What is a Mineral?

This unit was all about studying "What is a Mineral". We saw some videos, sideshows, did some worksheets and ended up having a test.

What is not a mineral and why-

• Wood- because it was once a living thing
• Fossils- because they were once living
• Bone- because it is a living material
• Granite- instructive igneous rock
• Pearls- because it is made by oysters
• Coal- because it is made of sedimentary rock
• Rock Salt- because it is made of sedimentary rocks

What is a mineral-

• Gold
• Topaz
• Quartz
• Diamond
• Talc
• Ice-burg

Those are all minerals, and non- minerals. Now I will tell you how you can recognize a mineral. Ask yourself the following queestions and you will get the naswer.

Questions that will help you determine if the item is a mineral-

• Is it a non-living material?
• Is it a solid?
• Is it formed in nature?
• Does it have a crystalline structure?

If you answer this questions correctly you will egt the right answer! This unit was, fun and since we will continue it, I am exitied to learn more about it!

Volcano Reflection

O.K. Before I even start writing this reflexction I need to tell something. When I answer the questions you will see taht I have Answer 1 and Answer 2. Answer 1 was for my first presentationa nd Answer 2 was for the second time that I presented the same thing. Also if you see any spelling mistakes blame the computer not me, because this computer doesnt have spell check! Hope you enjoy my presentation!

This unit was all about picking a volcano and researching it. We had and option of working in partners or alone. I choose to work with a partner. My partner was Alek. We choose to study Mount Vesuvius and the city Pompeii, which was buried by its huge eruption in 79 A.D. We found lots of interesting facts about the city Pomeii, and mOnu Vesuvius. There was also lots of information about the erouption, but one thing that I noticed there wasnt much information was who descovered the city Pomeii. I searched lots of websites, one of them was Answers.com and it did not have an answer! When I searched even more on 3 other websites I found 3 same answers. It basiclyl said, A group of workers descovered it by exident. Thts was all. No name or anyhting!
Quiding Question- How does the volcano, in this case Mount Vesuvius affect people that live arounf it?
Questions that we need to answer-
1. How you think you did on your presentation?
Answer 1- I think for the first time it went really bed, all because we were not ready. Alek for example was reading clearly, but I personally had problems with reading everything. I have those problems, partly because I was shy, and also because I admitt I didnt prepare myself.
Answer 2-
2. What was missing in your presentation?
Answer 1- I think that was missing is actually adding that voice, and looking at the audienc, not justr eading off the computer. I also could talk about the video that we watched, and tell them something about it.
Answer 2-
3. What grade do you think you deserve and why?
Answer 1- If I were to garde myself know I would give myself a 1 out of 6. I would give myself this garde because, I didnt look at the audience, I read of the computer, I didnt speak loud and clear, I didnt explain what was yhappening in the video, and I was mumbling instead of speaking like a normal person.
Answer 2-
4.  What did you learned about volcanoes and how they affect people who
leave around them?
Answer 1- I learned that people that live next to a volcano can benefit form it. There are also bed sides of it. The bed side is this. When there is an erouption the people that live there, will get shocked by the smoke, or with be burried with lave. The good sides are these. People coem to see the volcano a lot in other words there is a lot of tourism. People can benefit from that, becasue they can give the visitors confort and take care of them.
Answer 2-
5. How do volcanoes affect the world?
Answer 1- Volcanoes have changed the world and they still do. When a volcano erouts or explodes it lets uot hot steam, lava and lots of ash. The ash unables people to see the shy, covers the sun and also we cant use airplanes to fly around the world. BUT, there are also good sides of a volcano erputing. When a volcano eroupts there is a big chance of a rainforest growing on the hard lava. Hard lava has very good posibillites of growing plants on it.
Answer 2-

Conclusion-
I think taht this unit was one of the funest one swe had. I promise myself that next time IF we do this again I will try and do it by myself. I have never worked alone before. I ma sure that it cant be that hard. If I try I will see. I especially liked taht Ms. M let us pick which volcano and topic we wills tudy. Choosin g Pomeii and Mount Vesuvius, was a good idea becasue I have seen Pompeii and I have been standing on Moutn Vesuvius, just last year! I think that this was a very interesting project and I hope to do it again! Soon!

