Best Lab Equipment

Here are some more information for Milligram Scale:

Scaly Surprises: The Secrets of Snakes

Hey kids, close your eyes for a moment and imagine that your arms are stuck to your sides and your legs are stuck together. Imagine that you have no ears, and that you smell with your tongue. And imagine that your entire body is covered with fingernails.

Seems strange, doesn't it? Now you know what it's like being a snake!

Snakes are a group of reptiles closely related to lizards. Most people think that the big difference between them is that lizards have legs and snakes don't, but there are some legless lizards, and some snakes that have little "claws" near their tails which are actually the remnants of hind legs!

Actually, the biggest differences between snakes and lizards are the ears, eyes, and scales.

Snakes don't have eyelids like lizards do. Instead, their eyes are covered by a clear, hard scale. If something gets in a snake's eye, the snake licks its eyes clean using its tongue!

Snakes also don't have ear openings on their heads at all! Instead, snakes hear though vibrations that travel though the air and the ground. So if you want to frighten away any snakes, all you need to to is stamp very hard as you walk.

Snakes don't use legs to get around, either. They move by slithering with their bodies, and using their scales to help hold them in place.  Snake scales cover their entire bodies, and the widest scales are on their bellies. Their scales sit in your skin just like fingernails do, and help to grip the ground as a snake moves.

Because they are also hard, like your fingernails, scales don't stretch as a snake grows. That's why snakes have to shed their scales as they grow. They crawl out of the old, too-small skin, and leave it behind like a long sock!

Fun fact #1: Biggest Snake: You can divide snakes up into two groups: those who catch their prey by biting them with poisonous fangs, and those who catch their prey by squeezing. The biggest snakes are the squeezers, or constrictors. The title for biggest snake is shared between two species: anacondas and pythons. Anacondas are the heaviest snakes, and can weigh up to 550 pounds. Reticulated pythons are the longest; they can reach up to 10 metres (33 feet) long. That's like laying eight 10-year-olds end-to-end!

Fun Fact #2: Most Poisonous Snake: The Taipan is a snake that lives in Australia, and its venom will clot your blood, turning it into a thick soup, and destroy all your organs. It also doesn't need a lot of venom to do that.  Terry Phillip, a curator at Reptile Gardens, says: "1 milligram of the venom is equal to 1 M&M candy cut into 1,000 equal pieces and [one of those pieces] is how much it takes to kill one adult human being." That is one deadly snake!

Fun Fact #3: Greatest Actor: The hognose snake is a burrowing snake that is harmless to humans, but if anything threatens it, it will flatten out its head, rear up, and hiss, just like a cobra! Better yet, if that doesn't work to scare off the threat, the hognose will roll over on its back and play dead with its tongue hanging out of its mouth. Even if you flip it over onto its belly, it will just roll on to its back again!

Discover more kids science articles, look up amazing fun facts, do animated science quizzes with talking characters, meet friends in virtual worlds, play games and do fun science activities at Science Score – the world's most fun online elearning product for kids. Join the thousands of kids to play with Science Score and do well in Science. Visit http://www.sciencescore.com/home/sciencequizforkids.php

About the Author

Sarah Jane Elliott is a contributing author of curious science articles for an online kids science portal. She holds a honors bachelor of Science degree from University of Toronto, specializing in zoology and behavior. Sarah is an author of speculative fiction, as well as a teacher and museum educator. Visit http://www.sciencescore.com.

Do all science labs have milligram scales?

i need to know quickly because i have a science fair project and i need to know how to weigh it in milligrams

Not all do, but most chemistry labs will have one. Talk to the chemistry teacher at your high school (I'm assuming you're a student in high school or middle school) and he or she will probably let you use it.

Rexahn says depression drug missed study goal
Rexahn Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Tuesday that its experimental depression drug Serdaxin did not meet its main goal in a clinical trial, but said it plans to continue studying the drug after seeing some positive results.

Thanks for visiting!