The Science of Spring! | SciShow Kids Compilation

[Music] guess what it's finally spring where we live i love spring because it's finally warm enough to get outside and go on a hike squeaks love spring because he can play soccer again do you hear that that's another thing i love about spring the songbirds come back out and start singing hey squeaks do you remember when we learned why bird sing hi there squeaks and i were just outside bird watching and there are so many different kinds of birds some like the northern cardinal can sing beautiful songs just listen we call birds that sing like this song birds lots of birds sing for different reasons and for songbirds like cardinals singing is an important way for them to talk to each other cardinals will chirp and chitter all year long but in the spring they bring out their loudest and prettiest songs why do they sing so much in the spring they're getting ready to raise their babies like most animals you know cardinals are usually either a boy called a male or a girl called a female and they're pretty easy to tell apart male cardinals are bright red and female cardinals are brown and both male and female cardinals sing often for different reasons but during the spring they both sing much more than they usually do you see in the springtime cardinals are getting ready to build a nest lay eggs and raise little baby birds but they can't do it alone they need to find a mate another cardinal to help them feed and protect their babies a male cardinal wants to become a dad so when spring comes around he usually starts looking for a female mate to have and raise babies with he'll start singing and hope that a female cardinal will hear his song but showing a female cardinal that he'll be a good dad takes a lot of work female cardinals want to find a mate who's strong and smart who can find lots of food and who can protect their babies from other animals that might want to eat them so the male cardinal has to show that he's tough enough to protect his new family and the best way to do this is to sing loudly by singing loudly a male cardinal says here i am and i'm not afraid of anything he knows that other cardinals can hear him but there are also other types of animals listening too ones like hawks or cats that might want to eat him so his loud song shows that he isn't even afraid of getting eaten male cardinals will even try to sing louder than other males who might be nearby to prove that they're the toughest bird around tough enough to be a great dad now to call out to female birds male cardinals sing a special song called a mating call this song is different from his normal song it's meant just for the female a female that's nearby will want to see which brave male is singing his mating call so she can decide if she wants to raise her babies with him if she likes his song she'll let him fly over and they'll pair up for the spring now it's not just the males that sing female cardinals will also sing more in the spring too females learn different songs than the males and scientists are still trying to learn what the females are saying maybe someday we'll be able to understand everything these amazing birds are saying to each other until then we're just lucky that we get to enjoy their special springtime songs oh it sounds like it's gonna rain squeaks a nice spring rain is one of my favorite things oh yeah i don't blame you buddy i guess i wouldn't like rain very much if i was a robot either well we don't have to go outside but let's take a look at the time we learned about why it rains when you're thirsty nothing is better than a nice cool drink of water oh and it looks like my plant could use a drink of water too did you ever stop to think about where our water comes from sure when you get a drink of water it might come from a faucet or a bottle and i give my flower here water from a watering can but you know what the water that comes out of the faucet and the watering can may once have been part of a cloud or a snowflake or even the ocean awesome right and it's because of something called the water cycle now a cycle is a set of steps that repeat over and over when you get to the last step in a cycle you go back to the beginning and go through the steps again for example every year there are four seasons spring summer fall and winter and when winter is over it's time for spring again we go back to the beginning of the cycle in the water cycle all of the water on earth goes through a set of steps that repeat over and over let's start with a step in our water cycle where we open up our umbrellas that's right squeaks rain rain is water that falls from the sky some rain water soaks into the ground but a lot of it flows into little creeks and streams and then ends up in rivers lakes and eventually the ocean and then something really interesting happens some of this water changes you might have noticed that after it rains some water is left on the ground like in puddles that you can jump in but what happens to all that water it seems like it's there one day but then after a little while it's gone well that water didn't just disappear when the sun comes out and the ground gets warm water can