Pros & Cons of Blogging

Greeting fellow bloggers!

Today I’m going to write about what I liked and disliked about blogging-

I, personally, really liked blogging – I think it is a very good creational exercise – everybody got to write about something of their interest, which is always fun. I like the fact that the project was very liberal, and I also liked that we got to practice writing in a non-formal manner – which is always useful in the future. I mean, when we’re older, we’re not going to only have to write essays – we need to know how to both write formally (which we covered in class with in-class essays and several other projects), but we also need to know how to write informal emails, notes, and whatnot – blog-writing gives us the experience. I also think it is a great opportunity since it’s not like anything we’ve ever done before – it’s something new and original.

The only flaw I see to blogging is finding a topic to write about – but once you find one that fits your interests, it’s great.

I loved blogging and I think it’s a great project which a vast majority of kids are going to like since everybody can make of it something they enjoy. 

Paper Cuts

Paper cuts – I hate them! They always occur unexpectedly, and they produce a lot of pain. I’ve always wondered – how can something so flexible, skinny, and seemingly harmless, be so dangerous and hurtful.

The primary reason why paper cuts are so painful lies in where they generally occur - fingers/fingertips. Our hands and fingers have many more nerve fibers per square millimeter than most of the rest of our body – this makes cuts in general which occur in hands and fingers more painful than in other parts of our body.

However, paper cuts seem to sore much more than other cuts; they can even be more painful than other cuts that occur on fingers. This is because the edges of paper are very dull and flexible compared to knives and sharp objects – this causes paper, when it cuts through your flesh, to do a lot more microscopic damage as it rips through your skin. You could imagine it as a very dull knife with which you are trying to cut a piece of steak with – you will have to saw the steak more harshly with a dull knife than with a sharp knife. When you finally cut a piece of meat with the dull knife, the cut you’ve made will be a lot more mutilated than a cut done with a sharp knife. When paper cuts through your flesh, a similar thing occurs, which can be greatly noticed at a microscopic view.

Also, the fact that paper cuts are very shallow affect the duration of the wound – this is due to the cut usually not creating, if any, much blood. This causes the wound itself to remain open since the platelets, which are found in the blood, are the ones that cause the wound to close by clotting on the opening. This leaves the nerve cells open to the air and various irritants, causing these wounds to remain open much longer than more significant cuts.

Hope you found it interesting learning about the reasons to why paper cuts are so painful J

Izzie

Wrinkly Fingers in Water

I went swimming this week; as I came out of the water and noticed my wrinkly fingers, I wondered why. Since I’ve been very young, I’ve always questioned myself this; however, I’ve never been determined enough to find out the answer. Well, not until this time – I came home with one sole goal in mind: figure out why fingers become wrinkly in water. This blog is proof that I did search for it J.

Here it goes –

We all have an oily substance that protects our skin – water washes away this oily substance. When this happens, a type of dead cells on your outer layer of skin will start to swell up the water. However, the inner layer of skin will remain the same, and so will the connections between the two layers. Therefore, when the outer skin swells up, the places where it is connected to the inner layer will remain closely bonded whilst the places which are not connected are free to swell.  

You may be wondering – why do skin cells on fingers and toes swell, and not skin cells all over the body? Cells do swell and absorb water all over the skin layer of our body, just that they aren’t as visible. The reason is that fingers and toes contain a thicker layer of both the inner and outer layers of skin – which, noticeably, cause the skin to swell up more due to more cells absorbing the water.

Hope you enjoyed my mini lesson of the week J -  

Izzie