through your local waste-management center. DON’T pour them down the drain or dump them in your backyard, because they will end up in your local lakes, rivers, and streams.

  4. Start a compost pile. Compost is a biodegradable, natural fertilizer that plants (and frogs!) love.

  FIND OUT HOW TO START A COMPOST PILE:

  aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/sustainable/slidesets/kidscompost/cover.html

  www.copper-tree.ca/garden/compost.html

  www.dnr.wi.gov/org/caer/ce/eek/earth/recycle/compost_waste.htm

  5. Make sure your air conditioner doesn’t leak Freon. Freon depletes (eats away) the ozone layer, letting too much UV radiation through.

  6. Because our frog friends continue to decline in population, please DON’T gather frog eggs, tadpoles, or adult frogs from the outdoors to keep as pets. If you want to raise a frog at home (in an appropriate environment), purchase a tadpole or frog from a pet store. Even then, TAKE CAUTION! Some pet stores sell tadpoles or young frogs that are actually bullfrogs and grow to be enormous, so make certain you know what species you’re buying! Also, never release your captive frog or tadpole into the outdoors without first checking with a wildlife specialist. Many frogs that don’t belong in an area end up taking over a habitat, even eating the smaller frogs. All in all, it makes the problem much worse! To be on the safe side, build an outdoor frog pond (see #1), sit back, and let the frogs come to you. “If you build it, they will come” is good advice, plus you will know you are doing something good for the environment. See www.allaboutfrogs.org/info/index.html for more information.

  7. Write your government representatives and ask them to preserve wetlands and to support the Endangered Species Act.

  8. Encourage your classroom to adopt a local stream or pond. Make a commitment to keep that stream or pond clean. Visit www.adopt-a-stream.org for more information.

  9. Volunteer to help monitor the frog population.

  CONTACT:

  www.nwf.org/frogwatchUSA/

  OR WRITE:

  Frogwatch

  National Wildlife Federation

  11100 Wildlife Center Dr., Reston, VA 20190-5362

  (800) 822-9919

  10. Get involved with an organization to help care for animals and the environment.

  SOME ORGANIZATIONS TO CONTACT:

  Rainforest Action Network

  www.ran.org/new/kidscorner/home/

  221 Pine St., 5th Floor

  San Francisco, CA 94104

  (415) 398-4404

  EPA Student Center

  www.epa.gov/region5/students/index.htm

  Webmaster

  US EPA Region 5

  77 W. Jackson Blvd.

  Mail Code P-19J

  Chicago, IL 60604

  (312) 353-6353

  Kids’ Planet

  www.kidsplanet.org

  1130 17th St. NW

  Washington, DC 20036

  (800) 385-9712

  TUNZA For Children

  (A United Nations Organization)

  www.unep.org/tunza/children/default.asp

  Outreach Unit

  Division of Communications

  and Public Information

  UNEP

  P.O. Box 30552

  Nairobi, Kenya

  tel: 254 20 762-3937; fax: 254 20 762-3927

  e-mail: [email protected]

  Has the Web site moved? Search for similar Web sites by using a search engine such as Google on the World Wide Web and typing combinations of words, such as FROGS KIDS or FROGS KIDS ENVIR ONMEN T or SAVE FROGS KIDS. You’ll find all kinds of froggy information!

  QUIZ TIME: How Is a Frog Like a Canary?

  Not long ago, miners used to bring a canary with them into the mine. Why, you wonder? To hear them sing, perhaps? Maybe to add a splash of color in what would otherwise be a dreary hole in the ground? Well, maybe. But the real reason is that canaries are highly sensitive to dangerous gases. Miners knew that if their canary collapsed, to get out of the mine fast before it was too late! In much the same way, frogs play a special role for scientists. Frogs are known as an “indicator species.” Because frogs are so sensitive to changes, scientists look at frogs as an indication of the health of an environment. If frogs in a particular area have six legs, or no eyes, or are dying rapidly, scientists know that something is wrong. Scientists must then figure out what’s causing the frogs to be so sick, and begin to take the appropriate steps to correct it.

  Did You Know?

