Wave Lab

Guiding question/ hypothesis
When watter is droped from a piplette into a bucket of water how does the water behave?
It will create a disturbance called wave. That will go in circles around the place were the water was droped.
How do waves interact with each other and with objects in their path?
I think that they stop each other .

Observation:

I observed that the drops make a few circular waves that feel the whole bucke. I also saw that the waves bounce off of solid objects  in their way. Even if some parts of the waves will go "around it". But each "barrier" or solid in the wave's way made it slow down, it is why at one point it did come to an end.

Conclusion

I had some parts of my hypothesis right, it did create waves, but I was wrong, the solid objects didn't destroy the wave but just made it bounce of and/or go around.

Wave lab

Guiding Question: How does the thickness of string affect the sound that goes through it?”

 Hypothesis: I think it will travel better through thicker strings

Variables:  I will keep the 2 plastic glass and the same length for each strings, but I will change and try different thicknesses of strings. And my response should be different forces of sound waves..

Materials: 2 plastic glass, one knife, Small sowing string, medium size string, thick string

Procedure:

1)    With a knife make on small holes at the bottom of both glasses

2)    Pass one of the type of string threw each hole and make a knot at each of it’s extremities.

3)    Test the “telephone” by talking threw it from one end and listening threw the other .

4)    Record the amount of sound it produced.

5)    Repeat the procedure with each different string materials you have

6)    Compare your data

Record and Analyze:

Thin sowing string: When we talked threw the “phone” we only received a weak amount of sound. We could hear each other but had problems understanding each other.

Medium string:  I heard a tiny bit better then with the thin string, but it didn’t make a very big difference.

Large string: The sound was a bit better then the thiner strings we could understand each other almost every time. Even if it didn’t make a huge difference with the medium size string.

Data Table

	Amount of sound
Thin sowing string	weak
Medium-large string	medium weak
large string	high weak.

    D.  Analysis of Data:   Do you see any patterns?  Do you believe that your data shows accuracy and precision?

I think that my data shows that the volume increases just a little bit with thicker strings. I think that my data could have been a bit better if I had an appropriate instrument to measure decibels, sadly I didn’t. It would have given me precise numbers to compare my data with.

VI.         Concept Acquisition (CONCLUSION):  State the guiding question.  Present the relevant experimental results.  Discuss the relationship between variables.  What can you conclude regarding the guiding question?  Was your prediction correct?  If yes, explain.  If no, explain what you understand now about this investigation and how it taught you something new.

My guiding question was ‘ How does the thickness of string affect the sound that goes through it? My hypothesis was that it will travel better through thicker strings, and I was correct but I thought that the thickness would have affected sound much more. There , the difference of volume was very small.

VII.       Concept Application (FURTHER INQUIRY):    Examine the validity of your data and infer what you think the major causes of error may have been.  Propose methods of improvement.  For example, what modifications did you need to make or would make next time? Whatever happens in a test, think about all the reasons for your results.  Sometimes this thinking leads to a new hypothesis.  Write down these new hypotheses (predictions) or inquiries (questions) you may have here in this section.

My only mistake was that I should have been more precise with the data by using an instrument to measure data. But I could have made more interesting by using more types of strings as : wet strings, cold strings, warm strings, extremely thick strings, elastics and even maybe different types of cups! As I would think that wet strings would work better and that cups wouldn’t make a difference.

 

Helene Le Roux,

02/ 06 / 2012 ,

Mrs. Medenca ,

Science,

7 B

Tsunami

Each year earth earth is subject to a deadly natural diaster called tsunami, wich sadly kills thousands of people each year. By the end of this essay you will be able to answer questions as; What are tsunamis? Where do they form? What are their effects? And how to limit their hight death rates?

A tsunami is often defined as a large, often destructive, sea wave produced by a submarine earthquake, subsidence, or volcanic eruption. It occurs when under the sea, a plate tectonic slips under another plate tectonic, it creates a terrestrial disturbance called earthquake (but earthquakes can also be created by volcanic eruptions) .The earthquake will create one big wave, called tsunami, that will slowly go toward the beach. As they get closer to the beach, the tsunami will slow down, and get bigger because of all the smalls and fast waves that will have accumulated to the tsunami. The earthquakes can also be created by volcanic eruptions.

Knowing that tsunamis are created by earthquakes, it is obvious that they will mostly occur next to the ring of fire. The ring of fire is an extensive zone of volcanic and seismic activity that coincides roughly with the borders of the Pacific Ocean, and is a zone were about 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes occur. Tsunamis is one of the deadliest natural disaster. To give an example, in 2004 on the island of Sumatra a Tsunami killed about 320　000 people not counting the injuries, which was declare as the deadliest Tsunami of the year. It creates Big floodings everywhere in the area and many people die drowning. One other reason of the high death rate cause by the tsunamies is the debris that it accumulates, wich help the wave to break every thing on its way. Those debris are often large and small every day objects such as: tables, chairs, cars, trees, parts of houses, vases and corpse of all sorts, that slowly got picked up by the wave. It is so deadly, that even after the disaster happened it takes a lot of days for the water to leave. Meanwhile the water has become contaminated which creates new victims.

