SCIENCE NETWORK NEWS Vol. 3, #4, December, 1990, Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation (CIRCE), College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1310 S. 6th, Champaign, IL 61S20

Science News Hash: Gigantic New Storm on Saturn

Troubled Hubble Space Telescope photographed white clouds of huge new Saturn storm on November 9 & 11. Amateur astronomers saw the storm first in late September.

NASA released the photo shown here on November 2/). Science, the weekly magazine of the American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, reported it on November 30. The small picture was taken by the Hubble Telescope in August.

Science said that additional photos, taken every Hubble orbit (85 minutes), November 16-18, are still being processed to remove the blur due to the Hubble Telescope's faulty lens. As Saturn is now lost in the glare of the Sun, NASA changed Hubble's schedule, fearing the storm might be gone when Saturn reappears.

The last such storm on Saturn appeared in 1933 and lasted only a few years. The only storm seen before that was in 1870. Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a brick-colored hurricane, has been raging for centuries--at least since the telescope was invented.

RAIN & WORMS & WHEN DO YOU TELL CHILDREN THE ANSWERS?

Jack Easley and I (M.O.) visited Judy Sohn's second grade classroom at Bottenfield School to work on problems concerning the weather. The day was interesting, raining on and off, humid, windy and far too warm (70 degrees) for November in Champaign, Illinois. Jack had designed three "shoeboxes" for studying the weather which Judy's students used in stations. At one station, children made cloud-like bubbles in liquid detergent bottles filled with cooking oil and water (half and half) and 2 drops of food coloring. Shaking the contents created the neatest bubbles, like clouds floating in the less dense layer.

The second station was the window, where students looked at the thick stratus clouds and then returned to their desks to draw what they imagined it might look like on top of the clouds. At the third station, Jack helped the children to make a cloud in a gallon jug using a pump.

Ten strokes of the ball pump made a nice cloud in the moist, smoky air of the bottle when the stopper was released. More strokes could be dangerous, Jack warned.

I supervised small groups of children outside to do weather observations.

My first group of six students gathered their weather journals, coats and pencils and accompanied me outside on the blacktop. Immediately, the wind began to blow their journals and tangle their hair. "What do you see?" I asked. "Tell me all the things you observe." The replies were instantaneous -- It’s very windy. The clouds are moving so fast...I asked the students to try to find out what direction the wind was blowing from. One replied that they had looked at weather vanes with Mrs. Sohn. I suggested that they stretch their hands out to the sides and become human weather vanes. We faced in each direction and decided that the wind was coming from between the south and east..."What shall we write?" I asked. One student shouted in the wind, "Southeast". The students scurried to the wall and started to write in their journals--questions of spelling arose. How do you spell wind ?

Can we just put a SE for southeast? Will Mrs. Sohn be mad because our writing is so messy? It was difficult to write against the wall in this wind!

One boy was looking for a special word--He said that the wind was blowing hard and then slowing down and blowing really hard. He wanted a word for this phenomenon. I said that sometimes we speak of gusts of wind. He carefully wrote, "The wind is moving in gusts."

We moved back to the blacktop intending to see if the wind was stronger away from the shelter of the building when two children shrieked, "Look at all the worms!" Indeed there were hundreds of worms wiggling all over the blacktop. We saw tiny baby worms and fat, slimy worms. We circled around the longest one we could find and watched it move. I asked the children to describe the movement. They said that the worm retched and then scrunched up again men stretched. One said that the worm crawls. I suggested that we turn the worm over to check for legs. Finding none, several children remarked that the underside of the worm was a much lighter color than the top. Another child found another long worm. He volunteered to carry it over next to "our" worm so we could compare which was the longest.

I asked, "Why are there so many worms out today? Do you usually see worms in the winter?" Most students id that they never saw worms in the inter, although one said that his brother and he sometimes found them under big rocks. One girl said that the worms were out because they loved the rain. Others echoed her theory.--They are on the blacktop because they really like the puddles. Others also mentioned that the day was very warm and maybe the worms were out because of this.

We decided that we should find out how many worms were actually on the blacktop, so we started at one end and held hands to space ourselves evenly across the play area. Each child was to count only the worms in his or her path. We started to walk, I found myself doing the same thing as the children, pointing at each worm and counting out loud. The totals were amazing. Students found from 24-60 worms in their path (one boy remarked quietly that the girl who found 60 worms was probably counting the little twigs too.) We saw Mrs. Sohn bringing us a new group of students, so we decided to record our worm totals in one boy's journal. Later, we listed the totals on the blackboard. Mrs. Sohn wanted to know what the column of numbers were--"Worms," replied one boy as though she should have known better.

Judy looked a little perplexed and then smiled, "Maybe we can use our tiles to add up all of these big numbers later." I took another group outside and we repeated the activity and counted the worms, adding our list of numbers in a new column.