  Every year in Britain, about 300,000 toads get squashed while trying to cross the road to reach their breeding grounds. To help the situation, volunteers spend their evenings loading the toads into buckets and carrying them across the roads.

  It’s hard to believe that air can be so powerful. Tornadoes whirl trucks, houses, and people right off the ground! (Chickens, too!) Hurricanes knock over trees as if they were twigs.

  But those are forces of nature, and everybody knows that tornadoes and hurricanes are powerful. How about something as little as your breath? Maybe your breath can blow out a few birthday candles, but could it hold up a truck?

  Believe it or not, if you had enough of your breath, you could hold up a truck. When enough air is squished (compressed) into a limited space, such as a tire, it becomes very strong and can hold up a car or a tractor or a semitrailer.

  Want to amaze your friends with your new-found knowledge? Practice the following activity first, and then ask your friends if they can lift a stack of books using just their breath. After they stop laughing, show them how it’s done!

  MATERIALS

  • books

  • big balloon

  PROCEDURE

  Set the stack of books on a table and hide the balloon under the books. Make sure the neck of the balloon is sticking out. Without removing the balloon, blow it up. Voilà!

  You have been assigned a most mysterious case. The case of the … (gasp) … Mysterious Black Dot!

  The Scene: You have assembled five black ballpoint pens. Although the pens are different brands, their inks look identical. While your back is turned, your friend draws a heavy dot (•) on a piece of white paper with one of the pens. (Why, you ask? Why would your friend do such a mysterious thing? Because you asked him to, that’s why.)

  The Problem: You do not know which pen he used. />
  The Mission: Using chromatography, find out which pen your friend used.

  MATERIALS

  • 5 black ballpoint pens (different brands)

  • masking tape

  • scissors

  • plain white paper

  • 6 beakers

  • measuring spoon

  • rubbing alcohol

  • clear tape

  PROCEDURE

  1. Label the pens 1 through 5, using masking tape.

  2. Cut 5 strips of paper the same height as the beakers and 1/2 inch wide. Label the strips 1 through 5 across the top.

  3. Pour 1 tablespoon of alcohol into each beaker. (CAUTION: Alcohol is flammable, which means it can catch on fire easily. Keep it away from flame.)

  For each pen, do steps 4 and 5, starting with pen #1 and strip #1:

  4. With pen #1, draw a heavy dot (•) one inch from the bottom of strip #1. The darker the dot, the better.

  5. Tape the top of strip #1 to pen #1, using clear tape. Hang the strip in the beaker by resting the pen across the mouth of the beaker. The bottom of the strip should dip in the alcohol, but the dot of ink should be above the alcohol.

  6. Cut out a strip of paper containing the mysterious black dot. Like the other strips, the black dot should measure one inch from the bottom of the strip. Label the top of the strip “M” for “mysterious.” Tape the strip to a spare pencil and hang in the sixth beaker of alcohol.

  7. Take a major break. (MAJOR BREAK IDEAS: Dust for fingerprints, clean your spy glasses, snoop around corners.)

  8. After 4 hours, remove the strips. Which ink matches the “mysterious” ink? Show your friend the evidence. Were you right? (When his mouth flaps open in surprise, say: “Aha! I knew it all along! You can’t fool me! Easy-schmeasy!”)

  9. Tape the dried strips into your lab notebook. This is your hard evidence.

  10. IMPORTANT: DO NOT pour the leftover alcohol down the drain. Instead, use a funnel to pour the alcohol into a clean, dry bottle. Label the bottle rubbing alcohol and ask an adult to safely store it for a future experiment.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  Did you know that the FBI uses chromatography to catch forgers? (A forger is someone who writes a fake document.) By testing the ink on a document, detectives can determine the type, the age, and even the manufacturer of the ink. (It is impossible for a document to be, say, fifty years old if the ink in the document was made just last year!)

