Changing leaves

On Tuesday we finally left the animal world and turned to plants,  I am really going to miss the dissections though.  Our experiment Tuesday was to show how leaf color is affected by different ph levels.  It was a pretty simple experiment, we boiled some red cabbage so the water took on a bluish color then added various amounts of ammonia (a base) and vinegar (an acid).  As we put more in the water showed a broad range of colors going from pink to green.  We would put in one of the ammonia or vinegar and watch it change color, then put in some of the other and reverse it back again.  

When I think about it, I wonder what explanation evolution has for this.  How does this change help the plant survive?  Evolution says that organisms survive by developing traits that make them stronger, well, how do beautifully colored leaves make that tree stronger?  The way I see it is that the only explanation for this phenomenon is that it was created by a loving God who seeks to fill our world with beauty!

All About 'More' Dissections...

Over a span of three modules in our Biology book, and the length of four weeks, my Biology budies and I got to dissect four animals! 

The first animal we dissected came from the class Annelida, a worm! It was our first dissection so it was memorable! (Even though it was pretty small, and not as interesting as the others.) The worm was pretty 'bare' inside compared to the others, but we got to see the ganglia (which is a substitute of the brain) of the worm. It didn't have a respiratory sitym because it breathes through it's skin, so we missed out on that. Over all, it was a pretty interesting, and awesome dissection.

We ate some gummy worms!!!

And then had fun dissecting the real worm!

The next thing we dissected was the crayfish. That seemed to be filled with much more interesting stuff in it compared to the worm. It was pretty funny, before each dissection we had, we all named our crayfish. I think mine was named Dora. Mine also had many eggs inside her, so she was just about to lay eggs. It was pretty fun overall. Here are some pics below.

I remember when I cut it open, it was wet...

Completely shell-less!!!