Apologia General Science, Module 8, Uniformitarianism and Catastrophism

trilobite fossil

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Try a Bite of Trilobite!
This was a very cute and fun activity.  =)
We were learning about what evolutionists and uniformitarianists (believe the earth is billions of years old) think of  as the geological column, and in the layers, there is this real critter called a trilobite.  [try-luh-bite].
Whew!  He looks like some ugly lobster-bug thing, doesn't he!



Well, usually foreign-sounding names like this tend to be forgotten later, so to help the kids remember what a trilobite was, we had to try a bite.  =)
We did this at the beginning of class and put them in the fridge for a bit so they'd harden back up in time to eat them.
We used Pepperidge Farm lemon cookies (closest thing I could find that resembled any type of bug), melted chocolate, and mini m&m's.
I laid down wax paper and wrote their initials w/ a sharpie so we'd know which cookies belonged to whom.

             They turned out so cute!  =)

The trilobite was thought to be extinct, which is the only way it could be part of the "fossil record."
The fossils in the geological column are called index fossils because they are used to figure out the ages of the layers of rocks.  Oh, and they use the rocks to tell the ages of the fossils... Circular reasoning!  (Not too smart, eh?)
Actually, after this science book was written, there were some living trilobites discovered, so they need to be thrown out of this contrived, so-called fossil record.  There actually is no "record" --  the index fossils in the geological column are organisms that all died in the Flood, and are not a record of time periods.  They do not "index" anything.

Then we learned about the so-called geological column.  I say so-called, because it doesn't actually exist in any one location on earth.  There are layers of the same type of strata that have different fossils in them, and they have been placed within the geological column as different layers representing different times.
Some of the same type of fossils are in more than one type of strata; and some of the same types of strata have more than one type of fossil.
And there are not many fossils that can even be conceivably accepted as a missing link.  Most of the so-called ones only have a few parts that are found.  The rest of the animal is fabricated.

Did you know that carbon dating was not done until AFTER the arrangement of the geological column?
If there were no geological column, scientists would not know what to expect in their results of carbon dating.  Carbon dating of anything over about 3,000 years old is highly inaccurate.  Tissue and bone from the same animal have been dated millions of years apart.  (Guess he was evolving? haha)  Usually several tests have to be done just to get the desired results that line up with this geological column!
Pity they won't believe the Bible.
God caused the Flood that fossilized many animals in layers of strata.
When there is moving water, sediment will be laid down in many layers, simultaneously! 
The fossils in the layers do not represent the "evolution" of higher and higher life-forms.

So, I wanted the kids to understand how uniformitarians construct the geological column, so that we could discuss a few of the problems here.
The layers of the Grand Canyon for instance, were supposedly laid down when the ocean had covered the land we now know as Arizona for a few million years, and sediment sank to the bottom.  Then the ocean receded from Arizona for some reason, and that layer of sediment hardened.  Then the ocean came back and laid down some more sediment, then receded, and the next layer hardened, and so on for billions of years.
Hmmmm...

Left: "master" column; Right: columns from 3 diff regions

I showed them three stacks of legos with a few colors missing in each.  This represented different areas of the earth where there are layers.
By the way, the missing layers are thought to have totally weathered away.  Um... that is so odd!  That layers only weather away entirely.  No remnant left at all.  Seems to me that could happen occasionally, but entire layers in places all over the world?
hmmm....
We discussed how one could figure out an order to these layers, then put together a master column.


The problem with this, is that in many places on the earth where the layers exist, there are many of the same types of layers in different positions.  The uniformitarians simply put those layers into the geological column several times.  They also ignore the fact that some of the same fossils appear in more than one layer.
On the other hand, a catastrophist believes there was a large-scale catastrophe, the Flood, that caused all this.


Then we used pictures.  I taped them up in 3 columns, and the kids drew a geological column on paper.  They drew the pictures or simply wrote the names of the pictures in the order of what one would think a geological column would look like.




