Dynamic Earth

   In the last week, 6B has been studying about the Earth, but not only basic facts, they were digging into the history of everything. They got an assignment which was to read a site, answer some questions and reflect on everything they learned. Luckily, I was in that class so I will be explaining what we did and what I found out. I remember we had a substitute the day we got this assignment. She said it was due that day we started. The first time I looked at the site I was shocked, there were millions of pages and I she clearly said we had to read everything. By the end of class no one finished reading so she said we could get an extra day. Just for our luck, our original teacher came back the next day, and she stated that we didn't have to read the whole websites due that day. She allowed us to work on it in class, and finish a reflection or article about it due a specific Thursday. There were a lot of different sections to the web. And so I began.

My first topic I looked at was:

         Rocks and Mining
I found out that: every man and woman uses about 10,000 Kg of rocks every year for various reasons. I did know that houses take up a lot of concrete and rocks, but I didn't know that they take up 4000,000 Kg of gravel and concrete, but that also depends on the house. SO before I started studying this, I came up with some questions, and I answered few. For example, I asked myself where rocks come from, and I found out that they come from underground water, caves and they are found by digging and mining. And also including a bit of minerals in my next sentence, every rock is made for a different reason and contains a different material. Rocks also help scientist because they help them discover history with the minerals they posses. Some minerals that are found in rocks are: Orthoclase, Biotite, Quartz, Plagiollase and Gneiss. Some rocks can even tell us what has been on them or what happened. For example you may sometimes see rain drops, steps of animals, prints from a meteorite, lightning and so on. I think that every single piece of information is very useful but hard to remember. In this section, it mostly talked about different types of rocks and how we can distinguish them.

           Inner Earth

I have talked about this before, but now I will just include fact that are new to me. As we know, the Earth is made out of the inner core, outer core,inner mantle, outer mantle, and the crust.

The inner core, is dense molten iron and solid matter. The mantle, is lighter silicate liquid. And the crust is partial melting of the mantle.The crust is also only as thick as an apples skin. That is what amazed me the most.

       Plate Tectonics and Volcanoes

   How can we learn about Earth from clues of meteorites, rocks,diamonds, earthquakes etc.?
Meteorites help us understand about different materials and what is going on in space. Diamonds mostly give scientist clues from the upper mantle and remind others about high temperature forming. Scientist are mostly interested in studying the carbon atoms in diamonds. I made my diamond cycle including true facts of how diamonds came to be. Some of the things include answers to: How do diamonds come to Earth? Where do they form? So first of all, diamonds come out from volcanoes and they get carried by magma and rocks. Most people believe they get created in the upper mantle. If there is some magma or rocks coming out of the surface, once the diamonds are stuck in that, it takes them only 14-15 hours to get from the mantle to the Earth's surface.
  I also took some notes about earthquakes, and if you compare them with what I got the previous week, you can see that I learned tons of facts. Earthquakes are like sound waves and they travel in different speeds. Mostly they are formed in the mantle and seismic waves slow down in hot rocks and speed up in cold rocks. Even though earthquakes can be very violent, they give us a clear idea of what Earth's layer are. There are two main waves that travel. Those are the P-waves, and the S-waves. P-waves travel through liquids and solids but S-waves only travel through solids. After a lot of studying, scientist conclude that for know we know, that when plates collide they form and earthquake or a small mountain. There is also such thing as an under water earthquake which is pretty much like a normal earthquake except it is formed under water and it causes water to rise up.
     One of the sections to read was bout Volcanoes. I didn't gather as much information from that but I got just enough to not make you bored.Volcanoes are formed by the same heat that drives Earth's plates. Volcanoes aren't always as violent as others, and that all depends on the plate tectonic it is found on. A volcano is formed of a lot of sections. For example: pyroclastic flow, old tephra, summit crater, new tephra, flank vents, young lava flows and the cantral conduit.

         Gems and Minerals

   When I first started reading this section of the web, I was a bit confused because I didn't understand everything, but now I know pretty much everything I will tell you and I hope you will understand as well. First of all, I found out that only about 15 different minerals are commonly used gemstones. As you will read from under, gems can be in different colors. Most diamonds are made of carbon and are mostly yellow or brown, the other colors are only found in every 100,000 diamonds.

     Then, there is a Oppenheimer diamond:

      A Red diamond:                                            

 A Blue Heart Diamond:

                                                          

A Victoria-Transvaal Diamond:                Second hardest mineral: corundum: aluminum oxide  

 A rubies diamond:                           

                    

Sapphires diamond:                         

Emeralds:             (mostly green)                                  

Aquamarines diamonds: (mostly blue)

  Opal Diamonds:                                                                          

Moonstones Diamonds: 

Cat's eye Diamonds:   

There are also specific stones assigned to the month you were born in for example:
Jan.: Garnet
Feb.: Amethyst
March: Aquamarine
Apr.: Diamond
May: Emerald
June: Alexandrite
July: Ruby
August: Peridat
Sep.: Sapphire
Oct.: Opal
Nov.: Topaz
Dec.: Turquoise


So after all, I have had a great time reading this web even though it was very tiring and hard to work through. I learned a lot of great detail and now I know some extra information for my whole life. If you are interested in reading and watching videos about what I talked about, You can visit:
http://www.mnh.si.edu/earth/main_frames.html