2016 Bloggrammies - First Edition of Spring 2016

As we approach our second set of blogs, I just wanted to take the time to highlight  some exemplary work by a few people in the classroom.

While everyone did a great job in their first post - often showcasing their unique personality while teaching their readers about in-depth science - these three stood out in their own way:

1)  JZ's post at Discovering the Universe received much critique from his classmates about not showing enough personality or connecting his explanation to pop culture.  However, his mastery of flow and rhetorical questioning eliminated the need for any pop or zing.  He weaved through a few scientific concepts, showing his own analysis and communicated to the general reader these abstract topics.  There are a few of you out there who will need to tailor your writing more towards the scientific side while maintaining your own voice.

2)  AG's post at Earth, Space, and Everything in Between showcased much research and deep analysis.  It was a topic that seemed to be quite popular in the class but he was able to integrate important facts, opinions, and pop culture in a masterful post.  Check it out, it's well worth the read.

3)  Thirdly, we have KJ's post over at Galactose-Intolerant.  It may lack many aspects of a blog that I was looking for, but her personality just popped right out of the screen.  There is an efficacy in words evident in her blog and while I'd like to see some more information in her next post, the humour and personality just shone through.

4)  Finally, CC's post about the fake NASA landing on Spaced Out incited 6 comments in total with his controversial stance.  His strong opinion was enough for me to research more than I normally do when I read upon a student's post and I must congratulate him on that one end, even though it was very one-sided.   Go over and read about the topic that CC wonderfully wrote about.

Stay tuned for the next rubric!  It's pretty much the same, but I have tweaked it to look for more scientific and reliable content for this round.

Making Mineral Crystals - Year 2

Apologies for the lack of updates.  Extracurricular activities and the three preps are preventing me from managing my time well.  Anyways, we are approaching the halfway point of our course;  new student blogs will be up as well as the first blog awards handed out.  For now, it's lab time:

We're into year 2 of the making crystals challenge.  We have added a little scientific inquiry to this with a variable and control.  Looking good thus far - here's the first and only picture I got from day 1 of the lab:

Fig 1:  It's snowing, again, eh?

Good old sodium chlorate.  These crystals are formed from being in a saturated solution that was heated, and we're observing the cooling process which will end up forming crystals.

A few students connected this to minerals being created from magma, which is a similar process.  They could see the 'crust' developing on the surface where it's coolest, and they can see the denser minerals drop to the bottom of the beaker.

Looks like part 1 is done, and we'll see what the students can do the following week!

Spaces with Space with Volcanoes on the Pacific Rim

As you are approaching your final exams (not all of you...I'm looking at you grade 11s) with less than enthused study sessions, may I present to you some beautiful finds in the past month.

GoPro and SpaceX
SpaceX attached a GoPro camera to their falling module.  Just to see the Earth in all of its beauty in the resolution and motion that a GoPro can capture makes me feel like I myself am floating on the edge of the atmosphere.  The waltz music almost makes me forget about the heat and friction that accompany the falling back towards Earth - I was kind of looking forward to seeing that portion of the fall, but SpaceX elected to cut that out.

Feast your eyes, and then please go back to studying.

Star Party
Around 20 parents and students came on out two nights ago to watch Chris Vaughan of the Dunlop Observatory setup three telescopes to watch the night sky for almost 3 hours.  He was such a wealth of knowledge taking us from a pair of binary stars to swans to even spotting the ISS.  He masterfully had us observe Venus, then Jupiter, and then followed the ecliptic to find a third planet - Saturn!  I look forward to working with Chris again, and hopefully we can book him for another season to observe a different night sky.

Volcanoes

Remember how the study of Earth is also a part of the course?  Did you hear that our guest Chris Vaughan (see above) couldn't get a summer job after first year when he didn't have any geology courses, but after second year in university where he elected to take geology courses, he and all of his friends got summer job offers?  Don't neglect the geology portion of the course ladies and gents.  Here is a reminder of the power of our very own Earth shown in this Mount Shindake volcano video in which Japan raised the volcano alert level to 5, which is the highest on the scale.

NASA Mission to Europa

Looks like there's a mission to Jupiter's moon and they've chosen 9 instruments to help determine if this moon is habitable.  Guess which instruments they are?  (we've studied a couple of them in class!)

Hey, you're still here?  You should be studying...or blogging.  

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!

The 2015 Spring Blog Awards

The 2015 Spring Blog Awards are Out

Believe it or not, blog awards are a very important aspect of the digital ecosystem.  Just check out the swankiness of the UK blog awards that rewards individuals for their social media achievements, and it's no different in Shin's class either!  (minus the swank)

Most In-Depth yet Easy to Read Blog

You can tell that AL really enjoys writing about the latest from Rosetta and Philae, the adventures of the European Space Agency's (and humanity's) first mission to a comet.  Not only is it filled with jaw dropping pictures, it's littered with analysis dotted with his own reflections.  His personality shines through while he overviews the latest discoveries, and it's a good one to read.  Check it out at the  Space Buddha! 

