Seasons Greetings (and Explanations)

Click on the image to visit a helpful website explaining Earth's Tilt and the Seasons and more.

https://fretzreview.wikispaces.com/Seasons-Causes+Group+1

Astronomy Exam Videos

The following YouTube videos should be helpful as you prepare for the 2nd Astronomy exam, scheduled for the week of Monday, December 13, 2010.

* NEW *

• NASAKids: Time Zones
• NASA Connect: Ancient Observations

• Simple video: tilt of the Earth and Seasons.
• Old Video explaining Latitude, Longitude and Time Zones
• Helpful Sing-Along: "Longitude and Latitude are easy if..."
• Why do we have Time Zones?

• Latitude and Polaris, using a paper plate
• The height (attitude) of the noon Sun, using a paper plate

How does Foucault's Pendulum show earth's rotation?

• Earth's Rotation: Focault's Pendulum (Coreolis Effect) Explained and demonstrated
• Focault's Pendulum at the South Pole
• Why does the Earth Spin?
• NOAA Video showing tilt of the Earth and Temperatures
• Boring but helpful video about the tilt of the Earth, The length of the day Solstices, Equinoxes, the Topics of Capricorn and Cancer, the Arctic and Antarctic Circles and how this is all related to the Seasons
• Amazingly slow but interesting story of longitude and logszzzzzzzZZZZZZZ...

* * How the Earth Formed==> Heat from the Core drives Plate Tectonics ==> Volcanoes * *

Origin of the Universe / The Big Bang

Formation of the Solar System (Neil deGrasse Tyson) (includes How Earth Got its Moon)
Size and Structure of the Solar System

Why does the Sun shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)

Phases of the Moon, a kids funky version

Bill Nye the Science Guy: Moon Phases and Baseball
Phases of the Moon, from New to Full to New (No descriptions)

Eclipses

July 1969: Apollo 11 Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin Land on the Moon

To Infinity, and Beyond!

Links for your Astronomy projects

Basic Info on the Planets, comets, asteroids, the sun, Pluto, Moons, Galaxies and more from NASA.gov

Happy B-Earthday!
This is the year of the Solar System, and this month we look at the Birth of Worlds

Individual Project Links: (More links coming)

• NASA's Solar System Exploration site: Most projects can find everything here, including Jupiter's Moon Europa, Saturn's moon Titan,
• Astronomy vs. Astrology:
  - Basic Astrology, Constellations and The Plane of the Ecliptic
  - PseudoScience
• Asteroids and other things that might hit the Earth
  - NASA's NEO (Near Earth Object) Program
  - Apophis - Scary Video (Dark Side of the Moon - HD), with pop-up notes,
  - Another Scary Video
  - Comet Shoemaker-Levy
  - Impact Craters - Chicxulub (Yucatan Peninsula) - NASA analysis
  - Is this related to the Extinction of the Dinosaurs? - BBC Article - K-T Extinction
• Black Holes
• Polaris & How to Use It - Make a sextant! - Youtube: How to Find Polaris
• Constellations
• Kepler
• Hubble
• 2012: NASA Q&A, Sky & Telescope,
  - Neil deGrasse Tyson on 2012
  - debunking Dec 21, 2012
• NOVA: Pluto Files - Why Pluto isn't a Planet
• NASA's Exoplanets site: 490 and counting
• Project Mogul (July 7, 1947, Roswell, New Mexico)

Not so "Rare Earth" elements

Currently, there is great demand for certain minerals known as "Rare Earths". While the elements are not actually that rare, and most are actually metals, the majority of them that we use are currently mined in China.

Why are these important? without them, you would not have the current variety of mobile phones (including i-phones), flat-screen TV's and most of the electronic devices that we have come to rely on.

Similar to the Chocolate Chip Cookie Lab we worked on last week, the most efficient way of getting these minerals is through strip mining and dangerous factory work that leaves the soil, air and water polluted with acids, toxic metals and even radioactive waste (the radioactive element Thorium is often found with the iron ore that also holds the rare earth minerals.

