extra credit picture #2 - august 29, 2013.

 

these are pictures of the caterpillars my mother is raising. i find this so amazing that we have the ability to bring the monarchs back by raising them ourselves! they should be starting their transformation in the next week and grow twice their size in a DAY! it just fascinating.

current event #2 - august 29, 2013.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130829-glacier-canyon-greenland-ice-global-warming-environment/

this current event is about how there are canyons and crater under the ice sheets.

"...according to a study released today in the journal Science. Unlike the ice sheet covering Antarctica that sits atop numerous lakes, the Greenland Ice Sheet blankets a giant subglacial canyon nearly twice as long as the Grand Canyon located in Arizona. (Read: "Changing Greenland" in National Geographic magazine.)"

Jonathan Bamber, the lead author of the study believes that the canyon predates the ice sheet at least four million years. Before the land was completely iced over there was a bedrock canyon.

extra credit picture #1 - august 22, 2013.

this picture was taken by me when I was coming home from US Space and Engineering Camp. I thought the clouds looked so beautiful when you view them from an airplane window at the right place and time.

current event #1 - august 22, 2013.

the current event that I chose was about the southern right whales & how and why they haven't been able to come and nurse their claves in the recent years.

"However, in recent years these remote beaches have also been filled with dead whale calves. In 2008 alone, almost one hundred whales, 89 of them calves, died at Península Valdés and in surrounding areas. 2012 was a record-breaking season, with 116 whale deaths, 113 of them calves."

the scientist are having issues figuring out why they are dying off but have come up with either toxic areas or disease based upon tissue samples.

http://www.macroevolution.net/southern-right-whales.html#.Uhafv_XD-M8

blog post #1 - august 22, 2013.

a.)

my name is gabri mays & i'm 16 years old. i'm from atlanta, & i have a mom, dad, and little sister who's almost 13. all that jazz. we live comfortably.

 

be able to live comfortably, has made me aware about the problems on our planet. we recycle and compost in our house, we use energy efficient light bulbs and we are very conservative of our water. 

when i turned 15 my family took a weekend trip to st. louis, missouri for my mom's 20 year college class reunion. my dad is originally from there & we visit annually by car, but this time we took a plane because its faster and no one wanted to hear my dad complain the whole 8 hours because he had to drive. my mom went to washington university in saint louis so she was a very proud alumni & was so excited to go back.

 

on one of the free days we had we went to the saint louis earth day celebration in forest park, the biggest park ever. lol. but my parent surprised me by taking me here because i've heard things about this celebration from family and the internet, & i was so happy to be apart of this function. i heard people speak, i got gift bags, we entered in many competitions. it was amazing. i felt like i was actually apart of something bigger than me. i felt like there were people around me who actually wanted to change the ways that we as a nation & as a world have. 

needless to say, i believe that anything is possible and i'm a firm believer of optimism. people can change, but we just have to get used to the IDEA of change, and that's where we have a problem. 

 

b.)

5 things in my home that impact the environment are:

 

electronics: in my home we have 5 televisions, 4 computers, every member in my home has an iphone, & various electronics. if we continue to use these things the way we do then that could really be harmful to our environment. mainly because of the way we dispose of them.

water use: in my family we love to work out and do things outside that require cleaning ourselves. lol. we need to control the use of our water. because I am one who loves a 30 minute steam shower which is heavenly, but totally unpractical.

 

car use: my mom, dad, & I all drive. we have expensive cars that require the "93" gas. if we all didn't drive every day we could try to control the exhaust.

 

paper: we use heaping amounts of paper towels and toilet tissue for the most obscure reasons.

 

electricity: we don't turn off every single appliance in my home & if we did then we could save energy.

 

c.)

in my house I chose a stir fry seasoning packet. the ingredients are as follows:

 

- powdered soy sauce

- sugar modified corn starch

- hydrolyzed corn gluten

- spices

- maltodextrin

- garlic powder

- natural flavor

- caramel color

 

these ingreidients don't seem very harmful but the things I was concerned about were the things like "hydrolyzed corn gluten" & "maltodextrin".