  LONG, LONG, LOOOOONG AGO …

  The “art” of forgery is as old as ink, maybe older. Crooks throughout history have tried to fake just about anything and everything to make a buck. Forgeries can come in many different forms: paintings, books, sculptures, diaries, checks, identification cards, money …

  Take money, for instance. Several hundred years ago, when paper money was just beginning to be used, banks produced “banknotes”—basically a handwritten piece of paper with the bank’s seal, telling the bearer of the note how much the note was worth. At any time, the bearer of the note could cash the note for coins, or could give the note to someone else to pay a debt. Of course, a banknote was easy to forge and crooks everywhere (if they could write!) tried their hand at forgery. The problem got so bad, banks quickly made banknotes (paper money) more elaborate, with intricate designs, special paper, special inks, colors, and so on. Today, it is nearly impossible to forge, let’s say, a United States twenty-dollar bill.

  Oh, and by the way … do you know what happened to forgers who were caught trying to cash fake banknotes? They were put to death! Yikes!

  TRY THIS: If you can find one, look closely at a brand-new, crisp, U.S. twenty-dollar bill. Hold it up to the light. What colors do you see? How many people do you see? Are you sure? Look again—you should see two head shots, plus blues and pinks as well as the traditional green. Look also on the back of the bill. What do you see printed in the empty spaces on either side of the White House? Pretty cool, huh?

  AT FIVE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING, Drake and Nell stood at the water’s edge. Mist hung over the lake, and everything looked just a tad creepy.

  “Ready, Scientist Nell?” asked Drake.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” Nell snapped on her life preserver, grabbed an oar, and climbed into the boat. They pulled away from shore, rowing and rowing, until they reached the center of the lake.

  And there they lowered their secret weapon. Code 61….

  “WELCOME TO THE GREATEST GHOST SHOW ON EARTH!” Sloane waved her arms around and said, “Abracadabra! Presto chango! Hocus-pocus! Alakazam!”

  Nothing.

  And then, just as Nell was about to smugly cross her arms, there appeared …

  … a ghost.

  A chill swept up Nell’s spine as both the ghost and the wind began to howl.

  “Oh, my gosh,” whispered Nell. “I can’t believe it. It’s real.”

  “WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE TROUBLE, MS. JACKSON?” asked Drake.

  “It’s my twin sister, Chloe.” Zoe pointed across the emergency room lobby. Both Drake and Nell gasped as Chloe bent over a basin on her lap and … well … barfed.

  “Eew,” said Zoe.

  “Ugh,” said Nell.

  “Oh, dear,” said Drake.

  Nell flipped open her lab notebook. “Why don’t you take it from the top, Ms. Jackson.”

  Zoe nodded. She cleared her throat. “You see …”

  “Yes?” asked Drake, his pencil poised over his notebook.

  “Yes?” asked Nell, tapping her foot.

  Finally Zoe looked them square in the eye. “I think I poisoned my sister.”

  “DO YOU SUPPOSE FRISCO, BALONEY, AND SHADY JIM ARE ALL IN IT TOGETHER?” asked Drake, quite horrified by the thought.

  June gasped. “But that would be cheating!”

  “Cheating indeed, Ms. Jewell,” agreed Nell. “But it’s all we’ve got to go on right now.”

  “Great Scott!” cried Drake…. “Don’t look now. To your left. By the corn dogs. Under the licorice ropes. James Frisco! The very man!”

  … Drake and Nell sprang into action. They whipped out their magnifying glasses. They whipped out their periscopes. Their binoculars. Their repellant (it was a rather buggy day)…. They began surveillance (to watch, spy, stakeout, observe, shadow), determined to expose Frisco, the bad mad scientist, at his game.

  “STAND BACK, EVERY ONE, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!” Frisco whipped the cloth away to reveal an animal track (a fossilized cast, in paleo terms). But not just any animal track. No, indeed.

  “This,” declared Frisco, “is the fossilized footprint of a T. rex!”

  “Oooh! Aaah!” cried the crowd.

  It was really quite stunning.

  “Did I just say that it doesn’t get any better?” asked Frisco. “Well, ha ha! I lied! Because where there’s a footprint, there’s the creature that made the footprint! Behold … the one and only … the best, the most fabulous and horrifying … BEAST!” And he whipped the curtain open.

  “Oh my gosh!” cried Nell, her jaw dropping.

  “Great Scott!” cried Drake, his knees turning to jelly.

  Woof! cried Dr. Livingston, who hid behind Nell.

  “I can’t believe it!” cried Pepper. “It’s a T. rex!”