Earth and Space Science - my second year teaching

Second semester has arrived, and that means it's earth and space science time!  This is the second year teaching it, and my goodness, my comfort level with this course has skyrocketed.

It certainly helps that my wife is teaching the same course, and we are learning it at the same time.  On our road trips, we wouldn't listen to music - we would download audiobooks and lectures from Neil Degrasse Tyson and Robert Hazen and get the education we needed in space and earth respectively.  I have read most of Carl Sagan's Cosmos book (thanks to last year's students who bought me that book)  and the textbook that my students use.  I know...my wife and I are both geeks.  But, we both love learning.  Here is the comparison of how I feel from last year compared to this year:

• I can now elaborate on my slides as opposed to just reading.  
• I can answer a good percentage of questions that they have.  (at least thus far)
• The engagement level is much higher, even with a much bigger class of 27. 

It's weird - but I'm changing the way I will teach this.  I understand that the students mostly take this course for space - so I will put all the cosmology stuff at the beginning.  However, with the next 4 strands - I will be spiralling through the curriculum.  I will weave my way starting with a little bit of minerals, to touch upon volcanoes, geologic time in the first spiral.  My second spiral will weave through rocks, more volcanoes, geologic time and and planet formation.  The rest of the spiral organization is laid out with my thought processes here, with each column representing one spiral.

Now that I have tried the spiral curriculum when I taught grade 9 applied math, I know what advantages and disadvantages it has.  I know what content lends itself to each of the linear and spiral curriculum.  

One of the coolest things that I have been emphasizing thus far is the contribution of females to this science. Astronomy and cosmology is a science that we're still learning much about and we certainly don't understand much of it even at this point.  We are still developing tools to study what's way out there.  (Hello gravity waves!)  Females now have more access to education than 200 years ago, and one can see their contributions from Leavitt's discovery between absolute brightness and periodicity between maximum and minimum brightness to today's Lisa Randall's "Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs".  Now that women can touch telescopes and things are opening up for them a little, we will see more and more contributions like Lisa Randall's.  I certainly enjoyed her lecture at the Toronto Reference Library.  

I'll show the Cosmos reboot episode entitled "Sister's of the Sun" by Neil deGrasse Tyson later on this week to show other men and women's contribution to our understanding of space and stars.

My ultimate frisbee team is also asking for more practices and they're getting anxious because they're unfamiliar with the system.  Looks like more 5am wakeups for me!

Quakes, a Creationist Geologist, and Table Turning Planets

It's been a while, hasn't it? Senioritis is hitting the grade 12s in our class pretty hard, and it seems to be taking a toll on my blogging frequency as well.  No matter how hard senioritis hits the students though, plate tectonics keep building stress, magma is rolling, and disasters strike.  One must always work hard and be prepared.

I learned a lot this week from your presentations on past earthquakes and volcanoes.  Great job everyone.  The MA and OH's Chilean volcano coverage and LL and JL's Tongshan earthquake presentation really had me engaged throughout the twenty minutes.

Nepal

Nepal had a second major earthquake with a Richter magnitude of 7.3.  It's been very difficult for help to reach the more remote areas of the mountains, and the transportation of emergency supplies has been slow as a result.  An article was brought to mind as BL was performing his presentation where he creatively prepped us as volunteers:  random volunteers of students, church congregations or anyone else who go to help out but who also lack skills or coordination can actually slow down the aid process.  Sending money is the best thing we can do according to this article at the Guardian.  Read this reflection on how volunteers who attempted to help out in Haiti may have slowed down the process.

Texas

1 earthquake in 58 years prior to 2008.  Once fracking began, there have been over 100 mini earthquakes reported since 2008.  An interesting correlation, is it not? Read more at CNN

A Refreshing Perspective

Finally, a creationist has stood up in our class to counter the views - albeit on paper, and not in class. One day, I hope to see a serious, respectful discussion regarding how a creationist views some of these scientific ideas we learn about.  Nevertheless, here's a very different perspective - a geologist, who understands and believes in the stories that rocks tell us in terms of age (4.5 billion year old earth) and is bent on trying to reconcile Noah's great flood story with the rocks he studies.  Read more here on his journey.

The Tables have Turned

Our current theory and understanding of planetary formation has been called into question by Australian National University as they have found found a larger exoplanet orbiting a smaller sun.  Check it out here, on discovery.com!

