Day 7 – Pollen and Dust: What’s in the Air?

 

Day 7 – Pollen and Dust: What’s in the Air?

Blog Title: Airborne Mysteries – Pollen, Spores, and Dust Bunnies

Place sticky tape near windowsills or wave it through the air, then stick it on a slide.

Look for:

• Pollen grains (from flowers or grass)

• Fungal spores

• Dust mite remains or household fibres

• Ash, fluff, or mystery fluff!

Bonus: Compare pollen from different flower types in the garden.

🌬️ Biology Blog – The Magic of Microscopes

Day 7: Airborne Mysteries – Pollen, Spores, and Dust Bunnies

You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. But the air around you is teeming with life—or at least evidence of it. Today, we’re pointing our microscopes at something that floats silently through our homes, classrooms, and gardens: pollen, spores, and dust.

If you’ve ever sneezed in a sunbeam or watched specks dance in the light, you’ve seen the tip of the microscopic iceberg. Let's take a deep breath (carefully!) and see what we can capture from the invisible world around us.

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🔍 What You’ll Need

• A low-power or digital microscope

• Sticky tape or clear slides with petroleum jelly

• A torch or good side-lighting

• Optional: a few flowers, air filter, or feather duster!

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🧪 Collecting Air Samples

There are several fun ways to catch airborne particles:

• Gently press clear sticky tape onto a windowsill, curtain, or bookshelf.

• Hold it in the air and wave it slowly around for a few seconds.

• Leave a petroleum jelly-smeared slide near a window for a few hours.

• Brush dust from furniture or a fan blade directly onto a slide.

Press the tape onto a glass slide (sticky side up) and observe. Alternatively, just place it under the digital microscope lens.

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🧬 What to Look For

🌼 Pollen Grains

• Come in a wild variety of shapes: spiky, round, ridged, or smooth

• Often yellow, orange or clear depending on plant

• Larger grains = insect-pollinated, smaller grains = wind-pollinated

• Some are beautifully symmetrical under the lens

Compare: pollen from a daisy, grass, and pine tree—they look completely different!

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🍄 Fungal Spores

• Tiny and often oval, round, or club-shaped

• May be grey, green, or clear

• Found in household dust, especially in damp areas or near soil

• Sometimes seen clumped together in spore packets

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🐾 Household Dust

• A mix of: skin flakes, fibres, pet hair, insect parts (!), plant debris, and more

• Can contain:

  • Feather fragments

  • Dust mites or their droppings

  • Synthetic fibres

  • Tiny grains of soil or sand

Yes, the average dust bunny is a mini museum of life. Slightly gross? Maybe. Absolutely fascinating? Definitely.

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📸 Photo Tips

• Use side-lighting to create contrast on clear particles

• Try viewing dry dust and then the same dust with a drop of water—it changes shape and clarity

• Use your phone camera to take a “Microscopic Sky” photo collage!

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👨‍🔬 Microscope Log Challenge

Create a logbook page for airborne finds:

Sample Type	Shape	Colour	Likely Identity	Notes
Spiky ball	Round	Yellow	Dandelion pollen	Very common
Oval blob	Clear	N/A	Fungal spore	Found near soil
Fibre	Blue	Shiny	Synthetic thread	From curtain

And that wraps up our Summer Tour of the Hidden World! From pond life to pollen, every drop, strand, and speck revealed something new. With just a microscope and your curiosity, the world never looks the same again.

Day 6 – Hair, Fur, and Fibres

 

Day 6 – Hair, Fur, and Fibres

What’s That Strand? A Microscopic Tour of Hair and Fibres

Collect:

• Human hair (different colours, thickness)

• Pet fur (dog, cat, rabbit if possible)

• Wool, cotton, polyester threads

Compare natural vs synthetic fibres, and zoom in on split ends and dye penetration.

🧵 Biology Blog – The Magic of Microscopes

Day 6: What’s That Strand? A Microscopic Tour of Hair and Fibres

Today we’re heading into the tangled world of hair and fibres—those everyday threads that hold our clothes together, make up our pets’ fur, and cover our own heads (unless you’ve opted for the aerodynamic look).

At first glance, hair and fibres seem simple—but put them under a microscope and they reveal patterns, textures, and stories you’d never spot with the naked eye. Some are smooth, some scaly, some twisted like ropes, and others packed with pigment.

