http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRiGfVvqqQ

This is a video on Comets and Meteors by Bill Nye the Science Guy.  I've always loved his shows and how he explains everything.  It was really cool to listen to how he described.  Especially hearing facts from the "Tickle Me Meteorite".  It was very amusing.  As a class we actually did one of the projects, drawing an ellipse.

Average Stars in my Backyard

So I did a night time observation right in my own backyard.   I took a toilet paper roll and counted the numbers I saw through it 20 times.  So the total number of stars I saw at 9:30 p.m. on June 24th was 19.  Divide that by 20 and I got 0.95.  It was pretty low, but that was expected for my area because I live right behind an elementary school.  The new lights on the building aren't as bright as the old lights, but it still gives off a lot of light.  When I multiply 1.9 by 99.3, I can see a total of 189 stars in the sky (rounded).  It's not a whole lot so it shows that there is a lot of light pollution around my home.

Mars - Zooniverse

So the Zooniverse project I choose to work on was categorizing different features on Mar's surface.  For this I specifically looked for fans or blotches on the surface of Mars.  Here is some examples of what I did.

In these pictures you can see both fans (the cone shaped outlines) and the blobs (the oval shaped outlines.  According to Zooniverse's web page, the fans are created by sublimation of dry ice.  As the dry ice sublimates some of the gas is trapped underneath other ice till it explodes and particles go downwind.  The blobs are created when there is no wind.  This is fairly interesting because even though there is little atmosphere it means that there is still wind.  That is something I wouldn't have expected on Mars.  I classified 25 different images for this project.

Solar System Quiz

Here is a quiz on our Solar System.

1. How many planets are in our Solar System?
a. 1
b. 8
c. 4
d. 9

2. Which Planets are Jovian?
 a. Jupiter, Earth, Neptune
b. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars
c. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
d. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto

3. How old is our Solar System?
a. 1 billion years
b. 2 billion years
c. 3.5 billion years
d. 4.5 billion years

4. The prime zone for life that Earth sits in is called....
a. the Temperate zone
b. the Utopia zone
c. the Goldilocks zone
d. the Life zone

5. Pluto is now a....
a. Dwarf Star
b. Planet
c. Asteroid
d. Dwarf Planet

6. We categorized our sun as a ____ star.
a. B star
b. G star
c. O star
d. M star

7. Halley's comet was discovered to be a comet by....
a. Galileo Galilei
b. Edmund Halley
c. Harvey Dent
d. Ben Franklin

8.Which planet does the moon Titan revolve around?
a. Earth
b. Jupiter
c. Mars
d. Venus

9. Which planets' year is almost 84 Earth years long?
a. Uranus
b. Neptune
c. Mars
d. Mercury

10.  Which planet is the largest in the Solar System?
a. Earth
b. Titan
c. Pluto
d. Jupiter




Answers: 1.b; 2.c; 3.d; 4.c;5.a;6.b;7.b;8.b;9.a;10.d

Pluto?

Pluto, a basically unknown dwarf planet.  There has not been a decent picture taken yet of the surface of Pluto.  To me, that's highly surprising.  BUT according to NASA, at least online, that's the case.  So this means that the surface of Pluto is completely up in the air.  If I was to create what the surface of Pluto would look like, I would make it look like this:

Actually, I didn't draw this and I don't think Pluto's surface looks like this.  My friend drew this while I tried and failed at drawing the real surface of Pluto.  So I know what I think Pluto looks like.  I threw together something pretty basic on Paint to try to get my "surface of Pluto" to work.  I think that the surface of Pluto is covered in craters, like our own Moon.  I also think that there is ice in the craters.  Here's a basic "replication" of the surface.  Lovely, isn't it?

Faster than the Speed of Light?

The Sun - Observation

This picture may be hard to see, but this is a drawing of my observation of the sun.  I had the chance to observe the sun through a telescope with a solar filter.  It was really cool.  It was a bright glowing disk of orange which looked slightly frayed at the edges where there were prominence's.  There were also slightly darker lines in the middle where there were sun spots.  It was a really neat experience to be able to see the sun like that.