Earth's Layers, Trillions of Carats, and the Perfect Life Conditions

Earth's New Layer

The simplified layers of the Earth only have the inner and outer core, mantle and crust.  However, today, there is a layer of molten or pliable rock that is found to be quite stiff in Earth's mantle.  What's interesting is that they used diamond anvils to apply massive amounts of pressures to rocks to simulate conditions deep in the Earth to find this layer.  Read more here @ popular science.  

Raining Diamonds

Imagine a meteorite containing more diamonds than all of the deposits known on Earth just landing your country.  Apparently, that's what happened.  These diamonds are also claimed to be harder than Earth diamonds due to the immense amount of pressure and temperatures at the moment of impact which was a crater 100 km wide.  Can you please picture that for a moment?  Driving in a crater for an hour at 100km/hr.  That's how big the explosion was...35 million years ago.  Check out more from the Huffington post.

Checking out the Rings

Saturn's 6th largest moon, Enceladus, the source of Saturn's outermost ring now tops the list as most probable world to contain life.  Sean Hsu, from Boulder University in Colorado lead a team to study the rings and discovered that the silica point to WARM waters.  It's hard to imagine that something warm could exist so far out, but the small uniformity of the silicate materials serves as evidence.  Their work has been published in Nature and can be further read about here on Popular Mechanics.

Exciting Stuff on Earth and in Space

Large holes of ground continue to disappear into the depths of Earth somewhere in Siberia.  There were many hypothesis behind the sudden collapse of ground - ranging from nuclear testing to the end of the world.  Check out more on iflscience!

The Mars' Rover, Curiosity, recorded a long burst of methane that lasted about 2 months.  Methane is a molecule that points to either 1)  the existence of hydrothermal systems or 2) some bacteria or alien cows farting.  It's an exciting development that may point to life on Mars.  Current life.

Curiosity, the rover, takes a selfie

Nacho Average Cheese.  The oldest piece of cheese has been found.  Using dating techniques that we will study in 2 months from now, the cheese, from 1615 BC, was discovered in clumps on mummies of Bronze Age people buried under wooden boats wrapped in cowhide.  This burial ritual created a vacuum packing effect that's better than our ziplock bag in our kitchens!  Read some more here on popscience.

I shall end off this post with a tremendous video from NASA.  NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory released time lapse videos of extreme violet, ultraviolet, and visible light.  We get to see solar flares and prominences up close and personal:

2015 - Here we go!

Another year, another post.  This year's a little different than most with all of your applications to university due and you're wrapping up your 7/8 of your high school career.  Exams are coming up as well as a multitude of final assignments and projects.  You're probably experiencing stress as you have never felt before. I respond to you with this:

Colleges in the US and universities in Canada are turning to puppy therapy to help relax their students.  Puppies can be found in libraries and study halls throughout the university as a proven stress reliever. 

Here's an article on McGill University with their puppy room. 

Now that you're a little more relaxed, you're ready to catch up with the latest in science news! 

This professor can't get funding for his warp drive research because it's "too far out there".  It doesn't  stop David Pares though as he's willing to continue his research in his garage after a full day's work of teaching.  He's convinced of all that anecdotal evidence of veteran pilots who have traveled through serious electrical storms around the world and in the Bermuda triangle and find themselves 100 miles away from where they should be.  It's happened too often to far too many pilots in the past half decade that this man believes there's a correlation between high electrical activity and the ability to bend space.  Some physicists actually believe he's on to something.  Read more here.  

Some person wondered what would each of the planets look like if they were as close as the Moon.  Here's an animated GIF that I cannot corroborate on its authenticity but it's fun to look at nonetheless.

 A 5,500 year old fossil of an aboriginal woman found in Canada has its DNA analyzed.  It was found in BC's northern coast where many members of the indigenous First Nations currently live and apparently have lived for many years according to their history.  Their claim of living there has been verified by matching the DNA of that fossil with a living person who is now scientifically the 200x great-grandaughter.  That's a lot of generations.  Take a look! 

Remember those infographics and concept maps I assigned?  They're an increasingly important method of visually communicating information and its shown in WIRED's top 2014 science visualizations of the year.  Above what we see is a computer animation of a coronal mass ejection from the sun with the Earth in the background.  Make sure to look at the rest and make sure to read the captions. 

A mathematician has found a better way to get to Mars on less fuel.  Instead of aiming at the intended target and using extreme brakes (fuel) to arrive safely, the mathematician has shown a method of slowing down earlier at a proper speed enough to be gently pulled into orbit by the gravitational pull of the target.   It will be slower, but it's much cheaper. 