According to a recent New York Times article, "The refineries and the iron ore processing mill pump their waste into an artificial lake here. The reservoir, four square miles and surrounded by an earthen embankment four stories high, holds a dark gray, slightly radioactive sludge laced with toxic chemical compounds.

The deadly lake is not far from the Yellow River watershed that supplies drinking water to much of northern China. The reservoir covers an area 100 times the size of the alumina factory waste pond that collapsed this month in Hungary, inundating villages there and killing at least nine people."

Minerals Study Guide Resources

websites that can help you prepare your minerals exam study guide:

• geology.com/minerals
  
  
• regentsprep.org

Bonus

Bonus: the first five students from each class to e-mail Mr. B with "coelophysis ate my homework" will receive a 5 point bonus on their 1st marking period grade.

This offer expires at 8pm EST on Tuesday, October 26.

The Mineral Detective

Your recent assignment asked that you research a mineral

This website helps you answer some basic questions:

- What are minerals?
- What are the physical characteristics of your assigned mineral?
- Where is your assigned mineral found as a natural resource?
- How is your assigned mineral used once it is mined from the earth?

Minerals in Afghanistan

New York Times, June 13, 2010
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe...

Bronx Zoo Erratics & Striations

Giant boulders (remember that “boulder” is a size) can be found throughout the Bronx and New York City. These boulders are called erratics.

Erratics do not look like the rock that you’d find if you dug down into the ground (this kind of rock is called “bedrock”). Some erratic are so big that they cannot easily be moved, even with a truck. In the past, you either had to work around them, or blow them up if you wanted to build a road or houses.

ð What are these boulders? Where did they come from?

Another mystery is the presence of long scratch marks or “grooves” in sections where bedrock is exposed. These are called striations. Striations are cut into the solid rock in the same direction in many areas in the New York City area and can also be found hundreds of mile North. All of them are parallel (they line up in the same direction).

ð What are these strange grooves? Why do they all point in the same direction?

One place where you can find many such erratics and striations is the Bronx Zoo.

At the Zoo, a look at the grizzly bear area reveals a particularly large area of exposed rock with striations cut into the rock and many erratics as well.

Just outside of the now-closed World of Darkness exhibit building is a large erratic called the Rocking Stone. The Rocking Stone was once balanced so finely that the force of one or two men could make it wobble. It rocked, but it didnt move.Fearing that one day someone was going to rock the Rocking Stone a bit too far, Zoo officials shored up its base in 1959

This thing went to space

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/10/homemade_spacecraft.html

Mineral Properties Quiz

How well do you know your mineral properties?

Take this quiz to find out

HAPPY SPRING!

The seasons officially change... we have equal hours of daylight and night as we see the arrival of the Equinox tonight.

TimeandDate.com has a helpful page about the equinox and why, at 11:09 p.m. in New York, we can accurately say that the first day of Summer in only three months away.

The 2010 Autumnal Equixo will also see a full moon.

Why Does the Autumnal Equinox Fall on Different Dates?

Tornadoes in NYC!

Video from NY1

The Science Of A Tornado

NY1's meteorologist explains how tornadoes form and why they're so destructive.

Images from The New York Times - images from CNN

More Information about Tornados: The Tornado Project

YouTube: How a Tornado Forms

Why Tides?

Earth's Oceans vs. Moon vs. Sun

The animation above shows the relationship between Earth's oceans and the gravitational effects of the Sun and the moon

Lab Help: Drawing an Ellipse

Elliptical Orbits

YouTube:
Regents Earth Science Ellipse

Totally Elliptical lab similar to the one we did in class

Lesson Plan:
Draw an Elliptical Orbit

Lab Help: Moon Phase Links

Helpful links for phases of the moon

Lunar phase calendar

Phases of the Moon Video on YouTube

The Moon and Tides explained

The Universe: The Phases of the Moon (shown in class)

Bill Nye the Science Guy: Moon Phases and Baseball

Where is the moon tonight with an animations of the Partial eclipse of the Moon that will occur on June 26, 2010 as well as a where you'll need to be to view the next Total Eclipse of the Sun visible in the United States on August 21, 2017

Clickable Lunar Map

Moon Mosaic

Lots more moon info