Tomorrow the students will use these and other explanation examples to create a checklist of what a good explanation looks like. They will then go back to their original explanation and make improvements and add diagrams to assist understanding.
The students will be writing explanations throughout this Energy unit to show their understanding of different forms of energy and energy sources.
What is lightning?
Warm humid air rises and then cools. The air loses heat energy and water vapor condenses which makes clouds. Storms develop when the clouds cool enough that rain droplets form or ice crystals form. The clouds get so heavy that some of the moisture falls down as precipitation, rain, hail or snow.
Lightning is created by static electricity. Strong air currents inside storm clouds cause static electricity to build up as the air molecules rub up against each other. This difference in electrical charge can correct itself in a couple of ways.
Sometimes an arc of electricity can occur inside itself as the charge equalizes. This is called sheet lightning. The ground which is positively charged can also attract lightning strikes. A zig zag bolt of electricity called the leader stroke arcs from the cloud to the ground. The ground answers with a bright return stroke that continues up the the cloud. Electricity likes to take the easiest possible path so the lightening is jagged as it finds its way through the atmosphere. The whole thing is like when you rub your feet on the carpet and get shocked by touching a doorknob, but on a much larger scale.
Lightning can heat surrounding air to over 30,000 degrees celsius. The surrounding air rapidly expands and generates an immense shock wave that you hear as thunder. The speed of light is so fast, lightning can be seen almost instantly. However sound only travels about one kilometre(km) per every three seconds, so you hear thunder nine seconds after you see lightning.
The lightning is about 3 km’s away if you see and hear the thunder and lightning together. That means the storm is right on top of you and you should seek shelter. A bolt of lightning can be deadly so it is really important to be safe. If you can’t get indoors move to an open space and squat low on the ground. Being in a car is pretty safe because it has a metal exterior and conduct any lightning strike into the ground.
By Jed and Nikor
References
How do Cats keep clean?
What are cats? Cats are small mammals with soft fur, a short snout and retractile claws. They are related to African wildcats.
Cats like to stay clean and lick themselves with their barbed tongue to groom themselves. The cat’s tongue feels a bit like sandpaper. The rough barbs collect dirt and loose hair from the cat.
Anything the cat puts in its mouth will be caught on the tongue and swallowed. If a cat swallows something it shouldn’t it coughs up a fur ball to get rid of it.
Humans cannot groom themselves in this way. We do not have the same barbed tongue.
By Shelby and Boranay
How do birds build their nest?
Birds make nests. This is where they lay their eggs and hatch their young.
After breeding the male bird goes to get straw to build a nest. Finding the straw is easy but other males fight to also get the straw. Once they have the straw they return to the female and pass on the straw.
The female now puts the straw together. They need a lot of straw and start by forming small circle. They add weaving grasses, twigs and scavenged yard to add to the nest. They cushion the inside with feathers.
The birds make their nests high up in the trees because there are more predators lower down and the birds also need to learn how to fly.
By Sal
How to ride a bicycle?
A bicycle is a heavy vehicle. It has two wheels behind one another, handlebars, a saddle seat and pedals by which it is made to move.
To ride you need to
- Adjust your bike so that it fits properly.
- Make sure your seat is completely level.
- Your seat should be high enough that there is only a slight bend in your knee when your foot is on the pedals.
- Your handle bars should be on the same level as your seat.
- Make sure that your tyres are inflated to the proper pressure.
- Test the brakes to make sure they work.
- You will need to wear a helmet.
- Put reflective tape on your bike for safety
- If everything put your leg over one side of the frame.
- Lift one foot and push the pedal.
- As you start to move put your other foot on the other pedal and push down.
- Hold the handlebars and try to ride in a straight line.
- Keep pedaling until you want to stop.
References
By Panha & Lukas
How Do Bats Find Their Food?
Definition
Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Bats are not blind, but they don't have a good eye sight.
Description
Traditionally, bats are divided into two groups. Microbats mostly use echo-location and catch insects, but just a few eat fish or drink blood. Megabat do not echolocate, but instead only eat fruit or nectar.
Bats use their ears to help them to catch food. They eat fruits and some sucks bloods. Bats sleep during the day and hunt at night, when it is dark.
Process
Bats use to collect reflected sounds to track their targets. Bats then use the information gathered from the echoes to determine how near an object is, how big it is and which direction it's moving.
Application
But they have their ears to help them to catch food. They eat fruits and small bugs. They usually find food at night time, and use their senses to help them.
Websites
By: Kelly & Seo Yeon
HOW BEES MAKE HONEY?
Honey is something sweet and sticky. The color is yellow-ish brown and people eat it. Honey is made by bees; small striped creatures that also pollinates from flowers.
Honey is a flavour enhancer and also is remedies for a couple of things.
Bees suck a sugary juice out of flower called nectar and then they separate it into two types of sugar (glucose and fructose). some of the glucose are turn into acid and any bacteria in the honey is killed so that is why honey can last for years. The bees then move the watery honey from their tummy to a honeycomb on the hive. But the natural watery honey still have water so the bees get rid of the water by flapping wings. This creates air and makes the water dry to protect their honey. The bees put wax on their honey comb.