I'm glad I also did this instead of just the legos.  Everyone did great with the legos, but with pictures, some got stuck.  I purposely used different images of starfish, leaves, trilobites, and mammals.  I didn't want it to be too easy.  After all, if one were actually looking at fossils, they would not all be exactly the same.












There are also paraconformities.  We learned in Module 6 that an unconformity is a surface of erosion between two layers of strata, distinctly showing that there are two layers.  We learned about angular conformities, nonconformities, and disconformities.
So what is a paraconformity?  It is actually imaginary.  Non-existent.  It is ONE layer that has fossils that, according to uniformitarianists, should be two different layers.
Oh my!  This poses a big problem!  So.... what do these uniformitarians do?  Why, they invent something called a paraconformity.  In other words, there must be a layer to divide these fossils; it's just that no one can see it.  They say it is invisible.
Hmmmmm....
(ha, I seem to be doing a lot of hmm-ing, eh?)

More stuff to think about:
• A fossilized fish giving birth has been found.  It doesn't take millions of years to give birth.  Fossilized animals have been found in the middle of taking in food.  Fossilization can happen quickly!  
• Fossil "graveyards" have animals from various climates in the same location, such as the Cumberland Bone Cave in Maryland.
• Mt. St. Helens showed that stratified rock can form in less than a day.  It did take longer to fully harden (which is why layers can be bent), but layers do not need millions of years to form.
• There are hardly any fossils that can even be thought to be an intermediate link (or missing link), and those that are, are made up from just a few bones that couldn't even tell you for sure what the animal really was.  You'd think over billions of years, there would be some of these "missing" links.  Just like the average life span is 70 or so, and anywhere you go, you can see people of all ages from 0 up to 90 or more!  They do say evolution happens slowly, but surely something would die now and then before totally evolving for millions of years... There are SO many fossils of un-evolved organisms.
Even Charles Darwin admitted that there was nothing connecting the distinct species by "intermediate varieties" and said this was probably the "gravest... of all the many objections" against his views.

"Geological research, though it has added numerous species to existing and extinct genera, and has made the intervals between some few groups less wide than they otherwise would have been, yet has done scarecly anything in breaking the distinction between species, by connecting them together my numerous, fine, intermediate varieties; and this not having been affected, is probably the gravest and most obvious of all the many objections with can be raised against my views."  (The Origin of Species, 6th ed, 1962, Collier Books, NY, p. 462)

He thought that in time, these "missing" links would be discovered.  But they have not.

At the last of class, we watched part of a video while the class ate their trilobites and the rest of the m&m's.  Oh, and I had some lemonade on hand.  Great with chocolate, right?  =D

sMiLeS,

Rebekah's 17th Birthday =)

The cake:  

1 chocolate cake mix, 3 York peppermint patties, half a bag of chocolate chips, 2 cans of creamy icing, and 2 boxes of chocolate covered cherries.

Very chocolatey!

The bakers and the birthday girl:

Abigail, Rebekah, Bethany

Siblings, Cousins, Friends:

sMiLeS,

Apologia General Science, Module 7, The Fossil Record

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Fossils, fossils, fossils!  There are many different kinds, and many of them do not contain actual matter from the original fossil!  Such is the case with cast fossils.

Casts and Molds
We used homemade playdough (directions) to make molds with the items the kids brought to class (use a little smear of vaseline to keep from sticking), then poured in plaster of Paris to make fossil casts.

The lego mold was a little warped, causing the fossil cast to be a little warped.  =)

The cast will always be the shape of the mold.  So if a clam gets buried by sediment, after the soft tissue decays and sediment settles and hardens around the clam shell, if the clam shell eventually weathers away and the mold is filled with more sediment, that is what kind of fossil cast a paleontologist might find one day.

(I do not like blank spaces!  So I am writing something to fill it in..... blah, blah, blah!)
LOL!




