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Earthquakes and Volcanoes
The month of Geology is one of my favorite months to teach. I always start with the book HOW TO DIG A HOLE TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE EARTH. I first explain that it is impossible to dig through the earth. The book takes us through the layers of the earth. I use Playdough to build an earth. I use a magnet marble to act as the core. The core is silent iron and acts as to create a magnetic field in the earth. That's why a compass points north and why we have a north and south pole. The core is as hot as the surface of the sun and we pass it around and play hot potato. I then pass out pieces of yellow dough and have the kids put it around the core. This is the outer core. We placed on orange dough for the mantle (hot magma). We finished with flat pieces of brown dough to be the plates of the earth. When we finished I showed the kids where the pieces overlapped and made mountains and gaps where you can see the magma, where volcanoes form. I then cut the earth in half to show the kids the layers. I had a container of red jello which I called the magma and I floated graham crackers on top as plates. I showed them how the plates could float on this and cause earthquakes. I showed them a map of where the plate lines are and let the students see that we are in the middle of the plate and in a safe place. I had pairs of of wooden blocks with modeling clay on top. The children pulled on the blocks until the clay split causing an earthquake. Volcanoes - I had drawings of shield, cone and strato volcanoes. I talked about the two types of lava, aa (slow, thick lava) pahohoe (fast, runny lava). We then looked a cross section of a volcano and looked at the parts. I then erupted one with baking soda, vinegar and soap. I also erupted one with ammonium dichromate. I burned it in a bottle cap on top of a volcano model. You can order the am. dichromate for around twelve dollars.
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What is the difference between a rock and mineral. Rocks are composed of minerals. How do you tell the difference between the two? Rocks and minerals are made by the earth. Bricks, concrete and glass are man made and not considered a rock/mineral. I showed the children a crystal grown from a kit and they thought it was real but I explained it wasn't grown in the earth. I had a string of pearls and asked if they were minerals. NO, they grew inside of a oyster/clam. Minerals have never been alive. Rocks such as chalk, limestone, petrified wood were alive at one time. Minerals have the same crystal shape throughout them. Quartz always had a hexagonal crystal. Mica has a flat Crystal. Halite - cube. Rocks can have many crystals in them. Granite is a good example to see. It has quart, mica and feldspar normally.
We went through some tests to help identify minerals. First was using your tongue. I have a huge piece of halite that I licked and then bought a box of rock salt and gave everyone a piece to lick. I then explained that you shouldn't go around licking minerals. I should them a piece of lead and explained how some minerals were poisonous. Next test uses the nose, I passed around pieces of sulfur. I had the kids sniff it and they all said it smelled like smoke and I explained that they use it in matches. Sulphur burns with a purple flame, but if you light it do it outside or in good ventilation because it smells bad. The next test uses our fingernails as we do the scratch test. I gave each child a piece of talc and let them scratch it and make powder like baby powder. I then gave them a piece of quartz and had them try to scratch it, it's a 7 on the MOH's scale of hardness the talc is 1. Diamond is a 10 and could scratch quartz. The last test we did was using a magnet to check samples to identify iron. There are 3 types of rocks, sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. I explained that sedimentary is layered like a sandwich. I had a piece of sandstone that they could see the layers throughout. Igneous is fire rock and is hardened magma or lava. We pretended that a candle was a rock that I melted and we said that the melting wax was the lava. When the wax hardened it became "igneous rock". Pumice and granite are good examples. Metamorphic is rock that has been changed by heat and pressure of having a mountain on it. I had a multicolored pack of modeling clay. I gave each student a small ball and told them that they were a mineral. A rainstorm came and washed the "minerals" into the lake, which was my palm. The water squeezed these together to form a sedimentary rock. I showed them what it looked like stuck together. If I melted our "rock" it would harden into an igneous rock. I told the students that they were mountains and was going to squeeze the sedimentary rock and make it metamorphic. We passed it around and squeezed and saw how it changed. I then showed them limestone and the marble that it would change too after millions of years of pressure. How much would you weigh on Mars? If you weighed 70 pounds (32 kg) on the Earth, you would weigh about 27 pounds (12 kg) on Mars. The Planet Mars excites scientists because its mild temperament is more like the Earth's than any of the other planets. Evidence suggests that Mars once had rivers, streams, lakes, and even an ocean. As Mars' atmosphere slowly depleted into outer space, the surface water began to permanently evaporate. Today the only water on Mars in either frozen in the polar caps or underground. You may sometimes hear Mars referred to as the "Red Planet." This is because the surface of Mars is red. If you stood on the surface of Mars, you would see red dirt and rocks everywhere. Exploration At first, the only way modern explorers could study Mars was with satellites that would fly close to the surface of Mars and take pictures as it did so. The satellites would then send these pictures back to Earth. As scientific technology became more advanced, scientists were able to put spacecraft into orbit around the Red Planet. These types of missions allowed scientists and researchers to obtain even more information about Mars. Then, as technology advanced even more, scientists and researchers were able to actually land spacecraft on the surface of Mars. To learn more about these amazing explorations, Click Here. What if humans went to Mars? Moons: Mars has two moons, their names are Deimos and Phobos. The word crystal is used in different ways but scientists mean something special when using the word crystal. A tiny particle called an atom is the building block for everything on earth. In crystals the atoms repeat the same pattern over and over tomake a certain shape. Glass and plastic would not be considered a crystal since the atoms in them do not have an exact repeating pattern.
