Which Way The Wind Blows

The most basic facts about the Earth's structure is that it is a sphere, and is tilted about 23.5 degrees; this is what causes the uneven heating on this Earth.  When it's warm and sunny here in Massachusetts, Australia might be more chilly, and the spiders may seek refuge in the warm homes of those living there.  In the tropics, it is humid, and up in the poles it's freezing and bitter.  This is the effect of the rays from the sun; some parts of the Earth they are always directly on there, and on other areas of the Earth the sunlight rays are angled, making them not as strong, as therefore not very warm.  This, I learned from the Global Wind Patterns activity from class this week.

The movement of the wind and water is effected by the Earth's rotation.  Case in point, The Coriolis  Effect, is the turning of winds, as it happens from the Earth's rotation on its axis.  This was demonstrated in an activity done in class, in which one person spun a circular piece of paper on a nail, and another person dropped a bit of water on the paper, and the water moved everywhere, making this symbol.

There are differences within the global wind patterns.  In 60-90 there are the Polar Easterlies, blowing from east to north.  From north to west are the Westerlies in 30-60 degrees.  Horse latitudes are at 30 degrees, where Westerlies and trade winds meet.  The Horse latitudes are where some of the deserts are. 

Image taken from http://galacticconnection.com/shifting-jet-stream-causing-conversion-of-weather-pattern/

Coastal Dynamics

Okay, so there are some things that can determine characteristics of coastlines. Take for example, estuaries, which are in essence nurseries for fish, where fresh water mixes with the salt water; in these, the coasts are more than likely primary. 

Primary coasts are shaped from things relevant to land, like tectonic plates. Secondary coastlines are result of things relevant to marine, like waves.

In all honesty really, I originally took random guesses as to which ones were which.

Sands

The class looked at sand samples this week. With the ones I saw, most of them were white and not very noteworthy.

Anyway, one of the white sand samples, from Cancun, Mexico, were sorted well. It looked like salt, but since it was on a microscope, they looked much bigger, especially when a stronger lens was used.

There was another sand sample I saw that was orange. I don't remember which particular beach it came from, but it once again looked much bigger when looking at the microscope, was very well sorted, and was high on the Wentworth Scale.

Dance Of The Continents

I was supposed to write this thing over the weekend, but I forgot all about it, ugh. But hey, better late than never I suppose.

Anyway, we did an activity where we had to cut out the continents and glue them to each other so it would look like Pangea, the theorized continent which was theoretically made of the continents of now, before they theoretically split... theoretically of course. And then, we had to include a picture of ours in the post. (Sorry about the potato quality here).

I learned about the many theories of what the earth might have been like millions of years ago. One of those things was the theory of Continental Drift from Wegner, saying that the continents slide over the ocean floor. I don't know how and why he would possibly think that, especially with him being a meteorologist.

However, the theory thought of by Hess 40 years later, of Seafloor Spreading, was more rational. He took into consideration the fact that magma can rise from the cracks to from new seafloor, when at the same time, making the continents push away from each other. Good job Hess!

Field Trip

Yesterday I went on a field trip with some of my classmates to this harbor in Seabrook, New Hampshire. All the people there enjoy ocean studies and are simply volunteers. ("Dosens" I think they were called, but that's besides the point). I learned some stuff there, such as; plankton aren't always small and microscophic. In fact, the biggest plankton ever found was like 60 feet long, and looked like a deformed shark. After that we went to the beach. We collected sand samples and saw that sand would be darker if closer to the water. But yeah, it was fun.

Unerwater Observatory

So on Friday, I saw this thing of these guys diving like 100,000 feet under the sea. And it was really cool. Now we are today, and I should had this posted days ago.

First, we need to consider the time and money needed to build the observatory, and as well as bringing it down there. It's definitely going to take more than a few months, and more than 1,000 dollars. Also, the water pressure the deeper you go down gets more intense, and just might cause peoples' brains to explode. So, there would need to be some method of decompression.

Aside from that, everything else seems quite basic; food supply, drinking water, bathroom, all can be brought down with the scientist.

The Reasons We (or I) Study The Ocean.

   I wanted to take this course, because I've heard from other people about how cool it is. What I wish to get out of this, is a good grade and something interesting I can look back at 20 years from now.

   Science is infallible, and always has the answers to the things we want to know and if it doesn't, we search far and wide to see what we did wrong.