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.

Class Happenings Part 1: Best Formative Blogs of 2015

If I had to choose one blog that put together the most entertaining whilst still informing the audience, it'd had to be BL's blog.  It was thought provoking (at least for me), and I will definitely be commenting on his written piece to give my opinion of his exaggeration and bias.  His written work engaged the audience and had me talking about it.  He expanded upon what was covered in class and had me looking up some of his statements.  In essence, he has succeeded in writing in a bit of a sensationalist style.

At the same time, everyone has different writing styles and are writing not for sensationalism, but for of a intellectual style.  Just remember to always try and engage your audience, whichever tone you choose to use.

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.

Post March Break

Advertisements for Other Exoplanets

As Mars One whittles down to its finals to sending humans on a one way mission to Mars, NASA has already started advertising for other exoplanets outside of our solar system but seem to have habitable environments.  Here is my favourite.  Which one is yours? 

Extent of Human Broadcasts

You know, sometimes I wonder if aliens will come and visit our Earth because of the recording on Voyager 1 that is "rolling out the red carpet" by giving the directions to our Earth blindly to any extra-terrestrial life out there.  Then, I remember, even though our radio broadcasts are moving at the speed of light, our first radio broadcast in the early 1900s has only reached this far in our milky way galaxy:

There are 100 billion galaxies out there, and our radio broadcasts haven't even reached the edge of our one galaxy yet.  

4/9 Boundaries Crossed...Until Planetary Destruction

So, apparently, we're almost halfway to human destruction.  The speed with which the diversity of living beings is decreasing (biodiversity loss) and the amount of nitrogen we are taking out of atmosphere have also been passed.  It's like we're slowly checking off things to our own extinction...check...check...

Well - I'm doing my best to reduce my carbon footprint after my wife and I purchased a hybrid.  

I like Earth.  "If you like it, put a ring on it".  The closest ring I can put on Earth is:

                                                        (from reddit...of course)

We are creating minerals and identifying minerals this week.  I can't wait to see who wins the crystal growing competition!