Gio's reflection post

- As a blogger, I have improved a lot throughout these two years of blogging
- I think blogging helps students listen more in class, since they would have to write a scribe post about the class. Also, students can check the blog to understand what was done during class if they were absent.
- I think a blog for science could be also used to share interesting extra facts about what we're studying.
- Blogging has helped my overall writing because I am more careful about spelling and sentence structure.
- Blogging has helped me understand more how to grade others in their writing by making me more critical, but also always see a positive side about their writing.
- The most important thing I have learned by blogging is organize better my ideas and explain more clearly subjects I have to talk about.

Pluto

• Remember that all the data is approximated, because no spacecraft has been able to reach this dwarf planet yet.
  


• °° - interesting fact

PLUTO

Name:

• Pluto's name comes from the god of the underworld, because the dwarf planet always appeared very dark.
  


• The name was proposed by an eleven year-old girl, Venetia Burney.

Statistics:

• Mass: (metric) 13,090,000,000,000,000,000,000
  


• Diameter: 2,284 km
  


• Density: 2.05 g/cm^3
  


• Revolution: 247.7 years
  


• Rotation: 6.3872 (retrograde)
  


• Distance from Sun: 5,913,520,000 km
  

• ** retrograde: backward movement of celestial bodies in an orbit.
  

Climate:

• Extremely low temperature; about 44° K and -229° C



• Pluto's atmosphere usually measures -180° C

• Pluto goes through a seasonal cycle. Astronomers began to think so when they compared two pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, one in 1994 and the other in 2002-3 . The pictures who an evident change on the surface of this dwarf planet. Pluto goes through a seasonal cycle every 247.7 years, which is its revolution period.
  

Land/Atmosphere:

• Pluto is mostly made out of water ice, while its core is made out of iron and rock.
  


• Pluto's atmosphere is 90% Nitrogen (N) and 10% other complex molecules.
  


• °° Pluto's atmosphere is odd, because whenever Pluto (throughout its orbit) gets far from the Sun, the atmosphere actually freezes and falls on the planet (as solid ice). When, though, Pluto gets closer to the Sun in its orbit, the atmosphere turns into Nitrogen and other molecules again. This doesn't happen on any other planet.

Discovery:

• In 1909, Percival Lowell believed that a ninth planet in the Solar System existed. He build a whole observatory (Lowell Observatory) just to find what he temporarily called 'Planet X'. In 1915, Lowell captured a few pictures that actually caught Planet X, but he didn't notice. He died the year after, without having reached his goal.



• Fifteen years after Lowell's death, a 26 year-old, Clyde Tombaugh, was hired at the Lowell Observatory to find out if a ninth planet existed in the Solar System or if it was all Lowell's imagination.
  


• Tombaugh found the pictures taken of Planet X, published them and also understood that Lowell hadn't seen Planet X because he didn't think that it was going to be as small as it was.
  


• Once the planet was discovered, Clyde Tombaugh was sent many e-mails proposing names for the ninth planet. He accepted Pluto.
  

Moons:

• Charon, Nix and Hydra.
  


• Charon is the biggest moon of Pluto, it is very close to it and very similar. It was discovered in 1978 by James Christy. What is interesting about this moon and Pluto is that these two are so close that they share an atmosphere, they both orbit around each other and they are considered to be a double planet.
  


• A double planet is a planet that was brutally hit by an object and split into two celestial bodies. Astronomers belive that Pluto was hit by an object and so Charon was created.
  


• Charon was named after the man that brings souls in a boat underground to the river of dead people's souls.



• Nix and Hydra were discovered in 2005. It was hard for astronomers to spot them because of their very small size. Before, when they weren't sure these two moons existed, astronomers named them S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2.

Spacecrafts:

• New Horizons was launched in 2006 and programmed to arrive to Pluto in July 2015. Its mission is to capture close.up images of Pluto and its moons, but especially exploring the Kuiper Belt.
  

Location:

• 5.9 billion km far from the Sun



• 39.48 AU far from the Sun
  


• Located in the Kuiper Belt

Planet to dwarf planet:

• This is a video that explains what a planet and a dwarf planet are. Only watch from the points 2.40 to 3.50.
  


• In order for a celestial body to be a planet, it has to have a cleared neighborhood, has to orbit around a star, and have enough gravity to pull itself to a nearly round shape.



