Geologic Time Project Blog 9/28/18

Summary:

       This week in science we finished our Geologic Time Project where each student researched a certain era on the Geologic Time Scale and created an interactive poster about that era. The era that I chose to create a poster about was the Cenozoic Era. This project was very research intensive as almost half the project was spent on research. The types of things that we researched about our era's were the climate in the era, the geologic events of that era, the position of continents during that era, and much more. The climate in the Tertiary period of the Cenozoic Era was mainly warm. In the Quaternary period however, there was a change in the environment as the climate of the Earth began to cool. In result of this, there was a series of ice ages during the Quaternary Period. Although eventually the climate began to warm up and become what it is today. The main geologic events that occurred throughout this era are the formation of the Himalaya Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau through the convergence of the Eurasian and Indian Plates (Tertiary Period). Another mountain that was formed was the Alps Mountains (also the Tertiary Period). We also saw a series of ice ages and eventually the end of the last ice age during the Quaternary Period. Due to the end of the last Ice Age and glaciers melting we saw the Great Lakes also come to be. In terms of position of continents during the Cenozoic Era, they are the same as they are now seeing as the Cenozoic Era is the current era that we are living in.

Backward-Looking:

       One thing that I knew about the subject before we started was what the geologic time scale is. The geologic time scale is a record of the life forms and geologic events in Earth's history. I also knew what relative and absolute age were. Relative age in geologic time is the age of a rock compared to the ages of other rocks. One example of relative ages in the real world is when someone says, "I am older than my sister." Absolute age is the number of years since a rock was formed. An example of absolute age in the real world is when someone says, "I am 42 years old." I also knew what the law of superposition was. The law of superposition states that in horizontal sedimentary rock layers the oldest layers are on the bottom and the youngest layers are on the top layers. One other thing that I knew about the subject before we started this project was what an unconformity is. An unconformity is when new rock layers are much younger than the layers beneath it. An unconformity is what happens when parts of a layer have eroded away or been otherwise lost. The process I went through to produce this piece was a 5 part process. The first part of the process was the research portion where I inputted information on the Cenozoic Era into a data sheet. The second part of the process was actually figuring out what information I was going to display onto the poster. This is due to how if I were to display all the information I found onto the poster then my poster would be just words and would not be interactive at all. So I needed to narrow down my research to only the most important information. The third part of the process was actually designing what my poster was going to look like and what the individual pieces were going to look like. The fourth part of my process was building the individual parts of my project and the last part of my process was putting everything onto my poster.

Inward-Looking:

       I feel pretty good about my work due to how it was really well done and looks really nice. The parts of my project that I like are the pictures and parts of my project that are colorful. This is because I feel that a major part in a projects success is how pretty it looks, and I feel that I accomplished that. The parts of my project that I dislike is the parts that are overlapped on each other due to how it looks like I just crammed those pieces onto it (the poster). The part of the project that I enjoyed was how my project is very interactive. I enjoy this due to how I feel that I feel that it makes my project very unique. The part of my project that I found satisfying during the process of the project was seeing how all the individual pieces displayed their information. I found this satisfying because this part of the project took the longest and seeing it all come together made me feel very happy.

Outward-Looking:

       If I was a teacher, the comments I would make about this piece is that it is very creative and is very interactive. I would make these comments due to how those two components were major parts of the project and I feel that I did very well in them. The grade I would give this project is an A due to how it followed the rubric and my project is not "boring." Also because as mentioned before, it is very interactive. One thing that I would want people to notice when they look at my work is how each part of the poster is interactive in different ways. What I mean by this is that their is only one pop up and only one thing that you have to open, nothing is done twice and everything is unique. I would want people to notice this so that they could see how much thought went into creating this project.

Forward-Looking:

       One thing that I would like to improve upon is my penmanship. I would like to improve upon my penmanship due to how in almost every project that I have ever done (including this one), my penmanship has always never been the best. My penmanship is always what lets my project down. So if I can improve upon this, then my projects would be a lot better. One goal I would like to set for myself next time is to do more of the project on my own. This is because my parents helped me with some of the project and it kind of feels that the project is not completely mine which kind of makes me feel a bit dissapointed. One thing that I would like to change if I had the chance to do this piece over again is spending less time on research and more time on actually building the poster. This is because towards the end of the project I was kind of rushing to get my poster done and I feel that my poster could have looked a lot better if I did not have to rush.