So grab your microscope and a lint roller—it’s time for some forensic-style strand analysis!

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🔍 What You’ll Need

• A low-power or digital microscope

• A slide and coverslip or sticky tape

• A collection of fibres:

  • Human hair (from different people)

  • Pet fur (dog, cat, rabbit, etc.)

  • Wool, cotton, polyester, and nylon threads

  • Dyed vs undyed fabric fibres

  • Optional: a mystery fibre to identify!

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🧬 What to Look For

👱‍♀️ Human Hair

• Appears as a long, cylindrical structure

• May show cuticle scales if lighting is angled well

• Differences between thick vs fine, straight vs curly, and light vs dark

• Split ends, breakage, and dye bands can often be seen!

Fun to Try: Compare strands from different people—age, colour, or hair products can change the appearance.

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🐶 Pet Fur

• Usually shorter and finer than human hair

• Can be hollow or layered, depending on the animal (e.g. insulating undercoat)

• Some animals, like rabbits or cats, have downy fluff that looks cloudy or matted under the lens

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🧶 Natural vs Synthetic Fibres

• Wool: Wavy, twisted, may show scales

• Cotton: Flattened, twisted ribbon-like appearance

• Polyester: Smooth, shiny, uniform strands

• Nylon: Transparent, glossy, sometimes with bubble-like imperfections

Try This: Burn a tiny piece (safely!) to compare smell and ash—classic textile test!

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🔬 Hair-Raising Investigations

Use sticky tape to lift fibres from your clothes, sofa, or even classroom floor. You’ll get a true cross-section of daily life—stray hairs, mystery threads, fluff, and the occasional eyelash.

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👨‍🔬 Microscope Log Challenge

Record the source, colour, and texture of each strand and describe what you see.

Strand Type	Source	Colour	Shape	Notes
Hair	Human (Alex)	Brown	Round, smooth	Slight kink near root
Fur	Dog (Max)	White	Fine, wispy	Matted near tip
Fibre	Wool jumper	Grey	Wavy, rough	Irregular width
Fibre	Polyester fleece	Blue	Smooth, shiny	Very uniform

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📸 Top Tip: Contrast is Key

Place light hairs on black card and dark ones on white. Use side-lighting to bring out surface details like scales or texture.

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🧵 Tweet Teaser

What’s that strand? Hair, fur, and fibres reveal their secrets under the microscope!
From scaly human hair to shiny polyester, every thread tells a story. #MicroscopeMadness #HiddenWorld #HairAndFibres

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Hair today, gone tomorrow—but your fibre collection might just grow into a hobby of its own. Tomorrow we wrap up our microscopic summer tour with the floatiest, fluffiest blog yet: Pollen, Dust, and What’s in the Air!

Summer-themed text adventure

 

No homework? Perfect time to code your own summer-themed text adventure.

🎮 Gaming in Python – Creating a Summer Holiday Adventure

Summer holidays are the perfect time to learn something new — and what better way to build skills and have fun than by creating your own text-based adventure game in Python?

Forget mindlessly playing games — this is about designing, coding, and thinking creatively. It’s not just coding, it’s storytelling, logic, data handling, and project management rolled into one.

Welcome to the world of Python adventure games.

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🧠 Why Text-Based Games?

Before Fortnite, before Minecraft, there was Zork, Adventureland, and The Hobbit — games that ran purely on text. You typed commands like go north, open door, or use key, and the story responded.

These games:

• Require no graphics (perfect for beginners)

• Let you focus on coding logic and structure

• Encourage creativity and problem-solving

• Help students build confidence in Python

Bonus: they’re wildly nostalgic for teachers and surprisingly addictive for students.

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🧱 Building the Game – Step by Step

Here’s how we structure the project during tuition or workshops:

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🔹 1. Map Your World

Start with a map. Your game needs rooms, paths, and descriptions. Whether it’s a haunted mansion, a space station, or a tropical island, draw it out first.