Later, Judy Sohn set time aside for questions and answers. The students had prepared some really difficult questions (see below). Of course, some questions dealt with worms.

I sat back and listened to Jack's answers. Often he told the children that he didn't know the answer, but he would look it up and send it to them. When it came to questions about the worms, Jack turned the question back to the children. He asked, "Why do you think there were so many worms today?" They repeated their theory about the warm weather and that worms liked to be out in the rain. Jack repeated their theory but did not offer any of his own.
1 sat back and wondered when Jack was going to tell the children about the ground being saturated by water and the worms having to escape drowning? When was he going to give them the RIGHT answer?
I realized that being with the children again brought out the "teacher" in me. Teachers, we all know, always have an obligation to give all the right answers to their students. Later that week, at the DIME meeting, teachers talked about the value of allowing children to predict, observe, explain and measure. If we give them the right answer, it makes the process futile for children. Why waste so much time if you are only told you are wrong in the end?
David Brown, science methods course instructor at the U of I, reported he has a terrible time convincing his undergraduate teaching candidates to allow children to make mistakes. He says that it is probably the most difficult task he faces in teaching--his students are obsessed with giving the RIGHT answer.

David provided us with a fine metaphor for teaching. Several teachers were talking about how they often felt guilty when students were very involved in learning on their own. Somehow, sitting back and watching seems not to be "teaching." David replied, "Good teaching is like building a fire in the fireplace. You are quite busy in the beginning gathering logs and twigs and arranging everything just right so the fire will burn properly, but once you light the match, the productive part of fire making begins, and you only need to tend it, adding a log now and then."

QUESTIONS FROM SECOND GRADERS

Judy Sohn's second grade students asked very complicated questions. Bryan Thompson, a student in Judy's class was worried that Jack might have trouble answering such tough questions! He wrote:
It was fun working with you. ~ hope you fide (find) out the questions. I hope there (sic) not too hard for you. Thank you for coming here today. Have a merry Christmas!
-Your friend, Brian

Well, Brian, we'll give your classmates' questions a try:

Perhaps our readers would like to help us clarify the answers to these second grader's questions. Comments and criticisms would be appreciated.

Q1. What makes earthquakes?

A1. One student said that the earth was covered with plates that moved, and that when the plates went over or under each other, it made an earth quake. This may sound so fantastic, we should try to consider what evidence there is for this idea. One measurement that interests me is that, for the last ten years, they have been using satellites in orbit around the earth to measure the distance across the Atlantic Ocean. It's not the edge of the water they were measuring, but the distance between two radio markers on the earth, one near New York City and one near London, England. They found that every year those two radio markers get about one inch further apart. If you look at a globe or a map showing the Atlantic Ocean, you can see that the sides might have once fitted together like pieces of a puzzle.

Q2. How do you know when you are in an earthquake?

A2. People who have been in an earthquake, as I have, agree that it is very unpleasant when the floor or ground starts shaking, the dishes on the shelves start rattling, anything hanging starts swinging, and you don't know how bad it is going to get. You want to get under something to protect you if the roof falls in, just as you practice doing for tornadoes.

People living near the Atlantic Ocean don't have as many earthquakes as the edge of the Pacific Ocean does. Most of you probably saw some pictures on television of the earthquake last year near San Francisco. Perhaps you can see why there are so many more earthquakes around the Pacific Ocean. If the Atlantic Ocean is getting wider, the Pacific Ocean must be getting smaller. That seems to mean that the floor of the Pacific Ocean- is getting pushed underneath the land at the edges. It seems to be correct, as one student said, that when one plate goes under another, it makes earthquakes. Actually, any movement of one plate against another can make an earthquake, and we have had a few really big ones here in the middle of the U.S., and we may have another big one in the next century in the New Madrid fault that runs near Memphis, Tennessee.

How can you predict an earthquake? Many scientists are trying to predict earthquakes by studying the faults. So far, they haven't predicted very many They notice that in a hundred years, the plates may move several times, several feet each time. Try pushing your foot forward on the floor. If you push hard enough, your foot will slip forward, but it is hard to know exactly when it is going to slip. Sometimes on slippery floors or ice, our foot slips when we don't expect it to slip, and we fall. I try to walk so I am always ready for my foot to slip, sort of like ice skating. That way, I can catch myself and not break my leg falling down. Prediction of anything slipping is hard.

Q3. How did the earth begin?

A3. I recommend viewing the scene on the formation of the earth from Miracle Planet, I saw on Public Television.
In order to help answer your question, I'd like to try some backwards calculations. The Atlantic Ocean is flout 3,000 miles wide. (My atlas says it's 3,005 miles from New York to London, but to make the calculations easier, I threw away the extra five miles.) There are about 5,000 feet in a mile. (My dictionary says a mile is 5, 280 feet, but I threw away the 280 feet, to make it easy to multiply.) 3,000 X 5,000 = 15,000,000 feet. (Remember this is a little less than the distance across the Atlantic Ocean.) I want to find out how many inches there are across the Atlantic Ocean. Do you know why I want to find that out? (Rulers show there are 12 inches in each foot. I could make the arithmetic easier if I threw away the 2 and just multiplied by ten. That means add a zero.) 1 get 150,000,000 inches. (This too is less than the distance across the Atlantic Ocean.)

