Mistle thrush cut from Scotish Geology Map

Thrush cut from vintage Bartholamew Map

Green Woodpecker cut from Cwmbran Land Use Map 1976

Each bird is mounted on pins and put into a box file

Detail from Tawny Owl

I would like to express gratitude to all those SLNers who gave me inspiration and the motivation to carry on with the teaching of geography for as long as I did.  I still love geography and perhaps one day I will return to teaching it again.  Thanks to all who supported this blog I will continue to keep it here for now but I won’t be answering any comments or adding any posts.

Melanie Richards

AND WHY DOES IT HAVE A GIRLS NAME?

From todays lesson you should know that this rock is located in Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park in Califonia.  A playa a dry lake bed. 

Click here for a google earth placemark

There is something special about this area though. From the picture above you can see that there are trails behind the rock and evidence that this rock has moved.  But how can it move, no one has seen them move and some of the rocks are very heavy.  Your task is to try to solve the mystery of Race Track Playa

Web Sites to help you with your quest

A very good site to give you some more background lots of video’s and explanations from Dr Paula Messina

http://geology.com/articles/racetrack-playa-sliding-rocks.shtml - this has lots of different theories

US Geological Survey has tracked them using GPS – here is their report a piece of scientific research using GPS to try to track the movements.

USGS Death Valley Geology Field trip

Could this video below be true or just a red herring?  What do you think?

Your task is to work in fours to come up with your own theory as to why the rocks at Race Track Playa in Death Valley mysteriously move.  You can use movie maker or power point to come up with your own theory that must be presented to the rest of the class.

Here is the homework sheet that goes with the power point.  Click on the link to download

comparing-water-usage-l1

This has found its way to my household via a trail from Project Genie which is a project set up to produce educational materials, resources, information and support for children, teachers, parents and carers, to explore the implications of climate change and what everyone can do to minimise the harmful effects.

Project Genie lent us this little gadget to trial and shows how much electricity my household uses at any one time and calculates the cost in pence per hour as shown below or in greenhouse gasses.  This has been quite usefull as I can work out how much pocket money to stop for wasted energy usage! (Lights left on in bedrooms!). 

It has made all of us think how much energy we are using.  The second image shows the read out when I switched on the kettle.  A good way to cut down on the boil time is to only boil the amount of water you need, not a full kettle.   I have also noticed a difference with different types of lights on.  Most of my house runs on energy efficient light bulbs but in the kitchen there are some halogen bulbs which use a lot more energy.  You can see the OWL read out with the halogen bulbs on below.  We will definatley  be looking into replacing them.  We have also taken to switching off all appliances that are on standby at the wall and again this has made quite a bit of difference.

This shows the amount of pence spent per hour with the lights on in the kitchen before the Kettle is switched on.

This shows how many pence per hour when the kettle is switched on.

This was the value with the halogen lights on.

This is the value when we switched them on a normal set of lights would be below 1p

Below shows the electricity reading with the TV and video on standby

You can see it is around 1.3pence per hour.  Below shows the reading when it is switched off.

When we switched off the appliances at the plug the value went down to 0.9p per hour. 

Apparently cutting your base energy usage by 1p per hour will save around £85 per year.  The Owl even shows your greenhouse gas emissions, optimum temperature and humidity also.

We were lent ours but they can be bought on the highstreet in shops such as Peter Jones and John Lewis or just search for them online.  (They should sell for around £30)

HOW DOES IT CONNECT?

The wireless display unit is fed via a simple to fit transmitter which   clips around your electricity supply.  You set up The Owl by telling it how much your electricity supplier charges per kilowatt hour from your most recent bill.

You can buy your OWL from www.theowl.com

Ever heard of palm oil?  do you ever use it?  do you know where it comes from? 

Palm oil is used by virtually every one of us in one form or another.  In its basic form it is used in processed or prepared foods such as bread, cakes, breakfast cereals and ready meals, as well as ice cream, margarine and crisps.  Unlike oil seed rape and sunflower oils palm oil is valued because it is solid at room temperature.  Palm oil is also cheaper than other types of oils. 

The vast majority of the worlds palm oil comes from Malaysia and Indonesia  where the expansion of the industry has destroyed millions of hectares of rainforest.  This deforestation is said to be far greated than the rate of deforestation due to logging in the Amazon rainforest. 

