Final: Lauren I. and Katelin M.

South American Plate Boundary

Kelsey Hill, Lauren Ingham, Ally Hakeem, Katelin Mitchell

Type 1 is the purple line running down the middle of the oceanic plane. We discovered that this area has a higher elevation, making the earthquakes closer to the surface. The land here is younger and there aren't as many volcanoes.

Type 2 is the pink lines around the curve at the bottom and along the left side of the plate. In this area, the sea and land elevation is greatest. The earthquakes are very deep and there is a high concentration of volcanoes.

Type 3 is the yellow line along the bottom and top of the plate boundary. The earthquakes follow along this area, most of them being shallow. There was nothing significant about this area with any other map.

Transform and Divergent Boundary: Our Type 1 according to this map is both a Transform and Divergent plate boundary. This is the red and blue. This is where earthquakes and volcanoes were infrequent. The areas in which there is a Transform and Divergent plate boundary are the areas where there is new land forming and the elevation is the highest. Because of this, there are less volcanoes and the earthquakes follow along the boundary, but aren't as congested. Also these earthquakes are not as deep.

Here you can see that there is only one volcano exists in this whole area which agree with our type 1 observation that there are very few volcanoes.

This picture shows that there are earthquakes, but they are not nearly as frequent as they are in Convergent plate boundaries. The orange color of the earthquakes means that they are the most shallow in those areas. This agrees with our Type 1 observation that the earthquakes aren't as deep as they are in other areas.






Convergent Boundary: These next images show the Convergent boundaries in the South American plate. In Convergent boundaries, the two areas collide, so the land rises and the ocean becomes deeper. This proves why volcanoes are at their highest, the land is the oldest, and the ocean is deepest along these boundaries.

This picture shows the volcanoes along a Convergent boundary. This fits with our Type 2 because we observed that the volcanoes were more frequent along this line.

 We found this area interesting because this one curve showed to be a hot spot for volcanoes, which we later discovered to be a Convergent boundary, which means that there is more volcanic activity in this section. This also agrees with our Type 2 because we found the most activity in this region.

 This is another picture of the curve in our plate boundary, but this shows the earthquakes. It also goes with the definition of a Convergent boundary and our Type 2.

This is showing the several earthquakes of variant depths which is consistent with a Convergent boundary. This image is also consistent to our Type 2 definition.










Transform Boundary: This is in the areas where there is little activity because the plates are shifting close together. We have seen in some Transform boundaries that there is a lot of activity in both earthquakes and volcanoes, such as the San Andreas fault line. However, our Transform boundaries aren't as active so we do not have as many earthquakes and we have very little volcanoes.

This is looking at just the Transform boundary on the South American plate. This is the blue line on the map showing very little activity of volcanoes in this area. This agrees with our Type 3 that there is hardly anything happening in this region.

This picture is looking at the same Transform boundary, the blue line. We said in our Type 3 description that there were earthquakes along the boundary, but they weren't frequent, and this proves that observation.

Astronomy

     Science is very interesting in the sense that there is so much out in this world, this universe, that is to be discovered and with science these things can be found. Though there is a bunch of concepts and questions that have not been answered yet, science is in the making of resolving those issues. Without science, the discoveries of stars, planets, night and day, etc. would not be very clear to us to this day. 

     I was very excited to start our section on Astronomy because I love everything about the universe. There is so much to find out in space and it is crazy to realize how much could actually be floating around out there. Astronomy has a lot more to do with observations than experiments, I mean how are we supposed to conduct an experiment on, say, Saturn when it takes ten years to get there? :) The cool thing about Astronomy is that there can be so many hypotheses and so many answers to those observations that the discovery of space is never stopped. 

     In class we were to do a visual presentation with a partner and a powerpoint on the basic ideas in Astronomy. At first the powerpoint seemed like we were just repeating information we already knew; yeah, the sun rises and then the moon and that distinguishes day and night. However, once we got into lunar eclipses and solar eclipses, and tides, and all that extra stuff it got very interesting. I had known of these topics before, but being able to just research them more intently helped me gain a better knowledge of what each was about and why they happened. Not only did this research help, but all the visual representations we did in class were also very helpful. Between the two visuals of the planets (the walk of the planets and the video of traveling past each planet) it really put into perspective how vast everything is out in the galaxy. But out of all the activities we did through our Astronomy exploration I really enjoyed doing the research on my group visual project and seeing others research. It was nice because I learned new facts about topics that I thought I had a lot of knowledge on, and everyone was actually somewhat intrigued by what they found on their topic. The presentations were very exciting to look at, and the fact that we could ask questions and discuss with each other in the class was nice. 

     All in all, taking a couple trips out in the galaxy was well worth my time!

    

     Oh, and seeing what would happen if I got sucked into a black hole :)

Newton's Laws of Motion!

Hannah, Lynn, Katelin

We represented Newton's second law by using the mathematical equation, F = ma, to find the force of the object.

We had to, first, weigh the object and then convert it to kilograms in order to find the mass.

296g = .296 kg

After finding the mass we used the equation to find the force of the object.

F = ma
F = .296 (10)
F -= 2.95 N

We used a spring scale to check our work.

