Our Solar System and More!

Do you know how our solar system came to be? Well, I didn't either until I learned of the Solar Nebula Theory. It sounds boring but bear with me; basically these suuuuper smart guys named Emanuel Swedenborg, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and Immanuel Kant theorized about how the sun and all of our solar system (including other solar systems, duh) came to existence. To simplify the Solar Nebula Theory, a small gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud occurred; then poof here we are. Just kidding, that gravitational collapse allowed materials from all over to come together and eventually that formed a star. From there on our solar system formed just like you learn in science class, which I’m totally not currently in. The gravity that came with our sun forming attracted asteroids, rocks, and basically all the remnants of the gravitational collapse that didn’t go into the sun. These remnants eventually formed planets. What we know is that there are two types of planets, terrestrial and Jovian. Stay with me here, it gets interesting when Jupiter comes into the mix. So, terrestrial planets are rocky and such, much like Earth, Mars, Mercury, etc… Jovian planets; however, are much larger, like, huge. Think of Jupiter, that’s the only one we care about, right? Well when Jupiter had formed, there were a ton of asteroids and rocks just floating around the sun and planets. Jupiter wasn't having all that. That planet basically said go away and went on a monstrous rampage and cleaned up the solar system; all that cleaning, and Jupiter being so nice to all of us, we are still here and we don’t have meteorites raining down on us all of the time.

Speaking of meteorites and gravity and all, Earth has gravity; in case you didn’t know.  An incredible scientist told us about this, his name is Isaac Newton. We don’t care about the apple and gravity thing, we aren't here for that. What we’re here for are his three laws of motion.

1. An object in motion will stay in motion (Inertia)

This law tells us that if you move something, it will keep moving. Well, I tried that and it didn't work. It didn't work because of an unbalanced force. Unbalanced forces allow for objects to stop moving, start moving, or keep an object stationary. This unbalanced force is friction. Friction occurs when two objects rub against each other, it essentially stops an object from moving. To sum it all up, with Newton’s first law, everything that moved would keep moving for eternity; but, that doesn't happen due to unbalanced forces (friction).

2. The force of an object is the same as its mass x acceleration F=ma

The genius’ second law is all about how much force an object has and how to calculate it. If there is a gigantic rock weighing 9,000kg hits your house accelerating at 30mph, chances are it has enough force to destroy your house. In order to figure out the force of this rock, multiply 9,000 by 30. Go ahead, do the math. Good job. Obviously you can reverse this F=ma if you have the force and mass but not acceleration, or vice versa for mass and acceleration.

3. For every action, there is an opposite reaction

Say you push on a wall with 50 lbs of pressure, that wall pushes back with the same force. If two people are on a rope, both hold on tightly, and they run away from each other. By the time the rope is at its fullest length they should have already realized that it wasn't a good idea. When the rope becomes stiff and cannot go any further out, it will snap both of the runners back a few feet. For that motion of the rope snapping into place, it snapped backwards. That’s an opposite reaction of the first reaction.

Unfortunately for you, we aren’t done yet. Since I know how much all of you love this blog, I’ve decided to go and research Kepler’s three laws (wow things come in threes a lot). I’ll make this quick and sweet for all of you dedicated readers, all two of you. To be short and sweet about it (don’t hold me to this, it won’t be either of these things), Kepler had three laws of planetary motion.

1. The Law of Ellipses

All of the paths of the planets are in an elliptical shape. An elliptical shape is basically an oval; but, hey, fancy science words make for an intelligent blog post. The planets move far away from the focus of the elliptical, in this case the sun, then get sucked back by the star’s gravitational pull. They then zoom by the sun and go far out again. The process repeats itself over and over and over and over and over again. It has happened more than over and over and over and over; one elliptical is a year. The Earth has traveled this path many times.

2. The Law of Equal Areas

This rule is a bit difficult to understand for the weaker minded of you two fabulous readers, but, I’ll do my best. If you somehow are able to see the Earth’s whole elliptical, then set a timer for 1 month and mark down where the Earth was at every 1 month interval. Draw a line from the sun to each marking of the Earth. Due to the elliptical pathway, there will be wider and narrower triangles throughout the markings. All of these triangles have the same area. The wider triangles are where the Earth moved much slower and the narrower triangles are where the Earth moved much faster, also, that is where the Earth was much farther away from the sun than when the triangles were wide.

