Earth Day

Happy Earth Day

Devils Garden Campground and Skyline Arch, Arches National Park

Been a busy week, but I wanted to celebrate Earthday witih a picture from our Spring Break trip to Arches

Biology

In Science Class we are studying Biology and today we had a live lamb and a dead lamb brought in. We have a few class clowns and they wanted to name the live lamb Lamb Chops.


Oh and a fare warning if you do not like to see blood please do not look at the pictures. So as I said we brought in a live lamb and a dead one [Philip says - the science teacher's friend raises sheep, so the lamb brought in for dissection was one which did not survive the spring weather]. We also got to dissect the dead one. As we were dissecting the dead one we let the live lamb roam around the class room. But before we started dissecting we got to feed the live lamb.

Feeding the lamb

When we were done feeding we finally got to open up the dead lamb. After we opened it up we took out the heart then we took out the liver and gallbladder after that we got to feel around inside of it and I think some of my classmates went to extremes on that.

Lamb insides

Lamb Heart

After a while of letting people feel the lambs inside we cut open skull to see the brain. As we were cutting open the skull you could hear it crack every time we moved the knife. Then we let people feel the brain and after (almost) everyone felt it Mr. S asked what it felt like and if we could describe the difference between the brain and the intestines. They all answered that the brain was hard and not as "squishy."
Lamb's Brain
After people got to feel that we took out an eyeball. When I got to hold the eye I observed that it was hard and not as soft as the intestines or stomach. Which surprised me because I always thought an eye ball was softer than that.
Lamb's Eye

When we had to go clean up I decided to get a pic of my hands

My Bloody Hands

Science today was really fun and I hope that the sixth grades next year enjoy it to.
Sam

Arches

For Spring Break I went to Utah, but I didn't just go anywhere, I went to Arches National Park for two nights and Goblin State Park for one night.

At Arches, we went on three hikes. The first hike was to Devil's Garden where we we saw several arches. One of the first two arches was called Tunnel Arch, but we didn't get a picture of that one. The second was Pine Tree Arch. We took a picture that made it look like I was holding it up, but acutally the arches was three or four times my height.

After Pine Tree Arch, we went to another part of Devil's Garden where we saw three Arches. The first was called Landscape Arch, it is the biggest Arch in the World! On the trail there was a sign that talked about a day when a piece of the arch fell and someone got a picture of it!

Then my Dad and I hiked up to Partition Arch and Navajo Arch. From Partition Arch you could look through a window to Landscape arch, but my favorite arch was Navajo.

On the way to Navajo Arch there were some wind pockets in the wall that you could hide in

Unusual Outcrop

So on our trip to Arches over spring break, we were passing through Spanish Fork Canyon on Highway 6 when I saw this unusual outcrop appear along the road, but only on the north side of the highway.

It was cold and raining so Sam did not want to get out to give scale, but the whole expose is about 3meters. I got a closer look and it is a Anthropocene age sedimentary rock that is clearly well cemented. But whas was interesting was the series of lenses (ranging from 20cm to about 80cm in thickness. Based on their "hatch" pattern they are clearly limestone, but on closer inspection, they do not appear to be any different from the surrounding material. Also intneresting is the highly localized fault that apppears in the leftcenter of the outcrop of the picture. The one lens is clearly offset, but there is no fault scarp and the faul does not appear to extend to the lens at the bottom of the outcrop. 

Sedimentary structures are not my strong point, but this was one of many interesting outcrops we saw on the trip.

-philip