Dead Zone

Suffocating waters

Coastal animals around the world are spending more time in or around waters with too little oxygen
 By Cecile LeBlanc

 March 29, 2012

 http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/03/suffocating-waters/
What is a death zone? What do they do and how are they caused? Since the human race existed air pollution just as much as water pollution has been happening. What is the longest you can hol your breath, probably from about 15seconds- likely less than 1 minute, and now imagine being stuck at the bottom of the sea, in the so called death zones and not being able to get out, more specifically swimm away from. Fish and crabs are just some of the examples of the trapped innocent sea inhabitants, the reson why these deaths zones are called death zones is due to the lack of oxygen.
"Since 1994, he and the World Resources Institute in Washington,D.C., have identified and mapped 479 dead zones around the world. That’s more than nine times as many as scientists knew about 50 years ago." - From Suffocating Water
The nutrients released into the water take too much oxygen from the fish is suggested, these would for example come from big rivers which come from smaller tributaries picking washing through farms and dirt, and all of this is originated due to rainfall.
"Phytoplankton are tiny one-celled plants and plant-like organisms such as algae. They float in the water. Individual phytoplankton are too small to see without a microscope. But they can grow by the millions to form “blooms” in the ocean that are visible from space."- From article Suffocating Water.
These are most likely to start death zones.Zooplanktons graze on the phytoplankton keeping the number down, however if too much of it is made the planktons won't be able to keep up.
 
"As phytoplankton die, they fall to the ocean floor. So does zooplankton poop. Bacteria — small, single-celled organisms — feed on both. To break down these wastes, the growing populations of bacteria will need oxygen ."
This means that since they need all the oxygen they take it away from the other sea animals.
Since the bacteria needs the oxygen, new oxygen will arrive as waves and ocean currents bring the new water, they will bring oxygen because waves also grab oxygen from the atmosphere. When this ocean mixing stops and no more oxygen is brought in, death zones will develop. When freshwater is dumped into salty sea water it is heated by teh sun and stays atop due to its light weight, when no storm or stong winds arrive to mix the water up it will stay divided into freshwater and salty water which will limit the oxygen level,Hypoxia is what scientists call the state of having low oxygen

Jellyfish and fast swimming fish are able to escape this torture however the snails and animals that have created a firm home will slowly die, still these dead zperiods last for only about a few weeks or months until the ocean mixing hapen again, one of the best known places for Hypoxia would be at the Gulf of Mexico.
Surprisingly not every death zones are caused by humans, they are caused by winds that push the water away from the shores and bring cold water to the shores where oxygen can drop to 0. It is predicted that natural death zones will continue, "One theory as to why: Climate change is producing warmer layers of upper water that trap colder water below. These layers reduce ocean water mixing."- From article Suffocating Water
Scientists are trying to find a way to reduce the amount of nutriens entering the waters. Since the 1980s people have been careful to decreasing the amout of nutries entering the bays. Diaz, one of the scientists says death zones don't have to be permanent, we just have to watch we are doing and how we could chage it. Since then 55 dead zones have started improving.

I choose to read this article because I wanted to read about something I had not yet read about. I found it very interesting because it is an issue all around the world, I learned that waves absorb oxygen just as much as the nutriens do. I would recommend anyone to read this because it is educative and has a lot of new information.

Earthquake Worksheet

1. Observe the three circles you have drawn. Where is the earthquake's epicenter?
The earthwquake's epicenter is in Kentucky because if you drawn circles around the hits, they all meet in Kentucky.
2. Which city on the map is closest to the earthquake epicenter? How far in kilometers is this city from the epicenter?
The closest city is Chicago which is located only 600km away
3. In which of the three cities listed in the data table would seismographs detect the eathquake first and last?
The seismographs would first detect the earthquake in Chicago due to the close distance, second Houston and finally they would detect it in Denver.
4. About how far from San Francisco is the epicenter you found? What would be the difference in arrival times of the P waves and S waves for a recording station in San Francisco?
The epicenter is about 3,200km away from Chicago meaning 4.40 minutes for the waves to arrive. P waves, in other words Primary waves, can travel through anything no matter if solid or liquid, however S waves, or Secondary waves can't. In San Francisco, the P waves would arrive much earlier than the S waves since they can just travel forward while S waves can only go through solids and not liquids.
5. What happenes in arrival times between P waves and S waves as the distance from the earthquake increases?
As the distance from the earthquake increases, the force gets lower because it is going further from its epicenter. P waves however will still have an advantage of distance, still they won't travel as fast because they don't have as much energy. Then finally when the S waves will meet the P waves surface waves will be formed.
6. Reviwe the procedure you follwed in this lab and then answer the following question. When you are trying to locate an epicenter, why is it necessary to know the distance from the epicenter for at least three recording stations?
Finding the epicenter without 3 points is very close to hard. If a stastions only has 1 hit of the earthquake, they will not know where exactly the epicenter was, it coudl eb anywhere in the circle. Having found recordings from 3 recording stations, one may see the path the earthquake is going and its vibrations, and then join all of the points together to find the exact epicenter. In other words, having found the distance from the epicenter for at least 3 recording stations, makes it more efficient, easier and less time consuming to find the epicenter of the Earthquake.

