Name: ______Period: ______
My Scientific Summer (30 Points)
Well, summer is all over and we are back in school once again. Your task for this week will be to write a paragraph about something scientific that you did over the summer. As confusing as this may sound, you may be quite surprised as to how often you are engaged in scientific activity, from day to day. Please give this a lot of thought. You know a lot more than you think!
For your first paragraph, you will tell me about something you did this summer. It really can be anything - something around your house, around Verona or somewhere you went to this summer. For your second paragraph, you must explain how your summer activity relates to science. For example, I explored the rainforest by taking a riverboat down the Amazon in Peru. While on the trip, I learned a lot about how deforestation is affecting the rainforest ecosystem. Deforestation is most definitely related to science. Of course, you will have to provide more of an explanation than this in your paragraph! If you’re not sure what to write for the “science” part, you can chat with Ms. Heckel and/or do research on the internet. Everything relates to science, so with a little thought, I’m confident that you can relate your summer experience to science, even if it seems at first thought that it has nothing to do with science!
You will also be required to place a picture of yourself performing your activity on your assignment. If you are unable to produce such a picture, you may make a drawing of the activity, or even find a picture off of the Internet, out of a magazine, etc., that effectively demonstrates the activity.
Please keep the following in mind when completing this assignment:
1. Your assignment must be TYPED. Be sure to use a 12 pt. Font!
2. Be sure to leave a space towards the top of your assignment for your picture! Your picture should be large enough to take up 1/3 to 1/2 half of your paper. The remaining space on your paper will be occupied by your typed paragraphs (see sample paper on back). NOTE: A GOOD paragraph consists of at least 5-8 WELL WRITTEN SENTENCES!
3. Place your name and period at the top of the document and center justify. Go to the next line, center justify, and state the activity you experienced, during your summer break (once again...see sample).
Ms. Heckel
Period 3
Amazon River Rainforest in Peru
This summer I traveled to the rainforest in Peru right where the Amazon River begins at the convergence of the Maranon and Ucayali Rivers. For seven days I traveled on a riverboat and went on excursions on smaller skiff boats to explore these three rivers and their tributaries. I saw tons of animals and birds including toucans, caiman, macaws, piranhas, pink dolphins, sloths, arapaima, river manatees and even an anaconda! Our guide told us that there are more species of fish in the Amazon River than there are in the Atlantic Ocean. At night we went exploring for caiman and other nocturnal animals. My guide, Hulber, even caught a caiman for us! We would then get up early each morning to go out in the skiffs and look for animals and birds before they rested when the hot noon day Sun came out. I went fishing for piranha and ate them for lunch! I went swimming in the Amazon with pink dolphins. A local tribe took us out for a trip down a creek in their dugout canoes, and we had lunch (it was delicious!) in a local family’s home. I hiked through the rainforest to see poison frogs and tarantulas, and I even drank from a jungle vine! I also walked on a rope bridge through the rainforest canopy. On top of that, I had the chance to hold an Amazon Green Anaconda! However, I think that my favorite thing that we did was when we visited a village that was destroyed by flooding and brought school supplies for the kids in the village, Vista Alegre. We also brought crackers (they don’t have cookies!) and soda (Inka Cola!) and had a chance to play soccer with the kids and chat with the parents.
While out on the Tigre River, we ran across some illegal loggers floating giant logs down the river. Our guide told us that although companies have contracts with the government to cut down some fast-growing trees, they often abuse this agreement by cutting down more than they are contracted to and/or cutting down slow-growing trees, like cinnamon and sapodilla (the Mayans and Aztecs made chewing gum from its sap!) They get away with it by paying off local tribes and/or doing it so far away from cities that by the time the environmental police get there, they will be gone. Deforestation is bad for a number of reasons. The most significant is the lost habitat for the animals, plants and insects that live there. Deforestation also leads to more runoff getting into the water. This blocks sunlight from getting through the water and kills the plants that live there, throwing off the ecosystem’s food web. Trees also play a significant role in absorbing the greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, that lead to global warming. Fewer forests means less trees absorbing greenhouse gases and the increased speed and severity of global climate change. Trees also play an important role in the water cycle by returning water to the atmosphere through transpiration. Workable solutions to preventing deforestation include balancing the replanting of forests with those that are being cut down and eliminating clear-cutting of forests to help them remain intact.
***The photo is a picture of me holding a red-bellied piranha. Don’t worry, I caught much larger ones than this! This one was just my first.