Sadly, Stunamis can’t be prevented and are beyond human control. But hopefully scientist created many ways of limiting it’s devastating effects. Mainly, the T.W.S (tsunami warning system), it "has the functions of monitoring seismological and tidal stations throughout the Pacific Basin to evaluate potentially tsunamigenic earthquakes and disseminating tsunami warning information". As the P.T.W.C (Pacifique Warning System Convention) is placed in Hawaii, it has the function of sending all of their information to other countries that have risks of having tsunamis. An other way to reduce the tsunamis and earthquakes, big death rate in a country, is for them to build building specially conceive to resist the those disaster’s huge power.

Also, most schools are instructed to teach their students of the steps to do in case a tsunami occurs. They also recommend adults to follow the advice of local emergency and law enforcement authorities. But one of the most simple and obvious way to know if an earthquake or tsunami is coming, is to look at the behavior of the animals surrounding them. It is known that animal are much more sensitive then humans are. If there is a sudden change in their behavior, there is a high probability that something is wrong. Even though, whith all those techniques of prevention, they are not as precise as we would like them to be and can never totally prevent the inevitable. There will always be some lives of animals and human, taken away. Because even if there is an evacuation not everybody can afford or are willing to leave. And even in the survivors, many people without insurance would have been victims, as they have lost their house and all of their goods.

In conclusion it has been seen that tsunamis are very deadly as they kill thousands of people each year. Also, they have a deep connection with earthquakes and both of those natural disasters are being studied a lot as people try to prevent their devastating effects. As while, for now, we only succeded to protect a few percentage of the population. The instruments and methods used to intercept a tsunami before it occurs are not very precise, as animals’ sixth sense was almost always right, would there be a way of using it in the future, to limit tsunamis high death rates?

　

Bibliography

(n.d.). Retrieved june 2, 2012, from http://dictionary.reference.com/

(n.d.). Retrieved june 2, 2012, from iris: http://www.iris.edu/hq/files/programs/education_and_outreach/aotm/interactive/PNW_vs_Japan.swf

Dictionary.com. (n.d.). Retrieved june 2, 2012, from Dictionary: http://dictionary.reference.com/

Effects of Tsunamis. (n.d.). Retrieved june 2, 2012, from Universe Today: http://www.universetoday.com/39319/effects-of-tsunamis/

Ring of Fire. (n.d.). Retrieved june 2, 2012, from Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ring%20of%20fire

Tsunami Animation. (n.d.). Retrieved june 2, 2012, from Tsunami Safe: http://www.pep.bc.ca/tsunamis/causes_2.htm

Space exploration: Worth it or not?

Space exploration, it is a very interesting study but is it worth spending billions while we could feed families and save people everyday? Is it worth exploring the universe while we still cant take good care of our planet? Should we continue risking life of astronauts every day? Those are questions that take part od debates on if we should continue Space exploration or not.

Space exploration is an incredible study that leads us to answering questions about our creation, what's around us, and why are we what we are. It makes us discover other planets, galaxy, elements. It also leads to a huge developpement into human society take as an example the satelites, the phone...ext.  Many of the materials specially made for space exploration is now being incoorporated into daily human life for example robotic arms, microships, fuel cells for new renewable ressources..ext. And finally it could help us find other living creatures and/or a livable planet where, in the future, some humans could settle.
But space exploration is also very costly and dangerous. Wikipedia clearly states that about 24,459 million dolars are spent on General Science, Space and Technology each year! Also, space exploration is not a very safe study there were some big accidents and there will probably be others, those accident kill people and are very costly. Finally, we have many other problems on earth as hunger, poverty, polution and we should focuss on first solving the problems on our planet and learning how to take care of it before looking for other livable planets.
My personal opinion is that we should continue sending humans into space until we creat robots that could live feel and see things the way we do. Because even if there were some accidents, those accidents only killed few people in real short amount of time (so that they didn't suffer), while hundred of people die of car accidents everyday. But we should also continue and invest even more in earth based research, with does researchs we can see much farther then our galaxy and are able to discover planets or space elements that are more than billion of lightyears away from us. I think that we should also work on triying to creat more advanced robots and technology wich would help us investigate the universe from earth and in space, for example creat space stations, better telescopes, more advanced robots that are able to stay long into space shuttles... ext

If I was a member of the congress I would vote for 45 million dolars for General Science, Space and Technology. I think that the first most important area would be medicare, because making health inssurance and helping citizens with there health issues is needed to keep a population from decreasing. Then I would vote for social security because the protection and care of the population is one of our priority, we wouldn't want murders and accidents all around the country. Third I would shoes health,  because keeping the people healthy is keeping a country healthy and keeping it working. Fourth I would shoes Education, training and developement programs, because having  smart, educated, developed citizen leads to a smart, educated, developed community. Finally I would vote for natural ressources because earth is running out of them and that we need them for the continuation of our developement and our survival.

