The book’s structure & rhetorical strategies/style

Chris Mooney organized this book in a way that you will recognize the problems he is talking about and then understand them, and finally, begin looking for new solutions. Chris pointed out the main struggle that science goes through, which is religion, for they are always conflicting setting each other back. By doing this, the reader can think of ways to get science and religion to coexist, something that many scientist believe is possible. Chris Mooney also writes about current problems that need scientist to solve, but politicians keep pushing the problems to the side and ignore the advice of scientist, which in turn will just create bigger problems.

The author’s persona, tone, and intended audience

I believe that the intended audience for this book is supposed to be for the general population. I believe that the author, Chris Mooney, wants the population to see the importance of science in our daily lives and in politics in order to have more technological and scientific advances in the future. His tone is more of an irritated tone towards politicians and corporate businesses that keep pushing science out of the mainstream and feeding the public pseudoscience and gossip and keeping the public unaware of what happening in the scientific community.

Thesis/Purpose of Unscientific America, How Scientific Illiteracy Affects our Future

The purpose of this book is to alert the audience of a growing problem in the American society. Throughout the book, the author, Chris Mooney describes how throughout the past 40 years, America has slowly been declining as a leader in the field of Science. He describes that after the cold war, technological advances slowed down because the U.S. no longer had a foreign enemy that it was competing with to be scientifically and technologically more advanced. Since then, the importance of science has dropped dramatically. I have never noticed science not being much of a curriculum at school since I never lived during the time when science was everywhere. But for Chris Mooney to talk about science no longer being taken seriously, and giving statistics such as "For ever 5 hours of cable news, 1 minutes is devoted to science." This book has alerted me of how serious this problem is because we are letting faith lead us, and when faith leads people, drastic things happen, such as the Salem witch trails.

Questions for Monday's guest speaker

How much has agriculture changed in the past 50 years?

Is the agriculture business doing anything to prevent bee colony collapse?

Is it possible for agriculture to be completely organic and still support a population this big?

Is all agriculture food genetically modified?

What is the agriculture's business dirty secrets??

Lab Write Up

Lab Write-Up

1. The proportions of what three particles are used to determine soil texture? Which of these particles has the smallest surface area? Which has the largest?

We use the proportions of clay, silt, and sand to determine soil texture in this lab. The particle with the smallest particle is clay and the particles with the largest surface area is sand.

2. Using the soil texture triangle (Next Page), to determine the type of soils with the following particle sizes

a. 20% silt, 10% clay, 70% sand Sandy Loam	b. 30% sand, 10% clay, 60% silt Silt Loam
c. 10% silt, 50% sand, 40% clay Sandy Clay	d. 30% clay, 30% sand, 40% silt Clay Loam
e. 40% sand, 10% silt, 50% clay Clay	f. Determine the soil type for your sample based on your % volumes. 10% clay, 10% silt, 70% sand Sandy loam

What role does humus play in soil fertility?
Humus plays an important role in soil fertility because it is the organic matter that feed the micro-organisms in the soil. Without humus the soil would not be as fertile creating an imbalance of organisms in the soil.

Why is pH such an important aspect of soil fertility?
pH is important aspect of soil fertility because the level of pH will will influence what kind of organisms that will live in the soil. These can affect how the plants grow since each plant has an optimum pH level in which it will flourish.

What are some natural sources of the nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous found in soil?
Animal waste, insect waste, bacteria

How are the three primary plant nutrients used by living organisms?
Living organisms use the three primary nutrients to keep a chain of life going. When on nutrient is consumed a different nutrient comes out as a waste product that is then consumed and so on.
By what process is atmospheric molecular nitrogen (N2) converted into a form that plants can readily absorb through their roots? What form of nitrogen is this?
The process that turns nitrogen into N4 is when bacteria and fungi are eaten and then pooped out. Bacteria and fungi are rich in nitrogen and when they get eaten and pooped out they are turned into N4.

What are some possible sources of error in this experiment?
Some possible sources of error could probably be the amount of water put into the jar with dirt. Or another one might be not letting the water mix in long enough.

Evaluate the fertility of the soil used in this lab activity based upon your results.
Based on my results, I concluded that my soil was not very fertile since the nutrient levels were both low. If the nutrients are low not much life is going on. If there is not that much life not a lot of nutrients are around to be well fertile.
What types of vegetation does soil of the type and pH you sampled best support?
I think that my soil would best support desert plants because it has very little nutrients like the plants from the desert.

Photosynthesis Review

If I came back after spring break and saw that my plants had not been watered, i would be very upset. I would be mostly upset about the slow painful death that my crops had to go through. When the crops did not get watered, electrons were not being replenished in the electron transport chain so the plant was unable to create the energy needed in order to make sugars.

After inspecting my crops, I notice that the stomates on the underside of the leaf are closed. The only reason this has happened is because the plant was just trying to conserve his water. When this happens, a lot of the oxygen gets stored up inside the plant and CO2 isnt inhaled by the plant as much. In the end, the plant suffers critical loss of resources from both H2O and CO2, two of the main resources in photosynthesis.

Honors Reading Part 1 "Authors Credibility"

Entry 1: The authors credibility and background:

Quote:
"One side makes you smaller, one side makes you taller. The use of psilocybin as a psychoactive drug should not be taken too lightly. As a toy it is too often abused and the result makes you smaller mentally. As an aid to beyond your belief. Thus you grow taller in your psychic use, but I definitely condemn it's abuse."

Introduction: How to identify and grow
psilocybin mushrooms by Jule Stevens &
Rich Gee, p. 5

Background:
Jule Stevens and Rich Gee seem to me as young researchers looking into the study of Mycology. Together they have spent hours putting careful research into psilocybin mushrooms.This author might not know everything about these mushrooms but their research has been reviewed by other scientist and is now a well known as a go to book for information on psilocybin mushrooms that both professional mycologist and amateurs alike can go to get a great understanding of the mysterious magic mushroom.

Authors Purpose of Book:
I feel that the main goal of this author is to provide knowledge of psilocybin mushrooms to anyone that is interested on finding more knowledge of this specie that we know so little about. Throughout the book Jule Stevens and Rich Gee thouroughly talk about every process to properly identify psilocybin mushrooms. He also goes into much detail about growing this certain species either in your house or outdoors in a garden or lawn, showing different process that will yield in healthy mushroom crops that can be digested or further studied.