As we bring the school year to a close, I wanted you to take some time to think back on your freshman year at JP Knapp and reflect on your time, here so far.

Many of you are gearing up for finals or EOC’s, some of you may be thinking ahead to times you will have this summer on the beach with your friends, and others are probably looking for summer jobs or working towards getting their driver’s permit.  Regardless of what you plan to do after your last exam, I wanted you to take some time to think backwards, before moving on.

You have an easy comment this week.  Share one thing you will remember from this school year at JP Knapp.  This DOES NOT have to be science-related, it can be any thing that happened this year that involves being a SPARTAN.   While I am sure you have plenty of memories from you times outside of school, I would like this to be something positive that you remember from your first year at the early college.  Think back over the course of the ENTIRE SCHOOL year and dig up that one memory that really stands out.  Share your memory with us and comment on other students’ memories.

One memory that stands out in my mind is the last basketball game of the season for the PICKLES.  Our seminar had done really well all basketball season long and we were facing Mr. Talbert’s 49ers in a game that would determine who made the playoffs.  The stands were crowded that day, and both teams battled really hard, but at the end of regulation the game was tied and we went into overtime.  The overtime was an adventure with stolen passes, break-away lay-ups and the crowd and myself screaming each time a PICKLE or a 49er made a great play.  In the end the 49ers won the game by 1 point, but the sportsmanship and fair play that was exhibited that day made me proud to be a Spartan.  In addition, the crowd’s enthusiasm made the game even more exciting and it really reminded me about all the great students we have here.

Thanks for a great year, Spartan freshmen and good luck in your sophomore adventures, wherever they may take you.

Ash and smoke billow from a newly formed island in the South Pacific

In last week’s blog we looked at the destructive power of volcanoes by learning about the infamous 1980 Mt. St. Helen’s eruption that killed over 50 people, destroyed millions of acres of forest and left countless birds, fish, and other animals buried under ash and tephra.  This week, we see how volcanic eruptions do more than just destroy, they create.

In class this week we have been looking at a very different type of volcanic activity, namely seafloor spreading.  Seafloor spreading is the process that produces new plate material at ocean ridges.  While an underwater ocean ridge doesn’t look like a typical volcano, it is still a place on Earth where magma from the mantle is welling up and erupting onto the surface of Earth’s crust.  Another reason ocean ridges don’t seem like volcanoes is because they create plate material rather than cause destruction.

Another volcano that might not seem like one is the island pictured above.  It is less than two years old.  It was formed in March of 2009 when an underwater volcano erupted and deposited enough new material to peek above the Pacific Ocean.  If you were to fly over this part of the Pacific Ocean three years ago, there would have been only ocean…no island.  This is another example of a volcano that creates land.  But, according to THIS ARTICLE there was some destruction that took place while this new island was being created.  The video below is from the boat that they talk about in the article.  It shows the awesome power and beauty of one of nature’s most ferocious acts.

This video is from an on-line article that has some AMAZING STILL IMAGES of the eruption.

What is your take on the activity that takes place at plate boundaries like volcanoes and earthquakes?  Are they destructive or constructive?  Are they good or bad?  Beautiful or scary?  What are your thoughts about the Tonga eruption and subsequent island formation?  What are some connections between this story and the work we have done this week?  Find some other examples of recent volcanic activity and share a link,  or give your opinion on what makes a volcano a volcano.

The title for this week’s blog post comes from the last words that David Johnston ever spoke on Earth.  David Johnston was a volcanologist studying Mt. Saint Helens in the weeks leading up to its famous eruption in the spring of 1980.  David Johnston and his team were observing clues that told them a possible eruption was coming.  He was on a ridge about 6 miles from the summit of the mountain when the blast began.  His desperate call back to his team at the Cascade Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, WA was recorded.  In the moments before he was buried under thousands of feet of hot volcanic ash and debris he told the rest of the world that Mt. St. Helens had blown it’s top and in this final message he let the world know that this sleeping giant had awoken with a bang.  Today, 31 years later, there is a museum and observatory located on the ridge where he died.  It is called the Johnston Ridge Observatory in honor of the sacrifice he made in pursuit of knowledge.

This eruption is one of the most widely known and recorded volcanic eruptions in the past 40 years.  The result of this eruption was devastating to the people around Mt. St. Helens as well as the surrounding ecosystem.  Take a look at the images below from National Geographic.

This is what Mt. St. Helens looked like before the 1980 eruption. (Image from National Geographic)

This is the same view of Mt. St. Helens today. (National Geographic)

The force of the eruption was 1,600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan and it was enough to completely change the look of the mountain.  For some more before and after pictures of Mt. St. Helens check out the National Geographic page here.  To launch an interactive about the 1980 eruption CLICK HERE.

