Grade 8 Science

1. Kyle Rosbrook Grade 8 Science Outcome WS8.2 Examine how wind, water, and ice have shaped and continue to shape the Canadian landscape.

2. Meagan’s Summer Adventure • Meagan spent her summer vacation by the ocean, surfing and building sand castles. One day while whale watching out in open water, she put a message in a bottle and threw it out to sea. She forgot all about it until she received a letter from someone who had found it, thousands of kilometers away from where she put it. How did it travel so far?

3. What exactly is a current? • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu_Ga0JYFNg&feature=related • Water currents are caused by severe temperature differences in water and air • When cold water and air from artic and ant artic climates meets equatorial water and air, the cold air is forced down and the warm rises, causing a push in forces

4. How do currents work? • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZKIoiHSOy8 • Currents by force of wind and water continuously feed each other cold and hot air • This keep the water cooling and warming, and keeps the currents at a constant in the ocean • If equilibrium was reached with temperature, the currents would cease to exist(and Nemo would have no ride)

5. How big? • The Gulf Stream is a good example. Some currents are small, only travelling a couple kilometers and only a few meters wide • The Gulf Stream however is 100 km’s wide, and 1.6 km’s deep. It travels at a speed of 1.5 meters/second • Its cause? Warm Atlantic water piles up in the Gulf of Mexico, and the earth’s rotation hurls it up the coast. It travels faster than some small boats.

6. Cooling and warming of air and land • Localized winds like those found along a coastline are created by similar forces. As the sun rises, the water and the land absorb the sun's heat at different rates. As a result, high and low pressure systems are created. In the morning, the land will heat up faster than the water. As the land heats up it, radiates heats to the surrounding area. Hot air is less dense than cold air, so the warming air begins to rise, pulling the cooler air over the water inland. As the heated air rises, it begins to cool, flowing out to sea until it grows cold and dense and falls. This cycle reverses as the day closes and sun begins to set. Not only does the land warm faster but it also cools faster than does water. As a result, the circle of air flow reverses as the warmer air above the water flows toward the cooler air above the land.

7. How does wind affect weather? • As a result of the movement of atmospheric materials transported by wind, driven by the energy from the sun, climates are created and weather occurs. Without wind, weather would not exist. Wind, in its interdependent relationship with the other cycles of the Earth, like ocean currents, is the vehicle by which water vapor and, by consequence, temperature variations are moved from one area of the globe to another, creating weather variations within specific climate zones.