When I was in senior school I remeber weeks of our geography lessons being spent discussing these things, and it was sooo boring! Last week the kids at CLAS had great fun playing with them, and asking questions and taking photographs of them.

I hope to take Asha tomorrow to the river to look at ice a bit more, but in the mean time, some information for you on ICE, Stalactites and Stalagmites.

So what is the point of icicles then?

However, stalactites aren’t the only natural formations that look like elongated carrots. Once the researchers had found a mathematical representation of the stalactite’s shape, they began to wonder if the solution applied to other similarly shaped natural formations caused by dripping water.

So the team decided to investigate icicles. Although other scientists have studied how icicles grow, they had not found a formula to describe their shape.

Surprisingly, the team found that the same mathematical formula that describes the shape of stalactites also describes the shape of icicles.

“Everyone knows what an icicle is and what it looks like, so this research is very accessible. I think it is amazing that science and math can explain something like this so well. It really highlights the beauty of nature,” Short said.

The finding is surprising because the physical processes that form icicles are very different from those that form stalactites. Whereas heat diffusion and a rising air column are keys to an icicle’s growth, the diffusion of carbon dioxide gas fuels a stalactite’s growth.

Short, a doctoral candidate in UA’s physics department, Baygents, a UA associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering, and Goldstein, a UA professor of physics and the Schlumberger Professor of Complex Physical Systems at the University of Cambridge in England, published their article, “A Free-Boundary Theory for the Shape of the Ideal Dripping Icicle,” in the August 2006 issue of Physics of Fluids. The National Science Foundation funded the research.

As residents of cold climates know, icicles form when melting snow begins dripping down from a surface such as the edge of a roof. For an icicle to grow, there must be a constant layer of water flowing over it.

The growth of an icicle is caused by the diffusion of heat away from the icicle by a thin fluid layer of water and the resulting updraft of air traveling over the surface. The updraft of air occurs because the icicle is generally warmer than its surrounding environment, and thus convective heating causes the air surrounding the icicle to rise. As the rising air removes heat from the liquid layer, some of the water freezes, and the icicle grows thicker and elongates.

“At first, we focused only on the thin water layer covering the icicle, just like we did with stalactites,” said Short. “It was only later that we examined the layer of rising air, which is technically more correct. Strangely though, both methods lead to the same mathematical shape for icicles.”

The resulting shape turns out to be described by the same mathematical equation that describes stalactites. One could call it the Platonic form.

The team wanted to compare the predicted shape to real icicles. Because icicles are scarce in Tucson, the scientists naturally turned to the Internet. They were able to compare pictures of actual icicles with their predicted shape.

The team found that it doesn’t matter how big or small the actual icicles were, they could all fit to the shape generated by the mathematical equation.

“Fundamentally, just like in the early stalactite work, it’s a result that implies that the shape of an icicle, at least in its ideal, pristine form, ought to be described by this mathematical equation. And we found, examining images of icicles, that it is a very good fit,” senior author Goldstein said.

original article

Stalactites are formed by the deposition of calcium carbonate and other minerals, which is precipitated from mineralized water solutions. Limestone is calcium carbonate rock which is dissolved by water that contains carbon dioxide forming a calcium hydrogencarbonate solution. The chemical formula for this reaction is:[1]

CaCO3(s) + H2O(l) + CO2(aq) ? Ca(HCO3)2(aq)

This solution travels through the rock until it reaches an edge and if this is on the roof of a cave it will drip down. When the solution comes into contact with air the chemical reaction that created it is reversed and particles of calcium carbonate are deposited. The reversed reaction is:[1]

Ca(HCO3)2(aq) ? CaCO3(s) + H2O(l) + CO2(aq)

An average growth rate is 0.13 mm (0.005 inches) a year. The quickest growing stalactites are those formed by fast flowing water rich in calcium carbonate and carbon dioxide, these can grow at 3 mm (0.12 inches) per year.[2]
Greek stalagma (“???????????”), “drop” or “drip”) is a type of speleothem that rises from the floor of a limestone cave due to the dripping of mineralized solutions and the deposition of calcium carbonate.

The corresponding formation on the ceiling of a cave is known as a stalactite. If these formations grow together, the result is known as a column.

When touring caves with stalactites and stalagmites you might be requested to not touch the rock formations. This is generally because the formation is considered to still be growing and forming. Since the rock buildup is formed by minerals solidifying out of the water solution onto the old surface, skin oils can disturb where the mineral water will cling, thus affecting the growth of the formation. Oils and dirt from the hands can also stain the formation and change its colour permanently.

Icicles will form when ice or snow is melted by either sunlight or some other heat source (such as heat leaking from the interior of a heated building), and the resulting melted water runs off into an area where the ambient temperature is below the freezing point of water (0°C/32°F), causing the water to refreeze. Over time continued water runoff will cause the icicle to grow. If an icicle grows long enough to touch the ground (or its corresponding ice spike growing up from the ground) then it is called an ice column.

Icicles can pose both safety and structural dangers. Icicles that hang from an object may fall and cause damage to whatever is below them. In addition, ice deposits can be heavy. If enough icicles forms on a object, the weight of the ice can severely damage the structural integrity of the object and may cause the object to break.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavacicle

What a fantastic course this looks like! Its 44 weeks long and has two courrse books in all, wih two practice books as well. 6 TMA’s!!! But at least I should enjoy it. The materials seem well organised and clear to use.

The use of on line conferencing and activites will make it really good fun.

Over the next few weeks I shall develop this post.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water:
Jack fell down and broke his crown
and jill came tumbling after

Then up Jack got and home did trot
As fast as he could caper;
And went to bed, to mend his head
With vinegar and brown paper.

