Sunday, June 3, 2012

Tsunami's

                                                                    Tsunamis

   This is an informative essay about Hurricanes. You will learn why and how it occurs. Where they most often occur. What its effect are. How scientists can predict of keep us safe from them. What warning systems are used and what are the benefits and limitations are. And if there are other issues that cause problems as well. Such as if the country cannot afford good and safe warning systems, etc.  

    Hurricanes are large topical storms with heavy winds. The winds that they create are so powerful they can go faster than a cheetah (the worlds fastest animals) at 119 kilometers per hour (74 miles per hour). After a hurricane there is almost always damage, they destroy building and can sometimes even rip a tree from its roots. They form over warm ocean waters. The water has to be above 26 Celsius (79 Fahrenheit) to form. They can get very strong that the hurricanes can hit land, but they always form over the ocean. Storm surges happen when a hurricane hits land. What happens when it does is it pushed a lot of water onto the land. The water that is pushed onto the land is called a storm surge. Floods are caused by storm surges and topical rain falling. We cannot predict a hurricane before it is formed, but since if forms on the ocean we know about it. So once it is formed they predict where it will go and how strong it will be. Once they know where it will go and how strong it is people can then make decisions. Based on how strong it is and how close it is to where they live.That is what helps them prepare. A hurricane is divided into parts. There is an eye which is in the center of the storm. The winds in this part are usually fairly lights. The skies are a little bit cloudy and sometimes they can be completely clear. The second part is the eye wall, it is where the winds are the strongest and the rain fall is the heaviest. The last part of a hurricane is the rain bands. I think they are the most dangerous. They are bands of clouds and rain. They go out far from the eye wall and they stretch long distances. They contain thunderstorms and sometimes tornadoes.

   A long time ago people used to think Hurricanes formed because "the gods" were angry at them. Well now we have a scientific reason for why they form, and no, they do not have anything to do with any gods. They always form in tropical regions, you'll never find one out in the desert. The reason they only form in tropical climate is because they are the only regions where they have all the things needed to form. Hurricanes need  high humidity with moist air, light winds, warm water, and hot surface temperatures. They usually develop in the Summer and in the earl Fall. The Atlantic hurricanes usually form on the coast of Africa however in the northern hemisphere the hurricane season is from June through November. Before a hurricane occurs there a signs, the first is that a lot of thunderstorm over any tropical ocean will appear. Then the re occurrence of thunderstorms will break away and becomes more organized. The time is very different it can be from a few hours to a few days for a thunderstorm to become a hurricane. There are three things that have to happen before it can becomes a hurricane. There must be a constant evaporation and condensation cycle and wind patters that are set apart by uniting winds and there had to be a difference in the air pressure between the surface at sea level and high altitude.
   Typhoons and Hurricanes can only develop on top of a large basin of warm water which are usually ocean or seas. You don't get them on rivers or lakes. The reason they don't form over lakes and rivers and they do over oceans is because to form they need to have a large amount of energy, which the ocean supplies. The ocean also supplies heat and that allows the water to evaporate. Also they can occur quit a few degrees away from the equator because of the Coriolis effect is too weak at the actual equtor to cause a spin for the hurricane. 

   They can also cause disasters such a tidal flooding and storm surges. These two are the most damaging and prominent effects of a hurricane. I have already said that a storm sure is the rising wall of water that comes ashore with a land falling hurricane. However it is also responsible for ninety percent of all the deaths that are caused by hurricanes. High winds are however one of the most important effects of a hurricane because they determine how powerful the storm is and how much damage it will cause. Hurricane winds can reach about 200 miles per hour. Tornadoes are also an effect of hurricanes but are probably the least though of one and they do occur the least, but they still do occur. They occur when an incredibly large amounts of energy are created and then the hurricane makes a landfall. Most of the tornadoes that happen in hurricanes are not that strong. Then lastly there is heavy rain and flooding. After a hurricane makes landfall and when their winds then decrease, huge amounts of rainfall become a major factor and they can cause significant flooding.

   Even though tropical cyclones can take away many lived it also destroys property. They can be important events to places that need rain in dry regions. The hurricanes in the eastern north Pacific can sometimes provide moist to the Southwest of America and pasrt of western Mexico. Also Japan recieves more than half of its rainfall from typhoons yearly. But tropical cyclones can damage places where people live very badly. When it destroys settlement then money has to be used to rebuild things. For example. Hurricane Camille occurred on the Gulf Coast and the damage of the hurricane forced many things to be rebuilt.