That might mean that 150,000,000 years ago, the place where New York is, and the place where London is, would have been pretty close together. However, if we look at the globe, we see that there is something a little bit wrong. New York is not where London fits if we put the pieces of "the puzzle" together. Southern England fits near Newfoundland. Newfoundland is not as far from London today as New York, so maybe our 150,000,000 years result is not too small, as we thought, but too large. Why don't we round it off again and say that 100,000,000 years ago the mighty Atlantic Ocean might have been just a narrow sea marking a major fault in the Earth's crust? That number, 100,000,000 years, then represents one big change in the earth, the formation of the Atlantic Ocean. Ten big movements like that, whatever they might have been would be 1,000,000,000 years. Do you know how to say that number?

I think the Earth is surely older than a billion years. But maybe a billion years ago, the earth was a bit smaller. For we have meteors, mostly little bits of rock hitting the earth's atmosphere and breaking up into tiny dust or powder in the air, which collects on our furniture if we don't wipe it off. At times, bigger meteorites come in and some gigantic meteorites have landed in the past, for we can still see traces of the craters they made. If we knew how much material comes in every year on the average, we could figure out how long it took to grow the whole earth from just one rock out there in space. Of course, there may have been more rocks and dust when the earth began than there are now, because the earth has been going around the sun for a lot of years, and must have cleaned out most of the bigger pieces. If you were cleaning the top of your furniture by moving a small round sponge slowly around in a sort of circular way, you would get a lot of dust quickly, and then there wouldn't be much to pick up later on in that circle except for new dust wherever it came from.

That is a theory of how the earth was formed, and is still being formed. There may be other theories that scientists are investigating. Also, many people who are not scientists have their own theories about the earth. Do you?

Q4. What makes a hurricane? How come the weather changes? Is it because the world turns around the sun?

A4. Some people still believe the earth is just a big flat land that stretches forever in all directions. Since a pancake is round, some thinly the earth is round like a pancake and surrounded by water, like an island. That would explain for them the meaning of sailing around the earth, which some explorers did. Some children in second grade draw a special round earth in the sky above the flat earth at the bottom of their pictures. This round earth, in their theory is a pretty blue and white planet that astronauts go up and take pictures of. Others bane thought that the earth is a hollow ball, and we live on the flat bottom of the inside, like at the bottom of a pumpkin. The lid of the "pumpkin" is off so we can see the stars, sun, and moon, and astronauts can fly into the outer space. I believe that everyone should make their own theories, but they should also try to find out what has been found out by astronomers, astronauts, and other scientists.

One thing everyone needs to do is to think big. Think of a circle so large that each little piece of it seems straight. Can you do that? If I draw a big circle on my home computer, there are a lot of little straight pieces you can see. But I have a way to draw circles on my office computer where you can't see little pieces. I'll show you one of each kind of circle. Which one do you think is more like a slice of the Earth?

The way you ask and answer questions about the earth or the weather in its atmosphere depends on what you believe the earth is like.

The way scientists think about it, the earth is a big ball, 8,000 miles across, that spins around once a day, from the point of view of the sun. That's why we have night and day in most parts of the earth, and why they are having night in China when we are having day. The sun seems to rise every morning and set every evening, but it is easiest to explain that by imagining that the sun is still and the earth is spinning like a top, but only once a day.

Air tends to rise when heated at the equator, until it can't go up any more and then it spreads out. When air goes north or south; the earth is spinning under it, so we think that it is going opposite to the way the earth is spinning. Like in a car, the wind seems to blow against the front of the car, when really it is the car that is moving forward. The air is not all the same temperature, however, and so the cold air and the warm air push against each other and often start going in circles.

That's how a hurricane starts down near the equator. Air going in a circle may be called a tropical storm, and when the air is going 75 miles an hour, which is faster than cars are supposed to go on the interstate, we say it is a hurricane. In the south pacific, they have another word for it, typhoon. Hurricanes start in the warm part of the ocean nearer the equator, but once they are started, they can move up north or down south. I was in one in Boston once.

Further north, where we live, or further south where the Australians, South Americans, and others live (upside down to some of us), when air starts going in a circle, it doesn't start so fast, unless it is starting in one Spot, twisting around fast, and we call that a tornado, or a twister.

We enjoyed working with Judy’s class trying to solve the problems that perplex them. We think that the students enjoyed our session too. Erin wrote:

Thank you for coming to our class. I had fun with your projects. (sic) One of the big worms got smashed during recess. Your friend, Erin. Merry Christmas.