How much does a cloud weigh?

It depends on the amount of moisture is in the cloud and the size of the cloud. Different kinds of clouds carry different amounts of weights.

"Cloud" Experiment #1- What Happened?

We made a cloud using boiling water in a jar, adding a lit match, then by putting a cup of ice on top enclosing the jar. The ice cools the air at the top of the bottle. When the water vapor rising from the hot water on the bottom of the bottle reaches the cooler air at the top, it begins to condense and form drops around the smoke particles, which serve as condensation nuclei, and a cloud is created.

"Cloud" Experiment #2-What Happened?

We made a cloud using a plastic bottle with a small amount of water in it, then lit a match put it in the bottle, & then quickly closed the bottle. When we squeezed the bottle we increased the pressure in the bottle, creating a cloud. (Clouds need three things to form: Moisture, a temp/ pressure change and a condensation nuclei.)

Air pressure effects on a can

The soda can crumpled in on itself. When you heat it up, it causes the air temperature & pressure inside the can to rise.  When the air inside the can was put into the cool ice bucket, the air cooled and caused the pressure inside the can to decrease. As the pressure on the inside walls of the can decreased, the walls of the can collapsed since there wasn't enough air pressure inside the can to offset the air pressure on the outside of the can.

For the Egg Activity you need: a shelled hard-boiled egg, an empty glass frappucino bottle, a peice of paper and a match.

I predict that the egg is going to be sucked into the bottle.

What actually happened: I was right.When we lit a fire in the bottle, the air in the bottle became much warmer. The air expanded as it got warmer and warmer and it was crowded in there for the air. Then the flame burns out. As the air inside the bottle began to cool off, it also shrank in size again. The air pressure inside of the bottle was reduced. So, the air pressure outside of the bottle and on top of the egg was greater than the air pressure inside the bottle. The air pressure from outside the bottle pressed and pushed the egg down the bottle.

When we got egg back out again: When we blew and forced air back into the bottle, we increased the air pressure inside the bottle. So, the air was pushing and shoving the egg to get out of the bottle. We saw just the opposite thing happen with air pressure when we made the egg drop into the bottle. When there is air pressure, the air is shoving and pushing things around and in it.

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Why is pizza like the earth's crust?

A slice of pizza can be used as a model for the earth's crust. The earth consists of a Lithosphere, Asthenosphere, and Mesosphere. On a pizza, the cheese represents the oceanic crust (oceanic lithosphere) and the toppings represents the continental crust (continental lithosphere) that floats on top of the oceanic crust. It is thin and more dense than the sauce which simulates the asthenoshpere. Dough-simulates the mesosphere (the slides).

Tectonic Plates

The tectonic plates are composed of two types of crust- thicker continental and thin oceanic.
Tectonic plate interactions are of three different basic types. The boundaries can be continental/oceanic, continental/continental, or oceanic/oceanic depending on the density of the land itself.


Divergent boundaries-areas where plates move away from each other, forming either mid-oceanic ridges or rift valleys. (example-East African Great Rift Valley)

Convergent boundaries are areas where plates move toward each other and collide. These are also known as compressional or destructive boundaries. (example-The Himalayan Mnts.)
Transform boundaries- occur when two plates grind past each other with only limited convergent or divergent activity. (example-San Andreas Fault)



source: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plate_interactions) & by looking at the plate tectonic lab notes.

Where is Water?

Where is water? If all the water on Earth was worth $100, how would it be distributed?

Salt Water( Oceans)- $75
Frozen (Glaciers)- $5
Fresh Water- (Lakes, Rivers, Rain, Groundwater)- $20

Actual:
Oceans- $97.20
Frozen- $2.15
Ground Water- $0.62
Fresh Water Lakes- $0.09
Salt Water Lakes and Seas- $0.08
Variable-$0.07
Soil Moisture-$0.05
Atmosphere- $0.01
Streams- $0.0001

Wow, I was way off! I knew the oceans covered most of the Earth, but not 97%--and super surprised that the fresh water numbers are so low. I guess being surrounded by fresh water my whole life, I tend to think it's a huge amount:)

Video Blog

While watching the video "Restless Landscapes" I learned some interesting things about sand, water and how landscapes are formed. I pretty much knew already that sand came from the erosion of mountains/rocks but it was super interesting to listen to the 4th/5th graders give their explainations of where they believe sand comes from and also when they answered the question about why mountain ranges look different. I guess I really never thought about the different sizes/shapes/ages of mountains. I knew they were formed when two techtonic plates smooshed together, but a large part of the size/shape of mountains are shaped from the sky-from water, wind & weathering. We learned a lot about the contents in this video from the last few chapters we've studied-I found I was able to connect with the material and comprehend it because I have a basic understanding about the different kinds of rock, the layering of rock and the chemical weathering process already. 

A couple things I really liked from the video especially was the comparision of a glacier to a "conveyor belt"-how it picks up sediment, gravel, boulders, etc along the way and then deposits them-and that is in fact what we learned in the video about how Cape Cod was formed. I didn't know Cape Cod was all sand! That's really cool, and now I know why. Kind of crazy that scientists think it will be totally washed away in a few thousand years though. I liked the activity the teacher did with her students in learning about ground water as well. She modeled how to see it in the classroom by giving the students a bunch of rocks in a canister and then had them pour water into it-then you can see that the water is filling up all the spaces between the rocks-and also they used sponges (to model aquifers-rocks that can hold water). I think that is a great activity to do with students!

Lastly, I liked how they compared the earth's atmosphere as the "earths outer most layer" and stated it was kind of like "earth's blanket", protecting it from many things. I guess I never thought of the atmosphere as a layer of the earth, but it makes sense that it is since it plays such a huge role in everything that happens on earth. All in all, very cool video.

Models, Analogues and Simulations

I am still a little confused as to how an analogue and model are different, but I'll take a stab at it. A model is something physical that you make to represent something else-and it is usually made to look like a smaller version of the real thing. An analogue is like a model in that it is representing something, but it uses different components than the real thing (i.e. like an analogy for something.) A simulation is the actual process of imitation. For instance, we simulated making different kinds of rocks in class: sedementary, metamorphic and igneous.
My group made rice krispy treats, which were analogous of sedementary rocks because there you could see the "sediments" (i.e. the puffed  rice) in the final product.The peanut brittle and sea foam I think are both analagous of igneous rocks because in order to get the final "rock" product, we had to melt the candy & then let it cool-just like igneous rocks.Although we didn't make butterfingers in class, we got to bite into one lengthwise and then observe what we saw. I think you were trying to show us how there are many different platey layers that look like they were fused together -analagous of a metamorphic rock formation.