Longitudinal and Transverse waves

Longitudinal waves move in a horizontal motion and transverse waves move in a vertical motion. Longitudinal and transverse waves are formed when they pass through a medium. In longitudinal waves the displacement of the medium is parallel to the propagation of the wave. Unlike longitudinal waves a transversal wave is the total opposite. Instead, these waves move perpendicular to the propagation. In addition, longitudinal waves are usually more spread out than transverse One last difference between the two types of waves are that longitudinal waves have particles that do not move down the tube, instead they simply move around in their position. However, transverse waves have particles that move up and down. An example of a transverse wave is a ripple in a pond. Another example could be a wave on a string, or even a wave in a solid. But usually solids have a mixture of both a transversal and longitudinal wave. An example of a longitudinal wave is a sound wave in the air. Another example of a wave that involves transverse and longitudinal waves are the waves in water or an ocean. Last but not least transversal and longitudinal waves both have a trough and a crest. The crest is the highest point of the wave and the trough is the lowest point. I hope after having so much fun after reading this article you will stop by whenever you see a wave and try to identify it.

For more information visit: http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos/waves/wavemotion.html

Antartica was Warm in the past?

How can Antarctica be Warm?
On April 20, 2007 tiny fossil diatoms were discovered deep down in the ocean floor. This revealed a significant truth about Antarctica's past about 10 million years ago. Yes, it is true that it was much much hotter in the past. Let me start at the beginning so that you get it. First it was cold and there was a lot of ice in Antarctica. Then it became really hot in the middle, which the scientists very recently learned. Now, it's cold again. The scientists working on this topic were very surprised by the single-celled algae. They had never seen some of these diatoms and others they had only seen in waters with really really high temperatures. Scientists say that these diatoms are new to science and will help them understand future climate changes. Now their new goal is to recover sedimentary records close to Antarctica so that they can learn about Antarctica's history and understand how it's related to global warming. Hopefully, global warming will not occur again, but be prepared just in case...

To learn more about global warming visit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6570185.stm

Memory

Don't you always remember the significant details and forget the minor ones in your life?
For example, you would remember that you had a party yesterday, but you'd forget who left before Anne. Well, on April 18, 2007 Jan Born and her research group discovered that long- term memories are formed while sleeping. This process relies on the brain replaying recent events during the night. The scientists also realized that sleeping not only strengthens your memory, but it also lets you remember the order that the events occurred. They even did an experiment to see if their results were really right. For the experiment a few students were asked to learn triplets of words one after another. The next day they tested each student and only the ones that had slept were able to determine the order of the words. However, they could only remember when they recited them in a forward direction not a backwards one. In the end, every student needs at least 8-10 hours of sleep if they want to do well in school!

http://brightsurf.com/news/headlines/30003/Sleep_enforces_the_temporal_sequence_in_memory.html

THE SUN

There are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy and out of them our sun is the closest. With a diameter of 1,390,000 kilometers it is also the largest and therefore the hottest even though it is only a yellow star. The mass of the sun is 1.989e30 kilograms and the temperature is 5800 Kelvin on the surface, which is called the photosphere as well as the chromospere, which is a small region right above the photosphere. There is also a layer above the chromosphere called the corona layer, which has a temperature of 1,000,000 Kelvin. This layer extends millions of kilometers into space, but can only be seen during a solar eclipse. The temperature on the core is 15,600,000, which is way more than the surface. This is because each second about 700,000,000 tons of hydrogen are converted into about 695,000,000 tons of helium and 5,000,000 tons of energy in the form of gamma rays. But by the time that these gases reach the surface they would've cooled down and become only visible light. In spite of that the amount of output is still humongous and is produced by nuclear fusion reactions. The sun also emits solar winds, which are a low-density stream of charged particles, which mostly contain electrons and protons. Unlike the Earth the sun is not a solid body, instead it's a planet made up of gases. In addition, hundreds of sunspots lie on the sun. These areas are "cool" regions and only 3800 Kelvin. They can be as big as 50,000 km. in diameter. These sunspots are created by complicated interactions with the suns' magnetic field. Occasionally spectacular loops and prominences are visible along with solar flares. They can rise hundreds of kilometers high and are huge. One day the sun will become a black hole or at least die and make the world cold and dark. Unless we find a solution humans will probably become extinct just like dinosaurs. But don't worry our sun has lived for 4.5 billion years until now and will live for another 5 billion years. So we're safe for now!!!