Example:

• Bedroom → Hallway → Library → Secret Passage → Dragon’s Lair

Teach students how to:

• Create a dictionary of rooms

• Link rooms via directions (north, east, etc.)

python
rooms = {
    'bedroom': {'desc': 'You are in a cosy bedroom.', 'east': 'hallway'},
    'hallway': {'desc': 'A long corridor with paintings.', 'west': 'bedroom', 'south': 'library'}
}

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🔹 2. Add Movement Commands

Handle user input with simple logic:

python
command = input("> ").lower()
if command == "go east":
    current_room = rooms[current_room]['east']

Students learn:

• Input handling

• If/else control structures

• String parsing

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🔹 3. Add Objects and Inventory

Let players pick up items and solve puzzles:

• Create lists for inventory

• Add item interactions: keys that unlock doors, books with clues, potions that change things

python
inventory = []
items = {'library': 'ancient book'}

if command == "take book":
    inventory.append('ancient book')
    items['library'] = None

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🔹 4. Add Conditions, Scores, and Endings

Make the game dynamic:

• Use flags to track progress

• Add a scoring system

• Include multiple endings based on choices

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🔹 5. Add a Dash of Humour

Encourage students to write fun, engaging descriptions. The creativity shines here – even those less confident with code can shine as storytellers.

“You step into the library. A dusty parrot eyes you suspiciously from the chandelier.”

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🧪 The Learning Outcomes

This one project covers:

• Data structures: dictionaries, lists

• Control structures: if, while, loops

• Functions and modular coding

• Debugging and testing

• User interface design

• Creative writing and narrative design

Perfect for KS3 Computing, GCSE Computer Science, and even as a Year 12 refresher.

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🧰 Going Further: Add Graphics and Sound

Once the text game is solid, we often challenge students to:

• Add sound effects using pygame

• Display images or maps

• Convert to a clickable game with tkinter or a GUI

Our studio can even help students record voiceovers, soundtracks, and turn it into a playable web game — gaming meets filmmaking!

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🎓 What We Offer

At Philip M Russell Ltd, we teach computing by making it real, engaging, and fun. From Python to Raspberry Pi to building your own PC, our lessons go beyond the curriculum.

Learn to code. Build a game. Tell a story.
One-to-one tuition in our classroom, studio or online.

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📅 Sign up for GCSE/A-Level Computer Science tuition today
🔗 www.philipmrussell.co.uk
🎮 Because every coder starts with a game.

Here's a simple but expandable Python word parser that can be used for a text-based adventure game. This parser interprets the player's input like go north, take key, or look room and splits it into verb and noun (or direction/object). It’s the basis of how your game understands commands.

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🧩 Basic Word Parser in Python

python
def parse_command(command):
    """
    Parses the user's input into a verb and noun.
    Returns a tuple: (verb, noun)
    """
    command = command.lower().strip()  # Make lowercase and remove whitespace
    words = command.split()

    if len(words) == 0:
        return ("", "")  # Empty command
    elif len(words) == 1:
        return (words[0], "")  # e.g., "inventory"
    else:
        return (words[0], " ".join(words[1:]))  # e.g., "take golden key"

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💡 How to Use It in the Game

Here’s an example of how this fits into the game loop:

python
while True:
    command = input("> ")
    verb, noun = parse_command(command)

    if verb == "go":
        if noun in rooms[current_room]:
            current_room = rooms[current_room][noun]
            print(f"You move {noun} to the {current_room}.")
        else:
            print("You can't go that way.")
    
    elif verb == "look":
        print(rooms[current_room]['desc'])
    
    elif verb == "take":
        if noun == items.get(current_room):
            inventory.append(noun)
            items[current_room] = None
            print(f"You picked up the {noun}.")
        else:
            print(f"There is no {noun} here.")
    
    elif verb == "inventory":
        print("You are carrying:", ", ".join(inventory) or "nothing.")
    
    elif verb in ("quit", "exit"):
        print("Goodbye adventurer.")
        break
    
    else:
        print("I don't understand that command.")

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🧪 Example Use

markdown
> go north
> take lantern
> inventory
> look
> quit

The parse_command() function turns those into:

python
("go", "north")
("take", "lantern")
("inventory", "")
("look", "")
("quit", "")

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🧠 Extensions You Can Add Later

• Support for synonyms (e.g., “grab” = “take”, “exit” = “go out”)

• Better error handling ("go tree" could say "that's not a valid direction")

• Two-word verb support (e.g., "turn on torch")

• Tokenisation to allow commands like "take the golden key"