I swear Vladdy is growing right before our eyes. I'm almost convinced that if I put him in front of a vertical measuring stick and waited an hour I could watch him get taller. He did not sleep through the night last night but, to be fair, it really wasn't his fault. The cats decided to wake him up by playing right in front of his kennel and the experience was irresistible for him.
School is going well. I'm doing surprisingly better in this math class, so far, than I did in the last one and I am really loving my geology class. I've learned so much from it! We've been learning about plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes which has really helped answer some of the questions that I had after the recent Japan quake. Every time they talk about plates moving together causing friction on the news I've wondered 'well if plates are moving together in Japan where are they moving apart?' As it turns out there are huge rift valleys all over the world, including Loch Ness in Scotland, where plates are moving apart creating big tears in the surface of the Earth that eventually fill up with sea water and, over time, many of those locations become fresh water. I have also learned that the nearby San Andreas is totally different from the type of plate movement that caused the Japan quake. In Japan the plates were moving against each other and one, the oceanic plate, is subducting below the other one, the continental plate. But at the San Andreas the plates are rubbing against each other as they move laterally in opposite directions and they're grinding against each other which is what causes most of the west coast quakes. Isn't that fascinating to think that, in addition to the rotation of the Earth, big chunks of it are moving around very slowly below the surface? I think that is amazing!
Today's Weight: Sure enough ... 238.5 lbs just as I predicted. Water weight!
Food:
8 glasses of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 Healthy Choice meal
3 chicken tacos
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Daily Caloric Intake: 737
Activity:
9 flights of stairs
Training: Working with Vladdy on leash homework that Tia gave us: 45 min (moderate effort).
Also worked with Piper on all of the tricks that she knows to keep her distracted while Snackers worked on "sit" with Vladdy: 10-15 min (extremely light effort).
Yeah, that is pretty kewl about the plates moving underneath us huh???
ReplyDeleteNow here's another one that fascinates me: the moon is constantly moving further away from the earth; every year it moves an inch or so away. It's supposed to take something like 500m years but eventually it will move so far away that it will cease to have any gravitational pull on earth; so, theoretically and eventually, no tides on earth.
At the same time, the moon's pull causes the tides and the since the tides vary (generally being elongated towards the moon on areas directly underneath the moon) this causes friction on the bottom of the ocean-floor. This friction is causing the earth's axial-rotation to slow down a tiny bit every day; so, over time, the days and nights are becoming longer and longer. If the moon never got further away from the earth then eventually we would cease to see day and night altogether.
But, since the moon *IS* distancing itself, it's pull on the oceans diminishes, making the tides diminish. As I sad, as the tides diminish, the earth's slowing-down diminishes. Eventually the moon will become so distant from earth that the tides will cease, and thus the lengthening of days will cease; the time it takes between sunrise and sunset will become fixed.
Like I said, this is supposed to take about 500m years; but, in that time, the friction from the tides will have caused the earth's rotation to slow enough that the day is going to be something equivelant to 30 of our days.
Thus, it will be like an Alaskan-day for 30 days; and then an Alaskan-night for 30 nights.
Crazy, huh???
Very, but the tides of the ocean are so important to so many different variables of Earth that if the tides cease it could have an extremely dramatic affect on a lot of other variables too. Which makes me wonder if mankind will be around for those kinds of days and nights. I also found it fascinating that the Japan earthquake actually tilted the Earth's axis by about 10 inches and moved the coastline of Japan an average of about 8 feet closer to the United States.
ReplyDeletewow interesting information, scary.
ReplyDelete