Ryder's Biology Blog by Ryder Cederberg https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog A blog for cool science stuff. en-us 2021-03-23 16:58:23 UTC 2026-03-18 04:44:19 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/721924646/b0bf4bc8addebce943cff42c21ec60e2/circle_cropped__2_.png Free Fertilizer rcederberg24 https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1350775272 Lately the weather has been turning from sunny to rainy. There is a small possibility that lightning could appear which is great for some. When lightning crashes, it fixes the Atmospheric Nitrogen into Nitrogen Dioxide. Clouds then use the Nitrogen Dioxide and mix it with water, forming Nitric Acid. These Nitric Acids then turn into Nitrates, which come down when it rains. This can be used by the soil and gives it the nutrients it needs that gets used up by plants. If the weather’s right, you can fertilize your soil without having to spend a penny! In India over thousands of years of farming, the soil was not tended to and the nutrients in the soil began to deplete. Although it is an irrigated country, only one-third of crops are irrigated. If lightning were to strike over the farmlands, it would give back nutrients back to the soil and increase crop growth. Hope you enjoyed these fun facts!]]> 2021-03-25 01:30:49 UTC https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1350775272 Bike Riding... And Paying Attention To Your Body. rcederberg24 https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1369071051 The weather is finally clearing up which means that I can start to go bike riding again, but riding comes with responsibilities. One of these responsibilities is making sure you eat the necessary nutrients. If you decide that nutrition is for nerds, you should feel great when your body loses all strength and you can’t pedal anymore. If you do decide that nutrition isn't for nerds, there are three nutrients that you need. These three are carbohydrates, protein, and fats. Carbohydrates are fast sources of energy that fuel the body. Great choices for carbohydrates are vegetables, fruits, apples, bananas, carrots, rice, pasta, and potatoes. These are the main choices that cyclists choose to eat. The next nutrients are proteins. Proteins are the building blocks of the body. Healthy choices for proteins are meats, eggs, nuts, and many types of beans. Lastly are healthy fats, which are great for long-term energy. Some examples are eggs, nuts, seeds, and dried fruits. Although I don’t like these examples of proteins, I would eat them if I had to. In addition to these three nutrients, you need water. Water helps digest food and expel waste. Water also helps power the cells to work in tip-top shape. Something I would eat before I ride is scrambled eggs, yogurt, and grapes. I also make sure to drink my water. For lunch, I might have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole-grain bread and apples with peanut butter. If I have a long day of riding, I might eat chicken, rice, and a salad. All of these nutrients are important when it comes to biking. Proteins get broken down into nutrients for your body which helps support bones and muscles, water helps bodily functions, and carbohydrates and fats get turned into energy. For these carbohydrates and fats to be turned into energy the body can use, it’s going to have to go through cellular respiration. In biking, this is very important. If you do not breathe properly, you are not taking in the oxygen you need for cellular respiration. When breathing properly, the body takes in oxygen from the oxygen cycle and transfers the energy in the glucose to ATP with the by-products being carbon dioxide and water. Now your body has the energy it can use and stops you from bonking. Another way of possibly not bonking and keeping your energy levels steady is supplementing with products like Gu, Honeystinger, Cliff Bloks, or sports drinks. My favorite is the Cherry Cliff Bloks. As long as you give the needed nutrients to your body, you should not have to worry about bonking on a bike ride.]]> 2021-03-30 17:50:25 UTC https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1369071051 Your Reaction Time is in your genetics? - 4/19/21 rcederberg24 https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1435152421      I was playing a computer game recently called Osu! It's a game about clicking circles all around your screen to the rhythm of a song. Since I’m pretty good at the game, I can play faster songs. I ended up missing a couple of circles because I didn't react fast enough, which was annoying because it made me fail the level. I thought to myself, do my genetics affect my reaction time? I really started to wonder. The short answer is not really. Now you must be asking, how is it not really? Is it a yes or a no?! Well, genetics does have something to do with someone's reaction time but not directly. Some disorders such as ADHD affect someone's attention, which leads to affecting it.
     Other things that could affect your reaction times could be a combination of sleep, age, gender, diet, audio or visual. These factors play a huge role. As of writing this, my average time is 226 milliseconds to a visual test. Some big factors that are delaying my response time right now is sleep and the test being visual. The factors that are making my time faster are my age, gender, and diet. Now if I were to sleep in, get all of the rest I wanted to, and tested it with an audio test, it would be much faster. Again, as of writing this exact sentence, my auditory time was an average of 201 milliseconds with the fastest being 161 milliseconds which is much faster than my visual test. Although the visual test is the only one that mattered when I was playing my game. None the less, the answer to my question is still not really. Wait, that's still not an exact answer! What truly affects your reaction time is sleep, gender, diet, and the type of stimuli. 
     While reading this, did you think, wow mine is much slower. Well, worry not because there are ways to make it faster. Wait really? Yes really. It should be obvious that playing games help, but as in the above paragraph, your diet can also affect you. Having a healthy diet can truly help you have a faster reaction. Another thing that can help is being relaxed. If you got mad at a game recently, take a small break to cool off. Seriously, it will help in the long run. Maybe you won't break your Xbox controller. Personally, I have never done that and I never will. It's just a game. You should also do some warm-ups, don't just go out there and expect to win, it's the same as sports. Lastly, is sleep. Sleep is extremely important, if you don’t get enough your brain won’t process the information as fast as it normally does. Now onto the technical aspect, using gaming equipment. You may be asking again, what type of gaming equipment? The gaming equipment you are going to want to use is a gaming monitor. Higher-end gaming monitors offer better Hertz. A monitor's hertz is how many times per second your monitor refreshes the screen. The next technical term is input delay, this term is self-explanatory. It is the delay in which the user presses a key and the time it takes for the game to recognize the input. These two things are big within the gaming community.
     In conclusion, genetics don't play such a big role in reaction times. It is mainly just sleep, gender, diet and the type of stimuli. Ways to increase it are through training, playing games, having a healthy diet, being relaxed, and getting enough sleep.