• Instead, a dwarf planet does not have a cleared neighborhood, orbits around a star, has enough gravity to pull itself to a nearlt round shape, and finally is not a moon.



• What made astronomers wonder about Pluto being a planet was the discovery of another celestial body behind Pluto, Eris, 25% bigger than Pluto and made of the same matter. This made astronomers wonder weather there were ten planets in the Solar System or these two planets were actually part of the Kuiper Belt. Since neither of them didn't have a cleared neighborhood, they are not considered planets anymore.
  

Other facts:

• Throughout its orbit, Pluto gets closer to the Sun.



• When an object orbiting around Pluto aligns with the Sun, it blocks light to Pluto. This is an eclipse-like event happening on Pluto.
  


• Even though Pluto is made out of ice and rock, it is reddish-brown.
  


• Pluto might have been a moon of Neptune.

Gio's Reflection Post

I feel that I have improved as a scribe this quarter by explaining in more detail what was going on during class and including more science into the posts. Also, I think that I can organize better the scribe post in general and add more particular information to it. What I should improve in, is including more extra videos or links to interesting and relating websites. I should also include more definitions to scientific vocabulary, because people outside of the class might not understand it otherwise. I like the fact that we, as a class, use a blog. I think that it's very useful to continue it, because when anyone is absent it's possible to see whatever has been done during class, so it's easier to catch up with the rest of the class. Also, people from the outside can understand, too, what we're currently studying. Finally, there is nothing I actually dislike about this project.

Thursday 17th, 2011 - Science Class

Hello 8th graders,

Thursday in science class we learned many things;
Ms. D. started off by updating us about the news in Japan; and to know more about it, click here.
Next, Ms. D. showed us an example of a well-done APOD. To write and do well an APOD, we should concentrate more on the subjects hyperlinked, not on the actual picture we choose. Here you can find the Moodle page in which the APOD example is saved.
And this is the website of the Astronomy Picture Of the Day.

Then, we received an article (which is in Moodle) about the satellite MESSENGER, that has finally made it to Mercury.
The satellite was launched in 2007, but because of the speed of Mercury, it took very long for it to actually reach the planet.
At a first glance, Mercury seems very close to Earth and very easy to reach, but it actually travels at an average speed of 106,000 mph (miles per hour), and is very close to the Sun. Also, a curious fact about Mercury is that one side of the planet is extremely hot and the other side is extremely cold. So, the satellite had to have features that could stand both temperatures to get close to it. Scientists from NASA, in order to make MESSENGER reach Mercury, had to speed the satellite up to 65,000 mph and make sure that it could stand extreme temperatures. You can find a video about future movement of the MESSENGER to study Mercury here.

Later on, we looked at some pictures about world time zones and latitude and longitude.

World time zones:

In this picture you can see all the world time zones. They are labelled in different colors, and chosen by the actual country. Every color corresponds to a number listed underneath the world map with the same color. Some countries have time zones labelled as -3 1/2, or +9 1/2, just because the country chose so.


And latitude and longitude:

This picture, then, shows the latitude and the longitude of Earth. The latitude goes from North to South, while the longitude goes from West to East.








After looking at these pictures, we corrected our homework.
The homework was to label summer solstice*, winter solstice*, autumnal equinox* and vernal equinox* in the map we drew in class and to answer these questions:

1) How many different divisions of NASA are there and where are they located?

2) What does ESA stand for, where is it located and what countries are involved in it?

Here are the answers.

1)

- NASA Headquarters: Washington D.C.

- Marshall- Huntsville, AL

- Ames- Moffett Field, CA

- Goddard- Greenbelt, MD

- Johnson- Houston, TX

- Kennedy, FL

- JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab)- Pasaden, CA

- Langley- Hampton, VA

- Glenn- Cleveland, OH

- White Sands, Cruces, NM

- Stennis- MS

- Dryden- Edwards, CA

- Wallops- VA

- IV & V Facility- Fairmont, WV

- Plum Brook- Sandusky, OH

2) ESA - European Space Agency

Headquarters in Paris; Austronauts Centers - Cologne, Germany; Astronomy Center - Madrid, Spain; Space Operations - Germany; Center for Earth Observations - Rome, Italy; Space Research and Tech Center - Netherlands.

