Please help! Science question. 10 points for the correct answer!?

Question

I have this killer science project due tomorrow. It's about cotton and the cotton plant. Please help me out with these questions..

-When is the growing season for the cotton plant?
-WHere is the plant found?\
-What parts of the plant are used?
-What types of products can be made from this plant?
-How is the plant grown?
-How is it harvested?
-What are the different steps to make the product?
-What does the final product look like ans what is it used for?


Please help me out with this! I will seriously give you 10 points

Answer 1

Go to Cotton on Wikipedia and that should provide you with pretty much all of the answers to your questions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton

Answer 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton

Read the link

Pretty much all of the cotton plant is usable for cotton cloth, seeds for oil, the plant for fodder, etc.

Cotton grows in warmer regions of the US South and various other countries.

Cotton was picked by hand now they have machines

Cotton jin invented by Eli Whitney revolutionized cotton productions in the US but easily sorting the seed from the cotton - which was a laborious task by hand.

Answer 3

The latin name for the cotton plant most often grown and used is Gossypium hirsutum. The species is native the the Indian subcontinent (India) and to tropical and subtropical regions of Africa and the Americas. Fragments of cotton fiber for textile use have been found in the Mexico dating back to 7000 years ago, so the Native Americans had to have domesticated a different species of cotton on their own.

Cotton requires a very long warm growing season, and planting can begin as early as February for the year's crop depending on the location.

Cotton is actually a tree, but most people don't know that. For ease of harvest we essentially cultivate fields of saplings, harvest the fibers that grow in the "cotton bolls" that form around the seeds, and mow the young trees down in the Autumn to clear the field for the next year's saplings, so cotton never gets tall enough in commercial fields for it's identity as a tree to be widely known. Cotton is temperature sensitive; it requires intensive care and is grown on raised rows, and is protected from competition from weeds in the early growth stages.

The most well known use of cotton is as a fiber for clothing and other textiles, including rope, but other parts of the plant are routinely used. The seeds produce cotton oil, and the spent, pressed seeds, called cottonseed meal, can then be fed to livestock; the hulls are also used for this purpose, and sometimes are used for fertilizer or dyestuff.

The stems of cotton are fiberous enough for cotton based paper manufacture. The root bark of the cotton plant is an astringent that stops bleeding, and the cotton flower attracts bees and can be used to make honey or as in India, also as a dye.

Cotton oil is used in cooking, salad oil and margarine, as the oil ingredient of soap (the other ingredient of soap is lye water).

Cotton was used to make one of the earliest explosives (used up to the early 20th Century?), called "Guncotton." Guncotton or Nitrocellulose was originally made by laying cotton fiber out in the sun and treating it with Nitric acid. It is very pressure sensitive and very dangerous and was used to fire artillery.

Guncotton has been used in making flash paper, rocket propellant, smokeless gunpowder, and when dissolved in ether can carry salicylic acid (the active ingredient of aspirin) in other medicines such as Compound-W. This same ether dissolved form was used for wound dressings during the American Civil War. Other related plants such as Hollyhock (Marsh Mallow), and Hibiscus are used for medicine and for tea, respectively.

As for what processes are used to make the product, as you can see that depends on what you are trying to do. Cotton is one of the most versatile plants that humankind uses. I have friends who spin their own yarn with with dropspindles, and cotton fibers can be spun in this way.

I am a longbow archer. Bowstrings were to my knowledge not ever made of cotton, but the principles that make the fiber good for spinning thread and yarn for weaving into cloth are also found in linen fibres from the flax plant.

The concept for threads, bowstrings or ropes is that the fibers turn one way, so you card them (comb them out) to line them up in a single direction, then twist some groups of them in the direction they naturally want to go until you have a tightly twisted bunch.

After that, you take two or more of the bunches and twist them together in the OPPOSITE direction; when the fibres try to unravel, the two twists, one in one direction and one in the other, lock the fibers up against each other so the twisting cannot come undone. Now you have thread, or if you add many bundles, rope. Just keep overlapping bundles and working them into the twist to get the desired length.

Answer 4

Hi. Cotton seeds are poisonous, so are just wasted. Genetic engineers announced this week that they have made the seeds non-poisonous. The leftover seed could feed about 500 million people. I'll bet your teacher doesn't know THAT. The rest you have to look up for yourself. : http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1127/p03s02-usgn.html

Answer 5

Prediction - Method - Design - Table - Method - Safety - Controls - Resultts- Graph - Improve

Answer 6

Go do your homework boy. Don't try getting a grade off in the last min. I'm sure you had plenty of time to do your homework and you were to busy with whatever. Sorry kid. You brought this upond yourself.

Answer 7

I don't know much about the plant, but here's a page where you can find some information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton

I hope it helps.