Most Colourful Blog

Now, while it is colourful,my title also points out that this particular student challenged herself to stay on the topic of the unit (rocks) and was able to colour her words well to keep me engaged.  Her words engaged me and kept me going on a journey through to Australia and painted out a most interesting rock that I never knew existed.  She may have added a destination to my bucket list with this post on Uluru.

Most Learned Blog

Now JL asked a very important question in his blog that I'd bet all of us observed, but have probably never asked.  He went in deep and researched some profound analysis that brought me back to my electrical engineering university days and wow, I came out of that post a more learned man.  Now it might go over your heads a little, but it's one heck of an interesting post.  I'll bet you didn't know this! 

Most Unique Blog Posting

This student demonstrated his learning of rocks and the rock cycle in a way that I've never seen before. He must be recognized for writing something entirely different!  The number of concepts he runs through through his story is impressive.  

Best All-Round Blog

MA has created a succinct, yet jam packed informative post on the latest discovery about those ice crystals.  Her ability to hook you in, convey loads of information, and keep you engaged can be experienced right here.  

The Earth and her Power

This week there has been tons of happenings with the Earth.  Tragedies abound and the number of people displaced  grows each day- it is quite unfortunate, but we have no choice but to bow to Earth's power.  We will try to learn from these tragedies and improve our ability to predict but at the same time there are those of us that look out to space and try to find a new home.

Volcanoes

                                          April 22:  The smoke rose t o over 10km in the sky

Authorities in Chile declared a red alert and evacuated 1500 residents around Calbuco volcano.  The last known eruption was in 1972 and it has covered the sky with ash.  Check out the Atlantic for mesmerizing pictures.  Cool from far, but far from good for the Chileans.

Another less known Sarychev volcano along the Pacific Rim of Japan occurred and this time it was captured from outer space from those in the International Space Station.  They have their first projector installed, and the first movie they watched was Gravity.  

Do you see the similarity of the movie and reality?

Earthquakes

Because of the seismic gap that was in the Himalayas, an earthquake was predicted by many to occur in this area.  The devastating impact of this earthquake itself has a large capacity to destroy the light infrastructure of villages and surrounding area.  See more  from BBC of the collapsed temples and buildings that had its foundations destroyed and hope the best for the people of Nepal and surrounding villages.

It's been said by many that earthquakes are tremendously difficult to predict, but someone designed an app for smartphones named ShakeAlert  that can detect motion that can help with earthquaek prediction. If thousands of people have this app installed, all of us can serve as mini detectors of foreshocks which when appended all the information together can perhaps predict earthquakes in the future.

Liquefaction

In today's lecture I will be talking about liquefaction and its potential for destroying beach side infrastructure.  Here is the animated gif ahead of time.  

Creating Crystal Methods in the Lab

In the past two weeks we spent some time developing a good procedure and adjusting the procedure to grow the biggest crystal we could given a set amount of material.  Here are some of the results.

Chemical #1:  Cupric Sulfate

The characteristic blue of this copper really had me excited as it would have been interesting to see a large blue crystal.  The majority of the crystallization occurred at at the bottom of the beaker instead of the hanging crystal seed, so it didn't turn out as large as ED, RQ, and SC had hoped.

Picture 1: Crystallization occurring on hanging seed crystal with simultaneous crystals growing along bottom of beaker. 

Picture 2:  Crystallization happening on bottom - due to impurities at the bottom of beaker

Chemical #2:  Sodium Chlorate

The cubic structure of sodium chlorate was really evident in this jar.  As you can see in the pictures below, the layers of cubic sodium chlorate that accumulated on top of one another was absolutely breathtaking.  

 Picture 3:  Crystallization occurring on seed crystal as well as some impurities at bottom of jar.  If you look really closely, you can see the crystals growing on the nylon string near the top of  the beaker.  

  Picture 4:  ED, RQ, and SC decided to make multiple crystals and were able to grow multiple in different jars.  Of particular interest are the two cubes that have joined together.  

    Picture 5:  ED happy with his baby crystals. One is named Jerry, the other is a John Doe.  

  That's a picture of a proud father, right there.   

Chemical #3: Chromium Alum

Unfortunately, this beautiful black crystal suffered the same fate as the cupric sulfate.  

 Picture 6:  Crystallization at the bottom of beaker.  =( 

  Picture 7:  OH and MA were able to crack some crystals from the bottom.  

 Picture 8:  Some of the larger crystals that were extracted.  

Picture 9:  My favourite crystal. You can see its shape is almost perfectly octahedron.  The math teacher in me is quite pleased at the almost perfect symmetry of this crystal.

Picture 10:  OH and MA with their chromium alum octahedron crystals.  

Picture 11:  The rest of the class' sugar and salt crystals in a contest.  

I look forward to reading their reports that will maybe offer some reasons as to why certain crystals were able to grow well and others not so well.  Their recommendations in improvements to the procedure will be especially interesting, and I'm considering passing on their observations on to the next group next year to enlarge the crystals.