We watched a fun video in class about weather disasters happening in movies, and although there are some that are greatly exaggerated, such as sharknados, and they may happen so quickly it seems unrealistic, some movies are fairly realistic. Other movies, such as the Wizard of Oz, revolve around weather disasters happening to jumpstart their plot, such as the tornado landing Dorothy in Oz. Even though movies can make these weather events to seem unrealistic, they are very real and harmful.

We did a water activity/lab in class to see how water shared amongst 9 companies or places effected the water quality, and how much water each company used.

Companies have seniority rights when it comes to water. Who ever was using it first gets first dibs, I think this is a hard concept to implement because everybody needs water otherwise people will be deprived of a resource needed to survive. Its also a hard resource to share because there is so little of it.

We also did an activity that looked at the pollution each company put into their shared in water supply. Each company effected the water in different ways. Companies that used a lot of water and added more than one pollutant (or food coloring) to their water contributed the most to the ugly deep brown the water became, as an example of the contamination of real life water sources. The only company that helped was the Environmental one, but overall their positive effect on the water was minimal, as they were the company who took the least amount of water.

Here are some Labs in Water to go along with the theme of Water Lab:

Happy labrador retriever running and splashing in water

We watched Pixar’s Wall-e in class, as it relates to the unit we are in now. One of the more serious topics we have been discussing is sustainability. This is also a topic discussed in Wall-E. The humans in the movie had to move to space, as they had gone far over the carrying capacity of earth. Carrying capacity and sustainability can be directly linked to one another, as sustainability is the ability to maintain a certain level of, in this case life, and carrying capacity is how long a species can survive with the resources it has. The humans problem in Wall-E was that they were using too many resources of the earth too fast. This caused them to exceed their carrying capacity, thus ending the sustainability of Earth. This is bound to happen eventually (in real life) unless we become more cautious of the resources we are using and the rate we use them at.

Let’s keep our beautiful Earth!

One of the most interesting things we learned about this unit, was when we compared the ages of men and women in america from the 1800’s to the 1900’s. It was interesting to see the difference of male lifespan versus female lifespan. In the 1800’s men had a longer lifespan than women, but in the 1900’s, women began to have a longer lifespan. This might be because of the world wars we went through, as men were off fighting, and the women had to stay home.

One other thing that was interesting was looking at the obituaries of people in Washington state who had died earlier. It was sad to see all of the people who had died, and to think about all the families who were mourning, but I was glad to see they all lived rather long lives.  The average age ranges have definitely increased over time, as in the 1800’s the average age at death for both male and female was 42, in the 1900’s the average age at death was 71 years, and now, at least in Washington, the average age at death is 84 years.

This was an interesting pattern to see over the years, and is something I might want to spend more time analyzing and looking over.

One of my favorite animals is a lion. In this blog post, I will relate the majestic lion to things we have learned in class. One of the first things we learned about was a niche. For a lion, their niche would be:

Resource Needed: Zebra

Ideal Conditions: Tall grass to stalk in, warm sun to sleep in

Interactions it Provides: Killing the Zebras

Product it Provides: Controlled Zebra population

Another thing we talked about was Ideal vs Actual Niche. An Ideal Niche is also called a Fundamental Niche, or where the animal could live using the lion example, a hot climate with grasslands is ideal for a lion, because they are at the top of the food chain, they are able to have the same Realized Niche as their Fundamental Niche. A Realized Niche is the Actual Niche, where the animal actually lives.

The last thing I’ll be talking about is Specialists vs Generalists. A lion is a specialist-they only eat meat, and stay in the area of the Savannah. In comparison, a vulture would be a generalist, as they scavenge all over for food, and will eat anything.

Timon and Pumbaa trying to wake Simba up

Vultures trying to eat Simba

Please watch my fun lion slideshow! It starts with Simba 🙂 Thanks for reading another post!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We watched The Martian in class, and there were a lot of examples of systems in them. For example, the team had a system in place in case of a storm. Another example is when Mark (the guy who gets left on Mars) figures out all he needs to build his farm and grow his crops. He realizes he needs fertilized soil, water and light to plant his potatoes. He knows these parts of a system have to work together in order to survive. Mark also modifies the system of the rover in order to have it match and work with his needs. Overall, this movie is filled with examples of systems, and its entertaining too.

This week in class we started reviewing for our Unit 1 test, which is on Thursday or Friday. In small groups we created little review games to help us as a class review for the test. A lot of groups chose to make Kahoots, which is great! But I think my groups game is the most helpful for me personally. We chose to do an environmental systems memory match. This was helpful for me because not only do the cards give you a definition, but a visual as well, which is really helpful to me, as I am more of a visual learner. This was the first class I have done this and its actually been successful! So that was a plus. I am also pretty proud of my study guide, and I think it helped me a lot with rewriting stuff to remember it better.

The End.

Over the years, humans have impacted the environment in both positive and negative ways. There are many examples for both, but two of the most prominent examples of human impact, is what Teddy Roosevelt did, and what the people around the Aral Sea did.

Teddy Roosevelt was a U.S president from 1901-1909. As president he made a large impact on the environment. He created protected areas of land, like national parks. One of his major campaign promises was to protect the species of the United States to make sure they would be around for the next generations. He was not only interested in protecting animals, but plants and forests as well.

The people around the Aral Sea is an example of people impacting the environment in a negative way. The people around the Aral Sea used it to water their crops. However, the Sea had no input, so when the people would use the water, there was no replenishing it, leading to it shrinking. This led to a decline in the organisms in the Sea, so as their environment was shrinking so was the population of all of them.

Humans impact the environment in negative and positive ways. We need to be more aware of how we are impacting our environment, otherwise the Earth will not be the beautiful, natural place we know it as for the next generations.

My favorite thing to do at night is to look out my window and stare at all the stars. The way they cover the sky reminds me of how small our world is. There are so many different things in my life that frustrate, confuse, enthrall and amaze me. But when I look at the stars, all of that goes away. It’s just me, the stars and the sounds of the night. It’s my relaxation, it’s calming and gives me a chance to calm myself (and my brain) down before I sleep. One of my goals before I go to college, is to go to Jasper National Park in Canada (the picture below)          to see the stars in their multitude. I don’t know where my fascination with stars comes from, but I feel lucky to live in a neighborhood where the artificial light doesn’t block out the stars. Thank you for reading.

Makenzie