This Is A GIF of the game I was playing. It's pretty fun. But this is a GIF of missing the circles. I'm not this bad. You could also see all of the information about the game in the bottom right corner, which includes the input delay.
]]> 2021-04-19 20:38:58 UTC https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1435152421 How do game servers work and how are they so fast when they are sending data across the world? - 4/25/21 rcederberg24 https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1456794121 I love playing games but when you play online, you sometimes experience lag. For general computer use, who cares about lag. But for gamers, it’s our worst nightmare. You could be in the middle of a competitive game and BOOM. The lag hits, everything is frozen and no one can move except for you. In reality, you are the only one not moving so it’s an easy win for the other team. Your connection joins back and you notice that you died and lost the round for your team. Also, your teammates might be yelling at you for just sitting still. Not my fault. But here’s a question, how do game servers work? Not just game servers but servers in general. How do they truly work? I’ve talked with people online that were on the other side of the earth. That’s just crazy to think about! 

So how do you communicate with a server? When it comes to basic servers such as websites, it uses a simple request and response system. The person trying to access the website sends a request to the server, which basically says, “Give me data. NOW!” The server then understands that and gives the data back to the computer. Now you can watch that YouTube video you have been dying to see or just to find that funny gif on Facebook. This is the most basic form of a server. When it comes to game servers, it’s a bit different. With a game server, you are still using the request and response system. But now the server is doing the same thing to you. It’s asking you, “What have you done since the last time I asked? Have you tried to move your character? Have you tried to trigger something?” Your computer will then respond to the server’s request, so the next time someone else requests the data from the server it will contain your updated data. This is how a game server works. But to prevent extreme cheating such as teleporting people to you, the companies put a system in place. The server which is running all of the software releases only data that is needed to the players so everyone has an accurate view of what is really happening. This system prevents many extreme cheats that would break the game.