   And as you know hurricanes are names after they occur (ex. Hurricane Katrina). There is a reason they name them. It is because there can be more than one hurricane at a time. Names make it easier to keep track of all the ones that do occur. However the storm is only given a name if it becomes a tropical storm. The name stays if it becomes a hurricane. Every year tropical storms are given names in alphabetical order. They come from a list of names that are specific for the year. There are six lists of names. The lists get reused every six years. If a storm does enough damage sometimes its name is taken off the list. Then its replaced by a new name that then starts with the same letter.
These are the names during the year of 2012: Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto, Florence, Gordon, Helene, Isaac, Joyce, Kirk, Leslie, Michael, Nadine, Oscar, Patty, Rafael, Sandy, Tony, Valerie, William

   Hurricanes are studied by NASA in many ways. They take pictures with satellites from outer space. The pictures that are taken are shown on television to help people understand its path. They also get put onto the internet. They also use instruments to measure ocean and cloud temperatures. They also have more instruments to measure the height of the cloud and how fast the falling of the rain is. And then there are those instruments who measure the speed and direction of the winds. The scientists also use the data and facts from the satellites to learn more about hurricanes. The data they collect helps them to understand how the hurricanes develop and how they get stronger and stronger. The data also helps forecasters to predict the path of the hurricane and its strength. This is a way of informing and warning the public people about the hurricanes that will occur. This way people have time to prepare for the up coming natural disaster. What is also very interesting is that dust storms from Africa can affect hurricanes. NASA has two satellites that have a machine to help the scientists study how the dust affects the hurricanes. NASA also lets some planes fly in hurricanes. Can you believe that they do that?!? There are tools on the plane that help collect detail from the storm. However, obviously, some parts of the hurricane are too dangerous to fly into. For the "too dangerous" part scientist study them they use airplanes that collect the data without putting the people inside the actual plane. NASA also does other special projects that help them and society learn about hurricanes. All these different projects require different machines. Some projects are done on land, some on the ground and some through air planes



Bibliography:
"HURRICANES AND TROPICAL STORMS." NOAA. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 June 2012.
     ?n=hurrweb>.
 
"Hurricane Facts." The Weather Around Us. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 June 2012. 
     Thematic%20Units/The%20Weather%20Around%20Us/hurricane_facts.htm>. 
 
"Tropical cyclone." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 June 2012. 
     Tropical_cyclone>. 
 
 "What Are Hurricanes." What Are Hurricanes. Web. 03 June 2012. <http://www.cotf.edu
/ete/modules/sevweath/swwhatare.html>.



Sunday, May 27, 2012

Earthquake Worksheet

1. Observe the three circles you have drawn. Where is the earthquake's epicenter? The Earthquakes epicenter is in Kentucky because all the circles i drew around the hits 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?
It is Chicago and it is located 600 kilometers away from Chicago.

3. In which of the three cities listed in the data table would seismographs detect the earthquake first and last?
The first place the seismographs would detect the earthquake in is Chicago because of the close distance. The last one is Denver because it is the farthest. And obviously the second in Houston because it is in between.

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 epicenters is roughly 3,200 kilometers away from Chicago that means it take 4.4 minutes for the waves to arrive. P waves (primary waves) can travel through anything no matter if it is sold or liquid, however secondary waves (S waves) cannot. In San Francisco the primary waves would arrive a lot earlier than S waves because they travel faster going through both solids and liquids while S waves can only travel through solid.

5. What happens in arrival times between P waves and S waves as the distance from the earthquake increases?
While the distance from the earthquake is increasing the force is setting lower and its going farther away from the epicenter. P waves will still have the advantage of distance but they wont travel as fast because they don’t have enough or as much energy. When S and P waves meet, surface waves are formed.

6. Review the procedure you followed 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?
If a station only had one hit for an earthquake they will not know where the epicenter si exactly, it could be anywhere within in the circle. When you have ti from 3 stations you can see that the path the earthquake was taking and the vibrations that it made. The you join them all together to find the epicenter.

Finding the epicenter without 3 points is very close to hard. If a stations only has 1 hit of the earthquake, they will not know where exactly the epicenter was, it could be 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!

