Understanding Models of Earth's Surface

Sadly, this was my initial understanding of how to model Earth's surface in a 3D model. I drew this model of the Marquette area, more specifically, Lake Superior and Marquette Mountain. Obviously, my interpretation is inaccurate and even a bit naive. 

After our class activity, I have a much better idea of to draw as well as interpret a 3D model of Earth's surface. 

This picture very accurately represents a 3D model of a crater on Earth's surface.

Also, this picture very accurately represents a 3D model of mountain on Earth's surface. 

Rock Cycle Model

This is the first model I had of the rock cycle. In reality, my first model is actually pretty accurate without the specific details. My first model has an understanding that rocks can start in a melted state and after several years of cooling, the melted state turns into a solid state. Through weathering and erosion, rocks can be broken apart into smaller pieces. The smaller pieces can eventually be melted down and form back into lava. 

After today's class, it was a quite obvious that I don't know much in detail about the rock cycle. There are three types of rocks within the rock cycles. Igneous rocks are rocks in their melted state. Due to the cooling of igneous rocks, two types of igneous rocks can be formed such as, extrusive and intrusive. Intrusive are coarse grained igneous rocks and extrusive are fine grained igneous rocks. Through erosion and lithification on igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks are formed. The two types of sedimentary rocks are detrital and chemical. Detrital sedimentary rocks consist of bits and pieces of inclusions. Chemical rocks form by chemical changes to the sedimentary rocks. Once sedimentary rocks are exposed to heat and pressure, they form into metamorphic rocks. Their are two classifications to metamorphic rocks as well. There are foliated metamorphic rocks that show bands or layers, and there are nonfoliated rocks that don't show bands. If metamorphic rocks are exposed to enough heat, they eventually melt, forming back into igneous rocks. The rock cycle isn't bound by a particular clockwise rotation. At any given time, a rock can go backwards in the cycle as well as skip  a step. 

Crystal Growth Activity

Our crystal mixture consisted 2 tablespoons of salt, 2 tablespoons of water, 2 tables spoons of blueing, and 2 tablespoons of ammonia. We also added a little bit of red food coloring to our mixture. We then cut our crystal absorbent material to make it into a structure to hold the crystals. The next two pictures are what our mixture and absorbent structure looked like when we left them on Tuesday.

This is a picture of what our cup looked like when we returned to class on Thursday.

Something about our structure must have been optimal for crystal growing because ours appeared to have the most crystals as well as the most over flow.