Science and Religion

Science vs. Religion; this is how most of the world looks at it.  Religious books like the Bible are considered to “disagree” with today’s modern science.  In my opinion, as a believer, I think they do work together.  There is nothing that makes me see God in the universe more than when I am studying and learning science.  

During my astronomy class I learned that the perfect conditions we have on Earth are so precise that if one digit is changed to the .000001 then life on Earth may not exist.  That’s only calculating in a few conditions on Earth.  That doesn’t include all the other life threatening objects out in space that could have happened 13.7 billion years ago to today.  Our solar system could have been near a blue star, a super nova, a black hole, a meteor in the wrong place, and so much more.  There is so much that has to be exactly right from conditions on the planet to conditions in the galaxy that the planet is located.  It shocks me that people actually look at those odds and say ‘yeah, that’s all chance.  It just happened by accident’.  I think it’s too specific for any accident. 

With better equipment to study the night sky today than back when the Bible was written some of the “mystical” events that took place could be explained.  For example, the Star of David that appeared over the stable that Jesus was born in.  There are many theories that could explain what happened.  It could be a super nova.  They can be seen in the sky night and day for about 6 months.  Another theory is that it could have been Haley’s comet.  Yet another is another rare event of certain planets coming together in the sky and reappears about a year later in the same spot.  In my opinion the Bible says that God is all powerful.  If say theoretically this is true, then why couldn’t he have set the universe into motion in such a way that a significant event occurs in when he wants it to. 

No, science does not explain everything in the Bible and the Bible doesn’t explain everything in the world.  That doesn’t mean that science can’t explain anything in the Bible or the other way around.  So many believe that it is the Bible or Science and they can’t live side by side.  It makes me think of what Thor said in one of his movies “Science and Magic are one and the same in my world.” What if we said that about Science and Religion? Besides there will always be a bit of a mystery on how the universe works.  Yeah we will always be finding new and better things, but then we’ll gain another question.  What would be life without questions or a little mystery in the world?     

Observation- Waxing Crescent Moon

I had the chance to observe the Waxing Crescent Moon this evening around 9:00 pm.  It was during sunset and I could clearly see the moon from the front of my house.  I tried to get a good picture of it.  I was able to use this observation to help show my parents that the moon rises and sets at different times each day.  When I first told them, while casually talking about my class, they didn't believe me.  I even showed them the written facts from my text book and they didn't believe me.  Then on my way home from class, I noticed where the moon was.  It was following the sun.  Hence, the moon was setting in the evening.  So, I pointed it out to them.  I showed them that the sun was setting and so was the moon.  They finally believed me.  I find it funny that something that should seem obvious is not obvious.  We don't look up at the sky that often so we don't notice these things. I didn't realize it until it was pointed out to me but then it seemed too obvious to have missed before.

Black Holes- Doctor Who FanFiction

My name is Rose Tyler, and this is how I died. 

The Doctor and I were traveling.  Once again the T.A.R.D.I.S. took us somewhere that we had never been before.  When we walked out, we were in this tiny room. 

I looked at the Doctor and said "I dunno, do you think it's too dangerous?"

Then we looked at each other and laughed.  Nothings ever too dangerous for us.  We wandered through the metal hallways.  There were no windows, no marking features.  It didn't take long for us to come across a room. It was completely deserted.  There were still no windows and I spotted some symbols on the walls.  It was so random and crazy I thought I might have walked into the room of a mad man. 

"What does it say?" I asked the Doctor.

"I don't know. This must be old, very old.  The T.A.R.D.I.S. isn't translating it.  This is phenomanally old." He was just as giddy as a school boy.  He loves mysteries and unanswered questions.  No, The Doctor loves to solve those mysteries and unanswered questions. 

Right then one of the other doors opened up.  Creatures started filling the room.  They were freaky looking with tentacle like things coming from their faces and bright white glowing orbs in their hands.  Each one looked exactly alike, but that's how a lot of aliens look to me.  That wasn't the creepiest part.  They started chanting "We must feed. We must feed.  We must feed." They corrned the Doctor and I into a corner. They were obviously hungery and we were obviously good enough for them to eat.  I thought that was it, but then the front alien hit his orb and it sputtered.  Then he said something else. 

