Mercury

Mercury is the eighth largest planet and it is the planet closest to the Sun. Mercury is hot, extremely dry, and almost airless. Mercury takes 88 earth days to orbit the sun and Earth takes 365 days to orbit the sun. Something that weighed 100 lbs. on earth would only weigh about 38 lbs. on Mercury. Mercury has three layers and but Mercury's biggest layer is the core. Earths biggest layer is the mantle. The temperature in Mercury is a lot hotter and dryer than earth because it is closer than the sun. Mercury heats up 10 times more than Earth. Because the heat on Mercury is so intense no kind of living organisms could survive on that planet. If you see Mercury through a telescope it goes through phases like the moon and it appears to change size and shape.

By, Lili Nuno, Trevor Ruhrer, Brandon Powell

Geologic time scale

In 1913 the first geologic time scale was proposed by a british geologist Arthur Holmes. Holmes believed that the Earth was about 4 billion years old. Today scientist estimate that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old. Why is the geologic ime scale importan to us? The geologic time scale is used to determine how old something is. For example, the geologic timescale helps us understand how old the Earth is and how old rocks on it are.

Plate Tectonics

Plate Tectonics could be a hard topic to understand but it's something that affects many things. For example, plates moving could cause many things to happen. Plates moving can cause earthquakes, form land forms, and they can even cause land to move.

When two plates come together they collide, this movement of plates is called convergent plate movement. Converging plates can cause many things but two of the most recognized things they do is they create volcanos and mountains. Valcanos are formed when an oceanic plate and a continental plate collide. The oceanic plate goes under the continental plate because it is more dense. The oceanic plate has magma under it and the pressure and heat of the magma causes cracks in it. The acidic magma from the mantle rises through the cracks and it keeps building up and building up forming a volcano. When two continental plates collide they form mountains. One of the plates is forced under the other. The pressure of the two plates causes the crust to fold and it creates mountain ranges.

Divergent plate movement is when plates move apart from each other. When they move apart magma from the mantle comes to the surface and solidifies, this process is called sea-floor spreading. When the magma keeps adding on it forms an oceanic ridge. Volcano's can form in divergent plate boundaries but they have small gentle eruptions, these volcano's are called submarine volcano's.

Transform plate boundaries slide past each other. The movement is not smooth because of rocks in between the plates. Sometimes the plates lock. The plates may lock but whats under them doesn't so this causes pressure and the pressure keeps building up and building up resulting in earthquakes.
Plate boundaries moving is something that is important us. We use earthquakes to give off energy to make seismic waves to see what the center of the Earth is made of and we use plate tectonics to explain the theory of Pangea.

The land on Earth moves it did thousands of years ago and it will keep moving. Scientist believe that millions of years ago all the continents that make up the world today were one massive super continent called Pangea. Not everybody believes the Pangea theory even though there is a lot of evidence to support it. Something that leads many people to believe in Pangea is that the continents look like a big puzzle. The continents if arranged right all fit together and are all a big continent. There are fossil bands that connect one continent to another. Maybe its just all one coincidence but there is stronger evidence to support Pangea. Scientist have drilled holes on the ground and they compare what they drill from different places and the climate from thousands of years ago is the same in all the places so therefor they must have been connected.

Conferences Update

I learned that earthquakes happen like around the edges of continents. I learned about the Mid Atlantic Ridge. We learn about alot of different things in this class we talk about like weather and how that relates to particles but something I really like about this class is that we get to talk about how actual science works, we learn how actual science works and this year i have learned a lot more about science, scientist, and how science works because of open discussions in class, discussions on edmodo and things on the class website. We also learn about how science works by observing things like the tray investigations and the tubes
http://krusescience.ning.com/video/tray-investigations


I could actually try to participate more, like if i know something will try to confuse me i just don't even try to think about it. participate when i want to and like sometimes some days I like don't really care about anything and I don't even try to participate even though i know i should or sometimes when I like that we have open discussions and we don't have to read out of a book on our owns because i know that if we did work out of a book and did those boring worksheets everyday i wouldn't learn anything...i would just get the work done and never give a crap about it again. I don't like that like the worksheets make us think so hard even though that's kinda the point...to keep thinking about things so yeah...

open discussion video

one project i really enjoyed was when we did an investigation with people in other class periods we all worked on it during our own class period and at the end we all saw it put together.

Global Warming

I chose to learn more about global warming because I hear a lot of people talk about it but nobody really says what it is, they just say global warming can destroy the worl. I didn't know a lot about global warming but In learned that according to about 2,500 scientist humans are the cause of global warming.
When humans are the cause of climate change it is called anthropogenic climate change. I found out what keeps the Earth from going into space and staying on the Earth, that is the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse gasses absorb the heat and keep it from leaving Earth, even though the greenhouse affect is important to keep the heat, human activities are increasing the greenhouse gasses that absorb heat and those additional gasses are making a big difference to the climate and it's effecting not only animals but it can effect humans too.
I thought only animals in the North and South Pole are being effected by Global Warming but animals all over the world have to learn to adapt to the changes not only animals that live in the cold.
Heat effects farmers, in places like Africa they are getting droughts and they don't have water for their crops.
Human's can slow down the process of Global Warming by saving energy but humans won't change they will just deny they are the reason for global warming. I thought only animals and the weather was being affected by global warming but Global Warming affects almost everything going on! I think people should atleast make an effort to slow down the global warming process.
I got my information from:

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming

Day5

Today we are writing the conclusionn of our paper and making sure our link works fine on the ning. We are fixing our errors on the document trying to not miss mistakes.

Day 4

Today everything evaporated at the same pace as yesterday. We are about ready to write our conclusion and post it to ning.