On Tuesday we started a new quarter which led to us starting a new unit. This new unit revolves around weathering,deposition, and soil. To ease our way into the new topics, we did an activity before starting our notes. The activity centered around weathering and involved skittles and water. The skittles were put on a tray, which represented Earth or the ground, and then we dropped water on them from a dropper. After each set of ten drops, a drawing was taken and a brief description was also recorded. Very quickly, the water removed the coloring from the outside of the skittle. After the coloring came off, the "s" on the top came directly off. At first I did not completely understand the processes, but after going over notes I understood it more.
On Wednesday, we started a new lab to continue with our unit about weathering. In this lab, there were many stations and at each station we learned about a different type of weathering through a demonstration. The station I went to dealt with chemical weathering. We were instructed to put vinegar on a penny for four minutes and then wipe it off. After the four minutes was up and I wiped the vinegar off, there was a huge difference from when I first put the penny in. The tarnish on the outside was gone and the penny was a lot shinier. The penny that had been sitting for 24-hours was even shinier and had almost no tarnish at all. This demonstration showed what happens to a rock when acid rain constantly hits the rock. The demonstrations we did at the stations helped me better understand the material I needed to improve on.
On Thursday we continued with the lab we had previously worked on. Before we worked on the lab we watched a video showing us the weathering that occurs at beach environments. The change in just a couple months were very drastic but the change throughout the whole year was almost devastating. Almost 17 meters were gone in only one year due to beach erosion. This is a big problem in our area but it is hard to see in our daily life but this video really showed me how a beach environment can get destroyed by just weathering.
After watching the video we worked on the lab again. Today I mostly learned from the activities about frost action. Frost action occurs when water enter rocks through cracks and freezes. When water freezes, it expands breaking the rock apart. This is a type of mechanical weathering that can occur during the winter on road rocks. In the activity, two cups of water were presented on the table. One had been frozen and the other was normal. There was a difference been the volumes of the two waters. The frozen water appeared to have a greater amount. This was used to show that water expands as it freezes. Overall this lab helped me learn a lot more about the different types of weathering.
On Friday I was sick but it seems that we did more work on our seed lab.
This week was a short week since we had Monday off but I still was able to learn a lot about weathering. One thing I need to improve on this week is reviewing my notes more often. Reviewing my notes more frequently will make it a lot easier around test time and will help me learn the material better.
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