change into a different form we call this form water vapor and water vapor is a gas the air we breathe it's a bunch of different gases mixed together and like the gases that make up air you can't see water vapor gas when the sun shines on rivers lakes and oceans some of the water changes into water vapor and then the water vapor goes up high very high up into the sky and it gets pretty cold up there so when the water vapor gets high enough it starts to get cool and as water vapor cools down it changes back into little drops of liquid water you can actually see water vapor change into water drops right at home all you need is a mirror or window in your mouth put your face close to the mirror or window open your mouth nice and wide and breathe out what happens the glass gets foggy that's because there's water vapor in your warm breath and when the water vapor in your breath touches the cool glass it changes into teeny tiny droplets a lot of the droplets together make the glass look cloudy and up in the sky a lot of water droplets together make clouds when there's a lot of water in a cloud the cloud starts to get darker white fluffy clouds start to turn gray and as the clouds get grayer the water in them gets heavier when the water gets too heavy it falls right back out of the clouds as rain and rain is where we started in the cycle we made it all the way back to the beginning now the water cycle can start all over again all the water on a great big earth goes through this same cycle over and over it falls to the ground as rain or snow and soon the water ends up in a river lake or ocean from there it heats up and turns into vapor and when the vapor rises into the sky and cools off it comes right back down so the water that you drink and the water that's in my watering can right now might once have been part of a raindrop that fell into the ocean on the other side of the world think about that the next time you take a drink now that the weather is warmer we can't wait to start planting our garden we grow carrots lettuce all kinds of flowers and they all start from tiny little seeds you're right squeaks it is pretty amazing oh hey guys squeaks and i are checking out our plants and they look great it's almost hard to believe that these beautiful flowers and plants came from the teeny tiny seeds we put in the pots just a few weeks ago you might be familiar with the little packets of seeds that you use to grow flowers or vegetables in your garden or maybe the sunflower seeds that you find in your snack mix but did you know that popcorn kernels beans peas acorns and rice are also seeds well one of our friends five-year-old dimidri wrote in to ask us how does the seed grow into a plant thanks for asking dimitri first of all seeds come in lots of different shapes and sizes but they're all made of three parts an outer shell called the seed coat a tiny baby plant that's inside the seed called the embryo and some plant food for the embryo called endosperm the seed coat has an important job it covers the entire seed protecting the little baby plant inside and keeping it from drying out the seed coat also has super sensing powers it has special chemicals in it that can tell when the seed is in the right place to start growing for example the sunflower seeds and the pumpkin seeds in your trail mix since that is not safe to grow after all seeds can't grow when they're surrounded by raisins and chocolate chips so while the seeds are in a bag or in your hands it's like they're asleep the seeds are still alive but they're dormant or inactive some seeds can stay like this for hundreds or even thousands of years great question squeaks to get started every seed needs water the right temperature and the right amount of light once the seed has these three things like one is planted in some nice wet soil the embryo or baby plant gets the signal to start growing for plants this growing process is called germination first the seed coat let some water through to the embryo but the embryo needs more than just water if it's going to grow good thing there's a whole bunch of plant food right there inside the seed until the plant can make its own food from sunlight which it will need leaves to do it relies on the endosperm for energy it's like the little baby plant has its own backpack of snacks so the embryo keeps growing and taking in more water until the seed coat cracks open and the embryo kicks out a kind of a foot but not at all like my foot the first part of the plant to come out of the seed is the root the root always grows downward no matter what way the seed is planted a seed can actually tell which way is up and which way is down so the root pushes down deeper and deeper into the soil looking for more water and minerals to feed the baby plant once the plant is all grown up those deep roots will have another job they'll help keep the plant from falling over or blowing away in the wind but soon after the first baby root finds its way into the dirt another part of the seed pops out this time in the opposite direction a shoot which has the stem of the plant and a few leaves pushes its way up towards the sunlight once the shoot breaks through the soil to the