Earth in Action Project

We recently worked on an exploring weather project in Science Methods class. The first thing we had to do was watch a video on severe weather and come up with 3 things we learned and 3 things we wondered. The 3 things I learned were that wind speeds can reach up to 300 mph during tornadoes, floods happen when bodies of water overflow, and extreme weather can reshape the geosphere. The 3 things I wondered were what kinds of weather is able to reshape the geosphere and how much does it take, how fast are winds during an average tornado, and where on Earth do mudslides usually occur.

After I watched the video I looked at a bunch of pictures of different kinds of extreme weather, and had to come up with 4 questions I had on the pictures. The 4 questions I had were what happened in picture 4, why do tornadoes occur, why were all those people driving if that much snow was an option, and how far in advance are experts able to predict an avalanche will occur.

I then had to say how these pictures made me feel. I stated how these pictures made me never want to have to deal with these extreme weather conditions, and it made me feel sympathy for people who do have to deal with these conditions.

After I did all of this I picked one of the pictures to learn about more in depth. I chose floods because I am from Queens and I remember after Hurricane Sandy many of my friends experienced flooding in their homes, and many more people including one of my teachers lost their homes.

I watched a video and said 3 things that I learned. The 3 things I learned from watching the video were floods used to be seen as a positive by farmers who used to use an irrigation system to grow crops, floods can occur due to many different reasons, and 56,000 homes were flooded or destroyed in Mississippi during the Great Flood of 1993.

I then read an article and found 3 things I learned about floods from the article. The 3 things I learned from the article were water droplets form from warm air, the speed raindrops fall depends on the size of the raindrop, and flash floods when floodwaters rise rapidly with no warning within several hours of intense rain.

I then read a beautiful poem about natural disasters, and in the end the final line was Earth is restored.

I then wrote my own poem on Floods based on the information I learned.

My Poem

Floods occur when too high is water

If it happens to you protect your sons and daughters

Floods are seen as a big harm

But they used to be used to help the farm

If flash floods are expected I'll get an alarm

2 feet of water can tip over your car

Floods are awful because they destroy peoples' homes

During Hurricane Katrina people found safety at the Mercedes Benz Super-Dome

While floods are created by terrible weather

Many times they bring the community together.

Nature of Being A Scientist

I recently watched a video for Science Methods class which was a talk by Neil deGrasse Tyson on the nature of being a scientist. I found this video to be very intriguing and intellectually stimulating. During this talk, someone asks him what is the greatest science news in the universe. He responded that 85% of all the gravity in the cosmos has no known origin. We call it dark matter but it may not be matter at all. He then stated that 74% of the energy that drives the universe has an origin we know nothing about. We call it dark energy but we don't know what that is either. The point he is trying to make is the greatest news in the universe is that there is so much left to discover. I agree with him. This creates a sense of wonder which inspires people to hope for answers. He also goes on to say if you are a scientist and you are not befuddled every day you're not in the game. Scientists are constantly in a state of ignorance which he loves because that is where wonder comes from. This video really made me think about how little we truly know about the universe. If we are able to create this sense of wonder and exploration that Neil has in our students maybe one day they will attempt to figure these answers out too.