The Creation of Nature
Science
Mother Nature will continue to amaze us. Every day we discover something new about the effects that nature has on our lives. When I entered 8th grade, I knew that we would be completing the plate tectonic project in the Earth Science unit. Apart from knowing that the plates were capable of causing natural disasters, my knowledge was limited. When I explore the field of sciences, I see Biological sciences as a field that I am intrigued by. I never thought of Earth science as something that I would be interested in researching more about. This was about to change. I would like to take you on a journey to explain my growth in understanding how the plates interact with other plates to cause activity that affects our daily lives.
I later learned was that mantle convection affects the plate’s movement. The Earth’s core is the heat source for the mantle. The rocks that are deeper in the mantle gets heated by the Earth’s radioactive core. The same thing that occurred with our object earlier, occurs with the mantle’s rocks. This creates a phenomenon called convection currents, another new topic that I was introduced to. Convection currents are the circular motion that the mantle goes through because of mantle convection. The direction of convection currents dictates the way the plate will move. Depending on the direction of two plates, you will be able to see different natural features like ridges or volcanoes. As I mentioned earlier, the plates sit on top of the mantle. This means that the direction of the convection current dictates what direction the plate will move in. It was interesting for me to see how I had learned more information as the year went by. Being able to know what kinds of topics that we were going to learn, I was better prepared during class because I could research any topics that I felt I might have a little trouble understanding. Mantle convection was a key point that we had to understand to be able to work on modeling the interaction between two plates at a study site for the plate tectonics project.
Going through this unit enabled me to see the importance of Earth science. Interactions that the plates go through are important to understand because they are affecting the natural disasters that we see. We will be able to better protect our self by understanding how our Earth works. Knowing this information will allow us to better protect the environment allowing our human race to thrive. I understand that though I know so much more about the Earth than I knew before, there is still so much more to learn on this topic. No matter what field of study I take up in the future, Earth science will always be a field of study that I should understand because it tells us about the habitat that we live in.
At the very start of the unit, we filled out the Content Growth Recorder. The purpose of this assignment was to see what we already knew about the topic. As we kept learning more and more information, we were able to check in and see how much we knew and understood at that point in time. As you can see in general, at the beginning of the year, I knew minimal information about the topic or I didn’t know about it at all. I would write down one or two sentences about the topic or I would write “I don’t know”. As I kept going through the process I learned more information and I was able to write more information about that specific topic. Towards the end of the year, I started explaining the concept using terms that we had learned and gave a more technical answer to the questions. You can see how this occurred with a question about the effect of uplift on the plates on (pg.4). I initially said that uplift is when “Something is uplifted”. In the middle of the unit, I said that “Uplift is when two convergent plate boundaries form a mountain”. From the middle of the unit to the end, I felt like I had gained new information about uplift and wrote it down. My final answer was that “Uplift is when there is immense pressure between two convergent plate boundaries. This pressure can result in uplift or vibrations in an earthquake. Uplift can form mountains and peaks.” By getting a better understanding of uplift, I was able to understand one of the ways that plates can interact with each other and how uplift has caused landmarks that exist in our society.
​
As we moved on through the unit, another important concept that we learned about was mantle convection on (pg.4). When I was first filling out the Content Growth Recorder assignment, I wrote that there was “convection in the mantle” for the question about mantle convection. Later I wrote a more detailed description of mantle convection. “Mantle convection is when rocks in the deeper part of the mantle are heated up and rise to the top of the mantle. Since the risen rocks are far from its heat source, the core, the rock sinks. This cycle continues to create a convection current which determines the direction in which the plate will go”. When I went back and reread this answer, I felt like there were still important parts missing from the definition which is why I created a revised definition. Convection is the process where an object gets heated by a heat source. Since there is a heat source, the object’s molecules have gained energy which causes them to move faster. This causes the molecules to break at their bonds and move away from the other molecules. This causes the object to expand, making the object less dense. This density change causes the object to rise. When it rises, it is away from the heat source causing the object to contract and sink. This cycle continues with different masses rising and sinking at their respective times. The mantle is the layer in the Earth that is right under the plates. The mantle is composed of a semi-solid composition of rocks. I could infer that there was some type of convection occurring in the mantle, at the start of the school year.
They say that the best way to check your understanding of a concept is by being able to teach someone else the topic. This was what we had to do with the plate tectonics project. The goal of the project was to create a working model of how the plates move to create a specific case study site. After creating all of the models we were going to send these models to other middle schools for a range of middle and elementary school students to learn from. My group created a model of how the plates formed at the Himalayan Mountains. We first had to get a good understanding of how the two plates interacted with each other to form the mountains. This meant that we had to research the plate boundaries. If you were in the space and had the ability to see the plate boundaries on Earth, you would see boundary lines. You would also see that each plate is differently shaped and sized. In our model, we had two plates to work with. The Eurasian and Indian Plates that forms the Himalayan Mountains. One key part that we had to model was uplift since uplift is the main reason for why the Himalayan Mountains were formed. Uplift occurs when two plates “meet up” with each other. There is immense pressure that exists between these two plates causing the pressure to be released in two different ways. The pressure will either cause the plates to rise forming the mountain or the pressure can be released as vibrations that we feel as earthquakes. This is how the Himalayan Mountains were formed. To meet the goal of the project, the model had to be scientifically accurate. One problem that we ran into on our model was that when the plates formed the mountain, there was a gap under the plates. This is scientifically inaccurate because there isn’t a space between the plates, in reality. By observing this problem, my knowledge on the reality of interactions of plates was clearer. To fix this problem, we added pieces of foam underneath the plate to fill this gap. When we applied what we learned in science class to the model to make it more scientifically accurate, making us check our understanding of our knowledge in science.
When I Started Freshman Year
When I Started Freshman Year
Himalayan Plate Tectonics Model
Content Growth Recorder
Mantle Convection definition in my own words