Week of December 15

This week I was out Monday and Tuesday so i really don't have much for those two days. After reading Kelly's blog I then found out Monday we had watched a movie on continental drift and Pangaea. This talk about Wegener's theory and explained it in detail from what have heard. On Wednesday when I came back we did a work sheet on the tectonic plates and the ways they react and move. Her are the definitions:

Transformation: rubbing of the plates in different directions

Convergent: plates are hitting each other either overlapping one or causing orogenisis*
orogenisis*: when mountains are formed

Divergent: the plates are pulling apart and magma is coming up out of the ground making new land

Friday we reviewed these terms. Because my group finished the reading om Wednesday we had no homework.

Week of December 14

In the beginning of the week Mr. Finley gave us an article on Alfred Wegener, which is pronounced Vegener. He asks us to summarize the article which we all did. The article was about Wegener and his theory of the continental drift. As he was reading a book he notice some organisms were the same but on different continents separated by huge oceans. He wondered how this was possible. After that he studied on and found some land forms matched up. For example: The Appalachian Mountains And the Scottish Highlands matched up identically. Wegener's theory now is known as Pangaea which is Greek for "all of the earth".Then we began to talk about the different rock types. There were three types: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Here are the following definitions:
Igneous: formed from lava, magma that cools and hardens.
EX: granite, basalt, obsidian
Sedimentary: forming from sediment that gets pressurized together.
EX: sandstone, mud stone, limestone
Metamorphic: formed from rock that undergoes both pressure and a temperature increase.
EX: marble, diamond, slate

After this we went out side to were our two tributaries met. There we found a lot of sedimentary rock and maybe even some metamorphic. There was a lot of deposition. Deposition is when rock is deposited on the sides of rivers. This is how some deltas are formed.

Week December 1st

This week we did some review and some new things. We started out with talking reviewing contour lines and the contour interval. Contour lines always go up the same distance no matter what the gap is between them is. the gap is there to show if the increase is steep or shallow. Then after we were finished with that we went on to talking about and defining watershed. Watershed is something that we've been trying to define since day 1 of this unit. A watershed is an area with the same drainage system, without watershed floods would occur. New Providence uses the Passaic River watershed. After we did that we moved onto making a map of North Jersey. It was in many pieces. Luckily, my group finished on the second day. Then we took a birds eye view picture of the map and uploaded it to the computer to be ready to be put on the smart board. Now when it is our turn to use the smart board we need to look for a geographical phenomenon. My group does not have a hypothesis on what it maybe yet, but we will make one on Monday.