"We must feed you."

"Oh, right then.  Good." The Doctor said.  He loves trying to seem composed when he's not.  It makes me laugh. 

 Soon we came to find that we were on a space station on small planet.  We also found out that humans were in charge of the expidition and the aliens were called the Ood, supposidly a race ment to serve.  The Doctor and I disliked that, but there was nothing we could do at the moment for them.  The most important part was that we weren't just on a small planet, but the planet was orbiting a black hole.  That's what the team was doing there.  They were trying to find out how this planet existed.  They were in the process of drilling down to the center of the planet, looking for some power source.  That was their only explination on how this was happening. 

By the time we found all this out, the planet was rocked about by debree that was getting sucked into the black hole.  Part of the station collapsed into the center of the planet.  Guess what? It was the part where the T.A.R.D.I.S. was parked.  We were stranded on a planet orbiting the black hole.  Great.  This is just wonderful.  I thought maybe then I could get the Doctor to settle down instead of jumping all over the universe in every time imanigable.  Though, it would be slightly weird not having those adventures. 

When the drilling was done, the Doctor volunteered to help the team go down into the planet to explore.  I stayed up with the rest of the team.  I wasn't going to go down into some strange caverns with unknown writing in them.  Besides there wasn't enough suits.  The planet didn't have an atmosphere.  Strange things happened to the Oods, they became possessed and mentally linked with a great being, from where we have no clue.  They destroyed the elevater shaft that the Doctor and the team used to get into the caverns.  The team had to save themselves from the violent Oods by killing them.  We almost didn't make it.  The Captain decided that we needed to leave in their space shuttle. 

I threw such a fit.  I wasn't going to go anywhere without the Doctor.  He was my life.  Suddenly the world went black around me.  I woke up strapped into the space shuttle.  We were taking off.  I fought, but nothing was going to change.  I was trapped and leaving the Doctor on the planet. The shuttle was shaking trying to pull away from the Black Hole.  The planet also gave off a cone of protection, an area that was a safe zone to and from the planet.  Sensors started going haywire and the Captain freaked out.  We stopped going forward and were being pulled back towards the Black Hole.  The safe zone collapsed. 

"Well, I guess we're going to be the first to go into a black hole." The Captain said sarcastically. 

"Thanks for that." I responded.  I was going to die. That would be that. 

I watched as we followed everything else around us to the center of the black hole.  I could feel the force of it, it was like I was being drawn down a drain.  We had no controls so we were traveling face first into the mass of darkness.  I felt my upper body being pulled at a greater force than the rest of me.  It was like the closer I got the greater the force was, even if it was only a few feet of difference.  The difference in the tugging grew and grew and.......................................................................................................................... ...................................................................... ............................................ ........................................ ................................... 

Light Pollution

I read an article from National Geographic called "Our Vanishing Night" by Verlyn Klinkenborg. There were many interesting details concerning the affects of light pollution.  The article discussed the damage of light pollution and suggested various ways to fix light pollution.

The article started out by talking about the affect of light pollution on animals.  The feeding pattern of nocturnal animals has been thrown off.  Insects cluster around the lights at night so certain bats have trouble finding their prey.  Other animals like opossums and badgers hunt very warily at night because it is easier for them to become prey during the bright night.  There are many other ways that life has been thrown a muck because of light pollution; migration, breeding, survival, and many other habits of animal life.  I never thought of how much changes in the lives of animals because of light pollution.  It is strange to think that something, so seemingly harmless, can cause so much damage.   The article also discussed the repercussions on humans.    Yes, I agree with the article that there will or are issues that we may not fully understand that are caused by light pollution.  I am not so sure that there was a point in saying that "one new study has suggested a direct correlation between higher rates of breast cancer in women and the nighttime brightness of their neighborhood."  Correlation is not causation.  A more prominent point could be made here, maybe a study on insomnia or difference in when people sleep.

