Posts

Week 14

  The big question addressed in the lab, and a description of what you did. Our big question this week in the lab was, how do greenhouse gases work? The greenhouse effect is when gases in the Earth’s atmosphere traps heat from the sun and this is what keeps the planet warm. Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth would be cold. This is the “cycle”: Sunlight comes in and warms the Earth’s surface  The earth gives off some of the heat as infrared radiation  Greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) trap some of the heat and stop it from escaping into space  This is what keeps the planet warm.  We looked at lots of graphs that showed us how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. One of the graphs I found very interesting was the one from West Branch, Iowa. The graph shows data points starting around 2008 and going up to 2022. We see in the graph that carbon dioxide levels get higher and higher every year and then they don’t go low. The data points go up and down in a s...

Week 13

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  The big question addressed in the lab, and a description of what you did. We had big questions to answer for the lab this week. What type of data do we have that supports that climate change is happening, what questions did you derive from the data shared, and what answers did you find? My group started the lab by reading the KCRG article. This article was all about the heat in Iowa and how there was more severe weather coming. The article talks about how climate change is here and we are going to feel the effects. It talked about the health of the people in Iowa needing to prepare for the extreme heat because their health will be at risk. Scientists believe that by 2050 the number of days Iowa experiences 90 degree days will triple. These extreme temperature chances will cause flooding, extreme weather, and health risks. The article suggests we switch to solar energy rather than putting out carbon emissions. We then looked at different graphs and did our own research. My group l...

Week 12

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  The big question addressed in the lab, and a description of what you did. What are the primary points in the video? Empowering people to do better for the climate and the world  Fossil fuels, deforestation and many other things are affecting the climate  We are putting in emissions in everything we do while other countries are trying to do better We need to teach students at a young about these problems so they know about it young  What are the major issues? The US is using so much more electricity because our buildings are bigger and there are so many When cows let out gas, poop or burp, they are releasing methane into the air  The US is putting so much more emissions into the US then anyone realizes  What questions do you want us to teach you? How can we all get on the same page and want to do better? Is a lot going to change if only a couple of people do the change?  How do we teach when there is push back? How can we get students to collaborate a...

Week 11

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  In the lab we investigated three different topics. The first one was about the law of superposition. The law of superposition is when sedimentary rocks form layers that become buried under more layers over time. The layers on the bottom are older and the layers on the top are younger. The law of supervision helps geologists figure out the relative ages of layers of rocks. Next week we talked about the different characteristics of sand.  Sand created through water is polished, smooth, and similar in size  Sand created through glaciers are polished, smooth, and are irregular in size  Sane created through wind is opaque, frosted, pitted, and very fine grained. We looked at 11 different sand samples during the lab and tried to identify where they were from. My group was able to identify most of them. We also talked a little about the three different types of erosion.  Wind:  Wind erosion can only move small particles but they can eat away at larger particles...

week 10

The big question addressed in the lab, and a description of what you did.      Our big question addressed in the lab this week was, what are the layers of the earth? How do plates move? What evidence do we have? To begin this week's lab we talked about the different layers of the earth. There are four main layers of the earth. The crust, mantle, inner and outer core. We also talked about convection currents. These are currents of liquids heating up and cooling making it so there is a constant circulating flow of liquid. After that we made different types of rocks using starburst and heat. We made sedimentary rocks which are cemented and compacted together. We made igneous rocks which melted and then cooled. Lastly we made metamorphic rocks, we heated, but not enough to melt, and were pressured together.  A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture.       This week in lecture we talked about earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, and ...

week 9

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 1.  The big question addressed in the lab, and a description of what you did. This week in the lab we started talking about the timeline of when things started to live on earth. Our big question was, what are the significant events in the history of the earth and when do they appear in our timeline? To answer this question we took events of when things started to appear on earth, e.g., humans and dinosaurs, and placed them on a timeline to show when we thought they appeared. We then learned about when all of these things would have appeared on earth. We did this by looking at earth’s history as a clock and using earthviewer.  2 . A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture.  Exam this week. 3. Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading: What did you learn? At the beginning of the textbook it talks about geologic time and it breaks down every part of when things arrive on earth. It starts with the earth forming and then finishes when homo sapiens ...