Monday, April 30, 2012

The Gulf Stream

The Gulf Stream is really big and is about 80 kilometers (or 50 miles.) wide and 1000 meters (or 3,048 feet.) deep.
It starts in Florida and heads along the coast of North America for a while before heading on to Europe. After reaching Europe, the Gulf Stream branches out and heads to the Arctic Ocean and Africa.
The Gulf Stream is also responsible for the mild weather in Great Britten.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Fun On the Swings

Michael, the king of bossing people around.
A common saying in our house: "Oh! Isn't her so adorable!"

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Surface Currents

Surface Currents are moved by winds and can be several hundred feet deep.
They move in circular patterns called gyres.
(Jir.- the "i" has a little line "-" over it instead of a dot.)
In the northern Hemisphere the gyres move clockwise and in the southern Hemisphere, they move counter- clockwise.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Ocean Currents

The ocean currents are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon.
There are three types of currents:
              Ocean Currents
              Waves
      And tides.
Most currents flow under the surface of the water and you can tell them apart from the water that they're going through because of temperature and salinity. 
(Sa-lin-i-ty, is a measure of the quantity of dissolved salts and other solids in a mixture such as sea water.) -From the science dictionary.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Icebergs

     First off, we need to get the difference between icebergs and ice-chunks.
     Ice-chunks are frozen water.
     Icebergs are frozen snow that builds up after a long time with out melting.
     After a while gravity causes the frozen snow to slowly flow down the side of the iceberg at a grand speed of a few inches a day.
     When the snow finally gets down into the water, it forms an ice-shelf. This ice-shelf is spread-out under the surface of the water. The biggest ice shelf was the size of Texas. This one was called the Ross ice-shelf.
     Some icebergs are really big and a few where actually mistaken for islands. Well, the part of icebergs that we see is only about 10% of the actually iceberg and the other 90% is the part that we have to worry about. Sometimes the bottom of an iceberg can reach 800 meters or 2,620 feet. (This is down in the thermocline leval.)

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Heated Water

Water takes longer to heat up then land, but water holds the heat longer then land does.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Ocean

The Oceans takes up 7 10ths of the earth. But the ocean is actually only 96.5% water. The other 3.5% is 2.75% Sodom chloride and 0.78% other things.
  The ocean contains 360 quintillions gallons of water. (And just so you know; a quintillion is a billion billions which is 6 sets of 3 zeros or18 zeros.
  Gallons of water int the ocean:
               1,000,000,000,000,000,000, times 360. That's a lot of water.
   One cubic mile of ocean water contains:
           4.5 billion tons of water
           128 million tons of Sodium Chloride (table salt)
           18 million tons of magnesium chloride
           8 million tons of magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt)
           6 million tons of calcium sulfate
           4.2 million tons of potassium chloride
           470,000 tons of calcium carbonate
           47,000 tons of rubidium
           1,400 fluorine
           1,400 tons of nitrogen
           470 tons of zinc
           380 tons of phosphorous
           380 tons of arsenic
           94 tons of iodine

Any way that's a lot of things in one cubic mile of ocean.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

The Metric System

Why do we have the Metric System?

'cause it's just so Cool!!!

The Metric System is used by scientists because it can go from beyond huge to the size of an atom of even smaller.

   We have different words to measure different things such as: Volume is called a Liter or in abbreviations (L.)
Mass is measured in Grams or (g.) And last of all; length is measured in meters or (M)
 
Here's what a part of the Metric System looks like.

              Pico one trillionth (or one tenth to the 12th power.)
              nanomicro one billionth (or one tenth to the 9th power.)
              milli one millionth (or  one tenth to the 6th power.)
              centi one hundreth (or one tenth to the 3rd power.)
              deci one tenth (or one tenth to the 1st power.)
              _____ one
              deka ten (10)
              hecto hundred (10 to the 2nd power.)
              kilo thousand (10 to the 3rd power.)
              mega million (10 to the 6th power.)
              giga billion (10 to the 9th power.)
              tera trillion (10 to the 12th power.)

(These are all Latin words & 10 to the 2nd or 12th power means that you add how many ever zeros. So ten to the 3rd power is 10,000 
  And there is the Metric System.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Rain Droplets

I thought that I would do some cool facts for a while & so here's your cool fact of the day.

       Cloud and Rain Droplets; (There are four different sizes of droplets.)
                 Rain Droplets -(Diameter) 2mm
                 Drizzle droplets -(Diameter) 0.3mm
                 Giant Cloud droplets-(Diameter) 0.1mm
                 Cloud droplets-(Diameter) 0.02mm

Just so that you know, mm stands for Milli Meter and is one one thousandth of an inch.
         (mm is part of the Metric System. I'll do a post on it pretty soon.)