Joslin’s Blog

                      These are the earths major continental and oceanic plates.

Today in science we were assigned the homework of writing one “good” sentence on five types of plate movements. We also had to include what was happening in each movement. The first type of movement that I wrote about was when two continental plates slide past eachother. When this occurs there is a lot of friction made.  This can be dangerous because when this happens it creates earthquakes which can be deadly. A deadly earthquake occured on the San Andreas fault. The next type of plate movement is when two oceanic plates move apart. When this happens the magma under the ocean floor is pushed up and when this hot lava hits the cold water, it starts to cool. This makes new land when it turns to rock overtime. You can see the result of this at the Mid Atlantic ridge. When two oceanic plates collide, one is pushed under the other and this forms trenches. The Aleutian trench was formed by this movement. If two continental plates collide they keep pushing up against eachother and this force literally folds up the land which forms mountains. The Himalayas where formed this way when the Indian plate collided with the Eurasian plate. Lastly, there is the movement of a oceanic colliding with a continental plate. When this occurs the oceanic plate will go under the continental plate which wrinkles up the sea floor causing underwater mountains to be formed. An example of underwater mountains is the Cascades that are located on the Washington and Oregon coastline.

Today in Social Studies we had homework on China. We had to answer 11 questions on different people and happenings.After 1949 became a communist state. A communist state is when the government has control over the economy and society as a whole. The government also allows little or no private ownership of property. Did you know that in 1989 students called for a democracy in Tiananmen square, but as a result the government sent in tanks and troops. This killed hundreds of of people and thousands were arrested. Because of this many countries around the world criticized the Chinese leaders on their human rights. Some reasons were that was the right to have freedom of speech. After the death of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping brought many reforms to China like the fact that he gave more economic freedom to the people and he wanted to make China a more open country. Some leaders live in exile which means he or she is forced not to live in their country because of their political beliefs. An example of a leader living in exile is Dalai Lama. He was the Buddhist leader of Tibet who now lives in India. The Chinese are known for their type of writing that is called calligraphy. This is a type of writing that uses symbols for words. Plus many cooks in China use the stir-fry method of cooking. This is the process of quickly cooking food with little oil over veryhigh heat. Many of China’s cities are growing rapidly in population. This is because many of the farmers are moving to the big cities on the East coast.

          Today in social studies we went over our second questions sheet on China. This country is in a communist state. This is when the government hasstrong control over the economy and society. Also, China has a free enterprise system. The people can choose what job they want, where to start their businesses, and they can keep all of their profits. China’s economic growth is very rapid and this has helped the chinese people in many ways. More people can get jobs in manufacturing and service industries, wages have increased, more and more goods are ready to buy, and people can now afford consumer goods such as T.V’s, radios, cars, and motorcycles.  Today we also learned about the Three Gorges Dam. The government began a 17 year long project to create the massive dam. It will be 1.5 miles long and more than 600 feet high. It is being built between Chongqing and Wuhan. The dam will result in many benifets like controling flood waters, the system of locks will allow large ships to travel inland, and it will create electricity using turbines. But this dam will also have it’s down sides. The dam would make a deep resevoir about 400 miles long that will flood over 100 homes and force 1.2 million people to move from their homes and farms. It will also wash away more than 1,000 historical sites. Specialists caution that the dam may even cause some pollution because the industrial sites that were once underwater may leak poisonous chemicals and sewage from communities surrounding the dam might flow into the dam to the Yangtze River. The fast moving waters could cause it to move quickly to the sea.

             White Blood Cells

                              Today in science we mainly focused on the lymphatic system so we made a graphic organizer on it. The organs included in this system are the spleen, tonsils, adenoids, thymus, and the lymph nodes. There are 3 types of white blood cells that fight of pathogens which are germs, viruses, diseases, and bacteria. They are the leukocytes, lymphocytes, and the macrophages. The macrophages are very special because when bacteria is sent to the macrophages in the lymph nodes, they swallow them up and kill any foreign particles. The thymus gland in the sternum area is sort of like a computer because when you get a pathogen(bacteria) in your body that it has never seen before, your body sends the white blood cells to the pathogen to fight it off. When your body does fight it off the thymus keeps a memory of the pathogen so that the next time you are exposed to the same germ, your body can kill it easily. Since your body works that way, scientists create vaccinations which are small bits of a certain bacteria that has been killed already that is injected into your body. When your body sees the new pathogen, it rushes the white blood cells to the dead pathogen to fight it off. When its done fighting the bacteria off, your body now has a memory of the pathogen so that the next time you get it your body can fight it off easily and you don’t get sick. After you get injected with the vaccination, you may have a small fever. This is because your body is rushing the white blood cells to fight off the already dead pathogen and the body is working very hard. That is all a fever is.

