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Week 15: Climate Science

  The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. We started out lab by discussing CO2 levels. One thing I found interesting was discussing how much carbon dioxide in the room. Students task orientation, initiative, basic strategy, and more go down when the CO2 level is over 2,500ppm. Take the kids outside, less CO2. We then discussed the snowball earth and how it would thaw. We discussed that volcanic activity causes CO2 to be released which causes the earth to get warmer. We then discussed what we personally can do to help with climate change. We can recycle correctly, compost, weatherize your apartment, bikes and busses, and more! Climate change is something that we can fix. A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. In lecture we took the final exam. Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading: What did you learn? Earth’s climate has always fluctuated; the difference now is that Earth is experiencing significant climate change in a muc...
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Week 14: Climate Science

  The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. We started out lab by discussing climate change and where we are at now. We then discussed the greenhouse effect-visible light comes in, some is reflected as infrared, infrared can escape to space, most heat is contained in the atmosphere. Snow reflects a lot of the light, without snow, less gets reflected. A big question is what is the albedo effect and how does it affect climate? How does the GH Effect interact with the albedo effect? Is the albedo effect a positive or negative feedback loop? Positive cycles amplify while negative cycles negate effects. Ice caps melting at the North Pole are a positive feedback loop (increasing absorption rates). Greenhouse gas is a gas that absorbs and re-emits infrared light. For centuries, atmospheric carbon dioxide has never been above 300 ppm, but currently averaging 418 ppm (and isn't slowing down or tapering off). Since 1750-- carbon dioxide has increase 42%, methane h...
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Week 13: Climate Science

  The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. The beginning of the class, we discussed climate change in Iowa. The climate is already changing and Iowans are already adapting. We then expanded our scope to looking at all of the United States and the entire world. Every single piece of data we looked at showed that there is changing. It also shows that it is warming quicker. The driving question today was how does climate change affect the sea level? If all glaciers melted, sea level would rise 70 meters which would flood every single costal city. Sea level doesn't rise as sea ice melts as it is already in the water and accounted for, but when land glaciers melt, it adds to the ocean and causes the sea level to rise. We then discussed the Paris Climate Accord. The US was the first country to sign the accord, but then pulled out of the accord and now is the only country not int he Paris Climate Accord. The US has the largest emitter of greenhouse gases per p...
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Week 12: Climate Science

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The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we started discussing climate change. To investigate this, we analyze the rainfall in Iowa. My group focused on the Northeast section of Iowa. We found that the rainfall increased by 329%. We found that in Iowa as a whole, the Northern band is a lot wetter than the Southern band. The driving question we had was how do we know that the Goldfinch is in danger in Iowa? The answer is that the climate is changing and the Goldfinch can't adapt as quickly as the climate is changing. A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. In lecture, we took our Earth content exam.  Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading: What did you learn? I learned that climate change is human made and is a problem that we will jhave to confront in the future. What was most helpful? Watching the movie was so interesting and helped me learn more information about climate change. What do you need more informatio...
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Week 11: Superposition

The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we started out by being shown a picture of rocks and had to determine what rocks came first. We worked through that picture as a class. The rocks follow the law of superposition, which means that the rocks at the bottom are the oldest and the rocks at the top are the youngest. We then focused on sand and looking at them through a microscope. It was interesting because all of the sand was different from each other. We were able to place the sand in the communities that they belonged. To conclude class, we discussed Archimedes principle and water displacement and looked at Geodes to try and see which geodes would be hallow inside and which geodes would be solid inside. A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. In lecture we discussed more in detail about the rock cycle. We also went into detail about erosion --> wind erosion, water erosion, and glacier erosion. We finished class by drawing...
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Week 10:

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  The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we spent some time discussing rocks and the types of rocks. The big question we focused on was: What is a rock? We used starbursts to create the 3 different types of rocks: Igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. We also spent some time discussing the structure of the earth: the solid core, liquid mantle, and the crust. A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. In lecture, we discussed rock types and the law of superposition. The law of superposition states that the rocks at the bottom are the oldest and the rocks at the top are the newest. That follows pretty true unless theres is a fault or dyke. Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading: What did you learn? I learned about the types of plates on the earth and the different landforms that can come about with them. When two continental plates converge, the land is pushed into each other and forms a mountain. When to oceanic plate...
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Week 9: Geologic Time

The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we focused on significant events in the history of the Earth. We have 4.3 billion years on this Earth, but most things didn't happen until .5-1 bya. The Earth is completely different from when it originally appeared. We used biointeractive.org (earthviewer) to find the timing of the geologic events and added them to the timeline. A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. In lecture we took the space science exam. Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading: What did you learn? If the entirety of Earth's history was represented on a clock, humans wouldn't appear until 11:59:40. There have been 3 times in Earth's history where the entire planet was entirely ice. That happened because of a positive feedback loop. The reason that the snowball earth ended is because volcanoes kept erupting which caused the carbon dioxide to build up and start melting the ice, which led to ...
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