A crystal is able to grow by adding the same number of atoms to all its sides in the same pattern as the ones before, making sides called facets. The crystal will get bigger but keep it;s original shape. Science for Kids CrystalsWhat are crystals? Crystals are a specia How do they form? The process of crystal forming is called crystallization. Crystals often form in nature when liquids cool and start to harden. Certain molecules in the liquid gather together as they attempt to become stable. They do this in a uniform and repeating pattern that forms the crystal. In nature, crystals can form as liquid rock, called magma, cools. If it cools slowly, then crystals may form. Many valuable crystals such as diamonds, rubies, and emeralds form this way. Another way crystals from is when water evaporates from a mixture. Salt crystals often form as salt water evaporates. What unique properties do crystals have? Crystals can have very flat surfaces called facets. They can form geometric shapes such as triangles, rectangles, and squares. The shapes are a direct result of the type of molecules and atoms that make up the crystal. Smaller crystals and larger crystals that were formed of the same molecules and in the same method should have similar shapes. There are seven basic crystal shapes, also called lattices. They are Cubic, Trigonal, Triclinic, Orthorhombic, Hexagonal, Tetragonal, and Monoclinic. Interesting Types of Crystals Snow flakes - Snow flakes are ice crystals that are formed high in the clouds when water freezes. They always have six sides or arms, but every one of them is unique. Timing crystals - When an electric current is sent through some crystals they vibrate at a very precise frequency. Quartz crystals are used in watches and other electronics to keep and accurate time. Quartz - Quartz is a common mineral and crystal. It is one of the hardest common minerals. The gemstone amethyst is a purple type of quartz. The last class in this month's series is Paleontology. The word fossil means "dug up". A fossil is the remains of any living organism. A paleontologist studies fossils and can specialize in different areas. I sat the kids on the floor in a circle and brought out a plastic Stegosaurus and pretended that it was walking through the grasslands and it was older so it died. I asked them if they thought that it would become fossilized. Most kids said that it would. I then brought out a toy Allosaurus. I then acted out that the Allosaurus eating the Stegosaurus. For a dinosaur to become fossilized it had to become hidden from the predators. I had the students guess what could hide them. Sand storms, rock slides, quick sand, and floods were the favorite answers. Once the dinosaur was buried I asked which parts would become fossilized. The hard parts like the bones, spikes, teeth, and claws were what most kids think of. I added that skin prints, eggs, poops and footprints could be left behind too. I then moved on to showing the children the 2 groups of fossils. The first type is a replacement fossil. These are usually teeth, caws, bones, poops and eggs. The bone has tiny holes all over it and it lies in the dirt, water washes in and pushes a little of the bone out. Luckily it leaves a little piece of mineral in its place. I then passed around a T. Rex tooth replica. The second type is mold and cast which is footprints and skin prints. We pushed dinos into modeling clay to see the impressions left behind. Next we went through what it would be like to work on a dig. First we'd go out west to Colorado, Utah or South Dakota where there are more dino remains than here in North Carolina. Then when we began to dig we'd photograph the cite, map the cite and as each fossil is removed we number it and mark the number on the map. The bones are wrapped in plaster wrap and transported to the museum or university to be cleaned, studied and reassembled. We then excavated and cleaned a piece of amber which is fossilized tree sap that sometimes traps insects and other plant Woolly mammoth A great deal has been found out about woolly mammoths from analysis of carcasses frozen in the Siberian permafrost and from depictions in ancient art. They were built like elephants, but with adaptations to prevent heat loss - tiny ears, short tails and a thick coat of dark brown hair. On the underbelly, the hair grew up to a metre long and was probably shed in the summer. Their trunks ended with two 'fingers' that helped pluck grass. Humps of hair and fat behind the head made the shoulders seem higher than the pelvis. However, the front and back legs were actually about the same length.
Scientific name: Mammuthus primigenius Rank: Species Common names: Tundra mammoth I enjoy teaching dinosaurs because the children are so interested in them. There will be one student in most classes that know almost every dinosaur. The majority of the kids only know T. Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and they call Apatasaurus a long neck. Most information that younger children get are from "Land Before Time" movies.