The spring scale hit at about three, meaning we were pretty close in our calculations.

Next we used a battery charged car and a spring scale to measure the force of the car when it has another force acting up on it.

The scale moved between 3 and 3.5. Since the car has acceleration and is using force to move forward, the spring in the scale also moves back and forth because it is also exerting force on the object. When the car uses force to pull the spring to 3.5 that is showing more force and more acceleration.

We then proved Newton's laws of motion using marbles.

Newton's First Law: An object at rest will stay at rest unless acted about by an outside force.

The marbles stay at rest, unless acted on by an outside force, in this case, another marble.

Newton's Second Law: With more mass an object will have less acceleration or force.

This is an example of two objects of different masses in free fall. Even though one marble has more mass than the other marble, they should hit the ground at the same time because the acceleration of an object in free fall is 10 m/s.

Newton's third law: When an object exerts a force on another object the force is equal.

Since the larger marble has a bigger mass it effects the velocity of the smaller object, making it shoot in the opposite direction.

Lastly we proved Newton's laws using Newton's Cradle.

Newton's first law:

An object at rest will stay at rest...

Unless acted upon by an outside force.

Newton's Second Law: With more force there is more acceleration.

With the force of the first hit, it makes the other side shoot out, showing the acceleration of the object by using force from the first hit.

Newton's Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction

This shows the action of the first ball hitting the others and making the other end shoot out. They hit back and forth showing the equal and opposite reaction on each side. We slowed the video down so we could see the equal force on each object. We know they have equal force because the first ball goes out the same distance as the opposite ball.

How do we maintain creativity?

This article was actually very interesting to me. I never thought of the concept of "teaching to imitate." I found that statement to be very correct though after reading about the research presented. For example, one experiment used a toy that played music and a set of kids were told how to work the toy. This showed that kids will only imitate what their teacher tells them to do, but they really aren't learning how to solve the problem. I also agree that this method of teaching refrains from creative thinking because we all are trained to do things the way society and school administration wants us to, like the blog was saying, they give us rules to follow and if we don't follow them we are disobedient and obnoxious. In order to get kids to truly learn, teachers have to open their views up and let the students explore and ask questions, and actually get things wrong. This way, students can learn from their errors and come up with better, and quicker solutions. Like in the same experiment mentioned earlier, another group that had the toy were not told how to make it play music, but they found a quicker solution than the ones who were told how to make it sound. Not only proving that kids can discover quicker methods to things, but also that once kids know the answer they won't attempt more options. This article made some very strong and good points.

As a learner, I can completely relate to what this blog talks about. I'm so used to being told what to do and how to do problems that if I am put in a position where I have to figure everything out myself it is extremely challenging. However, when I actually discover something out for myself, I feel much more accomplished and I learn. I remember the concepts of the problem or lesson because I had to really think and explore, rather than just listen and copy. I would have liked to gain better critical thinking and creativity skills as a child, but I grew out of that, and those skills are extremely difficult to just get back.

This impacts me as a teacher because I am now inspired to help my future students become creative and have a strong skill of problem solving without having to lean on adults. I think that, like the blog suggested, all teachers should allow these methods of questioning and exploration in their classroom with their students at a younger age. This way, when kids still have their grand imagination, they don't lose that creativity and yearning for more discovery. It's very important for kids to want to explore and find answers for themselves, and being a college student that got sucked out of that and now regrets it, I want the best for generations to come. So, when I get into teaching, I will take those tips from the blog, such as asking kids what they think the answer is and engaging with a kid on their level, and use them to expand the brains and creativity in my students.

Car and Tire... CRASH! (freefall cont.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYz_K3mwq6A

This is further documentation that shows that objects of different masses can fall at the same velocity. This is pretty crazy... watch and see! :)

Freefall

Hannah Long
Lynn Lopez
Katelin Mitchell

Our definition of free fall is an object that falls by it's own acceleration according to gravitational pull and its mass. While in the process of this experiment, we were trying to prove that objects of different masses should still fall at the same velocity and hit the ground at the same time. However, due to human air, the different objects did not hit at the same time. The two types of balls that were the closest to hitting the ground at the same time were the tennis ball and the bouncy ball, the other objects we dropped were not close at all. We realized that, due to air resistance, the styrofoam balls dropped slower than any other ball we dropped.

Data: D = 1/2at^2

Distance: 10.65 meters

10.65 = 1/2 (10) t^2
          = 1.459 seconds

d = 1/2at^2

10.65 = 1/2 (10) 1.459^2

10.65 = 10.64

This video shows a golf ball and a tennis ball hitting the ground at different times.

This video shows two different sizes of styrofoam balls being dropped, one small styrofoam ball and one large styrofoam ball.

We found that only the tennis ball and the bouncy ball were the closest to falling at the same velocity, meaning that they dropped at about the same time.

This video shows that the tennis ball fell the closest to what we estimated in our acceleration equation, the data for the tennis ball fell around 1.3 and 1.4. Pretty darn close!

Our Percent Error is .09%

|known value - measured value|/known value

|10.65 - 10.64|/10.65 x 100 = .094%

This is further documentation that shows that objects of different masses can fall at the same velocity. This is pretty crazy... watch and see! :)