In conclusion I think that we should continue and even encourage the developement of space exploration because it is a development to our community and might one day be the saver of the human race.

The Movie

Even dough the Russians were the first ones to go to space,The Americans were the first one on the moon (1969-1972, Apollo 11). The crew was composed of Collins, Aldrin and Armstrong even if Neil Amstrong became even more famous by being the first man to walk on the Moon. But Apollo 11 wasn't the only ship to go to the moon in total 9 ships made it to the moon but only 7 land. 6 Apollo missions and 12 , they all spent 228 hours in total.

It took a lot to astronomers to be able to go on the moon and come back first they had to have a very intencive training but once on the moon they had to be carfull of the lack of oxygen and/or any bad weather.

But all of this wouldn't have happened without some special event in our world's History. First, Sputnik 1 being launched into the orbit by the Russians in 1958 (first satellite in space). Then in 1958 US created NASA. In 1961 Uri Gagarin went into orbiting space, and then the competition between Russia and US began (first Russia). Later on, Alan Shepherd went in 1961 (first American in space).
A funny fact: At the beiginning Astronomers believed that the moon was made of green cheese!!!

In conclusion we should all be thankfull to the Astronauts who wanted to risk their lives to go on the moon.

A "moonth" of a phase

What causes the phases of the moon?
While doing this experiment, the styrofoam ball represented the earth, the flashlight the sun and the mini styrofoam sphere,the moon. During the experiment we discovered that when the sun is behind the moon it would be a new moon for us, we wouldn't see the moon. When the moon is on the sides of the earth, compared to the sun, we would only see half of the moon, it would be a half moon and finally when the moon is one the opposite side of the earth, compared to the sun, we would see a full moon. You might ask yourself... Was the darkness of a new moon caused by an eclipse? Well the answer is NO, the eclipses and the new moons are totaly different things because, eclipses are when the light of the sun is blocked by the earth so the moon can't receive any of the sun's light. While the new moon is when the sun is behind the moon so people on earth can only see the shadowy part of the moon.
I think that making a model make us see and understand better the phases of the moon. I think that models help us to understand better, especially visual persons, because we can see it ourself with our own eyes. While when somebody only explains it to you you can have problems imagining the correct thing, soo you don't understand. The only negative thing with models is that they can take time and it can take for more that one person to build it. I think that another way to understand better the moon would be using online models, images, or even videos, those take less space and time.

Here are the pictures we took:

Reason for the seasons

Today in science we made a very interesting experiment.The problem was "How does the tilt of the earth'axis affect the light received by earth as it revolves around the sun?". For this experiment we used a phoneboard sphere on a stick with a toothpick on the sphere and a small lamptorch pointing on the phoneboard, we finally used a small gided transparent sheet of plastic. The phoneboard stick was putten into a 23 degree angle and was suppose to represent the earth, the toothpick represented buildings, trees, mountains or other things on earth and the flashlight represented the Sun, the sheet was only used for us to see the amount of sdirect and undirect sunlight on earth. Throughout the experiment we made the sphere rotate, the rotation represented the rotation of the earth, or one earth year. When the shere was closer to the sun it meant that it was summer and when it was the farthest from the sun it meant that it was winter. During this experiment we learned many things as, the shadow in the summer is bigger because there is more direct light on objects.We also saw that the squares ( made by the grided transparent sheet) are the most normal on the equator wich means that there is the most direct sun light. We also discovered why the poles only get few hours of day each day while the countries on the eqautor only have few hours of night each day and that's because the poles get no direct sunlight , while the equator gets almost only direct sunlight.I also learned that...In the summer the grid squares are keeping there shape squared on the equator and therefor the equator never has winter, most of the heat is directed foward.In summer the Grids squares are spread out on the poles, they are rectangular/irregular shaped, there for they only have winter all year long/only a light heat is directed on them.As the earth rotates, because it s tilted, when there is light on the south pole therefor north pole has less sun light and when there is a lot of. Light on the north poles there is much less light on the south pole. When it is summer there is more light on the north poleand when it is winter there is more light the south pole.
By making this expereriment and looking at all of the information we got from it, we concluded that if there was no tilt there would only be autumn and spring,there wouldn't be any extreme as summer and winter.