The eruption was the first big news event that I remember in my lifetime.  I was only 6 years old but I remember watching news reports of the volcano and wondering how crazy it must have been to live in eastern Washington during those unpredictable days in the spring of 1980.  Listen to these audio clips from the day of the eruption:

Here is what I would like you to do for this week’s blog comment.  Choose either one of the options below and share your response with the rest of us:

1) Talk to an adult in your family about their memories of the Mt. St. Helen’s eruption back in 1980.  What do they remember?  How did they feel about this eruption?  Do they remember hearing about it or seeing it on the news?  What are their thoughts on this piece of American geologic history?

2) Find a link or image from the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption and share it with us.  Explain why you chose this particular link or image and tell us how this link or image relates to something we are learning this week in class.

This week we began investigating earthquakes.  We looked at some key vocabulary terms like epicenter, focus, fault and two important words that you need to know to quantify earthquakes:  SEISMOGRAPHS and SEISMOGRAMS.  Seismograms (like the one above) show us the wave energy that passes through an area immediately after an earthquake.  These scribbles are created by an instrument called a seismograph that detects the wave energy and transmits that energy to a recording device.

Seismographs come in all shapes and sizes and they are found all over the globe in different locations.  These instruments are VITAL in helping scientists determine where earthquakes occur and how much energy is released from a given earthquake.

Read this article about the first seismographs created by the ancient Chinese.  What do you think of this technology?  What might have been some problems with it?  What were some things that made this instrument unique?  Are there any connections between this seismograph and what we have studied this week?

Seismographs in Hawaii detect tremors beneath the active volcanoes on the Big Island

Modern seismographs have been in use for more than 70 years and have advanced to the point where they can detect the slightest earthquake from thousands of miles away.  However, even the very best seismograph can not detect an earthquake BEFORE it occurs.  In fact, one of the biggest challenges in seismology is developing a warning system for earthquakes.

But if you ask some people, earthquake “detectors” already exist.  These “detectors” are part of the biosphere.  This article, titled “Can Animals Sense Earthquakes?” is from the National Geographic web site.  Read through the article and return with your opinion.  Do you think this is a reliable way to predict earthquakes?  What is evidence is there to support your opinion?  Could we design an earthquake prediction system using this idea?  Should we?

As we return from spring break this week, I have a simple request:  Connect your spring break to our science class.  For the past ten days you have been relaxing, traveling, doing chores around the house, visiting the beach, running around with friends, playing games and probably not thinking of science.  Well…spring break is over.

For this week, I would like you to reflect back on your spring break and make a connection to science.  Think back over the past 10 days and share with us AT LEAST one instance in which your spring break and our studies connected.  You can utilize our entire curriculum since the start of the year.

Did you make some observations of nature that led to an inference?  Did you make any measurements in which you had to be accurate or precise?  Did any scientifically testable questions occur to you because of your spring break activities?  Did you read about any scientific studies and identify variables?  Were any scientific laws applied to your spring break fun?  What interactions among Earth’s spheres did you see?  Did pressure gradients and temperature differences influence your break?  Did you see any evidence of past life forms on Earth (fossils) or rock layers and stratigraphy?  How about the rock cycle?

Please try to read over other students’ comments before posting your own.  Only original connections will be given full credit.

As we begin our study of rocks and the rock cycle next week, I wanted to share with you two stories about rocks moving.  Most of the time we think of rocks as static and boring.  They sit there and don’t change for long, long, periods of time.  While this may seem like the case, rocks are actually more dynamic than you might think.

Part 1

Photo by Colin Purrington

The image above is from a park in Pennsylvania.  Hickory Run State Park is home to an unusual field of sandstone boulders that looks completely out of place.  Why are these boulders here?  How did they get here?  The answers to these questions and some other interesting information is given in the video below.  Watch the video and return with a comment.

Part 2

On the other side of our country in the region of California known as Death Valley, rocks are moving in a much different way.  The picture below is a wide angle view of a place in Death Valley called Racetrack Playa.  This is a dry lake bed that sits between two fairly steep hills.

Down on this dry lake bed some unusual things have been happening that have perplexed scientists and researchers for years.  Read THIS ARTICLE about the mysterious movements of the dolomite rocks that are found around this dry lake bed.  Once you have read the article return with a comment expressing your thoughts and ideas about this phenomenon.

How are scientists using the inquiry method to learn about these two places?  What role does geology and the study of rocks play in the larger world?  Which explanations are the most convincing to you?  Are there other possible explanations for how these rocks moved to their current locations?

We have been exploring the ideas of dating rock layers through relative and absolute methods this week.  One of the principles used to date rocks is the Law of Superposition.  Recall that this law states that rock layers buried deeper in Earth’s crust are older than rock layers that are closer to the surface.  While this law and other scientific discoveries like radiometric dating have helped us know how old or young rock layers are, scientists still know very little about the layer of the Earth that sits below the crust–THE MANTLE.