Again, I've shown versions of this before, but here's a video version that came out xmas eve with extreme font to annoyingly hammer it home that we live in a very, very, small portion of the universe.  Have fun in your last few days of holidays - I know I will, because I'm marking. 

 

Closing the door on 2014 and Diving into 2015

Curiosity, the Mars Probe, Confirms Organics on Mars
We briefly went over the biobits that were necessary for life to begin on Earth.  Similar biobits, the building blocks of life, were found by the Mars rover Curiosity.  Combine this fact with the finding that Martian soil is 2% water, methane gas has been found in the atmosphere, a huge ancient lake was found, and these organics did not come from Earth - we have more scientists scrambling to find out what is or was on Mars!  Check it out!

                                  A photo, courtesy of CBC, of Curiosity - the Rover


ET is (probably) out there - Get Ready
If you're into videos - here's a TED talk from a SETI researcher who bets that we will find life out there in the next 24 years by discussing the new tech and laws of probability.

Don't Discount Planets with Horizontal Spinning Axis
In the search for extra terrestrial life, astronomers have always been looking at planets with similar characteristics as Earth.  No tilt to small tilt was one aspect that seemed to always be a characteristic until scientists at MIT have explained that planets that is spinning on a horizontal axis similar to Uranus could support life as long as the planet was completely covered in deep ocean.   Check it out here, at phys.org!

Since we Keep Talking about Life...
You guys enjoyed the last circular evolution animated GIF - look at how embroyos develop into babies.  Feast your eyes on this one.

New Photos from Rosetta Comet Landing
At the American Geophysical Union they spent the time to discuss the newest pictures released from Philae, the probe that's currently sitting on the comet.  They will wait until the comet approaches the sun at a different angle - sometime in March or April - Philae will then be able to use the sun's energy to power up and gather/send more data.  See here for more photos.

NASA to be Overfunded in 2015
Looks like excitement is building up in the space field.  So much so that NASA got MORE money than they asked for - $364 million more for a total of $18 billion.

Working for NASA would be pretty cool. Maybe Interstellar got me.  Or maybe these NASA employees doing this lip dub got me excited...

A Medley of Items

Europa's Icy Plate Tectonics Supporting Life
This is an oldie but a goodie.  It relates to our upcoming chapter on geologic time and life.  New Scientist is reporting that Jupiter's moon, Europa, is currently undergoing plate tectonics.  The difference?  Europa's plates are made entirely of ice due to its distance from the sun.  No other planet is currently undergoing plate tectonics in our solar system, and with Europa's abundance of water, any similarities to Earth elicits excitement to those of us in search of extracurricular life.

Turning Peanut Butter into Diamond
Another reason why not to buy your significant other a diamond - it now can be created from peanut butter.  By trying to simulate Earth's scorching and pressure cooked conditions, scientist Dan Frost somehow stumbled upon creating a diamond from peanut butter.  Aren't you wondering why peanut butter was inside his experiment in the first place?  Read here for more!

Update in Hawaii - House Toppling Lava
The volcano that erupted in June 27 has slowly made its way 13.5 miles to this house.  Even after four months, this leading edge lava has still reached 1149 degrees Celsius, enough to melt this house in its path.  The family watched from far away as their house toppled over. This is somewhat upsetting. 

Rosetta - Finally Landing its Comet Rover
History will be made as humanity will now be landing rover Philae on a comet.  Here is a tremendous infographic depicting space satellite Rosetta and rover Philae's journey so far.

Wow - a Little Unfair isn't it?

In 2009, an earthquake in an Italian town of Aquila killed at least 309 people.  When things go badly, the public and the government look for someone to blame.

They chose the geologists.

In the courts, the geologists were found guilty of manslaughter and were originally sentenced to 6 years in prison as well as pay $10 million in damages.

Thank goodness it was appealed and the ruling was reversed.  Check out more here on BBC or motherboard.

Relative Size of Planets and Breaking News on Plate Tectonics

Here's a cool picture depicting the relative size of the planets.  I've probably shown this a couple times already, but it's just one of those things that is interesting for me to see again and again.  

Breaking news: our geology plate tectonics textbook has to be updated again if other geologists confirm this finding.  Turns out the tectonic plates aren't rigid and there is shrinking and deformation of plates due to the plates cooling.  Check it out here if you want more info.  

The Best Geosites in the World - Take a Look and Vote!

The Geological Society recently held a vote for the top 100 geosites in the world. We will be looking at them in series - the first category that we'll take a look at is: Landscape. Here is my personal favourite. Which one is yours?