Buoy Data Reflection

For science class we have been looking at a link that shows us all the buoys that are located in the world. On these buoys you can see a lot of information. You can see what the buoy looks like, see the high the waves are there, and some other things such as the atmospheric pressure. During the time that I am looking at this, near England there are waves that are as high as 20 feet! But near America it said that the waves were not that big because I checked a lot of Buoy’s data, and they said that they were around 3-6 feet tall.

There are a few types of buoys. There are types that record all the data, but also there are types that show boats which way to go.

The yellow buoy is a type that records all the data, such as winds, height’s of waves, and other things like that, but the green type is the one that shows boats which way to go, mostly because there are big rocks in nearby areas, so that means that they should go left or right of the buoy depending of their color.

The atmospheric pressure at this point is 34.70 and is rising, while in other areas it is lower. I think this is determined by the height of the wave because the bigger the wave the bigger the atmospheric pressure. I am not sure about this because in the USA I cannot find a single buoy that shows the height of the waves but they show the wind and the atmospheric pressure.

I think that tsunamis and hurricanes make the waves go higher because tsunamis are big waves, and hurricanes have a lot of wind causing them to make bigger waves. I think that wind is also a key thing, because it’s the thing that pushes the water, causing waves, and it also determines the atmospheric pressure.

I think they are helpful because they can indicate when a tsunami or hurricane will happen, and they could evacuate the city if necessary. Like this they could save thousands of lives, rather than having to make a whole new graveyard.

Dolphins Current Event

Ever since Scientists realized how smart dolphins are, they have began trying to speak with these mammals. In these past few years scientist tried countless ways of communicating with dolphins, they even once gave them IPad's to use. But now they have come up with another brilliant idea. They call it the "Dolphin Speaker". This machine will not only be able to hear the low frequency clicks, but also the high frequency clicks that us humans cannot hear. This has never been possible, until now. Once they have recorded all of their sounds, they are going to replay it to them and see how they respond to those clicks, squeals and whistle. Even though we are still trying to figure out what these smart animals are trying to say, they have been quite successful in trying to learn some basic elements of human language and they can even follow these instructions when they are delivered on television.

 I think that dolphins are very smart animals. And I think that we are going to learn their language fairly soon because with this machine it will be easy to record their clicks. And then when we play it to them, we will see by their reactions if it’s true what the machine is telling us. And as you can see, in some way they are a bit smarter than us, because they have learned our language (not how to speak it, but understand it) but we haven’t even learned how to undersand or speak their language unless we are making random noises that sound like theirs.

Designed Lab Report

For our wave properties lab, we will be using droppers.

Guiding Question:

How does weight of an object affect the waves around it?

Hypothesis:
I think that the shape does not matter. But I think that the weight is going to determine how high the waves are going to be. Also I think that the height the object is dropped from will determine the height of the wave.


Materials:
1) Bucket
2) Water supply
3) Camera
4) Ruler
5) Varied Objects-
->Plastic balls
->Clay block
->Tape roll
->Big  rock


Controls (what stays the same):

1) Amount of water in bucket before  
2) Size of bucket


Variables (what changes):

1)  The objects
2) The corresponding waves  




Weights:


Plastic Ball 1-  57.2 Grams
Plastic Ball 2-  5.1 Grams
Modeling Clay- 85.4 Grams
Tennis Ball- 66.8 Grams
Styrofoam Ball- 12.8 Grams  
Tape Roll- 71.3 Grams

Shape:

Plastic Ball 1 and 2- Sphere
Modeling clay- Cylinder and Flat circle
Tape roll- Spherical/2d circle  


Results:

Tennis Ball-
Splash: 4 cm
Plastic Ball 1-
Splash: 5 mm
Plastic Ball 2-  
Splash: 1 mm
Styrofoam Ball-
Splash: 1.5 cm
Tape Roll-
Splash: 2.5 cm
Clay Cylinder-
Splash: 1 cm
Clay Flat circle:
Splash: 4 cm

Data Analysis:

I think that my data was accurate because we tested each thing twice, and if we got different answers, we would try it a third time to check which one was correct. I saw that there was a pattern that showed that the heavier and bigger objects made the bigger splash. Even though we only droped the objects from 30 cm height, I think that if we dropped it from a higher point it would have made a bigger splash.

Conclusion:

How does weight of an object affect the waves around it? Well we thought that the shape does not matter. But I think that the weight is going to determine how high the waves are going to be. Also I think that the height the object is dropped from will determine the height of the wave. What I predicted was going to happen or my hypothesis was close with what actually happened during this Lab report me and my partner designed.