Petrifaction
We made a petrified log!  Kind of.  =)
Actually, a real petrified log comes from when mineral-laden water seeps through a log and hardens there, and as the log decays, the minerals stay, eventually totally replacing the log!  Minerals are what rocks are made of, so the result is a large, log-shaped rock!
If you were too scared to move, you might say you were turned to stone, or petrified!
We mixed Epsom salts with water and laid our paper towel "log" in the mixture and rolled it over so that all sides were wet. (directions)  We kept in in the sun for two weeks so that it would dry and harden from the minerals.  This is like a petrified log in that there are minerals in it, but unlike a petrified log in that the original materials (paper towel) remained.
Then we tried to burn it.
Petrified anything will not burn!
Just watch:

We also tried to get a Carbon Residue or Impression by placing a green leaf between two sheets of paper, and applying pressure.  I demonstrated in class by weighing a 2-gallon water cooler that we were going to place on the leaves.  It weighed 17 pounds!  Much more than the book required, so I figured we'd get a good result.  We placed the leaves between the sheets of paper, then placed those between two very flat boards and the water cooler on top.  We did not move it for 3 weeks, but still we only had a slight impression, and a very faint green color where the stem was.
Well, my niece and nephew had placed theirs under 2 large bags of concrete -- 160 pounds!  Theirs was the only good results.

Other kids only used a few books or other similar weight as called for, but there were no results.  Literally.
Their papers looked like... nothing.  =\
 I think I'll try this one again, and just leave it there a little longer.
(Similar directions to what we used - but they suggested a fall leaf.)

We also learned about Remains in Ice and Remains in Amber.
At the beginning of class, I showed the class a frozen chunk of ice in a bowl, and placed a rock on top of it and put it back in the freezer.  At the end of class, the rock had sank down in the ice a little and was frozen there.  This is one idea of how animals become entrapped in ice.  Um... idk if this is right, because large animals can take 5 days to totally freeze all the way through and their insides would be rotting by then.
If an animal were actually buried quickly by snow and ice, then it would freeze quickly, preserving much of its remains.

For the insects trapped in amber, I came across a neat idea of using orange jello with insects inside.
I just knew this would be a hit.  I heard ewwww! from several girls, even though I had washed the li'l buggies beforehand.  [innocent voice]  =D
The only insects I could find were bigger than I was expecting, so I used 2 packages of jello to cover the insects for 8 treats.  Some wanted to float up out of the jello, so I used forks on those, precariously perched, holding down antennae or legs, lol.  I did remove the forks before the jello got too firm.
I did see a few girls take a taste or two, but most was left uneaten.  lol.

This module was mostly about the fossil "record," so we did learn about fossils.
We also learned more about the uniformitarianists' view and the catastrophists' view of how the geography of the earth came to be the way it is.
But we also learned four very important features of the fossil "record."
1.  Fossils are usually found in sedimentary rock.  Sedimentary rock is washed and laid down by water.  (Does that tell you something about the Flood?)
2.  About 95% of the fossils found are clams and other hard-shelled creatures - not wooly mammoths or other large animals.
3.  Many of the fossils that are found are of plants and animals that are still alive today.  So... nothing changed from "billions" of years ago to today!  =)
4.  Different kinds of fossils can be found in two of the same kind of layers of stratified rock.  This shows that layers of the same kind of rock do not represent time periods of different fossils.

sMiLeS,

Awesome pics of the moon! =)

http://www.pixheaven.net/galerie_us.php?id=22

sMiLeS,

Apologia General Science, Module 6, Foundations of Geology

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In this module, we learned two more new words!  Uniformitarianism and catastrophism. (!!!)
C'mon, they're no harder than all the words I learned in Biology last year!  
When thinking of the word uniformitarianism, think of uniform - same.  This is the belief that if something is happening slowly today, such as erosion, it has always happened that way.  Uniformitarianists believe that the earth's geography was formed over billions of years.
Catastrophism comes from catastrophe.  This is the belief that most of earth's geography was formed by a large-scale catastrophe -- the Flood.  There are always local floods, some volcanoes, even tsunamis that cause large-scale damage, but nothing like the Flood caused.

