Month: November 2016

Fitting and timely with our Dive Into Five LC theme this year,  NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, have recently teamed up to introduce exciting educational videos about our ocean.   Inspired by the tidal connection of our Earth’s ocean and the moon, every full moon, NOAA Ocean Today releases a new episode.  The video series began with our October full moon releasing a 6 part episode on Ocean Exploration and Bioluminescence.  Only two episodes (October & November full moons) are available so far.  Series are designed around a different ocean theme each month.  The videos are short and very well done as many of them were originally designed for kiosks for the ocean hall of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.   We were able to enjoy just some of the short videos released on the October full moon about bioluminescence as we studied exothermic chemical reactions.  Please try to watch them all!
Ocean Today Every Full Moon

The November 14th Supermoon brought the release of Ocean Today’s second and most recent episode, an excellent 7 part series on Marine Debris. We were first introduced to this topic last year when our classmate, Rafa, developed a power point presentation that he shared with the LC on the problem of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  His presentation introduced us to a young man, Boyan Slat, determined to solve the problem of this marine debris.  Here is the link to Boyan’s 2013 TedX talk that we watched last school year..
Boyan Slat on TedX

 Below at the link to Boyan’s website, interested students should be pleased to see that since 2013 Boyan has had great progress on his plan to clean up the ocean plastics.  I encourage you to click around the website…. Careers??
The Ocean Clean Up – CEO Boyan Slat

The next two NOAA Ocean Today series will release on December 13th, with the last supermoon of 2016, and on January 12th, the first full moon of 2017.    I hope to share some bit of the January series on Ocean Acidification as a follow-up to our recent Chemistry unit learning about acids and bases.  Mark your full moon calendar to catch up with the release of these new episodes!   I hope a second season is in the works 🙂

 

Just want to make sure our LC5 scientists and their families enjoy what the natural world is serving up this weekend!   Starting tomorrow night you will not want to miss the opportunity to view Earth’s natural satellite.  I know some of you have some spectacular telescopes that should come in handy but the rest of us will be treated as well to a fantastic view of a supermoon as the weather forecast appears to be clear.  A supermoon is when the moon is both full and at perigee (an orbital position closest to Earth).  The official perigee point in time will be Monday morning at 6:52am right before moonset in the west.  If you are up early Monday morning for work or school look west for a special site.

This is a great explanation from NASA on the science behind the occurence we have the opportunity to enjoy :))     NASA Rocks Supermoon Explanation!

Maria…. we are counting on you!