Further Inqaury: We had a few problems with our plab report when we started. First of all, we couldn't decide on the topic we were going to write about. Once we solved that problems, got all the materials, we had to put it all together. Once we did that, we had a ruler sticked next to the tank in wich water was filled up. And once we would throw the object into the pool, by instinct we closed our eyes because of the water splashing. So for some objects we needed to throw the object a few times until we got it right. I think we could have made it that we throw the objects from different hights, but we didn't because we had little time to complete the throwing in time to be able to finish the writing part.

Tsunamis and Earthquakes

For science class we had to learn about one of the following: Earthquackes, tsunamies, and hurricanes, and then write an essay about them which is about 600-2,000 words. For my essay I chouse to write about tsunamies. Tsunamies can be different. Some can make damage, and some can only make a liitle water on the streets.

Tsunamis are waves that are created by oceans or other bodies of water, by eaarthquakers, landslides, volcanic eruptions or meteorite impact. The can make huge destructions when they reach and hit the coastlines. Tsunamies can travel very fast, as much as up to 700 miles per hour, but they are only about one meter high in the open ocean. But when they get to the coasline they can be a series of waves up to 30 meters high! The tsunamies mostly occur, when the tectonic plates colide, and when one plate goes up, it makes a big seismic wave, like we did with our lab, but just from underneath, and a lot bogger. The tsunami isn’t that high in the ocean, its only about one meter, and if a ship goes over it , it probably wouldn’t even feel it. But as it gets closer to the coastline, it gets bigger. It lifts the wave up, but it doesn’t break on the beech, it becomes a monut of water that floods the place, and can destroy a lot of things, and kill a lot of people as we saw in Indonesioa in 2004 and in Japan in 2011. Around 80% of all the tsunamies that happen on earth are in the Pacific Ocean. Most offenly they are occurred at the borders of the Pacific ocean and the Ring of Fire. This is because at the Ring of Fire 90% of the worlds earthquackes happen there, and they are whatmostly cause the tsunamies to occur. The tsunamies damage can be huge. Once the tsunami floods the city, it can continue to cause damage for weeks. It can cause a lot of damage such as death, injuries, millions of dollars in financial loss and a lot more. The effects are actually continued for many years after the natural disaster hit the city.`Tsunamies are predicted by a siesmometor. When this machine detects a earthquake under the ocean, it signals the coaslikes the tsunami could head for. But the machine is not perfect, because not all earthquackes make tsunamies, but its always better to get away just in case if the tsunami is really going to happen in their area, or other areas. After an earthquake occurred in a certain area, you must calculate the energy of this earthquake. From the seismograph, you can collect data from this earthquake. Like this, you can calculate the location, depth and strength.What is good about this is that it can reveal clues about the nature of the rocks the waves were passing. The data records the motion of the mass. This makes a series of squiggly lines, that look like waves we have done in class.For big tsunamies, there is only one benefit, which is economical. Imagine if you have a house that you need to destroy, and there is a big tsunami coming, it would be good if that house was torn apart and took into the sea. This would be good for the government because they wouldn’t have to pay money to destroy that house or building, because the tsunami did it for them, but it would be bad for the environment because it would pollute the environment. 
In 2004, an earthquake occurred in Indonesia that was marked 8.8 in the richter scale. And only a few minutes later a big tsunami hit the same area. This made big damages to the city. It also killed a lot of people. To be percice, it was around quorter of a million people that died during this time. Something similar happened in Japan last year in 2011 whan a big earthquake also happened which was also around 8.8 on the richter scale. It aslo followed with a big tsunami wave. This also killed a lot of people. But wats worse, it also damaged a nuclearactive power plant that made equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and release of nuclearactive materials in Fukushima.

Space Exploration Essay

So the question that we are asking ourselves are how much is space exploration really worth to human society? Does it outweigh the costs? What are the benefits and what are our limitations? At the end, we will find out. I think that we could benefit a lot from space exploration because for example, if anything happens to our earth, if we searched the space we might find a new place to go to. Also, we might find some new species of life form. Another thing that we could find, is materials such as the rocks on the moon… etc. But even though I think these would all be great ideas, there are some costs too. It might happen for example that the engine is dead, or something happens to the rocket, like on the video we watched with the teacher going to space, the whole crew could die. I think that sending people to the moon and other planets is a great idea, because like I said, we could find new species, and we would become even smarter than we are now. But I think that only doing Earth-based research isn’t a good idea because like that we can only learn about our planet, and we wouldn’t know anything else about the rest of the universe. I don’t think that we shouldn’t learn about earth at all though, because if we do, we wouldn’t know to predict what can happen to it. So I think that it is important that we do both.

