Before we dive into our discussion, there are some facts about the ocean we should learn first.
(1) The ocean contains 97% of the planet's water and it covers approximately 71% of the surface.
(2) Earth has five major oceans. The largest is The Pacific, located between the Southern Ocean, Asia, Australia and the western hemisphere, over an area about 15 times the size of the USA. It contains more than 25,000 islands.
(3) The largest ocean on Earth is the Pacific Ocean, which covers approximately one third of the Earth’s surface. It measures over 180,000,000 kilometres square and has a larger surface area than all of the continents of the Earth combined. It is also the deepest ocean, with an average depth of 4,280 metres, but at its deepest, measures an amazing 11,033 metres. The deepest point is called the Mariana Trench which is at the bottom of the Challenger Deep.
(4) On average the depth of the ocean is 12200 feet, or 2.5 miles or 4.5 kilometers.
(5) The oceans are the greatest habitats on the planet providing more than 99% of living space with more than 90% living in the deep sea or the abyss. This means that more than 90% of the wildlife on earth live in the oceans.
(6) The deeper you travel into the ocean the more the pressure that builds up. At the deepest part of the ocean, the pressure is 8 tons per square inch; too much for any human being to handle
By the way, we jumped to another interesting topic in the middle of our discussion. We were talking about the urine treatment and surprisingly, some of us were pretty enthusiastic about this special treatment. Even some of our classmates have tried it before! It's said that it has quite a few benefits to our health to a certain degree and Barrett recommended that if you want to make it more flavorful, you should eat some plums before that. However, for me, it's surely a big challenge!
Before we ended the first topic, Zaili asked a question of Barrett whether we should drink the sea water if we get stuck without any fresh water or food supply in the middle of the ocean. He told us that drinking salt water would kill us faster, so we'd better not drink it or have to drink our urine to help us stay alive a little longer before we get rescued. Then, our teacher, Abbie, shared a piece of a song's lyrics that her father used to sing to her and it's actually also a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was an English poet, to help us to give a perfect conclusion to our first topic.
Andrea shared her presentation using the Powerpoint file and her topic was the people and culture on Orchid Island. The Yami or Tao people on Orchid Island is the only oceanic tribe of Taiwan, and its culture has been perfectly preserved due to its remote position. Andrea also mentioned that the women without children would do the long-hair dance and the men would wear a loincloth. There are two famous festivals on the island. One is flying fish festival and the other is the boat launching festival. On both festivals, the aboriginal people would have solemn rituals to pray to the Gods for the abundant harvest. There's a special solar-like totem on the sides of their boat and it represents "the eyes (mata-no-tatara)." Three primary colors, black, red and white, are used to paint the boat. Andrea told us that she was interested in the aboriginal histories until she got to read those articles about them, and she realized that the aboriginal people in Taiwan are playing a great part of Taiwan's culture and history. She's learned so much from them! If you're interested in more details and you can check the following link to find out more about Orchid Island(Lanyu). http://lanyu.taitung.gov.tw/english.html
Have you watched the animation movie "Finding Nemo?" If yes, do you still remember the father clown fish "Marlin", who is overly protective and his son "Nemo" and the friendly-but-forgetful Pacific regal blue tang, Dory? When they get separated in the Great Barrier Reef, Marlin starts a great adventure with Dory to try their best to find his son back. During their adventure, they meet the sea turtle family and they swim in the current. It's like a track for fish to race! Taiya shared wonderful information about the Ocean Conveyor Belt with us and drew an amazing picture of the world and the currents on the blackboard. She also made each of us a copy of information. She helped us to learn that the currents all start from Arctic. The icebergs don't contain salt inside, so he salt is stored at the bottom of the icebergs in water. The water with salt means higher density and it pushes the cold water down deep in the ocean. The warm water floats above the cold water close to the surface and it's pushed by the wind. Then it forms a cycle. However, due to the climate change and global warming, more icebergs melt and bring more fresh water into the ocean, so the density of the salt water isn't as high as before. It's affecting the currents more and more. In the end, when the situation gets ugly, we might not have no currents and it would bring more bad effects to all the animals in the world.
Time really flied when we all focused on those topics and discussing and sharing ideas with each other. But before we said good-bye, Abbie divided us into three teams and let us play a quiz game from the National Geographic website. It was about the ocean issues and we definitely all had a great time trying to get those answers right. Without a doubt, we were all shocked about the facts that we learned from the answers! It's time for us to take some action and we are all able to be a hummingbird to do our best to change the world!
Before we ended the first topic, Zaili asked a question of Barrett whether we should drink the sea water if we get stuck without any fresh water or food supply in the middle of the ocean. He told us that drinking salt water would kill us faster, so we'd better not drink it or have to drink our urine to help us stay alive a little longer before we get rescued. Then, our teacher, Abbie, shared a piece of a song's lyrics that her father used to sing to her and it's actually also a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was an English poet, to help us to give a perfect conclusion to our first topic.
" Water, water, everywhere
And all the boards did shrink
Water, water, everywhere
Nor any drop to drink."
Andrea shared her presentation using the Powerpoint file and her topic was the people and culture on Orchid Island. The Yami or Tao people on Orchid Island is the only oceanic tribe of Taiwan, and its culture has been perfectly preserved due to its remote position. Andrea also mentioned that the women without children would do the long-hair dance and the men would wear a loincloth. There are two famous festivals on the island. One is flying fish festival and the other is the boat launching festival. On both festivals, the aboriginal people would have solemn rituals to pray to the Gods for the abundant harvest. There's a special solar-like totem on the sides of their boat and it represents "the eyes (mata-no-tatara)." Three primary colors, black, red and white, are used to paint the boat. Andrea told us that she was interested in the aboriginal histories until she got to read those articles about them, and she realized that the aboriginal people in Taiwan are playing a great part of Taiwan's culture and history. She's learned so much from them! If you're interested in more details and you can check the following link to find out more about Orchid Island(Lanyu). http://lanyu.taitung.gov.tw/english.htmlHave you watched the animation movie "Finding Nemo?" If yes, do you still remember the father clown fish "Marlin", who is overly protective and his son "Nemo" and the friendly-but-forgetful Pacific regal blue tang, Dory? When they get separated in the Great Barrier Reef, Marlin starts a great adventure with Dory to try their best to find his son back. During their adventure, they meet the sea turtle family and they swim in the current. It's like a track for fish to race! Taiya shared wonderful information about the Ocean Conveyor Belt with us and drew an amazing picture of the world and the currents on the blackboard. She also made each of us a copy of information. She helped us to learn that the currents all start from Arctic. The icebergs don't contain salt inside, so he salt is stored at the bottom of the icebergs in water. The water with salt means higher density and it pushes the cold water down deep in the ocean. The warm water floats above the cold water close to the surface and it's pushed by the wind. Then it forms a cycle. However, due to the climate change and global warming, more icebergs melt and bring more fresh water into the ocean, so the density of the salt water isn't as high as before. It's affecting the currents more and more. In the end, when the situation gets ugly, we might not have no currents and it would bring more bad effects to all the animals in the world. Time really flied when we all focused on those topics and discussing and sharing ideas with each other. But before we said good-bye, Abbie divided us into three teams and let us play a quiz game from the National Geographic website. It was about the ocean issues and we definitely all had a great time trying to get those answers right. Without a doubt, we were all shocked about the facts that we learned from the answers! It's time for us to take some action and we are all able to be a hummingbird to do our best to change the world!
No comments:
Post a Comment