Week 7

     The main idea for this week's lab was discovering how big the solar system actually is when created to scale. My group used playdough to create the size for the planets and a cut out piece of paper for the sun. The diameter of the sun was 160 mm, which made Mercury 0.5mm, Venus 1.3mm, Earth 1.4mm, Mars 0.4mm, and the Moon 0.35mm. In relation to the sun, Mercury was 6.66m away, Venus was 12.4m away, Earth was 17.2 m away, and Mars was 26.2m away. Compared to the Earth, the moon was 26.6mm away. Here were our planets in size relation to the sun. 


Sun: paper
Mercury: red
Venus: yellow
Earth: green
Moon: blue
Mars: pink

    In Thursday's lecture, we discussed the phases of the moon and how the rotation of the earth effects shadows. We talked about the Tropic of Cancer, Equator, and Tropic of Capricorn and how depending on where on the planet someone is located, his or her shadow will either be North, South, or directly above them at exactly noon. We finished by talking about how the moon was created. We discussed how a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth and the debris created the moon. We also discussed alternative theories such as capture, fission, co-formation, and colliding planetesimal. Capture refers to the idea that the Earth's gravitational pull grabbed the moon from another planet. Fissis is the theory that the Earth spun so fast that material from the Earth flung into space and became the Moon. Co-formation is the idea that the Moon formed with the Earth from gas and dust combining. Colliding planetesimal is the idea that some debris collided and condensed and became the moon. Hinduism suggests that the god Soma represents the god of the moon and an elixir that gods drink. When they drink it, the moon becomes smaller and smaller. Anningan is the name of the god for some Inuit people that live in Greenland, and he is the Moon who chases sis sister Malina, the Sun goddess across the sky and becomes less visible as he forgets to eat before he disappears. 

    The textbook discusses the idea of how small we are in relation to the rest of our solar system. I thought it was very interesting to watch the video on the Hubble Telescope and XDF. The idea that if we hold a pen to the sky, we can only see that much through the telescope is unbelievable. When studying the solar system, it is so easy to imagine things closer together because of what we were taught as children and from photos we've seen. It's difficult to comprehend the idea of distance, light, and time across the galaxy and the entire solar system. I also found it interesting that when we look at these things, we are viewing these galaxies as they were 13 billion years ago and may not even exist today due to the speed of light. 






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 5

Image
      In lab, we discussed the idea of science vs. engineering. We decided science is why things happen and engineering is how we solve science-based problems. We then moved on to experiment dropping an egg into a bowl filled with possible playground materials to discover what is safe and what is not. My group started with a layer of saran wrap on the bottom covered with 1/2 sand then 1/2 straw.      We found that there was too much bounce from 1 meter and it would not be safe enough.       We then replaced the straw with foam pellets to prevent bounce.       Once we found that the bounce was reduced, we tried the egg. Since the egg weighed less than the golf ball we were experimenting with, we decided to create an indent in the pellets to keep the egg from bouncing or rolling out.      Since this worked, we started brainstorming how we could make it safe for a 2 meter drop. We decided to take out some sand and add more foam pellets. We ended up with the same layer of saran wrap covere
Read more

Week 14

      Monday's lab focused on the issues of climate change. The big questions were: 1. What is the albedo effect and how does it affect climate? 2. How does the greenhouse effect interact with the albedo effect? 3. Is the albedo effect a positive or negative feedback look? We discussed how bad climate change is, how scientists know what they know, who is influencing these decisions, fossil fuel emissions, environmental rules, insurance, and our impact. We then moved into the topic of the greenhouse effect and infrared radiation. We learned that certain gases in our atmosphere act like a blanket around Earth and protect us from the sun's radiation, but greenhouse gases absorb radiation and re-emit it into the atmosphere, burning a hole in the atmosphere. We the discussed the idea of the albedo effect and an albedo of 1 means radiation is completely reflected, while an albedo of 0 means radiation is completely absorbed. This positive cycle happens due to all surfaces having an al
Read more

Week 12

Image
 In Monday's lab, we began by reviewing the idea that climate is a 30-year average of weather. We then discussed how best to teach climate change to elementary students, especially students in the Midwest. A big consequence of climate change is ice melting and causing sea levels to rise, but since we are not coastal, it does not hit home for children in the Midwest. We brainstormed and came up with an idea that could motivate students to learn about climate change: how agriculture is affected. We then discussed the Paris Climate Agreement that we learned about in the movie Before the Flood  and came up with some different topics were were interested in learning more about. We finished lab with exploring precipitation levels in different areas throughout Iowa and how climate change has caused Iowa to receive more precipitation. We connected it to flooding and soil runoff and how that damages our environment here in Iowa. My group explored Northeast Iowa and discovered that the area
Read more