Lab Day! Fossils

Geologic Time Scale:
This week I will be taking the time to re-look over the Geologic Time Scale and hope to remember it.  I do not have the time scale fully memorized yet, but this week I plan to look over it and take time to memorize it.  I plan to learn the song from the youtube videos and or attempt to create a mnemonic device to remember it. 

Fossils:
Fossils are composed of animal remains.  They allow us to find old creatures, plants, and tell us about time and what may have happened many years ago. There are also many different types of fossils like: amber, trace fossils, and petrified food.  Fossils are incredible.  Amber is tree sap that is fossilized that can contain particles of insects. Trace fossils are impressions or imprints from animals, or plants.

Here is what I learned from Google and in class:
We can tell the age of fossils through radiometric dating.

Another types of fossils are compressed leaf imprinting, trilobites, molds and casts, carbonization, petrified animals and wood, and whole animals caught in the action.

Fossil Lab 2-27-13

Earlier this week my class made fossils by using plaster and sand.  The easiest fossil to get out was the 25 mL of plaster and 50 mL of sand mixture.  The next one to be the easiest was made of 50 mL plaster and 50 mL of sand.  The hardest fossil mixture to release contained 100 mL of plaster and 26 mL of sand.  Over all the first and easiest fossil mixture left the best impression.

Time

Two years ago, I learned about geologic time at Finlandia University by professor Barb Mctaggart.  She was a phenomenal teacher and gave us time to remember and learn the scale.  Since then I have not had any opportunities, time, or classes that needed me to use the information I once learned.  Because of that I no longer remember as well how the time periods go for geologic time, but from the music videos about geologic time I find it will not be hard to remember them again.  If there is one thing I did learn and remember is that the Precambrian period was the first block of the scale.  Also I recall the words, "Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic".  I am excited to relearn about the time scale and what happened in those periods.

 

Geologic Time

Over the snow day I was given some videos to watch for my blog.  At first I was disappointed thinking, "Oh man! Homework."  Then I clicked on the videos and I was blown away by what I was told to watch.  How could I be disappointed about learning about the Earth?  I am highly upset by myself.

I am torn between to music videos about Geologic time.  One video was to the tune, "We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel, a classic! I was nerding out once I started to watch each video because I knew what they were referencing to, and because it was about geologic time.  The second video was called "Ages of Rock".  I think both videos are a great way to learn the time periods and neat facts about what happened during those times.  I will be listening to these over again to help me memorize these.  Until then, I will be jamming to "We Didn't Start The Fire" while studying for my lab quiz tomorrow.

If I Had A Hundred Dollars

If our solar system was divided up into one hundred dollars between the:

• Sun-10 dollars    Correct Answer: $99.85 
• Earth-10 dollars  Correct Answer: .0003 cents
• Mercury-10 dollars Correct Answer: .00002 cents
• Venus-10 dollars Correct Answer: .0003 cents (Spins opposite of the Earth)
• Mars-10 dollars Correct Answer: .00004 cents (Half the size of Earth)
• Jupiter-10 dollars Correct Answer: 10.6 cents  (Biggest planet)
• Saturn-10 dollars Correct Answer: 3.2 cents (Second biggest planet)
• Uranus-10 dollars Correct Answer: .005 cents (Tilted at 90 degrees, causing bizarre weather)
• Neptune-10 dollars Correct Answer: .006 cents
• Satellites- 5 dollars Correct Answer: Depends (Almost nothing)
• Minor Elements (Comets, asteroids, Trans Neptunium Object's, Meteoroid Belts, Orc Cloud...etc)-5 dollars Correct Answer:  (Almost nothing)