People use honey for medicines, shakes, to making things sweet, you could eat it with cereal, make soup or dessert, bread, pour it onto salad and make cake.
the website we used was http://miniyummers.com/how-do-bees-make-honey-for-kids/
Jayco and Lyka
How are caves formed ?
A cave is a hollow place in the ground,especially a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. Caves form naturally by the weathering of rock and often extended deep underground. Caves are usually ancient, deep, and rocky. Other caves are underwater and are very hard to find.
There are three ways to form a cave
Using rainwater, flowing lava, and sulfuric acid.
#1 Rainwater
Step one: Microbes eat the sulfate in oil from underground oil fields.
Step two: The microbes release a gas called hydrogen sulfide.
Step three: The hydrogen sulfide rises through cracks in the rock until it reaches an area with oxygen.
Step four: The hydrogen sulfide gas reacts chemically with the oxygen and forms sulfuric acid , or microorganisms “eat” the hydrogen sulfide, forming sulfuric acid as a product of this metabolism.
Step five: The sulfuric acid eats away at the limestone in a the cave wall.
Step six: A cave begins to form!
#2 Flowing lava
Step one: Rain seeps into the surface of the earth.
Step two: The gas, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), is released by dying vegetation in the soil.
Step three: absorbs the carbon dioxide ( CO 2 ).
Step four: A chemical reaction begins that makes the water into a weak carbonic acid .
Step five: The carbonic acid eats away at rock by dissolving the limestone.
Step six: A cave passage is formed.
#3 Sulfuric acid
Step four: A chemical reaction begins that makes the water into a weak carbonic acid .
Step five: The carbonic acid eats away at rock by dissolving the limestone.
Step six: A cave passage is formed.
#3 Sulfuric acid
Step One: A volcano erupts.
Step Two: Lava flows out across the land.
Step Three: The surface of the lava cools more quickly than the lava underneath, forming a solid surface, which will become the lava tube roof.
Step Four: The volcano stops erupting.
Step Five: The hot, molten lava drains from under the cooler solid surface lava.
Step Six: An empty tube (called a lava tube) is left behind.
Step Two: Lava flows out across the land.
Step Three: The surface of the lava cools more quickly than the lava underneath, forming a solid surface, which will become the lava tube roof.
Step Four: The volcano stops erupting.
Step Five: The hot, molten lava drains from under the cooler solid surface lava.
Step Six: An empty tube (called a lava tube) is left behind.
Caves are used all over the world. People use them as a water source.
Animals use them too. Some fish live in underwater caves.
Birds make them their home and live on them, hunting for fish.
Caves are an important part of the world.
By Teppi
Earthquakes
Earthquakes are the shaking, rolling or sudden shock of the earth’s surface. They are the Earth's natural means of releasing stress. More than a million earthquakes rattle the world each year. Earthquakes can be felt over large areas although they usually last less than one minute. Earthquakes cannot be predicted - although scientists are working on it!
There are about 20 plates along the surface of the earth that move continuously and slowly past each other. When the plates squeeze or stretch, huge rocks form at their edges and the rocks shift with great force, causing an earthquake.
Think of it this way: Imagine holding a pencil horizontally. If you were to apply a force to both ends of the pencil by pushing down on them, you would see the pencil bend. After enough force was applied, the pencil would break in the middle, releasing the stress you have put on it.
The Earth's crust acts in the same way. As the plates move they put forces on themselves and each other. When the force is large enough, the crust is forced to break. When the break occurs, the stress is released as energy which moves through the Earth in the form of waves, which we feel and call an earthquake.
Earthquakes happen when a plate scrapes, bumps, or drags along another plate. When does this happen? Constantly. About a half-million quakes rock the Earth every day. That's millions a year. People don't feel most of them because the quake is too small, too far below the surface, or deep in the sea. Some, however, are so powerful they can be felt thousands of miles away.
The process of an earthquake is
1. Two or three plates of the earth hit together
2. A small shaking starts
3. The shaking fastly grow in a matter of seconds
4. Shaking may start destroying buildings
5. People around the world may feel a small shaking
A powerful earthquake can cause landslides, tsunamis, flooding, and other catastrophic events. Most damage and deaths happen in populated areas. That's because the shaking can cause windows to break, structures to collapse, fire, and other dangers.
In Alaska in 1964, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake jarred the earth so strongly it caused fishing boats to sink in Louisiana. What causes the ground tremble like that? The answer is simple. The Earth's surface is on the move.
The largest recorded earthquake happened in Chile on May 22, 1960. It was a magnitude 9.5. The deadliest known earthquake happened in China in 1556. It killed about 830,000 people
In 1985, the jolt from an 8.1 magnitude earthquake in Michoacán, Mexico caused water to slosh out of a pool in Tucson, Arizona—1240 miles (2000 kilometers) away!
By Tommy
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