Morgans blog

  What did you do in lab today? This week in lab we presented our projects to our class. My group presented over The Lifecycle of Stars. Other groups presentations consisted of Meteors, Meteorites, Craters, and Comets, Galaxies, and Black Holes. ​ What was the big question?  The big question for this week revolved around the presentations, as each group came with a set of multiple choice questions that allowed the listeners to think deeply about the content that was discussed.  ​ What did you learn in Thursday’s discussion?  I learned more about galaxies in Thursday's discussion which helped me understand them better. I learned that there are 2 trillion galaxies, that each galaxy has about 200 billion suns, and that a galaxy is just a collection of hundreds of billions of stars. Furthermore, I learned about Katie Bouman and how she is the person who took the only worthy picture of a black hole. Lastly, I learned more about the inner and outer planets, and that the in...

  What did you do in lab today? In lab this week we created our own model of the solar system, that was set to scale. We started by picking the size of our sun, which was 500 mm, then calculated the size of the rest of the 4 planets- Mercury (1.748 mm), Venus (4.349 mm), Earth (4.577 mm), Mars (2.428 mm) and the Moon (1.247 mm).  ​   What was the big question?  How big is the solar system?  ​ What did you learn in Thursday’s discussion?  In discussion this week I learned more about the origin of Earth and the universe. I learned that Earth was not created during the big bang, and that scientists believe that it was created by a former star that exploded- so Earth is made up of it's dust and debris. I also learned that the big bang was not actually an explosion but an expansion.  ​ Read the online textbook chapter:                                        ...

   What did you do in lab today?  This week we created our own experiment in lab. Each table was in charge of conducting their own experiment that showed the two phases of the moon. ​ What was the big question?  What are the phases of he Moon and why do they occur?  ​ What did you learn in Thursday’s discussion?  I learned more about the moon in this weeks discussion, specifically more about how the moon was created. We discussed different theories of how the moon was created- fission, co formation, colliding planetesimals, etc. We also discussed other facts about the moon, like how often the sun rises on the moon (once every 28 days), how the moon actually does have gravity, just a lot less, and how the moon is in the New Moon phase just before and after a solar eclipse.  ​ Read the online textbook chapter:                                          ...

  What did you do in lab today? No lab this week! ​ What was the big question?  How did the space race shape our understanding of space and technology?  ​ What did you learn in Thursday’s discussion?  I learned a lot more about the space race during discussion- I was unaware of this before Thursday. I specifically learned about how Russia and the USA were "racing" to send the first people to the moon. I knew that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men on the moon, but I learned who Alan Shepard was, and that he was the first American to go up to space. Though he did not orbit or land on the moon, being the first American in space was still a great accomplishment. I also learned that Russia nearly beat America to be the first country to have people land on the moon, however Russias space craft failed, and therefore Armstrong and Aldrin were the first men on the moon.  ​ Read the online textbook chapter:              ...