Call of the Wild

Today, I read "Call of the Wild", by Jack London. This book is a timeless classic about Buck, who is a St. Bernard/Sheepdog mix. 

The book starts out with Buck living in a home as a pet. At the end of the book, he is living with wolves, and is called "Ghost Dog" by local Indians. The story between these points is a very interesting one.

Over the course of the book, Buck is owned by many different masters, each very different. Buck changes along with them. At the beginning of the book, Buck is a pet of Judge Millers: he isn't used to hardships, or having to fight someone for his food. He is then stolen by one of Judge Miller's workers, in order to pay off a gambling debt. He is taken to a kind of dog trainer. The moment he arrives at the trainers house, he is beaten unconcious. He learns that the "man with the big club" is not one to be defied. Buck is eventually bought by Perrault. Perrault takes Buck to the North to be a sled dog. Here Buck becomes hardend: he learns how to fight in the manner of wolves, and how to bury himself in the snow for warmth. Buck quickly learns the ropes, and is soon know as one of the best sled dogs in the North.

After a sled run with Perrault, Buck is sold yet again. This time he is bought by Hal and Charles. They are two Southern men who want to try their luck at mining. Buck is chosen as their lead sled dog. Unfortunately, Hal and Charles had no idea of where to even begin. They are totally and utterly inexpeirienced at sled driving, and at mining in general. At first, they pack the sled so heavy that the dogs cannot move it. Hal then begins to whip the dogs, calling the, lazy brutes. That more or less sets the tone for the whole trip. 7 dogs died on the trip, all shot by Hal for refusing to pull the sled. Eventually, when they pull into a mining camp, John Thorton saw Hal beating Buck brutally. Thorton knocks Hal down, and threatens to kill him if he hits Buck again. Hal, in a rage, storms off, and readies the sled to continue. He doesn't listen to other driver's advice, and pushes on to Dawson, his intended destination. Not 50 yards down the trail, the sled, humans, and all of the dogs fall through the ice, and drown. Just what the drivers warned him of.

This event marks a turning point in Buck's life. He becomes Thorton's best freind, following him everywhere. Buck recovers from his mistreatment at the hands of Hal, and is quickly back into top shape. He is utterly happy, and is devoted to Thorton, protecting him from anyone who would do him harm. He lives with Thorton for a very long portion of his life. After a while, Thorton decides to go on a quest for gold, looking for a fabled mine. Buck, of course acompanys him. Along the way, however, Buck becomes restless. He begins going out into the woods, often gone for weeks at a time.  Buck begins hunting his own food, and becomes more and more wild. Buck has brought down a black bear, a baby moose, and even a full grown bull moose. Buck spends more and more time away from camp, but he always returns to his master. One trip, though, he returns  to find his master and his friends dead. They were attacked by Indians. Buck quickly avenges his master, killing two Indians, and scaring off the rest. Buck soon gains a reputation with the local tribes, and is know as "Ghost Dog". With no place else to go, Buck joins the wolf pack, and remains wild for the rest of his days.

I recommend this book to everyone, with it being very interesting and enjoyable. It also gives you a unique insight to the primitive law that drives animals: Kill or be killed.

Spectroscope

Today for science I made a spectroscope.......

and it was WAY COOL! I have never seen anything like this. I built it out of cardboard and a magnifying glass, but it was amazing. I pointed it at my desk lamp, looked through the lens, and I could see a neat pattern of different light colors. (green, red, yellow, purple were the main colors). If I pointed the spectroscope at different light sorces, (my window, a light bulb, a "energy efficient" light bulb) the colors changed.  Not the actual colors but the spacing of them, and their thickness. For example, sunlight has the largest spacing between the colors. My desk lamp, however, has almost no spacing. How this works is very complicated.

As Wikipedia explaines it, 

"When a material is heated to incandescence it emits light that is characteristic of the atomic makeup of the material. Particular light frequencies give rise to sharply defined bands on the scale which can be thought of as fingerprints. For example, the element sodium has a very characteristic double yellow band known as the Sodium D-lines at 588.9950 and 589.5924 nanometers, the color of which will be familiar to anyone who has seen a low pressure sodium vapor lamp."

Of course, my first reaction is "What the #$!&*?"

However, This is what I think Wikipedia means.

The spectroscope breaks up the light into different colors. Kind of like the RGB in a picture. (for you non-geeks, each pixel in a picture has a certain value of Red, Green, and Blue. mixed together, these create the final color.) Depending on the light sorce, these colors are split apart, which create the black spaces between them. (These are called Fraunhofer lines, after the man who discovered them.) Based on this combination of colors, thicknesses, and spaces, scientists can determine some part of the chemical makeup of the light source, as well whether or not it is moving.

Below, you can see some pictures I have taken of the bars.

My brother sam is dead: liturature update

The book that I just started reading is called "My Brother Sam is Dead". It is about the Revolutionary War, and the very beginnings of how it started. Right now, the main charecter is a boy (Tim) who's father is a loyalist to Dngland. However, Tim's brother, Sam, is a Patriot, and is part of the Minutemen. I am only a few pages into it, but it has started out well. The main conflict so far is "Father", and Sam fighting. Tim's Father wants to remain loyal to England, but Sam wants to fight for fredom. Because the book is written in the first person, you have unique insight into the thoughts of Tim, and allows you a interesting view of the Revolutionary War. I will post again when I am farther into the book.

Scientist Study:Microscope

I am back to my study of scientists, after 3 weeks of learning about spies. Today, I learned about early microscopes. Although the true inventor of microscopes is unclear, Ernst Abbe is credited with making the microscope a feasible tool in science. Although Ernst is credited with making the microscope more advanced, Galileo Galilei actually discovered the properties of a inverted telescope with a lens on the end. In this way, he made a kind of rudimentary microscope. Like the telescope that Galileo invented, however, his microscope was just an early version, or a prototype. Ernst Abbe changed the microscope into a powerful tool that unlocked worlds that no one had ever seen before. In 1886, Ernst created formulas that allowed him to calculate the best type of glass to use, and how the lenses should be positioned on combined.

Today, I built a microscope of my own, based on the model made by Galileo. You can see some pictures of it below.

You can see the lens that I taped onto the edge here. To make this microscope, I took my telescope, (Which I wrote about earleir) flipped it upside-down, and taped this lens onto the end. Sorry that I couldn't get any pictures of it in action, but I couldn't get the camera to take a picture through the lens. However, I was able to look at induvidual ink dots in a letter, and look at a picture up close.