Ali Craig science methods

 11/27/23 In lab, we really focused on the science behind climate change, specifically the role that the greenhouse effect plays.  A huge takeaway was that our carbon PPM has boosted from between 180 and 200 PPM to now 423 PPM. The only explanation for this is modern-day humans burning fossil fuels at such a high rate. This allows us an explanation and an argument against people who don't believe in climate change arguing "The climate always changes/The weather always changes". We know it does, but it doesn't change like this naturally.  Global temperatures do change, but they change gradually. We know that the change we're seeing now isn't natural because we can observe the sun, we can observe volcanic activity and we can observe human impacts. When temperatures change due to natural factors they change gradually and fluctuate. We can clearly see that the temperature is not fluctuating, as well as we can see that solar and volcanic activity has not changed. T...

 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 ...