In the past the majority of palm oil production has been for food and cosmetics but now the European Union have agreed to cut greenhouse gasses by 20%  by 2020 we are having to find a new source of fuel for our transport.  The answer is said to be bio-fuels however this will mean that Indonesia and Malaysia will produce more palm oil which will result in further destruction of some of the most valuable rainforest on the planet. 

The effect of this destruction will mean that many species of plants and animals that live in these rainforests  will be lost forever.  Examples of species that will be lost are the Sumatran tiger, Asian Elephant and the Orangutans of Borneo.

The FOE (Friends of the Earth) have highlighted how the palm oil industry is having a devastating impact on the orangutans of Sumatra and Borneo.  The orangutans like eating the palm oil fruit in the plantations and the farmers don’t like this so they have been killing the orangutans even though they are protected under national laws.  The rate of the forest clearance along with the killing of the orangutans by farmers is happening so quickly it is said that orangutans could be extinct within 15 years.  98% of the Indonesian forest is expected to be destroyed by 2022.  At the moment there are between 55,000 and 60,000 Orangutans in Borneo but 5,000 to 10,000 orangutans are killed each year.

SO WHAT CAN YOU DO?

The weeks homework is to find out which products in your home have palm oil in them.  This is quite difficult because often it is not labelled as palm oil but vegetable oil and it is often called numerous names.  Below are some of the names Palm oil goes by.  Download the worksheet below to help you collect your findings. 

  Click here to download the homework sheet

 Click here to open up a google earth file to show where Borneo is and also some overlays showing distributions of Orangutans in 1930, 1999 and 2004.  You can also watch the youtube video below in google earth.

 Names under which palm oil and its derivities appear.

Cety alcohol
Dicetyldimonium chloride
Elaeis guineensis
E471
Isopropyl palmitate, octyl palmitate, potassium palmitate, retinyl palmitate.
Vit A Palmitate
Palmitic acid
Palm kernel oil
Palm kernelamide DEA and MEA
Palm oil
Palm olein vegetable oil
Steareth-2, Steareth-20
Sodium palm kernelate
Vegetable oil

Find out more

Below are some other links that will help you with next lessons task

Palm oil biofuel of the future - guardian article 

Friends of the earth link for more info about palm oil

Born to be wild - a web site looking at the impact on the orangutans

Roundtable on sustainable palm oil -this is an organisation that aims to promote the use of sustainable palm oil use.  Many companies and supermarkets are now signing up to this. 

http://www.orangutans.com.au/index.htm

Watch this video to find out more about the impact on the forest

A sky news report on the effects of Palm Oil production on the Orangutans

After last weeks lessons looking at how Dubai is changing I thought we might have a go at building our own sustainable city.  After we have designed them we will use a programme called sketch up to make the buildings and put them into google earth.  So I have got Kevin scouting around for a suitable location while you wait until next weeks geography lesson here are some ideas about building sustainably to get you started.

My Sustainable House – this is an interactive web site to get you started with the ideas about building sustainably

BBC ArticleGovernment unveils plans for new ecotowns

Just to get you thinking on a grander scale here is a video of a design for a rotating tower block click on the links for more information about how the tower generates its own electricity.

More information about how this design works   I wonder how the people who live in these pods will feel about being spun round all day?

Also this is for my form who wanted to know more about the Burj, the tallest building in Dubai.  This is what it will look like when it is finished.  Below is the link to the web site we looked at in class

Burj official web site

The second programme followed the six to a factory that was of a different calibre.  This was an actual sweat shop where people worked for up to 15 hours a day and slept under their machines in order to get the work done.  This clip shows what the working conditions are like.

[Youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GWoeorQCkoM]

The UK workers have to make six garments each over two days, the real factory workers have to make around 20 each per day.  The Brits soon get down to work but are starting to question what it is like for the people who have to do this for real. Below is an interview with one Georgina one of the UK workers questions the factory owner about his factory.

One of the UK workers just couldn’t get it into his head that some people couldn’t get out of the cycle of poverty they were in.  His opinion is that if any one works hard they can get out of the situation they are in and better themselves.  He is now slowly beginning to realise that this might not be the case when he questions one of the machinists.

To find out more about this documentary visit BBC3s web site here this has some good advice about where to buy ethical clothing from and other facts to help you with your sweat shop task.

HOMEWORK THIS WEEK is to think about where you live and what would happen to it in a month, a year, 10 years, 100 years and 1000 years time. Write your answers into your exercise book.  You can include photos of your area and annotate to show what may change. (if you have photoshop or any other photo editing software you may want to show the effects of these changes – don’t worry if you can’t do this)

Scientific American Article can be viewed here