At the beginning of this new week, we made some new vocab cards. We learned some rather bizarre words today, including: Asthenosphere, Catastrophism, and Uniformitarianism. By the way, Spell check doesn't even recognize a single one. Anyway, Asthenosphere is a layer of mantel about 150km deep, Catastrophism is the idea that the world is shaped by a series of massive, rapid events, and Uniformitarianism, is the idea that the world is shaped by slow processes, like weathering, or erosion. After creating our vocab cards, we worked on our oreo labs. I was lucky that I already did most of it, because I was finished by the end of the period.
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| Seems to support Catastrophism, to me |
Tuesday or September 1, 2015 C.E.:
Today we started the day by talking about what we would invent to make the world a better place. It was interesting what people said. One person talked about a container, that could dry the contents, and another talked about a container that was almost infinitely large yet small in real life and when you stuck your hand in it, you were presumably sticking your hand into a wormhole, and yet another talked about using an existing quantum theory as transportation to ultimately reduce carbon emissions. After this we filled out a couple more vocabulary cards of words that most of us had never heard of, and then the day was over.
Wednesday or September 2, 2015 C.E.:
We started out to-day's science class by finishing a diagram of the inside of the Earth. We did notes on history of of the universe, all the way up to Precambrian era of the Earth. We talked about how the universe is really old, at 13.7 billion years, and the Earth is also old at 4.5 billion years. We learned that in the early stages, the Earth was molten, and gradually heavier metals sunk to the core, like iron or nickel. Lighter elements, like magnesium, sodium, potassium, and oxygen rose to higher levels.
Thursday or September 3, 2015 C.E.:
Today we started a new lab, simulating carbon-dating. We took 100 pennies, and threw them on the table. This was supposed to represent one half-life. The pennies that ended up tails, represented the carbon-14 atoms that decayed. We then put all the heads back together and threw them on the table again, to simulate another half-life. This was repeated until every penny ended up tails, or every last Carbon-14 decayed into a stable Nitrogen isotope. We repeated the process 1 or 2 times, and then we recorded the number of remaining pennies after each throw into a table. Tomorrow, we will probably start graphing, doing the questions for the lab, and filling out additional information in the tables, like averages.
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| Each Flask represents one half-life |
Friday or September 4, 2015 C.E.:
Today we finished our Radiometric Dating lab. We completed the table and filled out the averages. We then graphed the averages of our data. The X-axis was the number of years that had passed, and the Y-axis was the number of Carbon-14 or pennies left. The graph was very interesting, and made me think of the Zeno's ball paradox. If the top of the crests, were connected with a line, then the following graph, and our graph will look exactly the same.
Summary: The week was an extremely interesting week. I learned about the history of the Earth from a teacher for the first time, rather than a book, and I learned a lot. I can still complete my blog faster and more efficiently, and that is what I will do.
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