This are soem pictures of Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii!

This is a picture of Mont Vesuvius eropting and the city Pomepii benith.

This is a picture of the burried and killed people who were trying to pretect themselfs from dieing. P.S. They didnt survive.

This picture was taken latter when the camaras where still without color, but it is showing Mount Vesuvius!

This is a picture of Mount Vesuvius and the unburried city of Pomeii after the explosion!

Ploting Earthquakes and Volcanos

This unit was all about plotting earthquakes and volcanoes on a map. We got a bunch of locations of active volcanoes and earthquakes and we were asked to plot them. There was tons f them!!

The guiding question- Is there a pattern in the location of earthquakes and volcanoes?
Hypothesis- There are two things that I noticed. One, I think that they always happen somewhere else, but after a longer period of time they happen in the same place again. I also noticed that the longitude and latitude don't match at all.
Analyze and Conclude-
Question 1- How are earthquakes distributed on the map? Are they scattered evenly or concentrated in zones?
Answer- The earthquakes are more or lees divided evenly on the map. Well if you look at it really carefully and count the amount on each side you will notice that there is more volcanoes on my right side.
Question 2- How are volcanoes distributed? Are they scattered evenly or concentrated in zones?
Answer- Volcanoes are more evenly spread then earthquakes. Still if you count them on each side my right side would have more volcanic eruptions then on my left.

Conclusion-
In conclusion this unit was not AS fun as the others but I still enjoyed. I mean its better then taking a 20 page test, which by the way Ms. M. would never make us do! This was quite interesting, because you could really see where the most volcanic eruptions and earthquakes happened. I would like another unit or project like this, only I would like to plot hurricanes and tsunamis! I really hope that this unit will repeat only we would need to plot something else!

This is the map with only earthquakes!

This is the map with both earthquakes and volcanoes. If you look carefully you can see that the that they are mostly divided equally.

Unit 3 Growing A Crystal Garden

In Science we stated a new unit called " Growing a Crystal Garden". We all had to make our own garden out of materials such as cardboard, plastic and so on. Then, in school Mrs. Medenica gave us the solutions to put into our gardens.

Day 1- January 26, 2011
Today I noticed that my crystals started growing. ( Mostly the salt crystals). I added more salt crystals on my garden, and I noticed that my map mostly shows that I used salt and Epsom salt crystals. I updated my map with the salt and sugar crystals and can hardly wait to see what will happen tomorrow!

Day 2- January 27, 2011
Today I noticed that even more Epsom salt crystals grew on my garden. I evidently lost my map too, but I drew another one! I also noticed that even though I didn't add solution to some places it grew bigger and more colorful! On my garden I have everything pored with salt and Epsom salt solution, except for one little bit which is sugar crystal!

Day 5-  January 31, 2011
Today I started using a solution called Borax. I hope that it grows as fats as the salt crystals! Which I cant say for my sugar crystallized spots. Anyway tons of crystals started growing their way of the ground and they look amazing! My garden is very colorful and I cant wait to see the end product!

Day 6- February 21, 2011
It is right after the break and I had TONS of fun. Well today, when I came into Science class I saw my garden and................ OMG! It looked soooo beautiful! I noticed that the sugar crystals woke up and started growing! My garden looks..........I don't have any words to describe it! It is colorful, and it is finally starting to get the real shape. By shape I mean its real look! The Epsom salt is growing the fastest, but the normal salt is not far behind. Now the sugar solution finally started growing and I think it was worth waiting and adding more of the solution on it because in my opinion those crystals are the nicest ones ever! It is still not the end product for me, but I hope to get more crystals every day!