If I had to chose 5 top things my country would work on, the first thing would be medical studies, because with medical studies, we would find out about new medicine, and it would make our life a bit longer. The second thing would be education, because without education, nobody would have the knowledge to do all the tasks, especially medical studies! The third thing would science studies, because like that we could make new technology, and sell them to other countries for money so we could spend it on other things. The fourth thing would be transportation, such as airports, marines… etc. Like this tourist would come to our country, and we would get a lot of money on that. But like this we would import and export materials. And the fifth thing that I think would be important is space exploration, because with that, we could find new things, and then sell them to other countries. Also we would get better knowledge of space.

In conclusion, I think that space exploration is very important to human society, because we would find out more about the universe. It does outweigh the costs because with space exploration, like I said before, we can find so many things we can now only imagine! And there are much more benefits then limitations!

Reasons for the seasons Lab Report

1.     If it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the southern hemisphere will be getting the direct light, since the earth is tilted, but if it is summer in the Northern hemisphere, then there will be the direct light!

2.     During the summer they get direct light and during winter they don’t get direct light.

3.     You would get more heat and it would be hotter

4.     It will always be hottest near the equator since wherever the heat is going towards, it will always hit the equator, and it is the coolest at the poles, since there is where the least amount of heat goes, which then makes it cooler than in other places on the planet

5.     At summer, the tooth pick will be longest, since that is when the heat is headed towards you (depending where in the world you are) and in the winter it will be shortest because at that point is when not a lot of heat is headed toward you, and makes it cold (and the tooth pick short).

6.     They are related because they are the places that the sun rays hit the earth

7.     Since the earth is tilted on its axis (23.5^o), if the sun’s rays are headed to the southern part of the hemisphere, that is where it will be summer, since it’s the part of the earth that is getting direct heat from the sun. But, since in the northern part of the hemisphere there is no direct heat, there will be winter because there is less heat. And also the other way around. When the direct heat is going towards the Northern hemisphere, then there will be summer and in the southern hemisphere there is no direct heat so it will be winter.

 

 

Solar Storm

On Thursday March 8^th, the biggest solar storm hit us in the last 5 years! On Friday morning, the solar storm changed its direction, and hit earth massively as it travelled 4.5 million mph towards the southern side of earth. Luckily for us, this only made some little disrupts, and didn’t harm any of the satellites, electric grids, and GPS systems. The only thing that it did do was cause some auroras to happen in places like Michigan, Seattle, Alaska, New Zealand, Minnesota and Australia. On the grid, from G1 to G5 with G5 being the most powerful, this solar storm was rated G3. The largest solar storm to hit earth was in 1859. The Northern Lights where so powerful that they could be seen all the way up where Cuba is! And the Southern Lights were also so powerful that they were able to be seen all the way down in Santiago, which is in Chile. In some parts of the USA it was so bright that you could read your newspaper without turning on the lights because of how bright the aurora was! Luckily, back then there were no GPS’s and satellites to be broken, but some of the USA equipment was burned.

 

 

Bibliography:http://www.dogonews.com/2012/3/11/the-biggest-solar-storm-to-hit-earth-in-five-years-passes-without-incident

Zebras Bug Repellent

Zebra’s striped skin is what their bug repellent is. Scientists first thought that their stripes where to get away from predators, because in a herd, it’s hard to recognize what one zebra is! The study was led by a group of Swedish Scientists. The first clue they found out, is that dark horses got bit more than light colored or white horses. Since we know that the zebras are born black, and get their white stripes as they grow, so the made a theory that that is why zebras aren’t attracted to flies. They tested it by taking a black horse, and took white paint, and painted him so he would have white stripes like zebras. Their result was that not many flies went to bite him, but they did go for the rest of the horses that were not black and white. Even though the theory makes 100% sense, it has never been tested on a real zebra. If it is like this, then another question the scientist will have is why did zebras develop the stripes and horses didn’t, even though they are close relatives. Scientists think because in Africa, where the zebras are from, are a lot of horseflies, and there aren’t much horses there, the zebras had to get the stripes, and horses didn’t!

 

 

Bibliography:http://www.dogonews.com/2012/3/6/zebras-have-their-own-bug-repellent

Urban Farming

We have found out that by the time year 2050 comes, there will be an additional 9.1 million people! It will be very hard to feed everyone in the world. 70% of all people will be living in the city! The idea of urban farming has been going on for a while, but never really happened, until now! In Sweden, a huge skyscraper was built for the urban farming, but also for scientist from all around the earth to come and share their ideas and improve urban farming. In this skyscraper, the temperature is made by a machine that helps them, and the city’s air, because it absorbs the carbon dioxide from nearby buildings and uses that to create the temperature, to weather it needs to be cold or warm. If everything goes as planned, they will begin farming in 12-16 months! If it turns out a success, then they will start making these buildings all around the world so that there would be urban farming in other countries, and not just in Sweden! If this all works, it would get rid of the food crisis in the next 40 years!

 

 

Bibliography: http://www.dogonews.com/2012/3/2/urban-farming-may-finally-become-a-reality