Ali Craig science methods

 11/13/23 Before the Flood Intense, very doomsday. Follow-up with most of the projects they started isn't great, especially the Paris Agreement. It's very hard to hold whole countries accountable. Until they see even more severe, drastic effects will they ever try to make changes to help our climate? Changing climate causes bugs to hatch earlier than they have before, causing the bugs to leave by the time birds hatch which means birds have a shortage of food and either migrate to new habitats or go extinct. Talked about how to read data is an important skill to teach elementary students so we created a quick lesson plan for collecting data, making graphs etc. Reading graphs about Iowa and Nationwide precipitation and heat. The reason we have all of these graphs is because it's not enough to convince people of rise in hot days, because they think they are outliers or not real. Now we have data about furnaces, growing seasons, precipitation, frost-free days, showing it doesn...

 11/6/23 Climate Change From NASA's Climate Change Images We can see the ocean is changing colors to a more blue-green which is bad because that means there is way more algae growing all over which will end up blocking the sunlight from the ocean and life that needs to photosynthesize in the ocean won't be able to. we are changing the chemical makeup of the ocean. More than 99.9% of climate change is human-caused (anthropogenic). Climate is a 30 year average of weather.  (If weather is my mood, then climate is my personality.) (If weather is a lesson, then climate is the unit) Is the Goldfinch, Iowa's state bird endangered and how do we know? Probably, I haven't seen one in three years of living in Iowa. Also, majority of animals are endangered now I thought. In the Iowa State area (Ames, Fort Dodge, Mason City) there was a 75% increase in precipitation.                               ...

10/30/23  After we discussed our homework article we began to look at the ages of layers of rocks, fault lines, and erosions.  Erosion and Deposition wind, water, glacier characteristics of sand sand made through  water is polished, smooth, and generally similar in size. sand made through  wind is opaque, frosted, pitted, and very fine-grained. sand made through  glaciers is polished, smooth, but irregular in size. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the first sand we investigated we believed to be water because they were polished and similar in size. (green black colored) the second sand we investigated we believed to be made through wind because of the pitted, very fine grains. (felt like dust/flour) the third sand we investigated we believed to be through glaciers because they were very irregular in size. the fourth sand we also believed to be made through glaciers due to its very irregular ...

10/23/23 Is it a rock? Today we learned about rocks and tectonic plates while simultaneously exploring different types of teaching and assessing. We discussed the difference between formative assessments and summative assessments, and how we can use these to learn how to teach our students. After discussing assessments we began creating a rock cycle with starbursts. To do this we mixed broken-up starburst pieces to make sedimentary rocks, we melted starbursts on foil to create igneous rocks, and we slightly melted our sedimentary rock and changed its pressure to create metamorphic rocks. igenous ^  ^ sedimentary  ^ metamorphic  metamorphic > In Thursday's lecture: We discussed how rocks are naturally made, not man-made. Then we looked at a lot of plate tectonics and hot spots. We learned about how Hawaii had moved over time because of plate tectonic motions,  so now only the largest island is on top of the hot spot and is an active volcano. We also discussed how a...

Week 9 We focused on a geological timeline during lab this week. First, we individually guessed when we thought the moon formed, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and when humans, animals, and plants were first on Earth. We then investigated just how old our galaxy and our Earth is. Then we used an Earthviewer simulation to answer the question of the geological timeline we then further explored when these events took place and broke up into groups to find out what really happened during their billion years. We created a timeline of the earth moon and life. (Geological timeline)  This is what happened during ours: 2.4 bil years ago oxygen on earth 2.2 bil years ago snow covering earth 3.4 bil years ago first evidence of life on earth

9/18/23 Big Question:  How do we design a  Why does a swing slow down and stop? To continue our investigation on swings we paired up and each got a different length string and created a class graph from our results. This was a great visual that really solidified our understanding of pendulums, and how the length of the string is the determining factor of the speed of the pendulum. We also continued our investigation on energy in motion. To see what happened to the energy in the pendulums, we used a simulation to factor in potential, kinetic energy, and air resistance. We also got the chance to design a playground surface using an experiment with an egg. Our basis was to create a surface soft enough for an egg to not crack after being dropped. We were given the option between four different materials to mix and make a landing for the gg. My partner and I chose a combination of sand and hay. We put the sand on the bottom and hay on top, and we were able to successfully drop it a...