We studied how water and wind erosion can affect geography.  I came across this site that had 12 Weathering/Erosion Stations, and we did several of those.

Experiment 6.2, Separation of Sedimentation
We added dirt, gravel, sand, and water to a jar.  They were to shake it up several times during the evening and let it sit overnight.  They had brought their own quart jars.
You can see the fine dirt at the top, followed by the sand and dirt, then sand and gravel.  You can't really see the gravel, but it's there.  =)

I like this picture. ↓
One of my students brought this in and let me keep it from one class to the next so I could get a picture after the blue chalk had settled.
(Thanks, Grace!)
← This is actually a 2-liter that has not been "blown up"!!!
I was amazed!  =)



Experiment 6.3 was about Physical Weathering: The Power of Plants
This experiment did not work, not even after a retry.  Boo.  =(
Readers, if you got yours to work, please tell me what you did!  If you have pictures, I'd love to see them!

We did the experiment as directed, mixing the plaster of Paris, and dropping the lima beans in, and knowing it was okay if they sank a little.  We covered them with folded, moist paper towels and sat them in the sun, keeping the paper towels wet.
Well, the beans did sprout all right.  Right out of the plaster!  Just popped right up.  There was no cracking of the plaster at all.  My experiment, plus the experiments of 5 families (one per family instead of one per kid) were all fails.
← We DID have one to sprout up from the side of the plaster.  A student brought it back and I took a picture.  Very thankful I was, too, since my retry failed also.  (Thanks, Courtney!)


She said she thought that one had sunk way down in the plaster when they dropped it in.  I should have popped the plaster out of the bowl to look at the bottom, but didn't.  =\  But still, there was no splitting of the plaster.  bleh.
Sigh.  I had already tried to redo it, carefully pushing my beans way into the plaster with the seed sprout thingy pointing down.  →
No go.  Fail.  >: (  (very grumpy!)  I am not trying again.


Experiment 6.4, Chemical Weathering
For these experiments I needed limestone and steel wool.  And vinegar.  I only needed 2 pieces of steel wool and just kind of tore/broke it into thirds.  I was given some samples of limestone which JohnDavid (my son) broke apart with a hammer.  I needed it to be the size that could fit in a pint jar.  (Again, they brought their own jars - 2 each family)
← We put the limestone in and covered it with vinegar and immediately saw the bubbles.  Lime in the limestone reacts with the acid in vinegar to make carbon dioxide and other chemicals.  This was to sit overnight.
The limestone started to break down, and eventually we could see the sediment.

The steel wool was placed in a separate jar with vinegar only covering half of it. →
We used jars instead of bowls so that the kids could put on a lid (or saran wrap w/ rubber bands) for the transport home.  Once home, they were to uncover them.
The steel wool was to be turned over a few times during the evening, making sure both sides were immersed in the weakly acidic vinegar.  This only needed to be covered halfway because it needed oxygen in order to work. (No lid)  Steel wool  is made mostly of iron, which tends to rust.  Many rocks have iron in them, and can erode from rusting.  Ours didn't rust in one day, but by day two, we saw rust.
Both of these chemical weathering experiments were to simulate how the acid in rainwater can erode things and make them rust.  There isn't a lot of acid in rainwater, so we used vinegar to speed up the process in order to see the results in only a day or two.

We talked about stalactites and stalagmites that grow in caverns from groundwater dripping down through the ceiling of the cavern.
We discussed the Flood a little, and about the different kinds of rocks that are in the layers of the Grand Canyon.
Igneous rock (formed from magma, or lava), sedimentary rock (made from sediments of igneous rock that have weathered and eroded), and metamorphic rock (made from either igneous or sedimentary rock that is under extreme pressure and heat, but not enough heat to melt back to lava).

