Geologic-Biologic Timeline

The class spent a week and a half doing a project regarding the prehistoric eras of the Earth, starting from the Cambrian period, to Tertiary.  We were split into groups and had to research one of these periods.  My group was Tertiary.  I learned that the Tertiary was mostly what the Earth looks like today; the mammals were diversifying, Pangaea was splitting to make the continents known now, and halfway through there was a worldwide ice age.  This all happened between 2 to 65 million years ago, after all the dinosaurs died.  I worked well with my one partner in this project.  We looked through the books we could find, jotted down information we thought was important, and wasted no time trying to make it all look good.  The other groups in the class also did well with presenting the things they found.  The Triassic period had many forests, and saw the first turtles.

Relationships Among Marine Organisms.

This week in Marine Biology, there was an activity where each student had a necklace with the name of some marine organism, and we held parts of a string to represent a food web.  I, was a baleen whale.  In the food web, I was connected to the person labeled "krill;" the marine organism known as krill are very abundant in the Southern Hemisphere, and that's where baleen whales often like to be, because krill is their favorite thing to eat.  In the 11th century, baleen whales were hunted down by people for their oil, which they would use for lamps.  Baleen whales are probably the favorite meal of bull sharks.  There is an interdependency between baleen whales and  phytoplankton.  Krill EAT phytoplankton, so if they weren't around, there would be less to no krill.

Image taken from     http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/marine-life/baleen-whale4.htm

FINAL POST

The semester course that was Oceanography had aspects of physics and geology.  Given that physics is in the ocean, and the ocean is in Earth, this should've been quite obvious.   I learned many new concepts and things in this class.  It started with the underwater observatory.  Believe it or not, people sometimes go out to the middle of the sea, dive down a few meters, and live in there for some time, to look at the sea, face to face.  There's also the history aspect of Oceanography; explorers like Christopher Columbus, Sir Francis Drake, and of course, Charles Darwin.  I did a project about Charles Darwin, talking about his journey all throughout the world on a ship known as The Beagle.  He went to the Galapagos Islands, and found some new species of birds.  And then there was the tracking hurricanes.  It was learned that most hurricanes happen in the Summer, take a couple hours to take form, and strike the east coast days later.  I did actually know most of that, though I wasn't very interested before then.  Another thing was the measuring the tides.  The moon has effects upon the ocean, and the tides are often high or low depending on time of day and the position of the moon.  And, lastly, there was the study of heat in water.  There is no cold, only less warm.  If the water has a lower temperature, it has higher density.  Deeper down in the ocean it is more dense and cold than it is up at the surface.

Moon and Tides

The moon effects the water in terms of gravity.  Depending on the position of the moon in the sky, and in which phase it's in, the ocean will have either a low or a high tide.  Example, when it's a new moon, the high tide might go up to 8 feet at 11 in the morning, but then go back down to a low tide of below zero at six in the afternoon.  But as already said before, the moon is always somewhere different every time, especially in different times of the year.  This makes predicting the tides, nearly impossible.

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.