Today in science we started another human body system called the Endocrine System. This is the system that has all the glands. (The gland system) The glands that we covered today were the Thyroid, Parathyroids, Adrenal, Pancreas, and the pituitary glands. The Thyroid is a butterfly shaped gland about the size of a bar of soap. It releases a hormone called thyroxine that contrlos your bodys metabolism. The metabolism is all the chemical reactions that happen in the body and cells. The thyroid will not work properly if it doesn’t have enough iodine. Iodine is an element that is usually found in types of seafood. When your thyroid enlarges it makes it difficult to swallow sometimes. This can become painful! Behind the thyroid is the parathyroid, four, small pea sized gland.This gland releases hormones that help to control the amount of phostate and calcium that is in your blood. Calcium is very important because it makes your bones and teeth strong, and clotting blood. You need phostate to because this element helps to keep the right pH level in your blood. But this hormone can cause some problems like if it makes to much of the hormone your bones can become brittle and will break easily because they will not have the right level of calcium. Next there are the adrenal glands and they are the ones that are found on top of your kidneys. They have an inner and outer layer. The outer layer creates 30 hormones that control the amount of salt in your blood and keep the right water balance in the body. They provide relief to swollen joints. The inner layer makes a hormone called adrenaline. When you have sudden fear, pain, or anger your adrenals make adrenaline. The hormone makes the heart beat faster, releases more food stored in the liver, increases your sweating, and makes you breathe harder. The pancreas is found behind the stomach. Part of the pancreas produces enzymes that go to the small intestine to further break down the chyme coming from the stomach. But the pancreas also makes hormones. One hormone is called insulin that controls the amount of glucose in the bloodstream and allows glucose to move from your body to your cells. This is important because the glucose must be used with the oxygen to create energy in the body cells. If a persons body doesn’t make enough insulin which is a problem because then the glucose stays in the blood. When this happens you may be diagnosed with a diesease called diabetes. At the doctors, when you give a urine sample and the urine has sugar in it this could mean you have the disease. Lastly the pituitary gland is a marble sized gland that is found at the bottom of the cerebrum. This is sometimes called the “master gland” because it releases hormones that control the other glands. One of the hormones this gland makes is the human growth hormone or HGH. The hormone controls how fast your bones, muscles, and organs grow. Also it determines how tall a person would be as an adult. It controls the activities of the thyroid, adrenal, and reproductive glands too.

 The city of Varanasi is so much different than America. The people look and do things differently. It is a very holy city in Hinduism. Some people cover there heads in cloth. Underneath this cloth is their hair, but you may not know that the hair hangs down past the ground sometimes! In this city there are railroad systems that were built by the British when they ruled India. Each compartment holds 4 people and in the compartments there are fold down beds.  The climate in the city is mainly humid and subtropical. Summers are long and range from April to October. The average summer temperatures are 90 degrees Fahrenheit to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Winters go on from December to February and the temperatures range from 41 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. The average rainfall is a whopping 44 inches a year. This city also has an education system usually taught in Hindu or English. These are run by either state government or a private organization. Now going on to the Ganges River. Their are stairs leading down to the river called ghats. There are over 100 of them. There are also cremation ghats where the dead bodies burn and are then thrown in the river. The people believe that the river is filled with sacred water so they do almost everything in the Ganges. The bathe in it, wash their clothes in it, and so many other daily things people do. This water is polluted with chromium and other chemicals leaking in from leather factories, human wastes, and even water borne illness! Pipes leading into the river pour sewage in daily. There are also water buffaloes roaming through the water on occasions!

 Today in Social Studies we took a map test on South Asia. It was a country and capitals on it, the ones that we have studied. When you finished the quiz you had to read an article in our textbooks about the Taj Mahal. This magnificant building is located in India. It was built by the Muslim emperor Shah Jahan of India. He wanted to build it to put the grave of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal who sadly died in the year of 1631, a short time after having their 14th child. But this building holds much more including a mosque, rest house, beautiful garden, and an arched gateway. Her tomb is located in the central part of the building. When Her husband died in 1666 he was buried right next to Mumtaz. Their caskets are facing East towards the religous capital called Makkah. This follows Islam tradition. After reading that article, when everyone finished the quiz, the whole class reviewed a worksheet we did for homework called India part 2. Although India has many awesome places, they also have some enviormental problems. For example, acres of forests have been cut down, water and land hav been badly polluted, the worst river that is polluted is the Ganges) and all this commotion is harming the animals resulting in many species going extinct. Some species incude elephants, tigers, lions, panthers, monkeys, and leopards.