We went over the different types of unconformities.  An unconformity is a surface of erosion that separates one layer of rock from another, as in the layers of rock found in the Grand Canyon and many other places.
There are nonconformities, disconformities, angular unconformities, and so-called (by evolutionists) paraconformities.
We also learned about intrusions - when magma/lava "intrudes," shooting through several layers of strata.  It looks like it has been inserted there.  If it is perpendicular to the strata, crossing several layers, the intrusion is called a dike.  Sills are intrusions that run parallel to the strata.

sMiLeS,

Where Have YOU Been???

"I have been to a lot of places, but I've never been in Cahoots. Apparently you can't go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.
I've also never been in Cognito, either. I hear no one recognizes you there.
I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport; you have to be driven there. I have made several trips, thanks to my friends and family.
I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump and I'm not much on physical activity."

sMiLeS,

Apologia General Science, Module 5, The History of Life: Archaeology, Geology, and Paleontology

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This module was so interesting!  I had never before heard of dendrochronology.  (hee hee!)
[den-droh-kruh-nol-uh-jee] Listen here.  
In short, dendrochronology is the study of tree rings, particularly in architecture, compared to other known "master tree rings" to figure out how old buildings or other structures are.  The tree rings can be overlapped and linked back as far as native Indian canoes!

Read this story to get an idea of how dendrochron-
ology can work.  Very amateurish, I know, but
remember, I'd never heard of dendrochronology
before!  (If not printable, let me know)


After we read the story, we used this worksheet, and the kids figured out which samples from the worksheet could corresponded with the items in the story,  according to their order.  Remember to start with the living tree sample as current, and date back from there.




So we looked at "tree cookies" - I had enough for each kid to have one if they wanted it - and of course my girls and their cousin named theirs.
(The skeleton from last year was Oscar, a crawdad we found was dubbed Sparky, they named their eggs (my favorite!), and they even named their spud people!)

So the tree cookies were christened:
Chip, Woody, and Chuck.  LOL!




The newer girls haven't gotten into naming items in their science experiments as much as my girls do, and they're a little more shy, not being used to our "group" so to speak.  (consists mostly of cousins who have known each other all their lives)
Although they did teach one girl how to rename all the scientists in Module 1 on their scientists worksheet.  Her mother wasn't sure what I'd think!    I told her it was totally fine.
Anaximander was just Amander; Anaximenes was x-meanie (hee hee!), and Leucippus became Lucy, lol.
They said it helped them remember their names better, and i'm sure it did!


We also learned how archaeologists use three tests to confirm accuracy of historical documents.
There was an entire section for each of these! Much more information than what I mention here.
►The internal test checks to see whether or not the document in question has any contradictions within itself.  We also discussed some Biblical accounts that are assumed to be contradictory, and how they aren't contradictions.
►The external test compares the document with outside sources - other historical facts - and compares to archaeological facts (like the existence of a city, etc.)  The Bible passes this test very well!
►The bibliographic test is the most important.  The document must contain direct eye-witness accounts, or second-hand accounts.  So these were usually recorded shortly after the actual event, and that is a good thing!
Since there are virtually no original documents from any truly ancient work of history (there are always copies of copies), the bibliographic test also asks how may different copies exist that were made by different people.  The more people who give the same account, the better.  This shows that it would be unlikely that the original was modified.

Of course, the Bible passes this test with ease!  =)
Isaiah 40:8; Matthew 24:35

sMiLeS,

My Dad's 70th Birthday

There aren't 70 candles, bc we didn't have that many, but I know it was somewhere in the forties.  haha!  =)

sMiLeS,

Apologia General Science, Module 4, Science, Applied Science, and Technology

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This module was not quite as fun for the kids because there was MATH!!!  =)
We already knew about the simple machines - lever, inclined plane, etc, but mainly we were learning what the advantage was for using these machines.
This advantage can be measured, and is called a Mechanical Advantage, or MA.
Mechanical advantage makes a job easier.

