Sunday, January 24, 2010

Week of 1/17 - 1/22

This week we reviewed our learnings about the moon, seasons, and the earth. We also learned some new stuff, too. Like Solstices and Equinoxs and how they have to do with the earth and its tilt and seasons. An Solstice is when one hempshire gets the most amount of sunlight and when the other gets the least amount. In other words the one hempshire is the longest day of the year and the other is the shortest. Also Solstices happen twice a month. Now Equinox's are when day turns to night also when the sun crosses the plane of the earth's equator. Also Solstice and Equinox's happen in Summer or Winter.

Towards the end of the week we needed to complete sorta of a lab report by creating 20 trails on the orbit simulation and having an experiment and conclusion to many questions that we needed to answer.

The real world application for this week is easy during night feel if its getting dermaticly colder then its a equinox.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Week of 1/11 - 1/15

This week was probably one the busiest and knowledge learning week ever! Well to take up two of the days in the week, we took the test for the Biology Placement. The first day we had about 40 questions of muliple choice and for the last day we took a essay. I had ade many careless mistakes on the questions but for the essay I think I nailed. I'm not that interested in Honors next year because first I want to see what High School intells for me. The other three days of the week we continued on learning about the moon but we switched gears from learning about phases to tides of the moon. There are two tides the Neap tide, Spring Tide. The tides and the moons rotation creates the high and low tides at the beach. The neap tide means moderate or less extreme tides. These are the low tides but then the spring tides are very high tides or very low tides. So there the huge ones or the calm flat water. In other words the neap is like the average low/high tide. And the spring is either those really high ones or the really low ones.

We also learned about the tilts of the earth and how that creates the seasons. If the earth is tilted closer to the sun then the season is winter and if its farther the season is summer. Many people and I would think that if the sun is closer to the sun its summer because its warmer but apperantly thats not true. The earth being tilted causes one hemphirse to be pointed to the sun and the other should be pointed away from the sun. Also sun light is more consentrated based on tilt and position. And based on position in revolution the tilt could change. All of these aspects could change whether is winter or summer.

The real world application for this lesson could be just looking at the moon you can not just tell the phase but also the tide and then you can know if its summer or winter.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Week of 1/4-1/8

This week we started the Astronomy Unit. We began it learning the 8 phases of the moon. The phases consist of New Moon, Waxing Crescent, 1st quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full moon, Waning Gibbous, 3rd moon Crescent, Waning Crescent. Then you start back to new moon, and go through them again. It takes the moon to complete one full rotation of these phases in 29.5 days. Thats pretty much a month. Later in the week we just had a lot of practicing on them. Which included homework assignments and class work. Which gave me and my class a better understanding of what the phases are and how we can remember. That concludes this week because thats all we did was learning the phases.

The real world application for this week was next time you walk outside in the dark look up at the sky and you can know what phase it is. Also scientists and lots of weather people use night time as a source of there news.

Week of 1/4-1/8