That third verse

Then Jill came in,
And she did grin,
To see Jack’s paper plaster;
Her mother whipt her,
Across her knee
For Laughing at Jack’s disaster

taken from a chap book printed by James Kendrew c1820

The oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes edited by Iona and Peter opie.

The DfT said from 2009, new biometric ID cards would be introduced for people who work airside in the country’s airports, “allowing an individual to be linked more securely to their own true identity, helping protect against crime, illegal immigration and terrorism”.

source BBC news- 20th july 08

Prison chiefs have dismissed renewed claims that a biometric identity system at a Scottish jail failed so badly it let inmates have a free run.

The issue was raised in a House of Lords exchange on biometric ID cards.

[Source: BBC News- 20th July 08 ]

The government has already spent £32m preparing for its ID card scheme even before it becomes law.

That means spending rose from £25,000 to £63,000 a day in the last six months of 2005, the Home Office said.

And now for the scarey stuff!

According to no2id,

To begin with you need to get them to come to you.

The government’s solution to that problem is to make

people report themselves when they get a passport.

As part of the creeping move to state identity control in Britain, ID interrogation centres are being set up all around the UK . To begin with there will be 69, on top of the existing Passport Offices. A company called Mapeley, which owns the offices of HM Revenue and Customs

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2263208.stm The Inland Revenue has confirmed that it sold its estate of more than 600 buildings to a company based in a tax haven, and admits it wrongly announced the properties were sold to a UK firm. ………..All are part of Bermuda-based Mapeley Holdings Limited, a company ultimately owned by George Soros and US group Fortress Investment)

(HMRC), was given the job of setting them up. Planning applications were mostly in by the end of 2006. Operations started tentatively in 2007, and by the beginning of 2008 over 50 centres were open.

from 2007 onwards when people as young as 16 apply for their first adult passport, they will* have to attend their nearest interrogation centre. There they will be subject to background checks, questioning to test their story against official records, photographs, and, before long, fingerprinting. Registration on the national ID database(s) – the ‘National Identity Register’ or NIR – will follow.

[Source: http://www.no2id.net/ Accessed July 2008]

Now consider this factor.

GP – medical records on database…

Social services records on data base

HMRC records on database.

Banking records on database.

Shopping records on database – tescos, clubcards

Some shops ask for postcodes when purchasing goods – pc world for vat recipts, Brantamo, for shoes. for example.

Leisure cards ownership = on database.

Library cards = on database.

Every book you purchase from a high street store, with credit cards, can be checked back.

If who you are becomes a problem, then so does your ID.

I hope you enjoy them as much as Asha and I do!
Go on, have a look.

Vicki xx

Asha watched Just so stories this morning.. We then did a few audio books, with her “reading along” to herself. she enjoys pinoccio this way. I phoned mum, as I am sure some of the books to go with some of the tapes are down there still.

After I had done a trip to tescos for some after sun, Asha did some glueing. I had bought her a cheap funky felts set, which was meant to be used to make a neckless, but the needle wont go through the felt easily, and Asha was getting upset, so I suggested we got some glue out and she made a picture. She has done this, and now wants to send it to granny..

Asha is now outside again, playing with the neighbours children, and I need to get that chicken in the oven!

Asha is definatly on the way to reading on her own though. Its wonderfull to see.

So mummy is now a theasurus, as well, I had forgotten about this side of life off late…

So we did, I made a mistake, is the same as I did an error, which is similar to that was not right, or was wrong…

so.. what other words mean.. mistake or by accident mummy?…. I am now going to dictionary . com, to find out

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/mistake

(I am finally getting my head around this!)

In answer to this quest I came across this:

The variation in Ordovician volcanic rocks of Wales and the Lake District imply convergent plate boundary with subduction occurring to the north of these areas, southwards under the Lake District and Wales. There was a lot of volcanic activity in Wales. Many of the lavas erupted were erupted under the sea and mixed with the sediments on the sea floor, as did the large flows of volcanic subaerial ash, known today as nuées ardentes.

The convergent plates, subduction and volcanic activity resulted in the formation of the Caledonian mountain chain that runs from Wales up through Scotland and into Scandinavia. What we see now is the eroded core of these mountains.

The main centres of volcanic activity were Snowdonia, the Arenigs, (just south of Snowdonia) Cader Idris (just south of the Arenigs) and Prescelly (near the southern bit of Cardigan bay).

Other evidence for associated volcanic activity comes form the southern uplands of Scotland and Ireland.

link Accessed March 08
The Ordovician period is the second of the six periods of the Paleozoic era, and covers the time between 488.3±1.7 to 443.7±1.5 million years ago (ICS, 2004)[1].

It follows the Cambrian period and is followed by the Silurian period. The Ordovician, named after the Welsh tribe of the Ordovices, was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879, to resolve a dispute between followers of Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, who were placing the same rock beds in northern Wales into the Cambrian and Silurian periods respectively. Lapworth, recognizing that the fossil fauna in the disputed strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian periods, realized that they should be placed in a period of their own.

While recognition of the distinct Ordovician period was slow in the United Kingdom, other areas of the world accepted it quickly. It received international sanction in 1906, when it was adopted as an official period of the Paleozoic era by the International Geological Congress.

wikedpedia

Lava is molten rock expelled by a volcano during an eruption. When first expelled from a volcanic vent, it is a liquid at temperatures from 700 °C to 1,200 °C (1,300 °F to 2,200 °F). Although lava is quite viscous, with about 100,000 times the viscosity of water, it can flow great distances before cooling and solidifying, because of its thixotropic and shear thinning properties

Interesting!!