If the slope of two inclined planes are different, the Mechanical Advantage for each slope will be different.
This is easy to imagine, for if a wheelchair ramp is longer and less steep, it is easier to push the chair up the ramp.  This has a greater MA than a ramp that is shorter and more steep.
But with each advantage comes a "pay."  The pay for having a less steep slope is that you have to push farther.  Now this may seem like a no-brainer, and if one ramp had a height of 1.5 feet, and was only 3 feet long, and another ramp with a height of 1.5 feet was 10 feet long, you'd definitely say you'd rather have a longer ramp.
But suppose a ramp was 1.5 feet high, and was 40 feet long.  More MA is not always desirable if the advantage is not great enough to make the job significantly easier, or if the job wasn't hard to begin with.

Mechanical Advantage is measurable in numbers.
The formula for finding the MA for an inclined plane is MA = (length of the slope) ÷ (height).
So for a ramp that is 1.5 feet height and 10 feet long, you find the MA by dividing 10 ÷ 1.5 = 6.666...
The MA is 6.666...
The shorter ramp of 3 foot in length has a much smaller mechanical advantage.  3 ÷ 1.5 = 2.  Two is a very small mechanical advantage!    
Since a wedge is 2 inclined planes placed back to back, it uses the same formula as an inclined plane.

We learned the formula for each of the six simple machines. the lever, the wheel and axle, the pulley, the inclined plane, the wedge, and the screw.

A screw is a type of inclined plane -- it is just wound around.  To illustrate this, the kids took a piece of paper shaped like a right triangle, and highlighted the slope.  They wound it around a pencil to show that a screw is an inclined plane.
It would be hard to measure the length of the slope on a screw though, so there are extra steps involved in finding the MA of a screw, involving finding the circumference of the screwdriver or device that is turning the screw, then dividing that by the pitch (distance between threads).

The formula for pulleys was the easiest.  To find the MA for pulleys.... simply count the pulleys!  =)
(Unless you use only 1 pulley -- if you use only one pulley, you have no MA because you are simply reversing the direction of your pull.)
The more pulleys, the greater MA.
This means that using 6 pulleys is 3 times easier than using 2 pulleys!
To simulate how more pulleys can make things easier, we used a broom, a mop handle, and some rope.  Each time the rope wrapped around a handle, that simulated a pulley.  The kids first pulled with the rope wrapped around once, then three times.
They said it was much easier with more "pulleys."


The formula for the lever was the most complicated because there are three classes of levers.

MA = (distance from fulcrum to effort) ÷ (distance from fulcrum to resistance/load)
We used the term "fe-fr" to help us remember the order.
If you look at this image of the three classes of levers, you will see it can take a bit of brain work to think how to apply this formula to each of these different levers.

In a first class lever where the fulcrum is in the middle, we learned that the more distance between the fulcrum and the effort (where we placed on book), the easier it was to lift the load (resistance).  We illustrated this by placing a book on each end of a board, and using my pencil sharpener for the fulcrum (lol).  As we increased the number of books on the load end, we also increased the distance from the fulcrum to the effort (one book).  We illustrated that even though there were more and more books on the load end, the effort of one book was able to lift them all because of the increasing mechanical advantage by lengthening the distance between the fulcrum and the effort.  In other words, a longer lever.  =)

I had nothing ready to illustrate a wheel and axle, but I wish I had!  Something like bar weights on one end of the bar would have worked great.
I needed to impress upon the kids that turning the axle to make the wheel turn takes greater effort, but once it gets going, the wheel can turn fast.
►If you are turning the axle, the speed of the wheel is magnified.  You didn't turn the axle that fast, but it is magnified so that the wheel is turning faster.
This is like a 3rd class lever since a 3rd class lever is like a catapult.  
►When turning the wheel to make the axle move, the effort is magnified.  You didn't put forth that much effort, but it is magnified.  The axle turns easily.
This is similar to the first- and second-class levers.

sMiLeS,