The countries involved are: Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Italy, Ireland, Israel, Luxemburg, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, England, Sweden, Switzerland.

Finally, on Moodle, is posted all of the homework for this week and next week.

Some useful links would be:

ESA, NASA, and APOD.

The next scribe is Iva.

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*Summer Solstice: occurs when the axial tilt of Earth is most inclined towards the sun, on June 22nd/23rd. (Longer day, shorter night)

*Winter Solstice: occurs when the axial tilt is farthest away from the sun, on December 27th. (Longer night, shorter day)

*Autumnal Equinox: occurs when the axial tilt is neither towards the sun nor far from it. Happens on September 23rd. (Equal night and day, 12h each)

*Vernal Equinox: occurs when the axial tilt is neither towards the sun nor far from it. It happens on March 21st. (Equal night and day, 12h each)

Gio's Reflection Post

Hello,

This is my reflection post. First of all, down here is the list of the positive and negative sides:

Negative sides:

• I should check if my links work or if password/username are needed to access the website.


• I should explain my pictures more specifically.


• I should include more pictures.


• I should have explained what happened throughout the reading we did in class.


• I should have italicized the textbook's name.


• I should have included the Quiz's date.


• I should have included the homework due for next class at the end of the post.


• I should have included some extra link to YouTube videos or interesting websites that could have helped to understand the post.

Positive sides:

• Good spelling.


• Good pictures.


• I linked the Moodle site.


• I gave the definitions of the scientific vocabulary needed.


• I labelled the post correctly.

I will improve the 3rd quarter's scribe post by being more specific in everything I write, by including extra links that I found about the subject of the Scribe post. Then I will watch the colors of the font because some are not so legible. I will include more pictures and explain them if they need an explanation. About Blogger and the blog, I have to say I like the blog idea. First of all it's useful to understand and know what was done in science class if a student was absent. Also, it's good because an absent person could click on links included in the post and understand (at least a bit) the lesson. Also, the blog is good because we get to actually, when commenting on other's posts, understand the good and bad aspects of one's post. One thing I have to say, though, is that in some aspects Blogger has some defects. For example, is hard to position a picture in the middle or aside the text, once it is downloaded. Also, it would be good to have spell check in the option bar, wehn writing a post. Also, I've lately been having some problems commenting, because when I try to publish the comment, for some reason Blogger doesn't publish it, and automatically refreshes the page instead, so I'd have to rewrite the comment all over again. But overall, it is good to keep the blog in 8th grade.

Gio.

Class of Thursday 18, 2010

Hello everyone,
Here is the link to Moodle, to check homework:
http://zagreb.ceesa.net/course/view.php?id=189

Thursday in our science block we reviewed first of all the Periodic Table of Elements. We learned some symbols for some of the elements on the table because it would have shown up on our Quiz. After that we watched a few videos from Brainpop, (http://www.brainpop.com/) about cellular life, linked here:

1. http://www.brainpop.com/science/cellularlifeandgenetics/cellstructures/preview.weml
2. http://www.brainpop.com/science/cellularlifeandgenetics/activetransport/
3. http://www.brainpop.com/science/matterandchemistry/diffusion/
4. http://www.brainpop.com/science/cellularlifeandgenetics/photosynthesis/
5. http://www.brainpop.com/science/cellularlifeandgenetics/plantgrowth/

After watching the videos, we reviewed pages 32- 37 in our book Science Explorer. Throughout the reading we reviewed the definitions of the following words:

• Diffusion: main method by which small molecules move across the cell membrane.
• Osmosis: diffusion of water molecules through a selectively permeable membrane.
• Selectively permeable: some substances are able to pass through the membrane while others are not.
• Passive transport: the movement of dissolved materials though a cell membrane without using NRG.
• Active transport: the movement of materials though a cell membrane using cellular NRG.
• Exocytosis: movement of proteins leaving the cell across cell membrane.
• Endocytosis: movement of proteins coming into cell across cell membrane.

An example of diffusion.

Also, here is the link to the YouTube video about diffusion and osmosis we had to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3wG337xmQc&feature=related

One more thing we reviewed for the Quiz is the Mrs Gren method:

Movement
Respiration
Sensitivity
-
Growth
Reproduction
Excretion
Nutrition

This was it for Thursday's class.
The next scribe is Fabi.

Gio