Answer 8

Search the internet for this

Answer 9

Tomorrow's Sunday, though...

Answer 10

COTTON

seed-hair fibre of a variety of plants of the genus Gossypium, belonging to the Malvaceae family, native to most subtropical countries. The shrubby plant, growing up to 6 m (20 feet) high in the tropics, characteristically ranges from 1 to 2 m in height when it is under cultivation. It produces creamy-white flowers, which soon turn deep pink and fall off, leaving the small green seedpods, known as cotton bolls, which contain the seeds. Seed hairs, or fibres, growing from the outer skin of the seeds, become tightly packed within the boll, which bursts open upon maturity, revealing soft masses of the fibres. These are white to yellowish white in colour, ranging from about 2 to 4 cm (0.75 to 1.5 inches) in length. They are composed of about 87 to 90 percent cellulose (a carbohydrate plant substance), 5 to 8 percent water, and 4 to 6 percent natural impurities.

Cotton fibres may be classified roughly into three large groups, based on staple length (average length of the fibres making up a sample or bale of cotton) and appearance. The first group includes the fine, lustrous fibres with staple length ranging from about 2.5 to 6.5 cm and includes types of the highest quality—such as Sea Island, Egyptian, and pima cottons. Least plentiful and most difficult to grow, long-staple cottons are costly and are used mainly for fine fabrics, yarns, and hosiery. The second group contains the standard medium-staple cotton, such as American Upland, with staple length from about 1.3 to 3.3 cm. The third group includes the short-staple, coarse cottons, ranging from about 1 to 2.5 cm in length, used to make carpets and blankets, coarse and inexpensive fabrics, and blends with other fibres.

Cotton is harvested when the bolls open. If it is to be mechanically picked, the leaves are usually chemically removed, encouraging uniform opening of the bolls. Most of the seeds (cottonseed; q.v.) are separated from the fibres by a mechanical process called ginning.

Ginned cotton is shipped in bales to a textile mill for yarn manufacturing. A traditional yet common processing method is ring spinning, by which the mass of cotton may be subjected to opening and cleaning, picking, carding, combing, drawing, roving, and spinning. The cotton bale is opened and its fibres are raked mechanically to remove foreign matter (e.g., soil and seeds). A picker (picking machine) then wraps the fibres into a lap. A card (carding) machine brushes the loose fibres into rows that are joined as a soft sheet, or web, and forms them into loose untwisted rope known as card sliver. For higher quality yarn, card sliver is put through a combing machine, which straightens the staple to a finer degree and removes unwanted short lengths, or noils. In the drawing (drafting) stage, a series of variable-speed rollers attenuates and reduces the sliver to firm uniform strands of usable size. Thinner strands are produced by the roving (slubbing) process, in which the sliver is converted to roving by being pulled and slightly twisted. Finally, the roving is transferred to a spinning frame, where it is drawn further, twisted on a ring spinner, and wound on a bobbin as yarn.

Faster production methods include rotor spinning (a type of open-end spinning), in which fibres are detached from card sliver and twisted, within a rotor, as they are joined to the end of the yarn. For the production of cotton blends, air-jet spinning may be used; in this high-speed method, air currents wrap loose fibres around a straight sliver core.

Blends (composites) are made during yarn processing by joining drawn cotton with other staple fibres, such as polyester or casein.

The procedure for weaving cotton yarn into fabric is similar to that for other fibres. Cotton looms interlace the tense lengthwise yarns, called warp, with crosswise yarns called weft, or filling. Warp yarns often are treated chemically to prevent breaking during weaving.

Cotton, one of the world's leading agricultural crops, is plentiful and economically produced, making cotton products relatively inexpensive. The fibres can be made into a wide variety of fabrics ranging from lightweight voiles and laces to heavy sailcloths and thick-piled velveteens, suitable for a great variety of wearing apparel, home furnishings, and industrial uses. Cotton fabrics can be extremely durable and resistant to abrasion. Cotton accepts many dyes, is usually washable, and can be ironed at relatively high temperatures. It is comfortable to wear because it absorbs and releases moisture quickly. When warmth is desired, it can be napped, a process giving the fabric a downy surface. Various finishing processes have been developed to make cotton resistant to stains, water, and mildew; to increase resistance to wrinkling, thus reducing or eliminating the need for ironing; and to reduce shrinkage in laundering to not more than 1 percent. Nonwoven cotton, made by fusing or bonding the fibres together, is useful for making disposable products to be used as towels, polishing cloths, tea bags, tablecloths, bandages, and disposable uniforms and sheets for hospital and other medical uses. The world's leading producers of cotton are China, the United States, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Turkey, Australia, Turkmenistan, and Egypt.


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