News recently have been talking about volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunami and I realised that all that is happening really is connected to geography.
Take the volcanic eruption that took place in Hawaii on March 8 . Watch a video at http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20110307/video/vwl-volcano-erupts-in-hawaii-15af341.html. In http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110309/ap_on_re_us/us_hawaii_volcano_eruption, it says that Kamoamoa (the valcano), which is located in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park cracked open Saturday, and it continued to spew out loads of 2,000-degree glowing, red-orange lava that shot 65 feet high. Volcanoes are made up of rocks, as a volcano is a landform. Landforms are... part of geography.
The biggest earthquake to hit Japan in 140 years struck the northeast coast on Friday, triggering a 10-metre tsunami that swept away everything in its path, including houses and cars. Earthquake is caused by the plates crashing into each other, and for Japan, unfortunately, is a very strong tsunami. This earthquake not only caused a tsunami, but also cause the whole Pacific basin to be in danger of tsunami. This also shows that when there is a cause, there is an effect. Cause-Earthquake, Effect-Tsunami.
Wow, this really shows that geography is so relevant in life. We don't just learn how to find locations on the map, we learn how to see how everything that happens to us in our daily lives piece together.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Life beyond Earth?
Hmmm....there had been a debate going on recently about life beyond Earth. When I first read about this, I thought that there had been a discovery that humans had saw aliens or something, but I realized that there had been a discovery of Earth bacteria in a meteorite. The picture below is the minute filament scientists which they think is a kind of bacteria that occurs on Earth called cyanobacteria.
Amazing right? I wonder if there are such thing as aliens orr martians. We all thought that no life could exist on other planets as they were either to far from the Sun so there is lack of heat or too near to the Sun so there is just too much heat. However, the findings above show that there might be a chance that life existed outer space. Were we wrong?
Friday, March 4, 2011
ACE On and Over with Rocks
Today’s lesson is the very last lesson with the topic of rocks.
We started with a recap on what we have recently learnt. Then, we went on to the size of the Sediments. Turns out gravel are the biggest, then sand, silt and lastly, clay, which is so teeny weeny small that we can’t see them with our naked eye. As we spent only a little time on this part, I did some research and I found a website that states all these. Here is a paragraph below, taken from
Sediment and Sedimentation - Sediment Size :
“Sediments come in all shapes and sizes. Sediment sizes are classified by separating them into a number of groups, based on metric measurements, and naming them using common terms and size modifiers. The terms, in order of decreasing size, are boulder (> 256 mm), cobble (256-64 mm), pebble (64-2 mm), sand (2-1/16 mm), silt (1/16-1/256 mm), and clay (< 1/256 mm). The modifiers in decreasing size order, are very coarse, coarse, medium, fine, and very fine. For example, sand is sediment that ranges in size from 2 millimeters to 1/16 mm. Very coarse sand ranges from 2 mm to 1 mm; coarse from 1 mm to 1/2 mm; medium from 1/2 mm to 1/4 mm; fine from 1/4 mm to 1/8 mm; and very fine from 1/8 mm to 1/16 mm. Unfortunately, the entire classification is not as consistent as the terminology for sand—not every group includes size modifiers.”
So the sediments, according to the website, are (biggest to smallest) boulder, cobble, pebble, sand silt, and clay. Okay, we know sand, silt and clay, but where did boulder, cobble and pebble come from? Where is gravel? Probably gravel is the same as pebble. I did little more research to clear up this confusion. Here is the definition of gravel related to this topic from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gravel: small stones and pebbles, or a mixture of these with sand. So it is small pebbles! And here is the extra knowledge, there are sediments bigger than gravel- boulder and cobble.
