Tsunamis

A tsunami, also called a tidal wave, is a massive wave that causes extensive damage to land. A tsunami is started by earthquakes under the sea.

An earthquake is caused by tectonic plates moving. They float on top of the Earth’s mantle, so are not attached to anything. This means that they move a LOT. When a plate moves, it causes an earthquake.

When an earthquake happens in the ocean, the energy from it sends a rush of water up to the surface, which then sends waves in all directions. Far away from the mainland, these waves are small – in fact, if you are in a boat, you probably won’t feel them at all! But when the waves get closer to land... the trouble begins.

In the shallower water, the waves create friction by rubbing against the sea floor. This slows the wave down, making the waves behind build up and creates a vast tsunami. It causes mass destruction on land.

Since tsunamis are created by earthquakes, they act like them. Earthquakes mostly happen near the edges of the tectonic plates, because that is where two of them move apart or come closer together. So it makes sense that a tsunami’s epicentre (the place where the earthquake is started) is near the edge of the plates, right?

Tsunamis cause devastating damage. They flood EVERYTHING; they pick up absolutely everything – cars, houses, people – and guess what? When they pull back into the ocean (just like every other wave does) they pull ALL the waste they picked up back in with them. This pollutes the sea like crazy!

How do people predict these destruction machines? With buoys. They float in the water near the coast, anchored in place, and detect abnormally large waves. Most are positioned near the coastlines prone to tsunamis, or the ones that are near the edges of the tectonic plates. Nowadays, people can be warned when an earthquake is likely to occur.

Waves Interference

In class, my partner, Francesca, and I saw how waves interact with each other and other objects. We used a wide, shallow tank filled with water, two pipettes, two and a half sticks of clay, a paper towel, and a very small Styrofoam ball. We dropped small amounts of water into the centre of the tank using the pipette, and drew diagrams of how the wave moved. The wave went out in all directions, and another formed after it, so there were lots of circles expanding towards the sides of the tank. They were too feeble by the time they got there to bounce off them.
Then, we dropped water into the corner, and then the side, of the tank. The waves slightly bounced off the sides of the tank nearest to them. We repeated the steps but with two pipettes instead of one, and continued with our diagrams. The two waves overlapped, making them go in other directions.
Then came part 2. The first activity was to lower the paper towel into one side of the tank, and to drop water onto the other side. The waves went over the sunken paper towel. Then, we took out the towel and put a stick of clay into the middle of the tank, and dropped water in. The waves bounced off the clay. We continued, with clay in a different position, then with two sticks of clay across the width of the tank (forming a barrier that the waves bounced off), and then with two and a half sticks across its length, with about 2 1/2 space in between. This made waves go everywhere, bouncing off clay, the sides of the tank, and each other. It was pretty cool!
Then, we repeated everything, with the Styrofoam ball floating in the water. This didn't make much of a difference, except that the ball bounced up and down when the waves hit it.

Space Exploration - Is It Worth the Cost?

Costs of Space Exploration:

• Rockets & space shuttles
• Satellites
• Spacesuits
• Training
• Astronauts' salaries
• Telescopes
• Food, water, oxygen
• Lives
• Building

Benefits of Space Exploration:

• Gives people opportunities
• Gives us the possibility of finding a new planet to live on
• Lets people do what they love
• Lets other people find out about space

Options	Sending humans into space	Doing only Earth-based research	Using satellites
Benefits	- Humans can perform experiments in space where machines can't - Humans can assemble satellites - Humans can determine whether man can or can't survive in other places	- It is much cheaper then everything else - It is pretty safe	- They are more powerful than normal telescopes - They make it possible to see anything that's happening on the Earth's surface, and also inside the Earth
Drawbacks	- Humans can very well die - They can fail at what they are trying to do - They make it necessary to put food, water and oxygen in the rocket or the space shuttle	- It doesn't give enough information - It's pretty basic, compared to what we are capable of	- They require complicated and expensive assembling - They die and become space junk - They sometimes fall  through the atmosphere, polluting the ocean or wherever they land

My top 10 things I would spend money on:

1. Telescopes on Earth
2. Feeding for the hungry children of the world
3. Education
4. A few extremely powerful satellites and telescopes for space
5. Getting rid of space junk
6. Eliminating rubbish in the sea
7. Finding another planet to live on
8. Finding a way to save the Earth from a meteor WITHOUT a nuclear explosion
9. Sending less astronauts to space
10. Planting LOTS of trees to minimize the amount of carbon dioxide and to maximize the amount of oxygen

Mysterious Lake Blob Identified as Alien Bryozoan

http://www.livescience.com/11086-mysterious-lake-blob-identified-alien-bryozoan.html

 

A weird yellow-brown blobby substance was discovered in a man-made lake. Some people thought that it was a leftover Halloween prank (a fake lake monster), while others thought that the 4-ft-long blob was a bloated animal corpse. A third theory was that it was associated with aliens. This one turned out to be more correct than the others, since the "thing" was alien, to the freshwater lake. This creature is quite common in saltwater. Scientists think that it might have been brought there by a migrating bird's foot.