3. The Law of Harmonies

As physicsclassroom.com states “The ratio of the squares of the periods of any two planets is equal to the ratio of the cubes of their average distances from the sun. “ This law helps us determine what period and how far away all planets are individually from the sun. The formula to determine all of this is T^2/R^3. To use this effectively, find the yearly period (how long it takes for a planet to make a full rotation around the sun) or a planet, in this case Earth, 1.00 yr, and the average distance the planet is from the sun in astronomical units, 1.00 au. plug this into the formula with the yearly rotation as T and the average distance as R (1.00^2/1.00^3). This is easiest because the T^2/R^3 comes out as 1.00. All information for other planets may be found online or in a planetary motion textbook.
See guys? Was that so bad? Oh, it was. If you didn't like it then HAHA! I've wasted your time! However, if you did like it, you’re amazing and I personally love you. Gosh don’t be so sensitive, I’m just fooling around. Whether you enjoyed it or not I appreciate you reading this.

Thanks for reading!
By Garrett Boyce
P.S. I apologize for the white background of most of this last paragraph. I do not know how to adjust it to the normal background of common text.

Heat Transfer is Inevitable

So lately we’ve been busy. In class we are studying about energy transfer and how it occurs; we even had a field trip dedicated to insulation and where cold air enters a house. For the trip, we went to the Otterbrook house out in Peterborough. We looked outside, inside, upstairs, and downstairs; all to see where heat was being lost. Most of the heat loss was due to convection in small holes in the floors, walls, and ceilings. Previously posted was a video of a piece of tissue paper that was taped to a support beam in the ceiling. You can the paper moving like there was wind blowing. This is actually caused by convection heat loss in the beam. The paper was taped in front of a crack in the beam that was allowing heat to escape. We also took photos of certain things around the house to give you an idea of what it was like. Ted Styles, an energy audit, came into our class to talk to us about conduction and convection heat loss in houses and how he helps people save thousands of dollars a year.

We also did a multi-day lab/construction project where we tried to make the best thermos for a water bottle. We had the make it with a 5 in diameter and a 10 in height. The key was to choose the right insulation with the highest R value so that you could make a usable design that was practical and kept the water at the same temperature for 30 min. Overall this unit was very interesting and we learned a lot of useful information that could maybe help us save some money in the future when we live in our own homes.

Visible Air Leaking from Support Beams

Pictures From the Otterbrook House

Above is an outdoor view of a window that was releasing heat because of the surrounding cracks.

Shown above is a hole in the siding up by the roof releasing heat.

This is a blower door that seals the door and blows air outside. If you go around the house and put your hand against the cracks while this is on, you can feel air flowing through. Ted Styles uses this tool when he goes into houses and searches for heat loss causes.

Land on Earth is Alive and Moving

By Noah Bell

Scientists discovered that the continents that make up the land on earth, were once all conjoined in one land mass called Pangaea. This would only mean one thing; the continents had to have moved away to become the land we know today. The Earth’s crust is made up of different plates that “float” on the mantle. There are three different kinds of boundaries where these plates meet; divergent boundary, transform boundary, and convergent boundary. Divergent boundaries are when two plates are moving away from each other. This allows magma to flow up in between the two plates, forming new crust. Transform boundaries are where two plates are moving two different ways and grinding against each other. This creates vibrations, or as we know them, earthquakes. Convergent boundaries are where two plates are moving towards each other and smash together. This could either cause mountains to form or one of the plates could submerge under the other and be recycled. When a plate is recycled, it creates less dense magma that floats up to the crust and is released through volcanoes.

Recently, Scientist are discovering that a section of a plate has actually been missing. The Isabella anomaly is a section of the Farallon plate that has submerged underneath the North American plate. Usually when plates submerge under one another, they are recycled and transformed into new magma. This is an unusual case where the Isabella anomaly submerged user the North American plate, but was not destroyed. Instead it was pinned against the underside of the North American plate. This is supporting evidence that we do not know everything about plate tectonics and are learning more every day. 

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The History of Our Planet

By Noah Bell

            Our planet Earth has been somewhat alive for around 4.6 billion years. During the first periods of its life, there was no life on earth. The first forms of life started about 3.8 billion years ago with cyanobacteria. Life began to become more diverse and adaptable after what we call the Cambrian explosion; 544 million years ago. Humans have only been around for about 4 million years ago. If you look at this time frame against how long ago earth was created, you could see that humans have not been around very long. Cyanobacteria was the first living organism and is still around today. It is hard to imagine how long they have actually been on earth for. Scientist estimate that earth will be able to sustain life for about 1.75 to 2 billion more years. This will not affect us today, but will greatly impact our future generations.

Are We Responsible for Helping Those Being Most Effected by Global Warming?

By Noah Bell and Garrett Boyce

America is not responsible to help anyone who is being effected by global warming, unless they are American territory. We do not believe we should help other countries being effected by the pollution of the Earth’s atmosphere. If we helped only a couple of countries, more and more countries would expect help from us. The United States can’t afford to help the world with pollution issues. We believe that we need to focus on helping our own citizens first and then possible look at helping other countries. If we can solve our own issues in our country and we still have the resources to help other victims of global warming. But until we figure out a liable way to help the US, we can’t worry about helping other countries.