Conclusion-
This unit was fun and I really enjoyed it. To grow a crystal garden you need a lot of patience. First, when you need to design a garden and then the fun part comes. The fun part is spilling all those different solutions on it! But then when you are done, you need to keep the journal entry! Man can it be more boring?? I mean yes its fun LOOKING at your garden but then writing about it? Well its not that bad cause you get to tell your opinion and compare your garden with the rest of them, that your classmates have! On my garden there are 3 different solutions. Epsom salt, salt and sugar. I have seen Clare's garden and I noticed that we both used Epsom salt but that mine grew faster. Then I thought that maybe I used better materials, but then I remembered that Ms. M. said that the material doesn't really matter. So what can it be? Maybe I put more solution on it? Did I? I also noticed that when Ms. M. left some crystal solution in a normal cup over the weekend it grew really big, and by really big I mean bigger then mine! And I put it on a stick! I have learned that it doesn't really matter on what the crystal grows, but that it meters how much of the solution you put on i OR what solution do you put on! My new hypothesis is this---- I think that it doesn't matter on what the crystal solution is growing on, but it matters how it grows and where it grows! Because if you grow it outside, on the snow where it is icy cold, you are not going to be very happy!

Further Inquiry-
The errors that have occurred in my garden are......well there really wasn't any ERRORS but I noticed that if you put 2 solutions on the same stick that it will grow faster and that it looks cooler! If we did the experiment all over again I would try and get more different solutions and try and research more about the topic myself, not only let the teacher do all the work. While researching one of the things would be finding out which materials are the most appropriate for this experiment. I have a few questions about this unit or experiment. Can you make even more crystal solutions then we had? What is the recipe for the solutions? What are the appropriate materials for growing crystals? And last.....If we where to add more solution every day and let it be there for a year how much would it change? Would it start smelling bad? If you leave it on the heater will the heat melt the crystals? Will it? Will it? There is more questions that I can fit on here and that I feel like writing but what I am trying to say is that if you go deeper and deeper into inquiry you can discover more and more things about it!

This is my Crystal garden on day 5. It has improved a lot since I've seen it on day 2. I am really proud to say that its my garden. I am very sure that it is going to look better on day 6 (and 7, if 6 is not my last  day).

This is my garden on day 6. It looked better then day 5, not only because it had more crystals but because of the color it had. It really isn't day 6 but I call it that, because it was winter break after day 5 so really like 10 days past!



This what I wanted to make my garden look like, but obviously i didn't seceded that much. I am proud of what I made but I am sure that when I make the solution at home it will improve.

The Dynamic Earth

This week we studied The Dynamic Earth. We visited a few websites and the best one that we found was-
http://www.mnh.si.edu/earth/main_frames.html This website tells all about Plate Tectonics, Gems and Minerals and Rocks and Mining. I choose to study Plate Tectonics and Volcano's and Rocks and Mining. In the Plate Tectonics section I studied The Inner Earth and The Unreachable Frontier. In the rocks and Mining section I choose to study Rocks Tell Stories and Water Recycles Rocks. Down below I will show you what I learned.
Plate Tectonics and Volcanoes

The Inner Earth-

• the inner earth is layered
• beneath the surface is a rocky and cold mantle and core
• the inner earth is very very hot
• the earths core is hotter then the surface of the sun
• the inner earth flows
• in the mantle the flowing rocks help the tectonic plates move them
• during Earth’s first 100 million years large particles in the Solar System collided and stuck together making tremendous heat.
•  dense molten iron sank and created the core

Rocks and Minerals

• lighter silicate liquid rose and cooled forming the mantle
• later the melting of the mantle produced the crust a process that continues todayThe Unreachable Frontier
• more than 99 percent of the distance to Earths center still leys beneath the drill bit
• the inner earth is very hot so tahts why we cant reach it
• scientists gather information from meteorites, rocks, diamonds and earthquake waves
• scientists can learn about the inner Earth from special rocks called peridotites
• sulfur, alimumum, calcium, magnesium, sislicon, oxygen and iron are the main 7 elements taht amke up the earth
• the magmas that erupt at earths surface come from partial melting of peritonitis

