Day 1: It's Going to be Twins/One Ate the Other

Day 1: Today I was given two sunflower seeds to grow. Here there are! Their first picture! Stay tuned for more on the "Twins!"

On 2/11/14, the twins were planted and I waited for Cruz and Ann to grow. 

2/15/14

Day 4: One of my twins (Cruz) has begun to sprout. I wait eagerly to see if the other (Ann) will sprout as well. 

Cruz is at a small 1 cm.

2/21/14

Day 10: Ann has not sprouted and I have come to terms that Cruz has eaten his sister and will be left handed. Cruz however is now at 1 in, and I fear that he may be a small, wee sunflower. 

2/24/14

Day 13: Cruz has hit a growth spurt and is now 3 1/2 inches tall! He loves his home on the sun porch and it has been extremely vital for his growth.  

3/16/14
Day 34: Cruz has been a little camera shy lately due to his growth spurt that has left him tall and lanky and awkwardly taller than all his plantmates. However, after a couple of weeks of awkward teen stages, he is now more mature and is ready for the spot light. He is not 6 1/4 inches tall.

4/8/14

Day 57: Cruz is now at 10 1/2 inches! He is standing up straight and his very bottom two leaves have wilted, but two more have sprouted higher up his stem. He still loves the sun porch and is thriving there. 

You Are My Sun Plot! My Only Sun Plot!

After much time spent waiting for the snow to melt, and the rain to go away I was finally able to find sunshine to create a sun plot. I collected data with three of my sorority sisters, Averi Hess, Sarah Brown and Jessica Byers, who are all in the class with me. We used a light post that we measured and measured the shadow of the post at different times of the day, as well as recording the direction of the shadow with a compass on an iphone.

Data Collected:

Time	Pole Height	Shadow Length	Degree of Shadow
9:45	210	274	217 SW
10:45	210	203	196 S
11:45	210	156	193 S
12:45	210	141	140 SE
1:45	210	158	116 SE
4:45	210	383	65 NE

SunCalc Sun Position Photo

SunPlot Graph Photo

Songs are the Best Way to Learn!

Even thought we are all in college, why can't we act like children? I find this song quite catchy and hopefully it will help me out for the test... Enjoy all others that need help with the periodic table!

Knowing the Amount of Rain that Fall on a Parking Lot Could Stop Protests

It is important to be able to calculate the amount of rainfall that falls on a parking lot when designing it so that you can design the lot to be able to handle the rainfall so that it does not affect the function of the parking lot. if you design a parking lot that cannot drain water then the parking lot becomes useless because it would flood and you would not be able to park. Considering the parking situation at Mercer is already bad, and students are on the cusp of potentially protesting the parking at Mercer, it is very important that Mercer maintains effective draining parking lots so that their students can park and riots do not break out about the horrid parking at Mercer. The students would like to park at Mercer, not go swimming in the parking lots. We have pools for that. Therefore, it is important to know the amount of rain fall that would fall on a parking lot to ensure that the lot could properly drain the water and not cause a flood in the parking lot hindering people from parking.

The Woman Who Sparked Concern for the Environment

Rachel Carson was a Marine Biologist in a time where many women could only even dream of going to college. She started her career part time working with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and she urged people, from the beginning of her career, to be aware of the destructions that human placed onto the environment. She then was given a full time position by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and became one of two women employed at the time professionally by the bureau. She continued to do work for the government dealing with the oceans. Her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, showed that she could take all the scientific lingo and jargon and simplify it for "normal" audiences. Her work did not need a college degree in biology to understand, which could be the reason that her work was so pivotal for the environmental movement. She went on to be an aquatic biologist, assistant editor and later, chief editor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. After she retired from the Fish and Wildlife Service to focus on her writing after her second book, The Sea Around Us, was published. Not only did this book give the U.S. reasons that it should start to take concern about the environment, but also the world because it was translated into 32 different languages. While she worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service she became interested in how pesticides affected the environment. She wrote Silent Springs to educate people on the use of pesticides and the negative affects they have on our environment. Her book sparked Congress to review its pesticide laws and ban DDT. Carson was a women, who in a time in which women did not have much power, who was able to start a movement that could help the human race in the future from destroying our planet. We would not want to end up in a destroyed and unlivable world like the one you see in the animated film Wall-E; therefore it is important that we try to stop destroying our environment and Rachel Carson was the mother of this movement to keep our planet safe from our own hands.

For more info visit, http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Rachel_Carson/about/rachelcarson.html