National Data Bouy Notes:

Hypothesis:  Before I went on the Buoy website I predicted that the biggest waves would be found in an ocean because that is a place where there are already natural waves and there are already animals living in there creating movement and there are rocks and coral already creating barriers and its just like one big wave experiment. Also I think it will be the;largest in the pacific ocean because the pacific ocean has the largest natural waves. 

Where are waves the highest and the lowest?
This website was a little but confusing and I wasn't exactly sure how to read it. But I am defiantly sure that the site shows many points are around America the west coast, Hawaii and there are also a lot on the East coast
What do you think makes them so high?  
What I think makes them very high is disturbance. Depending on the strength and size of it will effect the size and force of a wave. Also it depends on where it starts. Waves that are close to the shore are actually much more fierce then the waves far out because what happens is the waves build up and accumulates and then when it comes to the shore it breaks.
What types of buoys were they? 
I saw quit a few. I notices that there were some that were collecting data. Others would mark safe areas for swimming and others would have warnings. There were also ones that recorded the actual waves themselves. There were many others as well.
What atmospheric pressure or wind speed was at that location?
The location I chose was station 46086 NDBC and its atmospheric pressure is 30.03 in and the wind speed is 7.8 kt going to 11.7 kt


What causes waves to become so high or low?  
 What causes waves to be so high or low is disturbance and barriers causes disturbances. Disturbance affects it the most because what happens is it hit the water and that is what makes waves strong or weak. Also the stronger the disturbance the bigger the wave.

Why might these buoys be helpful to meteorologists, cities on the coast (seaside), boatsmen, you...?  
They are helpful because the show when the wave is coming. If it is up that means its coming toward the shore. They also help because they help collect data for that body of water.




Sunday, March 25, 2012

WOW!! Space Travel!!!

O.M.G, you may be saying "this is so inapropraite for a school blog", but you will understand once you find out a spanish company in barcelona has created a luxiours "four hour excrusion" to about three times higher than commercialed planes (it goes to 118,000 ft, equivilent to twenty two miles). It takes about one hour to get to the altitued that the aircraft is flying to. Then the passengers spend a few hours cruising around and enjoying the view, considering the fact that the aircraft has a 360 degree view of Earth. While they are cruising they get to eat a enjoyable meal and then after that is when, in my opinion, the best part starts! They get to choose the amount of gravity on them, they can choose zero, lunar, or the same amount of gravity that they have on mars! However, it only can last 25 seconds :(

   I really think one day for wealthy people this will be a great activiy for them to do. They will get to experiance wonderful acivities and REALLY get to see our Earth. Up until now they would have had a narrow, and small view of the Earth, now they can see the big picture. I would really like to do this one day, although I doubt it. But hopefully I will one day!!!!!!!!!!! This is one of the coolest articles I read as a current event! Its super cool and really interesting. And for everyone out there who thinks science is a waste of time. I bet you have nothing to say now to this super cool balloon!!!!! amazing!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

11 New Planetery Systems!!!

26 new planetary systems have been discovered and they have 26 confirmed planets!!  "These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star."(quoted from the article.)  This will help astronomers learn more about how planets are created. Their orbits are different, they very in between 6-143 days, so that means that they are closer to their star, in fact all of them are closer to their star than Venus it to ours. "Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky. Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits." this was said by Doug Hudgins. Because of all the gravitational pulling going on between all the planets, it causes some of their orbiting speed to accelerate, while it causes other to decelerate. Also what is very interesting (quoting from the article) is that "Five of the systems contain a pair of planets where the inner planet orbits the star twice during each orbit of the outer planet. Four of the systems contain a pairing where the outer planet circles the star twice for every three times the inner planet orbits its star." Also according to Jason Steffen he said "These configurations help to amplify the gravitational interactions between the planets, similar to how my sons kick their legs on a swing at the right time to go higher," that I think is a great analogy about the swing and the kicking of the legs at the RIGHT time to go higher each time. 

I think this article is really interesting becuase it just goes to show how much we have developed in this region of study. Look at around the time of Galileo, we were still working on discovering all the planets in OUR own solar system, and now we are at solar systems and planets and stars way beyond our own. We are also not only looking at the large things we are looking at light and air and atmospheres and water and heat and cold and distance and rotation and gravity and so much more. And go back around to Columbus time, we even once though the world was flat. Just look at then and now, big difference right? And this article just made me so much more aware of our development in this field, and how we will go even farther. To us, the planets, and the future!!!