Earthquakes, Faults, and Waves...OH MY!

In science, we're finishing up studying about earthquakes, faults, waves, and such. So treasure had us each take a topic to research. We then had to write a page for our unit wiki. My topic was the Coalinga, California earthquake. Did you know that in a high school, fluorescent lights fell on students? And that the city of Coalinga celebrated its 100th birthday last year? Also, the aftershocks continued for 2 years! This unfortunate quake was devastating, but I think it was important to help rebuild and bring the city together to help all the buildings that were destroyed. It really pulled everyone together for a single cause. Here I learned that the earthquake measured 6.7! I also learned that 487 people were injured in this earthquake. I feel bad for anyone who was hurt in 1983 by this quake.

MY WEBSITE

Here's the link to my website for the Tic Tac Toe project!!!!! I worked really hard on it and I hope you like it! P.S. Make sure the sound on your computer is on, because I have music, too!

The Twirl World

Roller Coaster Rock (or not)

In science class, we're working on a project with physics. My group is building a roller coaster. We must have 5 (I believe) aspects of a roller coaster exhibited. We have to buy all our supplies with Omega $$. To earn this, well, there's many ways to earn it. Anyway, back to building. We have to use Newton's laws to construct our coaster, like real engineers. Do you know Newton's laws? They're 3 very interesting facts. They are-

1- An object in motion will remain in motion and an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

2- F=ma, or Force = Mass x Acceleration

3- Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

I found a site that can simulate building a roller coaster, just like what we're doing in class, but it's online. That's not very fair... online vs. the fun of building it yourself. But the site does include links to definitions to words-

Acceleration
Centripetal Force
Energy
Force
g's
Inertia
Momentum
Sir Isaac Newton
Velocity
Weightlessness
Weight
Work

This can help anyone confused. I read almost all the definitions! Also, here is an interactive guide to Newton's Laws. The games are fun, and they really help reinforce what has been learned in class. I learned all about Newton's Laws, and I think they're very important to life. If we didn't know about the laws, we wouldn't have many rides at amusement parks or many other things due to a lack of knowledge of physics.

A New Reason to Avoid Chocolate

This is an article probably not many of us have heard about, because it happened in England very recently. So we all know chocolate isn't the best thing for our health. However, this scare may spark mass paranoia over the course of about the next month or so. Cadbury, a candy company, recently recalled 1 MILLION chocolate bars. Why? Get this--salmonella. And the company didn't even bother to tell the public! Obviously, charges are being brought up against them. I think this company should altogether be shut down. They failed to tell the public after they realized the risk back in 2006! >:-O Bad company! They jeopardized(word study word) the public health, realized risks, and STILL sold the candy! I don't know about you, but it might be awhile before I eat foriegn chocolate again!

The Big Bang

This time, I read about the Big Bang and a question I never before stopped to ponder- How DID the Universe Survive the Big Bang? The site I got the story from said, and I quote,

"The birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago created equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Since matter and antimatter annihilate each other when they come in contact, that would have left nothing to coalesce into stars and galaxies. There must be some imbalance in the laws of physics that led to a slight preponderance of matter over antimatter, and that extra bit of matter formed everything in the visible universe."

So what does that mean to us? It means that how WAS the universe created if the matter and antimatter cancelled each other out, and left no matter for stars and planets to be made out of? The scientists that released this information recently came from institutions all around, just to figure out one more mystery about the giant vacuum we call the universe. The information I just told you about came from an experiment around 1999. More recently, however, was a new experiment to see if one door will just reveal more doors, or if we have finally found answers. The experiment is called MiniBooNE because it is a smaller, first stage of a larger experiment, and the BooNE is the Booster Neutrino Experiment. I'm not exactly what the experiment does, and I'm sure I'll never really understand, but I can tell that it will have a huge impact on the way we see the universe. This connects to what I am learning in science! Okay, so we haven't been talking about the universe. But we talked about the sun when we first were starting talking about energy, before we started waves. To most, this doesn't mean anything, yet it may change our entire map of the "universe" and make everything seem strange and unpredictable. Years before, people didn't pay attention to Global Warming, but now it is one of the most major alarms going off in the minds of everyone. The same thing could possibly happen to the universe! You never know!