http://www.nineplanets.org/sol.html

Black Holes

On March 13, 2007, astronomers discovered over a thousand super massive black holes. They looked a t these humungous black holes from the Spitzer Space telescope from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory. The images of the black holes that they captured show are hundreds of billions to several billion more massive than the sun. Astronomers are still trying to figure out the entire truth about the habits of black holes. They also want to locate the largest black holes. They are trying to prepare for when the sun becomes a black hole and sucks everything in. Hopefully, these outcomes will give the astronomers some sort of an idea on when these black holes that lie in the center of the galaxies are growing and in which environments they occur in. In conclusion, we need to solve this problem of black holes.

visit this website for more information
http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/29304/New_panorama_reveals_more_than_a_thousand_black_holes.html

Heroes

IT'S HARD TO BELEIVE, BUT THE SHOW HEROES IS CONNECTED TO GENETICS IN MANY WAYS. ONE OF THE WAYS IS HOW THE CHARACTERS LOOK. CLAIRE, THE DAUGHTER HAS BLONDE HAIR THAT IS MOSTLY STRAIGHT, BUT A LITTLE WAVY ON THE ENDS. SHE HAS GREEN EYES AND NO GLASSES. HER MOM HAS THE SAME EXACT PALE SKIN-COLOR. HER HAIR IS STRAIGHT AS WELL, BUT IT'S KIND OF GOLDISH COLORED. IN ADDITION, SHE HAS HAZEL EYES AND NO GLASSES. CLAIRE'S FATHER DOES HAVE GLASSES AS OPPOSED TO CLAIRE AND HER MOTHER WHO DON'T. HE HAS STRIGHT BROWN HAIR AND EYES AND HIS SKIN-COLOR'S A LITTLE DARKER THAN HIS DAUGHTER'S. THEY ALL HAVE RED EARS THAT AREN'T ATTACHED AND POINTY NOSES. AT THE END OF THE SHOW CLAIRE MET HER GRANDMOTHER (DAD'S MOM) WHO HAD NO GLASSES, BROWNISH BLACK HAIR, THAT WAS STRAIGHT, AND DARK BLUE EYES. FROM ALL THIS INFORMATION YOU CAN DETERMINE WHICH TRAITS CLAIRE GOT FROM EACH OF HER PARENTS. FOR EXAMPLE, SHE GOT HER SKIN-COLOR FROM HER MOM AND STRAIGHT HAIR FROM BOTH HER PARENTS. SHE PROBABLY GOT HER GOOD EYES FROM BOTH HER GRANDMOTHER AND MOTHER. YOU COULD ALSO TELL FROM THIS INFORMATION THAT SHE DIDN'T AS MANY TRAITS FROM HAR FATHER AS SHE DID HER MOTHER. OVERALL HEROES IS AN AWESOME SHOW AND DEFINATLEY GREAT FOR EXTRA-CREDIT ASSIGNMENTS!!!

TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD

The setting of "To Kill A Mockingbird" is in Maycomb. Maycomb is an old town where it rains a lot, is very humid, rarely snows, and is very muddy. This community includes many consumers and producers. One type of population in this community is mammals/humans such as Jem, Scout, Atticus, Tom Robinson, Dill, or Boo Radley. Some other consumers in Maycomb are dogs, flies, cows, and mocking birds. Some producers in this envirnoment are oak trees, grass, camellias, and scuppernongs. This habitat doesn't include many decomposers, but organisms living here can still obtain the resources that they need to survive. For example, it rains a lot and is sunny, so that's perfect for the producers. And the consumers can consume the producers for energy. Overall, this is a perfect ecosystem.