Oceans

Massive 8.3 Ocean Earthquake

Today’s South Pacific earthquake is an example of Earth’s interacting spheres. The heat from within the Earth powered the magnitude 8.3 quake whose epicenter was 21 miles below the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The shifting of Earth’s crust resulted in a tsunami killing 23 people on surrounding islands.
Here’s an excerpt from Discovery News about [...]

Waves From Bill

Waves From Bill

I was sitting at the table Saturday morning having breakfast with my wife, in the background  the weather channel was talking about the waves that we could expect from hurricane Bill, then close to 1,000 miles away off the coast of Virginia. Hard to imagine that something that far away could have a significant affect [...]

How are you connected to the ocean?

How are you connected to the ocean?

Take two breaths.

One came from the ocean.

It’s true! Roughly half of the oxygen we breathe is produced by phytoplankton, tiny single-celled plants that live in the sea. That fact alone means that you – and all life on Earth – depend on the ocean for survival every minute of every day. In fact, no matter [...]

El Nino

El Nino

Here is some excellent information on El Nino. Click on the image below.

I decided to do a quick recap of our discussions about El Nino (actually this includes today and tomorrow). This might help with your notes.
Ocean circulation and how it changes during El Nino. 

Factors that influence currents: winds, land masses, Coriolis effect
Normal non-El Nino [...]

Ocean Studies

We took a very different route towards learning this time. We started with a simple “I Wonder” question “I wonder what causes ocean circulation?”. No introduction from the teacher, no movies, no textbooks, no experiments, not even the internet, just students discussing their ideas.
Then we combined ideas from all the classes, asked a few questions [...]

Oceans Re-Test

Tomorrow you’ll take the Oceans test again, and of course you’ll do much better this time around!!
Looking for some last minute study resources? Then try these classroom PowerPoint presentations:

Ocean Circulation
El Nino
 

Chapter Challenge Re-visited

Let’s take a look at what I would have considered as good accurate discussions (answers) in your Chapter Challenge. Good answers could come directly from classroom work without the need to do further research. The textbook (remember you can always checkout a textbook from the media center) and classroom notes are all you needed.
First you [...]