Project Blog 3/31

This week, we completed our plate tectonics project. My group chose to do Discovery, where we needed to find out how far each of the plates would move in a year. The image above is a drawing of this. The areas that are outlined in red are the plate boundaries and the land is the green and brown, and the rest are the plates. I had a great time completing this project, and I learned a lot about Math and Science while I was at it. To find out how far to move the plates on the map, we took the diameter of the Earth (in cm), multiplied it by how far it was to move in a year, divided by 24, and moved them. There was a lot of Math and teamwork involved with this project.

Backward-Looking: What resources did you use on this piece? Were any especially helpful? Are there any that you will use again?

To do this, we found a very helpful website on the directions each plate is moving and how far per year. I will use this again. Athena was helping us by reading them out to us and me and Mackenzie put them in the table. For most of the Math, I simply typed the numbers and symbols into the Google Search bar and the correct answer came up. I will definitely use the Google Search bar again.

Inward-Looking: What was particularly satisfying to you about either the process or the product?

To me, seeing the map that we made was the most satisfying. We had created a pixlr.com drawing of the new Earth and I copied it down onto a drawing as our map. The table that we made was also satisfying. There were four columns: the name of the plate, how far it moved per year, how far it would move in 150 million years, and the direction that the plate was going in.

Outward-Looking: What is one thing you want people to notice when they look at this piece?

I want people to see that we really did our best when they look at our work. We tried so hard and tried to be as accurate as possible and I’m not totally sure if we got it right, but we really tried our best on this piece of work and I want people to notice this.

Forward-Looking: What would you change if you had a chance to do this piece over again?

I would try to make it more accurate, for one thing. I would also try and make the map look neater and more realistic, like the pixlr drawing that we did.