Then we did more on sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks. Sedimentary rocks we are familiar with, but metamorphic rocks are quite new to us. Metamorphic rocks are formed from Igneous and Sedimentary rocks. These rocks come under contact with intense heat and pressure, and the product is a metamorphic rock. Intense heat? Okay, what temperature exactly? That was the first question that came into my mind. A little research answered that question. The answer lies in http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10g.html : 600 to 1200° Celsius for the complete melting of the rock. WOW! Of course it’s cooler than the Mantle, but it is still very hot. It is so hot that it can melt rocks! Can you imagine that? Here is how melted rocks look like, taken from Google:
I guess it was liquid, because it looks like it was dripping before it hardened!
This is the end of our journey with rocks, at least for now. After all those lessons on rocks, the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions ‘rocks’ is ‘What kind of rock?’ When I see rocks, I try to find out for myself if I can identify what kind of rock that is (I hope that we will eventually learn how to identify rocks lying on the road!). I don’t see them as ordinary things that lie on the ground for no purpose anymore, because rocks are what scientists use to find out about the past. They are things that people wrote on long before paper came out. Rocks are not useless meaningless things. They are objects that are the ground that we are standing on. I guess everything in this world is also like that, put into this world for a purpose.
We started with a recap on what we have recently learnt. Then, we went on to the size of the Sediments. Turns out gravel are the biggest, then sand, silt and lastly, clay, which is so teeny weeny small that we can’t see them with our naked eye. As we spent only a little time on this part, I did some research and I found a website that states all these. Here is a paragraph below, taken from
Sediment and Sedimentation - Sediment Size :
“Sediments come in all shapes and sizes. Sediment sizes are classified by separating them into a number of groups, based on metric measurements, and naming them using common terms and size modifiers. The terms, in order of decreasing size, are boulder (> 256 mm), cobble (256-64 mm), pebble (64-2 mm), sand (2-1/16 mm), silt (1/16-1/256 mm), and clay (< 1/256 mm). The modifiers in decreasing size order, are very coarse, coarse, medium, fine, and very fine. For example, sand is sediment that ranges in size from 2 millimeters to 1/16 mm. Very coarse sand ranges from 2 mm to 1 mm; coarse from 1 mm to 1/2 mm; medium from 1/2 mm to 1/4 mm; fine from 1/4 mm to 1/8 mm; and very fine from 1/8 mm to 1/16 mm. Unfortunately, the entire classification is not as consistent as the terminology for sand—not every group includes size modifiers.”
So the sediments, according to the website, are (biggest to smallest) boulder, cobble, pebble, sand silt, and clay. Okay, we know sand, silt and clay, but where did boulder, cobble and pebble come from? Where is gravel? Probably gravel is the same as pebble. I did little more research to clear up this confusion. Here is the definition of gravel related to this topic from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gravel: small stones and pebbles, or a mixture of these with sand. So it is small pebbles! And here is the extra knowledge, there are sediments bigger than gravel- boulder and cobble.
Then we did more on sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks. Sedimentary rocks we are familiar with, but metamorphic rocks are quite new to us. Metamorphic rocks are formed from Igneous and Sedimentary rocks. These rocks come under contact with intense heat and pressure, and the product is a metamorphic rock. Intense heat? Okay, what temperature exactly? That was the first question that came into my mind. A little research answered that question. The answer lies in http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10g.html : 600 to 1200° Celsius for the complete melting of the rock. WOW! Of course it’s cooler than the Mantle, but it is still very hot. It is so hot that it can melt rocks! Can you imagine that? Here is how melted rocks look like, taken from Google:
I guess it was liquid, because it looks like it was dripping before it hardened!
This is the end of our journey with rocks, at least for now. After all those lessons on rocks, the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions ‘rocks’ is ‘What kind of rock?’ When I see rocks, I try to find out for myself if I can identify what kind of rock that is (I hope that we will eventually learn how to identify rocks lying on the road!). I don’t see them as ordinary things that lie on the ground for no purpose anymore, because rocks are what scientists use to find out about the past. They are things that people wrote on long before paper came out. Rocks are not useless meaningless things. They are objects that are the ground that we are standing on. I guess everything in this world is also like that, put into this world for a purpose.
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