I was out this week sick so I need to catch up. While I was sick however, I have been working on my personal project. We discovered that the tag that we were planning on buying would not work because the insertion method was by using epoxy to attach. This will not work because we have no way to touch the shark for safety reasons. We have found another tag that is inserted through a javelin. It is called a sPAT which pops off of the shark after a programmed about of time. We would insert the tag into the lower dorsal fin where white sharks have no nerves
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The Ted ED video was very interesting. What struck me the most is how the earths ecosystems are all dependent on the deep sea current patterns. This is something that I had never learned about. Here are some of the things I learned: A gyre is a big loop in surface currents that travel clockwise in northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. This natural phenomenon makes air traveling north in the northern hemisphere to deflect eastward and air traveling south to deflect westward this is the opposite in the southern hemisphere. This wind pushes currents and due to the properties of heat retention in water, this helps to distribute heat. Thermohaline circulation is caused because near the poles there is colder water and when the ice freezes it holds on to salt which makes it more dense and sinks; this frozen water gets replaced by warmer water. Thermohaline circulation and surface currents combine to form the global conveyor belt. This conveyor belt is the longest ocean current known to man and travels throughout the globe. When the warm water rises, it carries micro-nutrients helps to start the food chain in ocean ecosystems. This conveyor belt moves very slowly (a couple inches per day) rising temperature cause the conveyor belt to slow down which alter weather patterns, food distribution, and heat dilution. A couple questions I have from this video are: Why does rising ocean temperatures make the conveyor belt move slower? If frozen water is more dense and thus sinks near the ice caps, why does ice in a cup of water float? How deep do ocean currents affect? If the earth warms to a certain extent could the global conveyor belt cease to exist? This is a cool hole that I found at sunset cliffs. It was a very circular hole that had equally circular rings inside of it. I believe these rings were caused by periods of a lot of water and periods with no water. This could have been due to a storm or just the tides. I traced the image with a sharpie pen which is why the rings are not very circular. I then used Photoshop to color the rings and then put it on top of the original photo. This is some of the math that I have been working on this week. I am a little behind because of last week which is why the "differentiating logs is not completed but I will definitely have that done by next week. I am feeling confident in calculus right now even though I was gone for so long. I have been helping other people to understand how to solve some problems especially in the "Implicit Differentiation" worksheet.
Unfortunately we have not made very much progress on my personal project. I talked to Molly and she gave me a good idea for a project which is to pick a local fish and do multiple dissections on it and document the innards of the species. I think this is a more viable option. Also the reason that tagging sharks didn't work out was because we didn't have a boat that we could use and so we had to contact researchers to see if we could do our project with them. Unfortunately, not very many people responded so we were unable to continue with our project. However, I spoke with Bryan and he said that if I wanted to develop a tag this semester, We could go out on the blue dot boat during the summer and see if we could tag any sharks then. I was not here this week but have gotten work done on my project. We are still emailing people without much success. We are looking into building our own trackers so we have started emailing other people trying to get more information on their tags. Luckily, we have had more success and we got a email back from the DOBBS Institute that was very informative.
**Pressed the Save button instead of the Publish button** This is my Juxtaposition image. We only made one draft because I didn't know that we were making a second one. In the image we made fish that had adapted to an environment that was full of trash. We used Photoshop and sourced images off of google. I am not very proud of this product because I feel like at this point it is fairly rushed. I think that if I could spend a couple more hours on it I could make it into something that I am proud of. I am fairly confident using Photoshop so I didn't learn much but this draft is definitely not a good example of my skills.
There is many things that I am proud of this week in the area of math. Throughout my high school experience, I have felt that we learn math concepts just to say that we have learned them without also learning how we can apply these concepts real life. In the last week however, I have applied mathematics to one of my future projects which is to get scuba diving certified. This week, I calculated the pressure that is applied to a person given their depth in a body of water. I have also learned a lot about the properties of water. Water is made up of two different atoms namely hydrogen and oxygen. Two hydrogen atoms are covalently bonded to one oxygen atom. This causes the oxygen atom to have more electrons than protons which gives it a positive charge and causes the hydrogen atoms to have more protons that electrons which gives it a positive charge. This is called a hydrogen bond. This hydrogen bond is why water is the best solvent known to man; Any molecule that has a polarity (either positive or negative) can break these hydrogen bonds and can dissolve in water. Water also has a high heat capacity. This means that water can hold temperatures without much fluctuation. This is why places like San Diego does not experience much fluctuation in temperature while places like Nebraska does. Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere greatly affects our oceans. CO2 has a slight negative bond which means that it is hydrophilic (can dissolve in water). This hydrophilic nature causes the oceans to absorb 93% of all carbon dioxide. This causes the oceans to have a lower ph level (more acidic) which can harm marine life. While there are many marine organisms that can use carbon dioxide such as algae, there is not enough to keep up with the high demand. So far we have emailed multiple people in the field of shark tagging. We have emailed multiple institutions such as Monterrey Bay Aquarium, I was not here for Monday so I do not have the map of San Diego coast or the Semester Azul Math Intro. I took this photo at sunset cliffs. I ended up not taking many photos because of camera troubles which meant that I had less photos to choose from. Next time I will shoot more photos so that I end up with better quality photos. One thing that I learned from this photo is that if you are shooting into a cloudless sky, I should get more foreground in the photo so that it does not look as boring. Another thing that I need to work on is asking Mike and Bryan for resources so that I can take better photos and enhance my photography skills.
My goal for this semester is to build and track sharks. This is a very ambitious goal so I will have to work hard to make sure that it happens. My first steps will be to contact some experts at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Monterrey Bay Aquarium and Ocearch which is an open source website that tracks many aquatic animals. Some of my strengths include ambition about the world around me, asking questions, and working hard to answer those questions. Something that I need to work on is asking Mike and Bryan to use the equipment such as the Mavics , underwater drone, underwater housing and GoPros. These things would really enhance my photography skills and would also prepare me for using resources in college and in my career. |
Semester AzulThis semester I am in Semester Azul which is a class with around 20 students of all high school grade levels. We are exploring the vast mysteries of the ocean learning about the ecosystems, climate, and human influence. I hope you enjoy my progression!. Archives
May 2019
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