Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Water Cycle Re-Visited

1)The water cycle is a continuous cycle through which water is constantly moving through.
2)No, the water cycle doesn't have a starting point; that is the whole concept of a "cycle".
3)A puddle of water may move through the water cycle and fall back as rain when the sun evaporates the water, the water condenses into clouds and mixes with other various molecules, and then falls back down again in some form of precipitation.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Melting Polar Ice Caps Comic

Melting Polar Ice Caps Annotated Bibliography

1) If the polar ice caps melted, how much would the oceans rise?
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question473.htm
This websight explains how much the oceans would rise if the polar ice caps melted. It also explains how the rising coast lines would affect life. I plan to use the website in my presentation by putting in a link so people to explore themselves.

2)No Title
http://www.gemzies.com/img_photos/melting_polar_ice_caps_global_warming_6_67f624662a8531b11823ea862c302016_490x350.png
This isn't a website. It is just a picture. Seeing this picture gave me all I needed to know that the melting of ice caps was effecting animals in a HUGE way! I've already put this image in my presentation and included a slide on it.

Melting Polar Ice Caps

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Melting Polar Ice Caps

1)What, specifically about your topic, are you going to research? What are the dangers of the melting ice caps?

2)What conclusions did you come to? What do you recommend average citizens do to make a difference? I have concluded that since in about the last 100 years the temperature on Earth has risen about 1 degree Celsius, that the sea level has risen about 6 to 8 inches. The oceans are rising because the floating icebergs are melting due to the increased heat and when they melt, all of the frozen water that was above the surface, is now part of the surface. If all of the ice in Antarctica alone melted, the sea level would rise about 200 feet! If you take that average number of JUST Antarctica, and added all of the other ice caps and glaciers around the world, imagine how tremendously the sea level would rise!! Some cities could be completely buried in water! Another thing that is affected by the melting ice caps is animal life. Some animals such as seals, penguins, polar bears, etc are all affected by the melting, because the ice is what they live on! Obviously, if the ice melted, they would die off , because they can't survive in water due to the fact that they don't have gills. If these animals die off, the larger animals that eat them may starve or attempt to seek another habitat. I recommend to people to continue to try not to emit greenhouse gasses and to recycle as much as possible so we can reuse things instead of burning or letting the old ones rot! The best thing people can do is let others be aware of the issue and PRACTICE WHAT THEY PREACH!!!! Source

3) What would happen if, worst-case scenario, nobody listened to your recommendations? Global warming would take control, causing littler precipitation, lots of drought, animal life to go extinct, shore lines to rise, less crops would be able to be grown, temperature would increase, and overall just chaos!

4) What would happen if, best-case scenario, everybody listened to your recommendations? Global warming would disappear, shore lines would reseed (possibly further than before), fresh water would become much more plentiful, the number of plant-able crops would increase, a MUCH healthier environment would exist for all, and if all goes extremely well; polar life may actually increase!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Penny Lab


-First, we put pennies on paper towels. Then we took droppers and put one drop of water at a time on the top of the penny. We saw how many drops of water we could drop on the penny before it poured off of the penny. We dropped the water at different heights and speeds to see what worked best.
-My prediction was that the higher you drop the water from and the slower you do it, the more water drops you can fit on the penny before it flows off. Also, I tried to get my penny flat on my desk so that the water didn't have a slope to trickle down.
-It turned out that the closer to the penny that I dropped the water from and the slower I did it, the more drops i got to stay on the penny. The max number of drops that I got to stay on the penny was 24.
- I think that the water eventually falls off, because the water molecules have to keep expanding in order to connect to each other, and the surface tension decreases as the water droplets increase.