I went to a camp for a week. It was supposed to teach us all about the Pacific Northwest. The Native Americans around here, the natural climate, why we have a temperate rainforest, how to act like an eagle in a skit, all of that and more. And we did learn, though mostly not about that.

The lesson we learned was; don't go to Odyssey if you like rest and relaxation. Or if you like not being bored.

See, most of the time we were either hiking or on the bus. The hikes were fun, when you got to the end and saw the sights (we went to Marymere Falls and Sol Duc Falls in one day) and they did tell us to bring stuff to do on the bus, but it wasn't as good as I thought. Which nothing ever is. On this occasion, it was only slightly worse than my daydream.

But I am supposed to write about the science aspect of Odyssey, so I better get started. We learned why the Hoh Rainforest is a rainforest (there's lots of rain from the ocean winds) and how the wind erodes the land on Dungeness Spit. It is the largest spit of land in the world, and the waves were huge.

There was also supposed to be a part where we find the average growth of a tree and compare it with some other tree, but the people with the protractor thinngies didn't know how to work them. So they picked a broken stump of a tree which we were unable to calculate because the equation would only work with trees of a certain size.

 Not to mention the 6-mile hike that I got lost on and traveled 2 miles on the wrong trail. We got back to the bus, soaked and dripping, only to find that there was no way to contact the other group. We had to sit in a muggy bus for an hour and a half.

But the food was good, and our cabin was the only one that was heated. Plus there was a great view of Lake Crescent, which almost gave me hypothermia when I did the polar dip. One whole night we did nothing but show our skits. All in all, it was a nice week.

We spent an awfully long time using this tilted container thing (a stream table) to explore how rivers are made. 

We fill it with sand from outdoors, which means an exhausting hike to a giant pile of dirt. Then we pour water down it in numerous ways. Slow, fast, very tilted, slightly tilted, we do it all. Just when it looks like we are done, there is another thing to do- a lab! With our own controlled, manipulated variables. In other words, all we have to have in the lab is something about the stream table.

My group picks the best way to stop floodwaters. We use little Monopoly hotels. And the best one? The one that was uphill and had a wall of dirt at the bottom. The one where we made a wall of rocks and wood worked really well, also.

So folks, If you're in a hot spot for flooding, either raise your house or build a sandbagging wall. Or do what the authorities say and evacuate.

Well, we spent quite a while learning about earthquakes. And boy, was I ever surprised. Okay, there are actually TWO types of earthquake waves, and they each have their own characteristics. First, there are the fastest, or Primary waves. These waves of energy compact and expand the earth. They can also move through water. Have you ever squished a Slinky and pulled it apart again? Those are the Primary Waves. Then there are the slower waves: Secondary waves. These shake the earth back and forth. However, these waves won't go through water. Just disappear! They need those links solids have to transfer their energy. So to tie that in to Earth Science, we learned how the S waves won't go through the liquid outer core, but the P waves will. That's how scientists knw about the core.

Our last couple weeks were focused on plates. You see, we're floating on a bunch of plates of rock. There are three types of movement: sliding by, crashing into, and moving away.

Plates that are moving away makes new land (called divergent boundaries). Plates crashing together (they call 'em convergent plates) recycles old plate 'cause one plate will go under another into the mantle (called subduction). That's how deep ocean trenches are formed. Plus really DEEP earthquakes: not big earthqauakes, deep ones from the mantle.

Now, the cool part about WA is that it's the only boundary where two plates slide by. Isn't that great? Only one. Plus there's a mini-plate called the Juan de Fuca that's subducting under the North American Plate.

The one plate that's really weird is Africa. It seems to be shrinking in on itself. How is that happening? Any ideas? Because I don't.

I wrote that at the top because the title is kind of ironic. Plus, it gets your attention. And I really need people to visit my blog. 

So we had this preliminary experiment. We got several 12cm x 12cm squares and were told to make a boat that'd hold as many pennies as possible. Some results were pretty weird, and Mr G told us to make a lab up that was kind of like our first. 

So my team had this unique idea. See, my classmate had this flair for making unusual boats, and he made one that looked like a catamaran. That boat held a LOT of pennies. Naturally, we decided to change the shape of the bottom of the boat. 

So we had one with a flat bottom, one catamaran, one shaped like a bowl, and one in which the bottom curved inward. Guess which ones held more!

Well, the catamaran and the one curved inward held very few on average. The one with the highest average? THE ONE LIKE A BOWL! And the flat one was only one lower. It was very confusing. 

So does anybody have a scientific reason  WHY this happened? We have a wild guess, which I won't write down because in reflection, it makes no sense. 

Alright, so I shoulda known that all those demos were leading up to something. The "something" was another webquest.

The webquest's about a king that assigned five goldsmiths to make him a crown of gold each. They do, but they have shady reputations, and we are told that FOUR of the goldsmiths have (gasp!) not used all of the gold! They mixed in other materials instead. So we start.

We get information about the crowns' mass and density. And Crown Four, with a mass of 3474 grams and 180 cc, is the one with the density of gold! Which is 19.3 g/cc, by the way.

Are we done yet? Oh no, 'cause we have to write a letter to King Hiero (aka Mr. G) explaining what density is, what we got for all those crowns, and what those goldsmiths have to say for themselves and why they are wrong. This takes a LONG time, and I'm probably the only one to get full points.

This better get me some points.

We spent a lot of time with some science movies. They were about how heat affects density. Then we had a couple of experiments. This is what I learned. 

I learned that with most objects, the hotter it get, the less dense. The only substance that breaks that rule is water. Sure, when it gets hot it gets less dense, and as it gets colder, it gets more, but when it FREEZES, it gets LESS DENSE. Isn't that so weird? That is why ice cubes float.

Hope that gets my grade!

Another assignment about science. I would have written earlier about the floating crayons lab, but I had a hunch that it'd turn out like the last assignment...

 So. To business. This whole week back from winter break, we've been doing an experiment on the theme "Floating Crayons". We were allowed to pick any topic. And my groups picked changing the material.

See, we watched a show that had somebody making crayons float by putting salt in the water. Our group thought, well, what about sugar? Or baking soda? Or cayene pepper? Would you need more baking soda to make it float?

Well, we didn't bring enough cayene pepper. But here, I willl type up our results.

Salt needed: 2 TBS

Sugar needed: 4TBS

Baking soda needed: 4TBS

Isn't that weird? Now I am going to use some of my tenth grade math and figure out how often this would happen if they were all the same.

I guess I should explain. I wrote the previous article before Mr. G started his assignment. Then he announced that we needed to write MORE than what I had written on my blog! As in, solutions! I mean, COME ON!! What use is writing solutions to slow down the erosion process?

    (Aside from keeping me from sounding like old gloom-and-doom Mr. Gore…)

    Okay, might as well get it over with. I have to lightly cover weathering and erosion, too. Weathering is how rock breaks down into dust or sand. It is important to the problem because that is how new dirt is formed. Erosion is how the eroded rock gets blown away. That is important to the problem because that is how we are losing soil so fast.

    Now, our solutions are divided into three groups: farming, plant, and other. Our farming solutions included: don’t till as much (instead, spray weedkiller), alternate crops in rows, and till evenly. Plant solutions were simple: Plant plants so that the soil doesn’t get blown away as easy.

    And in the other category, we wrote about this plastic grid that you bury and fill in with dirt. It is called HoofGrid, and it keeps soil from sliding down slopes.

    That is my info about our huge project.