I begin with what is and isn't a dinosaur. Not all reptiles that lived in the Mesozoic Age are dinosaurs. Dinosaurs did not have flippers and live their entire life in the water. Dinosaurs could swim however. Elasmosaurs and others were not dinos. Dinosaurs could not just fly with wings. Pterosaurs weren't dinos. Some of the later dinos had feathers and could glide or fly but could also fly. Dinosaurs had legs that came down straight not bent like those of a crocodile today. I had toy models so the children could chose who was and was not a dinosaur. You could do this with pictures too. We then played "Name That Dinosaur". I had toy models and placed one in the child's hands, but there hands were behind their back and they guessed which it was by feeling for horns, spikes and claws. The kids love playing and when we were done we sorted them by herbivores and carnivores. Al herbivore dinosaurs walked on 4 legs. Not all dinosaurs that walked on 2 legs were carnivores. You must look at their head and teeth to decide. We then sorted them by the time period they lived in. The Triassic was first and we saw a Plateosaurus. The Jurassic was the time of the large herbivores. The Cretaceous had the largest meat eaters. We then looked at my Iguana, Ozzy and talked about his difference and similarities to a dinosaur. His legs are bent which make him not a dino. His spines on the back are similar, his tail can whip like a sauropods tail. He's covered in spines. I begin the year with my favorite topic - Reptiles. I usually begin class with a book and this week I used CAN SNAKES CRAWL BACKWARDS. I began with talking about animal classifications. Vertebrates - have a skeleton Invertebrates - no skeleton The 5 main classes of vertebrates are Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians and Fish. There are 5 orders of groups of reptiles living on earth today: Tuataras, Snakes, Lizards, Crocodilians, Turtles There are many types of extinct reptiles. I then went over the characteristics that make a reptile a reptile: 1. Scales - I asked the kids to show me there scales. They of course responded that they had no scales and I pointed to there fingernails and hair. They are made of keratin which is the same material reptile scales are made of. Why are the scales so important? I explained that if I made a sandwich for their lunch early in the morning and left it laying in the desk all day that my lunch it would be dry and stale and not very good. I asked what I should do with the sandwich to make it better for lunch and most kids know you should put it in a zip lock. Think of scales like a zip lock. They keep reptiles from drying up and allows them to live in saltwater and hot, dry desserts that the amphibians with no scales can't live in. The scales also protect their bellies. I asked the kids if they would like to crawl through the park on their bellies in a bathing suit. If they had scales they could. You can cut the end off of a pillow case and put it over a child and let them lay down and try to shed their old scales off. Remind them that if they were a snake they'd have no arms to help with. Real snakes don't just crawl out of their skin but they peel it off like a banana skin. 2. Breath with lungs - Reptiles do not have gills so, sharks are not reptiles even though they have scales. 3. Body Temp - Reptiles are cold blooded, we are mammals and are warm blooded. We can make heat to maintain a steady temp. If we go out to play in the snow we don't die. Reptiles do not have ice in there blood but they can't make heat (except a few pythons when protecting eggs). If a lizard goes out in the snow it will die. Even if you put a coat, hat and gloves on it. That's why they hibernate in winter or live in warm places. 4. Reptiles lay eggs with shells. I then gave everyone a toy reptile, amphibian, fish and eel. I said crocodilian and everyone with a croc or alligator put it in line,snakes, turtles and lizards. We talked about why the salamander wasn't a reptile (no scales and only 4 toes on the front legs). You could do this with pictures too. We looked at a corn snake. ball python and Myrtle the yellowed bellied slider. Punishments for Breaking the Code- Punishments for breaking the pirate's code were always swift and rarely without exception, an attitude carried over from their previous time aboard a sailing vessel.The quartermaster would deliver the punishment determined by the captain or vote of the crew, which might be legs in irons, flogging, or keel hauling. More serious crimes were answered with marooning or death....
These were the articles used by Captain John Phillips' ship 'Revenge':
Bats are such an interesting group of mammals. They are not rodents but in the order Chiroptera. There are 1000 species in the world, 43 species in the US, and 17 species in North Caroina, 7 of these are endangered. There are 2 taxa of bats. Megabats are not found in North America, only in Africa, Asia and Australia, they eat fruit, pollen and nectar. Microbats dine on insects, fish, frogs, and occasinally birds and small mammals. A bat can eat 1 insect every 6 seconds. Bats are a keystone species, which means without them the food chain would collapse and many species would be in trouble. Biologists are concerned about the white nose fungus that is killing bats throughout the US, including NC.
Here are a few bat facts: A bat can live to be 30 years old. Their heartbeat can reach 900 beats a minute when hunting. Vampire bats sometimes urinate when drinking blood so that they won't be to heavy to fly. |
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