Waves

Last week in my science class we started to learn about waves, you might be thinking, why waves? what can you learn about water waves? But there are more than just water waves, in fact there are 3 wave types. The things we were most concentrated on where looking at how waves change by disturbance's frequency and amplitude, in other words the amount of time the droplet falls and the size of it.
The first type I looked at was:
Frequency: Minimum
Amplitude:Middle
Observation: The waves flow very smoothly and slowly, the peaks are not very spiky either, instead they are more round shaped.













2: Frequency: Minimal
Amplitude: Minimal
Observation: Since the water droplets have become even smaller, the waves have as well, now the water is barely disturbed. From the top view, not much is seen either:
You can barely see the place where the water droplet is falling, but you can see that it is not as flat as where no water is dropping.

3: Frequency: Middle
Amplitude:Middle
Observation: The waves have now grown because the frequency is more and the amplitude has made them become bigger. From the top view the waves are visible because of the dark color:\
Side view:                                                                          Top view:

4: Frequency: Highest
Amplitude: Highest
Observation: From the side view I can see that the waves move very fast and are pretty high, I'm guessing that the energy in the water is causing them to move aster. The top view shows that in fact there are a lot of waves one after an other.
Side View:                                                                  Top View:

5: Frequency: Medium-low
Amplitude: High
Observation: This time I used 2 drips, when I did this the waves became very large however from the top you could see there aren't as many because the frequency was low but the waves had very thick lines because of their size:
Side view:                                                                          Top View:


6: Frequency: Medium-low
Amplitude: Medium
Barriers: 1
Observation:When I looked from the top, I could see that once the droplet would hit the water, it would start the normal way, but once it hit the surface it would bounce back and one part of it would continue to go through the middle of the 2 surfaces.

Top View:

Here you can see that part of it is going through

Analysis: What patterns or relationships do you see in your data table/sketches/images?
When in class we would test if the water moved the cork or what effects it had, I saw that the water droplets would every time only move the cork when it was close to the disturbance, other wise the waves would just float under it. Also, as you can see in the last 2 pictures, when waves hit a surface they do not go through it unless it's floating, in fact they bounce back, we could also see this in class, when the waves hit the 4 surfaces of the box they would bounce back meaning they do not just suddenly stop. As we know, amplitude means the height of a wave or the size of the disturbance in this case, what I noticed was that if the amplitude was high, the waves would be pretty high as well except for when the frequency is very high as well, then there wouldn't be enough time for the waves to be as big. Lastly, I noticed that if the frequency of a wave is very low, the water is not as disturbed.

Conclusion: What do you conclude about the behavior of waves in the various situations you created today? Can you answer the guiding question: When water is dropped from a pipette into a pan of water, how does the wave behave? How do waves interact with each other and solid objects in their paths?
 Water can behave in different ways, some people even believe it has memory, however the basic part of a wave are: it's frequency, amplitude and wavelength:When water is disturbed, waves are formed, so when water droplets are dropped into the pan of water, waves start flowing as a circle reaching usually all 4 surfaces of the pan and sending waves back, not only do they come back, but they can pass through each other if the frequency is high. If waves reach a surface that doe not allow them to go through, such as the sides of a pan, they will return, however if they hit for example a surface that has a big whole in it like if you chop a piece of clay in half, and add it on both sides of the pan, dividing it in 2 except for in the middle, then the waves will pass through the middle but bounce back from the surface of the clay where they cant pass by. So after all, waves have many important properties which affect them, and are caused by disturbances, even the smallest little touch affects waves.

However before even looking at simulations, we worked with real water and real disturbance.
Guiding question: When water is dropped from a pipette into a pan of water, how does the wave behave? What properties does a mechanical wave have? How do waves intercat with each other and with solid objects in their paths?
Hypothesis: When you drop water into a pan of water, I think  that waves are going to form in a circular form, the size of the wave will probably depend on the size of the disturbance. This is what we got:

Observation without cork Observation with cork   Drops from Pipette
Drops water in center	Waves are released and they come back bouncing from all of the sides of the pan.	Because the cork is close to the disturbance the water has enough force to move the cork
Drops water in one corner	The waves now traveled horizontally and bounced back from one corner of the pan	The cork barely moved because the disturbance was far away
Drops water from one end	The waves travel through the pan however they don’t come back from all the way of the other side of the pan	The cork barely moved again
2 Drops in center	There are more waves and more forces so there are 2 sort of epicenters, the waves go out to every side and bounce back meeting in the middle and intersecting.	The force of the waves is strong due to the amount of disturbances, while the waves overlap each other, the cork is being moved pretty fast due to the strength.
2 Drops in corner
2 Sticks of clay in different position	Since there is a gap between the 2 pieces of clay, when the disturbance hits the water if flows out circular, some bounce back from the clay while the others glow through the middle and become larger once they pass through the middle.	Everything happened the same, the cork didn’t move because it was far away from the disturbance.

So after all, from this lab it showed how waves travel, how they bounce back, react to different solids and that if they don't have a lot of force they don't have enough force to move things on the water.