Earth Pizza

We use the side view of a pizza slice to model the earth. We are only seeing a very thin part of the crust of the earth.

The crust of the pizza is the bottom layer, which in this case is the asthenosphere. The sauce in under the cheese is the lithosphere. The cheese is more dense then the meat or vegetables, which makes it the oceanic crust.This is everywhere on the earth, and the meat or vegetables is the continental crust, only being on parts of the pizza or earth.

Plate Tectonics

 To demonstrate the plate tectonics we used frosting and graham crackers. The graham crackers represent the lithosphere
1. Transform Fault- Plates slide past one another with no creation or destruction of lithosphere. I put the two graham crackers right next to one another and slid them past one another, like shown below.

2. Divergent Boundary- Two plates diverge, or move apart and new crust or lithosphere is formed. I put the graham crackers in the frosting and then pulled them apart. This is shown below.

3. Convergent Boundary- Plates converge, or come together. If a plate of oceanic lithosphere collides with thicker and less dense continental lithosphere, the denser oceanic plate will dive beneath the continent in a subduction zone. You can not use the graham crackers for this demonstration because they are stiff. A great example of convergent boundaries is when you run and jump on a carpet and the carpet hist the wall and bunches up.

Project W.E.T.

Project W.E.T. is an initiative program that has water based lessons for teachers to use on their students. W.E.T. stands for Water Education for Teachers. This is a great way to get students learning in different ways through activities and hands on learning.

The website of Project W.E.T. is http://www.projectwet.org/


Professor Klett then asked us to divide up $100 into the different forms of water:
Oceans- $96
Lakes/Rivers/Streams-$0.75
Glaciers/Ice caps- $2
Groundwater- $1
Atmosphere-$0.25

I was pretty close with oceans, glaciers/ice caps. and groundwater, but I was way off with lakes. Lakes consists of $0.007.

Jacobsville Sandstone

If you walk around the city of Marquette and look at all the builds, most of them are built from sandstone. The exact sandstone is from Jacobsville, Michigan which is about two and a half hours from Marquette, in the Keweenaw Peninsula. I grew up 20 miles away from Jacobsville, and hearing this was very shocking and interesting.
The formation of this sandstone lies southeast of the Keweenaw Fault and south of Lake Superior. The stone was extracted by 32 quarries throughout the Upper Peninsula between 1870 and 1915. It is ideal for builds because of its strength, durability and aesthetic appeal.

Rock Identification Lab

Igneous Rock:
This rock I identified as igneous is mostly gray with red, green, and shiny silver spots. There are two different types of igneous rocks, intrusive and extrusive. Intrusive igneous rocks cool slowly because they crystallize below the Earths surface. This causes large crystals to form, like in the picture below.  .

Metamorphic Rock:
This rock had several thin layers parallel to itself which is why I identified it as a metamorphic rock. There are two types of metamorphic rocks, foliated and non-foliated. Foliated rocks have a layered appearance that is formed by exposure to heat and pressure.

Sedimentary Rock:
I noticed the fossil in this rock and concluded that it is a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rocks form at a temperature and pressure that do not destroy fossil remnants.

Rocks

 In class today we learned about rocks and the three different types, Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphic. Dr. Klett gave each of us a rice krispies treat, a butterfingers, and a piece of peanut brittle and asked us to classify each of these as a type of rock. The peanut brittle is melted together, which is an example of igneous rock. The butterfingers has several thin layers (foliated) inside of the chocolate, which is a great example of metamorphic rock. The rice krispies treat can represent a sedimentary rock because it is a bunch of bits and pieces glued together. This was a great representation of the different rocks in a fun and unique way.

Crystals and Crystal Growing Activity

We began learning about minerals and crystals in class this week, but for this blog we are focusing on the crystals. A crystal form is a set of crystal faces defined according to their relationship to the crystal axes. Crystal forms look like 3D objects, like cubes or pyramids.
In my group we grabbed 5 sponges, 3 pipe cleaners, and one piece of charcoal. We broke the charcoal down into smaller pieces to spread it out on our plate. We then poured 2 tablespoons of water, 2 table spoons of the bluing solution, and 2 tablespoons of salt on the objects on the plate. We didn't think it was enough solution for the size of our objects so we used the same amount of solutions over again, doubling the original recipe. We had two different types of salts, fine grained and larger grained. We separated them on to the different sections to see if the reaction would be different. There was no reaction to begin with but we put it on the windowsill to let sit for a few days.

 We checked our crystal formation on Thursday and our plate had a little bit of formation. The most formation appeared on the sponges. Other groups plates had a lot more, but they also added a lot more solution to theirs. We then added 10mL of water, 10mL of ammonia, 10mL of bluing, and 5 mL of salt to the plate and put it back on the windowsill.