Ant Architecture

This project lets you observe the elaborate tunneling structures of an ant colony and determine the social organization of ants.

You will need

• 2 wide-mouth glass jars
• Frozen-orange-juice can or similar can
• Small dish
• Fine cloth netting
• Rubber band
• Digging spade
• White paper
• Soil sample with ants
• Gardening gloves
• Small block of wood
• Pie tin
• Black construction paper
• Cellophane tape

Procedure

• Collect workers ants by using the digging spade to gently lift soil under flat rocks. Place the soil sample on the white paper and gently stir it. As the ants scatter, fold the paper and brush both soil and ants into the jar. Replace the jar lid without screwing it on.

Caution : Use gardening gloves when collecting ants. Some species bite.

• Continue digging until you see ants scattering with larvae. Take one final clump of soil and place it on the white paper. As you gently break it up, you should see the much larger and paler ant queen emerge. If she doesn't appear, take another soil sample and repeat the procedure.
• Deposit the queen in the jar and screw the lid on. Take the jar to where you'll set up your colony.
• Place the frozen-orange-juice can in the center of jar #2. Remove the lid from jar #1 and use tablespoon to transfer the soil and ants jar #2. Be extra careful that you don't harm any ants, particularly the queen, during this procedure.
• When you've surrounded the orange can with ants and soil, rest a small water-filled dish on top of the can. Place netting over the mouth of the jar and secure it with the rubber band.
• Partly fill the pie tin with water, and place the block of wood in the center.
• Rest the ant-colony jar on the block of wood so that the water in the pie tin forms a kind of moat around the jar. This will keep ants clever to squeeze through the netting from escaping.
• Make a wide tube of black construction paper to fit snugly over the jar. Place the tube over the jar, and leave your ants undisturbed in a warm location for 24 hours.
• Remove the tube to watch the ants; add bits of bread occasionally to feed your colony.

Result

The ants construct an elaborate connecting network tunnels close to the inner surface of the jar. Some tunnels appear to end in small chambers where larvae are kept.

Explanation

Calmed by the presence of their queen and no longer feeling threatened, your ants waste no time in setting up house. Ant colonies have an elaborate structure of tunnels, chambers, nurseries for larvae, and even "gardens" of nutritious molds. As your colony develops, so will the complexity of the tunneling system. You may even notice an ant "cemetery" after a while! The social order of ant colonies usually include three classes: winged, fertile females; wingless infertile females, or workers; and winged males. In some species, workers may become soldiers or other specialized types.

Without the black construction paper, the ants would tunnel towards the jar's interior rather than close to its surface.

Display Tip

Document your ant collecting with photographs. Display the living colony in your booth. Use Post-It notes attached to your jar to identify some of the colony structures, such as tunnels, chambers, or nurseries. If you're lucky enough to have the queen exposed, clearly identify her.

Did You Know?

Not all ants live in tunnels. Some species of ants live in mounds they build above the ground, and other species live in wood. Army ants are mostly on the move, traveling in columns and destroying plants and animals in their way. When they do stop briefly, they live in tangled and structures made of their own bodies.

Homemade Perfume

Besides enhancing the flavors of foods, chemistry can please our sense of smell, too. For thousands of years, people have collected the aromatic oils of plants and seeds in order to make sweet-smelling waters and perfumes. But they had to squeeze a great numbers of to get just a few drops of oil, and scent of the oil did not last very long.

Perfume making is probably one of the oldest forms of chemistry. Perfume makers soon realized that, by adding other ingredients to a plant's essential oils, not only could less oil be used, but the essential oil's scent would last longer.



You will need:

* 7 small jars or vials with lids
* Rubbing alcohol
* Popsicle stick
* Cotton swab
* Tweezers
* Paper towel
* 1/8 cup sample of each : fragrant rose petals, gardenia blossoms, orange-tree (or lemon-tree) leaves, eucalyptus leaves, pine needles, mint leaves, and whole cloves
* Tape or marking pen for labeling


Procedure

1. Press as many plant and flower samples into 1/8 cup (30 ml) as you can. Place each sample in its own jar.
2. Except for the cloves, crush the samples as finely as you can with the Popsicle stick.
3. Add 2 teaspoons (10 ml) of rubbing alcohol and continue crushing.
4. Add about 10 cloves to one of the jars and then add alcohol.
5. Puts lids on all the jars, and allow them to sit on a warm place for about a week.
6. After a week, open one of the jars and dip in the cotton swab. Lift the swab towards your face, and fan the air around the moist tip so that the odor reaches your nose.
7. Dab the moist tip against the back of your wrist, then allow the spot to dry. Smell it.
8. Use the tweezers to remove a sample of the plant material, and let it dry on the paper towel. Smell it.

Result

The moist swab had a strong alcohol scent mixed with the plant scent. After you allowed the liquid to dry on your skin, your skin had only the plant scent and no alcohol odor. The sample of dried plant has little or no scent.


Explanation

Alcohol dissolves the aromatic oils in plants so that the plant's oil are removed from the plant tissue, suspended in the alcohol, and preserved. Alcohol also evaporates very quickly when exposed to air. When you placed a sample of homemade perfume on your wrist and exposed it to the air, the alcohol dried quickly, leaving behind only the aromatic oil.


Display Tip

Document each stages of your perfume-making procedure with photograph. Place the actual jars of perfume on your display table, along with some clean cotton swabs so that your perfumes may be sampled. You can also dab a small amount of perfume on separate index cards and label them. Place a sample or picture of each type of plant you've used to create your perfumes.

Did You Know?

About hundred years ago, perfume manufacturers used a secret ingredients as a fixative to keep the scent from evaporating too quickly. The ingredient, ambergris, is a waxy liquid that coats the stomachs of sperm whales and protects the whales fro the sharp bones of cuttlefish. Ambergris has the strange property of turning into a solid as soon as it is removed from the whale and exposed to air, and early photographs of whale hunters show them covered with icicles of ambergris as they packed the stuff into pails for transporting. Luckily, no one uses ambergris anymore due to the chemical substitutes, and the needless killing of whales has almost stopped.

Photos Gallery of Online E-E-Camp, Presentation By Faisal Kashif From MIT USA About his Invention