National Geographic did not leave their article at that.  Practical articles do not always just tell us the problem, but they try to show us how to fix the problem.  This is what N.G. did.  They listed many different ways that light pollution could be fixed.  The article said that the easiest way to fix the problem is to change the design of the light.  This actually can also help give us a better visual at night.  Changing the light structure will not hinder our vision at night but help it.

Overall it was a good article on light pollution.  It helped me see our impact on nature.  Light pollution is an easy fix, the more the world sees and understands this the easier and quicker it will be to fix the problem.

Laws of Motion Lesson Plan

6^th Grade Classroom                                                                                Ms. Wert

S6.C.3.1: Explain why an object’s motion is the result of all forces acting on it.      

                                                                                                           

Essential Question:

What are the 3 Laws of Motion?

Activating Strategy:

On the front board, write the question “If you put a ruler on your desk and leave it there for one day undisturbed, will it have moved? Why?” Have the students answer this in their journal or on a piece of paper. 

Teaching Strategy:

1.      Hand out a vocabulary chart for your students. 

2.      Split up the words between groups.  Have the students fill out the vocab sheet for their assigned words.  Then come together as a class and let the students help each other understand the other words. 

3.      Pull up the Prezi presentation and teach the 3 laws of motion.  Take time to explain and help the students know and understand the laws.

                       http://prezi.com/smpwiqatfpkn/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy 

4.      Give each group of students a set of note cards.  On each card have a scenario or picture.  Have the students split the cards into the 3 laws. 

5.      Discuss how the students categorized the different scenarios. 

Summarizing strategy:

Have the students look at the question on the board from the beginning of class “If you put a ruler on your desk and leave it there for one day undisturbed, will it have moved? Why?” Have the students answer the question on a piece of paper and turn it in on their way out the door.  Decide whether more time is needed on the lesson depending on the students’ answers. 

Moon Phases

I found a great activity for kids to learn the phases of the moon. All you need are kids and Oreo cookies. It would help if the kids are not extremely hungry because you might run out of cookies. Below is a picture of the project that I created. I used Oreo cookies to create the phases of the moon and took a picture. On paint, I added labels for each phase as well as the Sun and the Earth. This is a fun and yummy activity. Below are basic directions for this activity.


 


  Step 1: Form the kids into groups (2 or 3 unless you want them to work individually)
  Step 2: Talk about the moon and ask the kids about what they know about the moon (if it changes each night etc)
  Step 3: Describe and talk about each phase of the moon (new moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, last quarter, waning crescent).
  Step 4: Show the kids an example of what they will be creating. This can be in picture form, like mine below, or an actual model they can look, touch, etc.
  Step 5: Explain to the students that they have to take apart the cookies so that all the white filling is on each cookie. Then they have to take some of the filling off to represent each moon phase and how we see it.
  Step 6: Give each group 8 cookies. Use your own judgement, but you don't want to give them too many or they will eat them and run out.
  Step 7: Help the kids work on it giving them tips or helping them when needed.
  Step 8: Take a picture of each groups project. If you would like you could print out copies to hang on the walls.
  Step 9: AFTER the picture is taken, help the students divide the moon cookies and the leftover cookie bits between the group members. This is where extra cookies may be needed in case of sickness, dropping parts on the floor, uneven number of cookies for each student, etc.
  Step 10: Eat.

Seasons

For my first post I decided to create something that has to deal with the seasons of the Earth. It is a subject that comes up in late elementary and early middle school. To make it slightly more enjoyable I created a Prezi, an online power point that is much more interactive and fun to watch. This blog is also for a college course, so I tried to meet everyone half way. If I taught this in a classroom, there would be less words on the Prezi and more talking, discussing, and interactive elements. Seeing how I have to get all the information I know across to the viewer of the Prezi, there is much more reading involved than I would like. Please, follow the link to see my Prezi about seasons. I hope it is entertaining and enlightening and turn up your volume to listen to Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, Spring. Highlight and copy the link below to take you to my Prezi. 

http://prezi.com/bhh_ptwifeab/