This article tells the story of how two scientists want to change all of that.  Read the article first and then find out some more specifics by watching the video below.  Return and give us your thoughts on this undertaking.  What do the scientists hope to learn by drilling?  Has this ever been attempted before, why or why not?  What are some problems with trying to drill into the mantle?  What sorts of things will scientists need to do in order to be successful?  How likely do you think it is that they will be successful?  Is this too costly for the information we’re going to get or is it worth the price?

The image on the right was taken from a fossil unearthed in China and dates back about 125 million years.  It is of a dinosaur called Archaeopteryx lithographica.

Since the 1990s scientists have been discovering more and more fossils like this.  If you take a close look at this fossil image you will see that this creature was preserved so well that you can see the tiny bones that make up the “hands” and “feet”.  Upon further inspection you will notice evidence of something more intriguing:  feathers preserved in the rock.

As more and more fossil evidence is unearthed in different parts of the world, our understanding of the creatures that lived long ago, changes.  Thirty years ago, very few scientists thought that birds and dinosaurs could be related.  However, current thinking in the study of dinosaurs suggests that this idea isn’t so far fetched.  Read here to find out about the link between extinct dinosaurs and birds.

As with any new discovery, the existence of feathers on some species of dinosaurs raises more questions than it answers.  These questions provide paleontologists with ideas for future study.  What types of questions do feathered dinosaurs raise?  Are the dinosaur feathers the same as bird feathers?  Did dinosaurs use feathers for flying or were they just used for warmth and covering?  Does this mean that dinosaurs are ancestors of modern birds?  Were there different colors of dinosaur feathers?

All of these questions are still being explored in various different ways.  Take a look at what Jakob Vinther, a graduate student at Yale University has discovered about feathered dinosaurs.

This week we began looking into the history of Earth as revealed by the fossil record.  We used adding machine tape to show the lengthy history of Earth.  This history is usually referred to as the Geologic Time Scale.

As we continue to study the way Earth’s rocks can tell this history, we will begin to uncover the mysteries of ancients life like the fossilized shell in the picture above.  Fossils like this form when an animal or plant dies and it’s remains are covered by sediment deposits.  Over time the hard parts (and in some cases even the soft parts) of the plants and animals undergo a chemical change which turns those hard parts, like shells, into actual rocks.  These left behind evidence of remains are called fossils and can tell us a lot about the history of the Earth and life on Earth.

Probably the most famous examples of fossils are the remains of dinosaurs that are found buried in rock layers millions of years old.  As scientists, called paleontologists and archaeologists, dig up these fossils they are able to figure out all sorts of things about the creatures that once covered the Earth’s surface.    Below is a video from a pretty recent dinosaur discovery in South America.  Watch the video and return with a comment.  What role does the information in this video and information from fossils play in our understanding of Earth’s history?  What are some things that you learned this week about Earth’s history that surprised or confused you?  What questions do you have about how these scientists do their jobs?

This week we have been examining how carbon naturally cycles through the Earth system, in a complex cycle called the Carbon Cycle.  One of the places where we find LARGE amounts of carbon in the Earth system is in the atmosphere in the form of Carbon Dioxide gas (CO2).

About 50 years ago, a researcher by the name of Dave Keeling began taking ultra-precise measurements of the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere.  He chose to take his measurements at the top of Mauna Loa, a volcano located on the isolated islands of Hawai’i.  These measurements are still being carried out by researchers at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography

After gathering this data for many years, Dr. Keeling noticed a SHORT-TERM repeating pattern of spikes and valleys in his data.  These spikes and valleys correspond to different amounts of CO2 being used by plants during different seasons.

But after more than a decade of taking these measurements Dr. Keeling began to notice a LONG-TERM pattern in the data.  The consistently rising levels of CO2 on the above chart, clearly shows this long term pattern.  Basically, CO2 concentrations are rising more and more each year.  This upward sloping line was given the name “the Keeling curve” in honor of the man who first measured CO2 levels.  This data has been supported by other measurements from other stations all over the globe, and they all indicate the same thing:  Global concentrations of CO2 are rising steadily as each year passes.  Hopefully, you learned some reasons why this is happening this week in class.

50 years after the initial measurements were begun we have a good idea about why the curve continues to rise and we have also begun to educate our citizens on what might be the dangers of allowing this curve to continue in the future.  THIS ARTICLE explains the history behind the Keeling curve and some interesting information about the past and future of climate science.  Read the article and come back with a comment.

How has the data from Dr. Keeling contributed to our understanding of climate change?  What were some struggles he had to overcome to do his research?  How has the study of climate science changed since he first began?  Why did he choose to collect his data on top of a dormant volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?  How might his data have been biased if he chose to collect data somewhere else?  How has CO2 monitoring changed in the past 50 years?  What evidence is there that his research is valid?