"Zoologists from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science were asked to examine the unidentified floating object, and quickly concluded that it was a stellar specimen of Pectinatella magnifica. That is, a bryozoan — a creature (actually a colony of tiny creatures) that filters and consumes algae from the water."

I think that this blob is really cool, thought pretty disgusting. 4 feet is actually really big, yuck! I wonder how they got it out of the water - it was all squishy...

Nomad Alien Planets May Fill Our Milky Way Galaxy

http://www.livescience.com/18655-nomad-alien-planets-wandering-galaxy.html

  A nomad planet is a planet that doesn't orbit a host star, they just hurtle around space. There may be a shocking 100,000 times more of these planets than stars in the Milky Way!
  "If any of these nomad planets are big enough to have a thick atmosphere, they could have trapped enough heat for bacterial life to exist".
  We don't really know what these planets would be like - gas giants, icy or terrestrial. But our galaxy may be teeming with them, and to me that is is really exciting. Apparently, if the estimated number of these nomad planets is correct, exciting things could happen, like: collisions could break them apart and fling bacterial life onto other bodies. That, in my opinion, would be REALLY cool.

Moon Phases

1) In the model, the pocket light represented the Sun, and the Earth was a plastic foam ball, on a skewer, about the size of an adult’s fist, and the Moon was a smaller one the size of a bottle cap.

2) When facing the lamp, you couldn’t see any of the lighted part of the ball, because it was facing the lamp, too. You could only see the dark side.

3) On the drawing, the circle that is empty represents the full moon, and the one filled in, in black, is the new moon. The one that’s almost all filled in except for the far right is the waking crescent, and the one that’s the same but with a crescent on the far left is the waning crescent.

4) After each turn, more and more of the right side of the Moon is visible. However, after the full moon, less and less of it can be seen.

5) Always half of the Moon’s surface was lighted, whether we could see it from our angle or not. The darkness of the new moon is not caused by an eclipse, but by the fact that the lighted side of the Moon is facing the other way, towards the Sun.

6) Making a model of the Moon’s phases helped me because it showed me a visual of how the light is always shining on half of the Moon, but whether we can see all of it depends. A disadvantage of using a model is that it’s not accurate, but it’s better than nothing! Another way to make a model to represent the various phases of the Moon could be to make your head the Earth, so we can accurately see how much light is visible, and to have a flash light that is not too powerful, so that’s it’s not dangerous to our sight.

Reasons for Seasons

1) When it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the area between the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn gets the most concentrated light. In the summer, though, the area with the most concentrated light is between the equator and the Tropic of Cancer.

2) In the winter, the light halfway between the equator and the North Pole is a lot more spread out than in the summer, because the Northern Hemisphere is more tilted towards the Sun in the summer and so receives more direct sunlight.

3) If the squares on the acetate get larger (they are farther from the equator), it means that the same amount of light is reaching the other squares (near the equator), but since the squares are stretched out, the light has to be distributed and so less light reaches each area.

4) The Poles are consistently the coolest areas on the planet, because the only get light a very short time every year, in the summer, and even then the light is stretched out. The equator, on the other hand, barely has seasons, because it is so consistently receiving direct sunlight and heat. It is the closest place on Earth to the Sun.

      The equator always receives the same amount of light and heat, so there are no real seasons. The poles, on the other hand, are always dark in the winter and always light in the summer. They have no day or night, it's like winter is the night and summer the day. They don't have autumn or spring, just a very long winter and a very short summer.

5) The toothpick’s shadow will be longest in the summer and shortest in the winter.

6) If the square is more stretched, out, it’s because it’s at an angle (because the Earth is a sphere), which is exactly how the Sun’s rays work: the light is at an angle, so it is more stretched out.

7) Seasons define the temperature, weather and amount of light in different parts of the Earth. The Northern and Southern Hemispheres are on opposite ends of the Earth, and as a result are opposites in seasons. If it's summer in Europe, it's winter in Australia. This is because the Earth is not fully upright. It's tilted on an axis, at 23.5°. In the summer, our hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, while the other is tilted away from it. This means that ours receives more heat, more light and longer days than the other. In spring and autumn, both Hemispheres receive the same amount of light and heat.

Comet Death Caught on Camera

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120120010600.htm

"On July 6, 2011, a comet was caught doing something never seen before: die a scorching death as it flew too close to the Sun."

It was believed that we would never catch a picture like that on tape because, usually, comets are too dim to be seen against the bright glare of our star. But scientists were proved wrong: this 150 to 300-feet long comet, which happened to be very bright, went in over the right side of the Sun, and was gone 20 minutes later. It had literally evaporated in the scorching heat, going at almost 400 miles per second.

I think that this is very interesting, as I also thought that all comets were too dim to be seen in front of the Sun. This one was not only seen, it was seen destroyed. It made it to within 62,000 miles of the Sun's surface before being destroyed.