        

 Today in Science class we learned about the Circulatory System. We mainly focused on the heart for today. The blood has a certain path through the different parts and valves. It starts in the body and is passed through the vena cava and ends up in the  right atrium and then passes through the Tricuspid valve and enters the right ventricle. Then it is pushed through the pulmonary valve and pumped through the pulmonary artery. The blood then goes to the lungs to exchange the carbon dioxide for oxygen rich blood. Next it flows into the left atrium and pumped through the mitral valve to the left ventricle. After this, it goes into the aortic valve into the aorta and is then branched out to all parts of the body. This cycle repeats many times throughout the day.

    Today in Social Studies we took our final test on Iran and Afghanistan. It had questions about it’s government and population stats too. After you finished the test you were to complete a worksheet on our next unit, South Asia. It was a map of countries which included India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. The last thing to do was read a fascinating article on Afghanistan and how if the U.S made peace with Afghanistan they would help us too.

   What will the world use for transportation? Oil of course! But have you ever imagined a world without oil? Well, those days could come as early as 2015 for non OPEC countries and 2030 for the OPEC ones! (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) People are coming up with new car designs that do not use oil at all! For example, the MiniCat which uses compressed air. This product is enviorment safe. Other people, including Paul Roberts, author of the new book The End of Oil says that natural gas is the way to go. Although, this new solution has its ups and downs too! Natural gas is non reusable! So what can people do to save oil? Keep the furnace down and most of all, if you can walk somewhere do it! Most of the oil is used up by driving cars! As the oil gets used up, people need to come up with new ways to travel or keep houses warm during the winter. So all we can do is try to help out to save the earths oil!

Today in Science class we watched a video all about Killer Whales. We noticed behaviors, instincts, and traits of this amazing mammal. Most of the whales behaviors were learned as a young whale. I am going to show you my paragraph on Killer Whales. Killer Whales are black and white mammals with blubber that are born knowing how to jump. The males fins can rise up to 6 feet. Some instincts that I saw in the video is that they hunt in pods, use echo location to find prey, and they are very curious and playful whales. I thought the 2 dominating behaviors was that they stay and hunt in their pods and their curiosity. The habitat of this whale is northern cold parts of the ocean. The life of the Killer Whale starts when the whale is born and then has to learn the language, echo location, and how to hunt. As the seasons pass the whale grows rapidly but they can’t mate until they are 16 years old. That was the basic Science class on Killer Whales.

                                                                                                January 8, 2007

   Dear Jordan,

           I am a citizen of Turkey and our first president Mustafa Kemal, has just died. It has been quite a suprise to my country. He was a good president and he did many things to moderize Turkey, but there was some downs to these changes. My husband Abdul, used to wear his fez everywhere he went because it has been passed down from generation to generation. He was outraged to hear that Mustafa has banished them from ever being worn! He also banished women from wearing veils a head covering we always wore. Many women were in disagreement with him but I for one was very relived from covering my face. It got really hot under there! He was only trying to make Turkey more modern. He also adopted western style clothing! Now this was very new to us! Mustafa also introduced an alphabet that was based on the Roman alphabet. He later ordered that all signs, books, and newspapers to be printed in Turkeys new alphabet. This man also moved the countrys capital of Istanbul to Anakara. Now he was also known as Kemal Ataturk which meant ” Father Of The Turks.” His title was President of the Republic, but Mustafa was truly a dictator. I am very sad that this wondeful man has moved on but I do belive he is in a better place. May Mustafa Kemal, a changing man.. rest in peace.

                                                           Sincerly,

                                                            Golga 

 To do this letter my reference was the paper on Mustafa Kemal I was given to look at.

Today in Social Studies we mainly focused on a hero of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal. ( Kemal Ataturk) We started by reading an article about this man. Let me tell you about his time as the first president of Turkey. Now Ataturk was a good president and he made some changes to the country during his time. For instance, he moved the capital of Turkey, (Istanbul) to Ankara and introduced an alphabet based on a Roman alphabet to the country to. He soon ordered that all signs and books and other reading utensils in that style. And of-course no president can be perfect and Ataturk for one made a few changes that the citizens were not to crazy about! Women in Turkey were always wearing veils which are head coverings but with Ataturk in charge he decided to banish them. one of the bigger changes he made as the president was to get rid of the mans hat… the fez. It was a round hat with no brim included and since the people of Turkey prayed 5 times a day, it was a good hat to wear because when you would bow with a brimmed hat chances were that the brims on the hat would hit the floor making a ruckus during the praying! That pretty much sums up todays social Studies class!

       If I could go anywhere in the world for free I would probably go to the Bahamas because I love tropical foods and drinks… just about anything tropical!! I would love to learn about their culture and surf, scuba dive, and go glass water boating on the Bermuda Triangle too. I’m sure there would be beautiful hotels with unbelievable views of the ocean. I can already imagine the colorful species of fish and bright parrots throughout the island!