Monday, May 31, 2010

Blizzard Website

Check out our Blizzard Website! You can learn a lot of new information about blizzards such as how they are formed and some famous blizzards in history. You can also learn about where in the world blizzards are commonly formed and much more! Hope you enjoy it!

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Lit. Poems


"So Far Away, Yet So Close"


Liesel

Adventurous, daring

Reading, stealing, mastering

Benevolent, compassionate, omniscient, courageous

Saving, loving, caring

Mystic, perplexing

Death.


“Black”


Their hair isn’t yellow,

Their eyes aren’t blue;

Black is the only color

In the eyes and mind of a Jew.


The sun is blazing orange,

The trees are pine green;

Black is yet the only lonely color

The Jew in the basement has seen.


Purple is the color of the evening sky,

Gray is the color of the air;

Black is the color of the bomb

Which caused the family to be the last to tear.


By, crazy4coke091

Friday, May 14, 2010

Animal Fridays!


Recently, our unit has seen animals for the past two Fridays. Last Friday, our unit took a trip to the aquarium where we saw several different aqua creatures. We not only got to see but also had the ability to touch some of the animals such as jellyfish and starfish. The aquarium was the perfect trip because in science class we did learn about animal classification like fish. It was an overall wonderful trip where everyone did not just have fun, but learned along the way. This Friday was also yet another animal filled day, this time reptiles. We got a visit from a nearby zoo to our school and we were able to meet some of the zoo's reptiles. We met a turtle, a snake, a lizard, and a lizard which looked exactly like a snake. We also saw a really large alligator skin and a big turtle shell. We learned a lot of facts about these animals like how turtles are endangered creatures. We can definitely help the turtles by one simple task, no littering. The turtles favorite snack is a jellyfish, which look very similar to plastic shopping bags which we are littering. The bags are left on the beach and the turtles can't distinguish the difference between it and a jellyfish. So the bags end up being the turtle's snack sometimes. The bags stay in their stomachs and expand, letting them not consume any more food. This ends up killing the animal and letting their population decrease day by day. Overall, the past two Fridays were very intriguing and we all learned a lot in them.

Picture: http://www.lisisoft.com/imglisi/5/Screensavers/25297sh1.jpg

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Earthquake Shortens Time of Day


Recently many people have heard about the earthquake that has occurred in Haiti, but on the other hand, a more recent earthquake has occurred in Chile and was much larger than the one in Haiti. Scientists have now found that because of this massive earthquake the time of day has decreased. No need to worry, it was only by 1.26 microseconds. Even though this is not a significant amount of time this change has astonished many scientists. Chile is surrounded by the Nazca and South American plates and these two plates always collide with each other constantly. This earthquake occurred because plates started to move suddenly. From this earthquake the sudden movement of the plates to the center of the earth happened, it changed the mass of the earth. When the mass inside of the planet moves around the way the earth tilts may also change. This change is the cause of the change in time because the way the earth spins determines time. When I read this article I was completely awestruck. The article started out saying that if you may be feeling that there's just not enough time in the day it may be because of this earthquake. That made me want to continue reading for I always think the day is just too short. Throughout reading the article I learned that it wasn't a large time difference at all, almost not enough time to blink. Overall, I enjoyed reading about a different side of this earthquake other than it's destruction.

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Friday, January 22, 2010

How Math Connects To The Research Task [Math]

Some would argue that math does not connect to our research task at all. That though is not true. Through my research on Afghanistan I had to use a lot of math skills to help me do the best research. Math can connect to our task in many ways. For example, in some of my research I learned new percentages about how many deaths there has been in the past year in Afghanistan. Along with percentages I also read a lot about numbers of fighters and numbers years. When it came to years, there were a lot. There were years of war or even how many years the soldiers would be in Afghanistan. Sometimes the text did not give the whole information and I opted to figure out the different between the years to find out how many years that the Soviets and Afghanistan fought. I also had to look at some graphs to find information. Even though I did not wish to use any information I learned of these maps in my essay, it was still in my research process. Also, I read about a lot of numbers. Numbers of deaths, number of soldiers, rankings. Those all relate with math as well. I learned rankings for Afghanistan, and again, death tolls. Overall, our research task did involve math.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Class Response- Start of Biology


Recently in class we started learning the building blocks of biology. We learned the structures of animals. The basic unit of structure and function in a living thing is a cell. They make up any living thing, whether plant or animal. Another aspect we learned were the levels of organization and functions of all animals. The four major functions of an animal is, obtaining food and oxygen, being able to move, reproduction and keeping conditions stable. All animals need oxygen and food to survive. All animals reproduce. They either do sexual reproduction or asexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction is the process in which a new organism develops from the joining of two sex cells. Asexual reproduction is the process by which a single organism produces a new organism identical to itself. Along with learning all of those, classification of animals was also something we learned. Overall, we learned most of the basics of biology.

I loved learning about all of these things about animals. Even though a lot of it was a review, I still found it very interesting. I am looking forward to this unit and especially dissecting some animals, such as a starfish. I like this unit better than our last one, chemistry. The hands on work is always fun, but to get there we must do all of the work we're doing currently. At least there's a lot of fun to look forward to!

Picture- http://seemikedraw.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/biology-final.jpg
Information- https://www.pearsonsuccessnet.com/snpapp/login/login.jsp