Rocks Tell Stories

• rocks are solid natural aggregates of minerals
• in each rock they tell a different story
•  within earth water plays a critical role in transforming and melting rocks
• water is hidden in tiny pores between mineral grains in a rock of course
• every rock isn a piece of earths history
• rocks are clues taht help us predict about the nature and timing of the events that formed them

Water Recycles Rocks

• water creates shapes and destroys rocks as it travels among land, sea, and air
• the mississippi river spills into the Gulf of Mexico and transforming loads of sediment
• the ocean water evaporates into the atmosphere

That is all that I learned from this website. It helps a lot and it contains many more interesting facts about the inner earth, minerals, caves and so on. This website answered so many of my questions but while it answered my old questions, new ones popped into my head while responding and writing and reading all the information. Some of my questions are- why is earth layerd? Why is the Inner Earth hotter then the suns surface?  Why are rocks pieces of history and other things like the deserts arent?  There is so many that my head is full of huge ? ? ?  that can be answered only by reading! So visit the website and get some Awesome Knowledge!!!!! I hope that you enjoy the website just like I did!!!!!

What I learned in Science this week

This week we learned a lot about rocks, minerals and caves. We learned about the earth's structure too. We watched some cool videos about caves, rocks and minerals. Some videos were about the earth's structure. We learned that the earth has layers. It has 4 layers. The core, outer core, the mental and the crust. In the video it said that the core is 1,500 degrees Celsius, the mental is 1,200 degrees Celsius and the crust is cold and rocky. Very cold. Here is a picture of it. We learned that there was lots of different small animals living in the dark caves. All of them were blind because it is dark and the eyes wouldn't help in anyway. One of those animals are bets who go looking for food at night, and because they are blind they have a very good sense of hearing. So that is why they hunt really good. ( At least I think that)

I want to learn why the earth's crust is so cold and rocky, and why the inner core is so hot. I would also like to know if the animals that live in the caves are dangerous or poison. Do the bigger animals eat the smaller animals from the caves? Could we, humans travel to the center of the earth (the inner core) and discover what it actually is? Or did we do that already? There is so many things that interest me about the earth, caves or minerals (rocks)!!!! I really like this unit and I hope that we will discuss more about it, because I know that I am not talented for things like science but things like this really interest 
                                                                                          me and make me want to learn more about it.

BUILD A MUSHROOM FARM!!!

Build A Mushroom Farm
http://www.fengfu.com.cn/
About them:
Fengfu, as a edible mushroom science & technology
company, was found by Mr.Pengzhaowang, as a source
of mushroom logs, firstly established mushroom logs'
model of management chain farms. For many years, the
products, facilities, and the solution plans that offered by
Fengfu, is already one of the roads that are convenient
and can be trusted most where the client of all parts of
the world builds his mushroom farm.

This week my current event post is about building a mushroom farm. I decided to write about this because I want Clare to read it. I want Clarie to read this because she HATES mushrooms! So lets get back to mushrooms. Ms. Shanghai Femgfu who is a scince and technique Co. has dont 80% of all the work!! She will provide all-set-farm-construction solutions, speciality facilities, along with sending the technicians to give the people guidience. This is a new healthy industry! The fat in edible mushroom equals to that in vegetables, and with a veriaty of health-care functions. All the production process does not contact fertilizers, pesticides and soil is a new generation healthy industry! So Clarie do you like mushrooms now? I forgot to add that there is 25 kinds of mushroom logs in the farm. There is also 2-3 kinds of temperature in each variety! Mushrooms can be soooo exitinf right???

By: Ajda Mozetic