open air above we say that it's sprouted now the plant doesn't need the endosperm anymore because it can make its own food from sunlight with enough water and sunlight and the right temperature the young plant will continue to grow getting bigger and growing more leaves until it's an adult plant and it can produce seeds of its own one more thing that's really cool and kind of gross about spring is that all kinds of bugs start showing up pretty much anywhere you look you can find bees spiders centipedes worms and lots more in fact squeaks and i went on a bug safari in our backyard not too long ago check it out we're looking around the yard to see what kinds of things we can find and i know of a great place to find lots of cool stuff stuff that you might not otherwise see under rocks now the underside of a rock might not seem like a place where you and i would want to live it's dark it's kind of chilly and it's usually pretty damp but it's the perfect place to look for insects spiders slugs and other animals for lots of reasons for one thing there's lots to eat under there rotting leaves old grass and other kinds of plants make good food for small animals like insects and then other creatures like spiders eat insects so there's usually plenty of food to go around another reason that life's so good under a rock you and i might like sunshine but lots of other animals like it dark and damp the moisture under rocks keeps animals like worms from drying out and the darkness makes it easier for them to hide from hungry predators so if you want to find some cool creepy crawlies look no further than your nearest rock but here are a couple rock flipping tips first look for rocks that are in a quiet out of the way place you also want them to be kind of big but not too big otherwise you won't be able to turn them over so look for rocks that are about the size of a grown-up shoe it's also better to look under rocks that have dirt or grass under them instead of cement or other rocks and be careful when you turn it over if you're lucky enough to find something under there you can look at it but don't touch them okay ready let's see what we can find under this one whoa look at all the living things let's write down what we can see before they all have a chance to run and hide okay the first thing i see are insects lots of them there are lots of kinds of insects that live under rocks but some of the most common ones are crickets ants and beetles one of my favorite things about insects is that they can change into different forms as they grow up an insect's life begins as an egg and sometimes an insect egg hatches into what are called larva a caterpillar is a kind of insect larvae then the larva goes through some really big changes and becomes an adult oh and look i see some beetle eggs under our rock too they look a little like rice and you see those things there those things that look like short squishy worms those really aren't worms at all they're grubs a grub is a beetle larva just like a caterpillar will someday be a moth or a butterfly this grub will someday be a beetle and i can see some adult beetles too i also see some spiders they look and act kind of like insects but spiders have eight legs and only two body segments and spider eggs don't hatch into larvae they hatch into tiny spiders called spiderlings oh look there are some slimy looking things stuck to the bottom of the rock these definitely aren't insects or spiders they're animals called slugs a slug looks like a snail without a shell they don't have any legs instead slugs have a huge muscle called the foot that helps them move and slugs make slime lots of it in fact slugs leave a trail of slime behind them wherever they go this slime helps keep the slug from getting too dry wow there were a lot of things under that rock spiders insects and slugs are just a few of the things that you might find under a rock if you turn over a rock in your neighborhood you might find centipedes snails or even salamanders now that you know what to expect when you turn over a rock are you ready to explore i am come on squeaks let's go find another rock all right squeaks we can go out to play soon but there's one more spring activity that we need to do first spring cleaning the fort is a mess it's okay buddy we'll be done before you know it and then we can go play on the playground what are your favorite things about spring we'd love to hear about them so grab a grown up and leave a comment down below or send us an email to kids at scishow.com alright squeaks let's get to sweeping [Music]

Channel: SciShow Kids

Views: 1,956,759

Keywords: scishow, scishowkids, Jessi Knudsen, Jessi Knudsen Castaneda, Squeaks, science, kids, children, learning, education, school, sci, show, hank, green, home, curriculum, kindergarten, activities, compilation, spring, bugs, insects, weather, rain, spider, thunder, water cycle, environment, parcipitaton, plant, seed, gardening, garden, grow, seasons, puppet, animation, fun, cartoon, long play, ocean, river, lake, cloud, storm, slug, snail, egg, backyard, outside, play

Id: qaZ2CICGuL8

Length: 14min 53sec (893 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 24 2018