Jenna- Elementary Science Methods Blog

  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...

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 ...

  The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we did presentations about the following concepts Origins of the Universe, Lifecycles of Stars, Galaxies, Origin of the Earth, Black Holes, and Exploration of Space (past, present, and future). My group presented on galaxies: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QG_PaivJ7nScxtVJi-5uTTiCqH6PRVKeqGkQcH7iSxI/edit?usp=sharing A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. In lecture we spent time further discussing the topics that we did presentations on in lab. Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading: What did you learn? The textbook helped us learn the timeline of how our universe formed. It started with the Big Ban 13.7 billion years ago. Then there was a mass star formation, which lead to the black hole and the Milky Way to be formed. The earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. What was most helpful? I found the videos to be most helpful because they are an engaging way to l...

   The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we investigated the size of our solar system. We had to make it to scale, which really put it into perspective the size of our solar system. We made our sun about 7-8 cm long and it lead the rest of the planets to be less than a millimeter. We focused a lot of our discussion on the size of the solar system. It really put it into perspective about how large the solar system is and how small the Earth is in comparison. A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture. In lecture, we learned that the sun has never been directly above us in Iowa, which is why our shadows always point north. We also learned about the origins of the moon. Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading: What did you learn? I learned the order of the planets and that the inner 4 planets are rocky and the outer 4 are gaseous.  What was most helpful? I found the video that put into perspective the size of sp...