Thursday, July 21, 2016

Weekly Homework:
           This week in the lab we started a new experiment on ocean acidification. We crushed oyster shells and put about one ounce in a salt-water vinegar solution, another in just a solution of saltwater, and the final ounce in a solution of seltzer water and vinegar. After about a month we will see how much the shells look like being in water with that level of acidity. This is to show how the ocean acidification affects shell-fishs' shells. We also continued washing samples and learned how to put the dry samples into bottles, so that others can study them. We also began to arrange the forams on slides, for me this was a bit of a time consuming. We put glue on the slides and using water we stuck them on there. I , of course, picked the smallest forams to arrange and it took me 45 minutes to arrange six of them on a slide. However, i enjoyed it. It was a good week overall.

The earth's climate has changed greatly over the course of millions of years. The Geology lab studies how small microfossils called foraminifera (forams) tell what the climate was like millions of years of ago. The lab studies how forams and their shells can tell us about the how the climate and the acidification was thousands and millions of years ago. By studying the shells and how much calcium carbonate are in the shells it tells them how Ocean acidification is caused by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere which causes the Ph levels in the ocean to drop. The acidification of oceans makes the shells of shellfish weaker and thinner, and by studying the amount of calcium carbonate in the shells of forams it can tell researchers what the climate was like millions of years ago.



   

1 comment:

  1. Read over this and do some general editing— some things are repeated that don’t need to be. Also instead of ‘them’ use the word ‘researchers.’ Nice job telling us about the forams and what you’re studying. Tell us why we need to know about Ocean Acidification and Climate— why does what happened centuries ago matter now?

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