Science II Blog

  The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we reviewed more on  "Before the Flood" and then talked about the importance of students being able to read graphs. We also talked about coupled inquiry. Climate change seems more of an issue for island people because they are surrounded by water. One way climate change affects them is because it causes thermal expansion in sea levels which means the water rises. We, Iowans, are surrounded by land so people here pretend climate change is not an issue. Another misconception is that climate and weather are the same thing, but this is untrue. Weather is the current temperature and conditions, climate is 30 years worth of weather. One cool fact about climate change though is that Iowa City is in the top 100 cities for making efforts to prevent climate change. Moreover, coupled inquiry is important because we want our students to ask questions and we want them to learn how to investigate their inquirie...

In lab this week we played Kahoot to prepare for the exam. Some notes I too: young river- lots of energy young river creates V-shaped valley 1/4 of 2.7 25% full  earth melted from ocean volcanoes and co2  the climate is a 30 yr average of weather.  Some analogies to remember that: weather what clothes u wear, climate what clothes you buy weather is a song, climate is a playlist  weather is a shred of carrot, climate is the salad. We also did a little review on the film "Before the Flood" We then did an activity to figure out precipitation change in Iowa over the last 100 years  As climate change gets worse there will be more pandemics. A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. In lecture we took our earth science exam.  Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading: What did you learn?/ What was most helpful? In place of reading, I took practice quizzes to prepare for the test.  What do you need more information on?  The albedo...

The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we talked about a lot of different types of rocks, crystals, superposition, erosion, and weathering. Firstly, we talked about geodes and how a full geode has a density of 2.7. if the density is more than 2.7 it is not a geode. If the geode is less than 2.7 than it is whatever its density divided by 2.7 full. For example, a geode with a density of 1.3 is about half full. Whenever geodes are brought up I automatically think of two things one the above picture of a grotto that is back home at St. Mary's in West Burlington, across the street from one of my childhood homes. The second is United States Gypsum a mining company where my dad works that mines gypsum which is a mineral found in crystals like geodes. They mine it mainly to make sheetrock. Next, we reviewed the homework 'Sweater Weather' and  road cuts. Example: back home in Sperry, Iowa my first childhood home is on a road named Stony Hollow....

The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we made a curve for our last test to be regraded on, talked about convention cells which I learned is how air fryers work, and recreated the rock cycle with starburst. An air fryer will send the air up to heat food.  For some of the starbursts we changed with pressure like the very top two, for the third one we used heat from a blow torch, and for the bottom one we melted two starbursts with a hot plate A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. In Thursday's lecture, we learned that sand comes from distant mountains and landforms, not from the ocean floor. We also learned that rocks are naturally occurring mineral collections. Then we got introduced to earthquakes and volcanoes. We learned that Yellowstone is a super volcano that could destroy our continent or parts of the world, like in thousands of years. The debris from this eruption will block out the sun for years after.  Addition...

     In lab this week we reviewed for our space test. We did this by playing Kahoot and also by just going back over the material. One thing I remember was as the sun moves up shadow gets shorter. Another thing I learned was that the coasts seem to really impact presidential elections. This is because close to the coasts were swarms and swamps where crops grew and where slaves were used most. Additionally, after the proclamation emancipation, slaves may have been freed but they did not have the resources to move very far. The lucky ones at least got to move off their previous slaveowner's property. Therefore, states like Georgia, are mainly republican, however, the ideals of those who are there because their ancestors were enslaved generally have opposing, democratic views.       In lab, we were also introduced to our next unit of earth science and learned about how the history of the earth is only a small bit of the history of the universe. The Earth ...

     In class, we presented our group presentations and learned more about space. Some cool things I learned from these presentations were that black holes don't search for things to eat they just pull things in that are around them. We also learned that our galaxy is not at the center of the universe, a black hole is there instead. Next, dark  dark matter is a mystery, however, makes up a lot of the galaxies.  Hydrogen, helium, and materials from dead stars make up new stars. Likewise, matter cannot be made or destroyed, only recycled. We also talked about the Big Bang and what it is. The Big Bang is the theory that everything came from one atom. Einstein actually published some of the earliest theories about the world's creation. Lastly, we discussed in both lab and lecture how unlikely it is that there are no other sources of life outside of us humans. This is because there are approximately 2 trillion galaxies with 1 billion stars in them each and each star ...