Featured

How Soap KILLS the Coronavirus

This article is so awesome. Here’s a quick excerpt, but be sure to check out the full info by clicking here.

“…when you wash your hands with soap and water, you’re not just wiping viruses off your hands and sending them down the drain. You’re actually annihilating the viruses, rendering them harmless. Soap “is almost like a demolition team breaking down a building and taking all the bricks away,” says Palli Thordarson, a chemistry professor at the University of New South Wales, who posted a viral Twitter thread on the wonders of soap.

In a recent phone call, he explained why soap is such an effective Covid-19 killer and why it’s so important to soap your hands for at least 20 seconds.

The soap takes care of the virus much like it takes care of the oil in the water. “It’s almost like a crowbar; it starts to pull all the things apart,” Thordarson says.

One side of the soap molecule (the one that’s attracted to fat and repelled by water) buries its way into the virus’s fat and protein shell. Fortunately, the chemical bonds holding the virus together aren’t very strong, so this intrusion is enough to break the virus’s coat. “You pull the virus apart, you make it soluble in water, and it disintegrates,” he says.

Then the harmless shards of virus get flushed down the drain. And even if it the soap doesn’t destroy every virus, you’ll still rid them from your hands with soap and water, as well as any grease or dirt they may be clinging to. Soap will also wash away bacteria and other viruses that may be a bit tougher than coronavirus, and harder to disintegrate.

The trick is this all takes a little time to happen, and that’s why you need to take at least 20 seconds to wash your hands.”

(Read on)

Academics

Women’s College Resources

In honor of Women’s History Month, the team at BestColleges.com put together a series of guides that celebrates and supports women who choose to earn a degree. The Women’s History Month series features top programs, a plethora of scholarships and resources specifically for women, and highlights of women scientists.

Their goal is to share these resources and get them in front of both women and girls to inspire future generations of STEM leaders, global advocates, and college graduates. Please take a look below:

Women’s History Month Series

Top Programs:
https://www.bestcolleges.com/features/top-womens-colleges/

Scholarships & Resources:
https://www.bestcolleges.com/resources/scholarships-and-resources-for-women/

Women Leaders in Science:
https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/10-women-who-made-scientific-history/

A note for Girl Scout Ambassadors: These resources pair well with the College Knowledge badge!

Activities for Kids

SeaWorld & Crayola Experience

Members of the tourism and attractions community continue to provide online content for entertainment and educational purposes during the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down schools and theme parks alike. Add offerings from Orlando-based SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment and the Crayola Experience to the options.

SeaWorld Orlando and its sister park Busch Gardens Tampa Bay have made public some of its (mostly) animal-driven resources that are tailored to students between kindergarten and 12th grade.

Included are a series of fact sheets called Animal Bytes, which spotlight dozens of species; a broader InfoBooks series; information about careers that involve working with animals; the Saving a Species series and a series of playable animal sounds.

With just a casual browse of the offerings, I learned facts about the blue tang (and that there’s a bony fish called the lookdown), consider saving the cheetah and heard the cries of a camel, a gibbon and a Clydesdale. (Most unnerving: the sounds from a beluga whale and a Florida panther.)

The information is available through seaworld.org.

Meanwhile, Crayola Experience, which has an Orlando location inside Florida Mall, is offering crafting instruction, games, apps, coloring pages and science experiments using household items.

To sign up for their downloads, go to crayolaexperience.com/athome.

Other experiences will be posted on the social media platforms for both Crayola Experience and Crayola.