Thursday, January 28, 2010

Link Between Math and Global Warming

Everything imaginable, some how, has to do with math. Especially if there are numbers, fractions, or decimals, then math 100%, in some way, makes a connection. One of the few items math is greatly involved, is the global issue, global warming. Global warming is the increase in temperature or the decrease in the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere or surface temperature. Of course, the increase and decrease of temperatures is linked with mathematics. Scientists can find out how much the temperatures have increased or decreased, by math. Scientists find out the weather out side is by math.Another possibility that math is linked with global warming is when there is an increase or decrease in the populations of animals or plants. Every month people go into the wild and don't literally count all of the animals left in a certain species, but they take a really close estimate. The estimate is then compared to the old population estimate, and we all find out if a species of an animal has increased or decreased. Finally, math can be found and used everywhere, including global warming.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Animals in the animal kingdom (Class Response)

For the past few days, I was learning in class about the different phyla. Some of them are echinoderms (like sea stars), arthropods (like spiders), and cnidarians (like jelly fish). There are also 32 other phyla. Some things I learned about in class is that the phylum that animals are put in are classified by their symmetry. They are bilateral (one line of symmetry), radial symmetry (more than one line of symmetry), and asymmetrical (no lines of symmetry). Second, I have learned that only 5% of the world's animals are vertebrates (have a spine), and 95% of the world's animals are invertebrates (have no spine). Finally, I also learned that some animals can reproduce both sexually and asexually.

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/trnov01.htm
From this helpful website, two interesting facts I learned are:
-Every animal has it own way of life no two animals can live the same way.
-Every animal on earth fits into a phyla, even animals that were extinct for over billions of years!

My opinion on this topic is that this is a great way to classify animals, but I think that each some phyla have to be broken down into smaller sections like mammals. The mammals is a group that contains a huge amount of animals, and should be broken down into sections. Also, I am confused, why are there more invertebrates that vertebrates in the world, and most of them live in the water? I also want to know why animals that are extinct are considered into the phylum today, even though they are no longer living. All in all, I think that animals being classified into their own phyla is a great idea, but has some ups and downs.