How can we communicate with these servers so fast? One major reason we can communicate with these servers so fast is because of their location. Most companies have servers located all around the world so users don’t lag. The next big reason is because of the servers internet provider. These servers use the fastest possible internet provider so they can get the data out faster. This most likely includes using fiber-optics which is as fast as the speed of light. Lastly, is due to the size of the data being transferred. The size of the data being transfer is around 20 - 200 bytes. The average internet speed is around 12 - 25 megabits per second. This means that the average WiFi speed could send that 200 bytes of data in less then a second. I tried using online calculators to find the time it would take and they all calculated 0 seconds.

In conclusion, people communicate with a server using a request and response system. Game servers use the same system but also use it on the user. We can communicate with servers really fast because of the server’s location, WiFi, and data size being transferred back and fourth.]]> 2021-04-25 18:48:15 UTC https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1456794121 What is static electricity? - 5 / 11 / 21 rcederberg24 https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1483416739      I was laying down in my bed recently and sometimes my mind wanders and topics pop in my head, but there was one topic that I thought of that I wanted to write about which is static electricity. You know, the stuff that makes your hair go all crazy when you go down the slide or put a ballon near your head. Yes, that stuff, which also shocks you when you give someone a handshake. I even shocked my cat when I was sitting on the rug petting her.

So what is static electricity?
     In simple terms, it’s an electric charge created by the rubbing of two objects in opposite directions. When you get more in detail, it’s caused when an object has an imbalance of electrons or electricity. It does not matter if it’s a negative or a positive imbalance. An example is when you rub your arms with a dry hand, you start to feel the heat which is the electric charge created by friction.

How is it conducted?
     The main way in which static electricity is conducted is through friction. Friction is caused when two objects going in opposite directions rub against each other. Each day, tons of people are creating friction without even knowing it. This is also creating static electricity, although the amount is so small that it doesn’t affect the person.

     Ending this topic, static electricity is an electric charge caused by an imbalance. The main way static electricity is conducted is through friction. Many people each day create a small amount of static electricity from friction.]]> 2021-05-03 00:55:15 UTC https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1483416739 How does coding work? - 6 / 1 / 21 rcederberg24 https://padlet.com/rcederberg24/blog/wish/1577152432      If there is one thing that I love to do when I have free time, it’s coding. Coding can be very tiresome but it’s also a lot of fun. Code is what makes the internet work. An example of code is the Padlet website. It’s made out of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) which makes the text pop up on the screen, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) that styles the website and tells the text where to go, how to look, and other things like text spacing, and finally JS (JavaScript) which runs all the data processing such as time, receiving data, and making some buttons work.

So what is code and how does it work?
     The definition of code is the conversion of information into another form. This still applies to computer code. But how does it work? In order to get coding languages to work, you're going to need to download them. If I have to download a coding language, how do my programs still work? The reason why programs still work is because they are already translated for you. This means that it’s already in a language the computer can understand when you download it. When you download a coding language, you download the converter know as a compiler. What it does is translate the specific coding language into a language the computer can understand. This language the computer can understand is called binary code which is comprised of 1s and 0s. The letter “a” in binary code is 01100001. This code is easier for the computer and makes running data faster.

What is coding used for?
     Earlier in the introduction, I talked about HTML, CSS, and JS. These three coding languages make up a website. One thing that is unique about these three specific coding languages is that you don’t need to download anything to make them work. All you need is a viewer such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Opera Browser. So what can code truly be used for? Well, almost anything! This could include making games, robots, AI, video players, drawing programs, or TV systems such as FireStick, and Roku. There is an infinite amount of things that can be made with code. With my free time, I like to make chat robots. Although they can't talk automatically, I code it so it follows orders and gives fun information. You should try out coding yourself!

     To sum it up, coding makes up the internet. Code is just an easier way of sending instructions to the computer to be processed. It can be used to make many different types of programs. It can also be used for fast and complicated calculations. So give it a try, you might be surprised what you can accomplish in a small amount of time!


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