Mystery of the Mega Flood

This visual presentation showed how "mystery" was a great name for the topic because the showing was hesitant and not 100 percent sure of the findings and conclusions, or to why the landscape is the way it is. There are many evidence and explanations for the landscape to be the way it is, and they have good support to suggest the truth in these discoveries and explanations. 

I found the showing to be a bit confusing because I was not familiar with the background information of mega floods, nor the science of determining the cause for such landscapes. But, as i researched the topic more on the internet, i was able to find some more support for further understanding the issue and environmental concerns for this curiosity.

Overall, I thought it was an educational show and it revealed information that was completely new to me, but intriguing.  

Here is some visual and written explanation to the mega flood issue and science. 

		1. Blackfoot River Valley When Glacial Lake Missoula's ice dam shattered, a northern arm of the lake drained in a matter of hours through a narrow gap in Montana's Blackfoot River valley. One can only imagine the extraordinary upheaval that took place along this portion of the gap as the flood pounded through.
		2. Mission Mountains One of the most striking signs that a vast lake once lay atop present-day Missoula and other parts of northwest Montana are the former shorelines etched into hills like this one in the Flathead River Valley. Backed by the Mission Mountains, the hillside lies about 10 miles south of Flathead Lake.
		3. Flathead River Valley This river valley once lay at the bottom of Glacial Lake Missoula. When the lake drained catastrophically, its waters gushed (from right to left in the image) over the ridge at right, depositing a bar of sand and gravel in a tributary valley (center). Locals call these deposits "gulch fillings."
		4. Camas Prairie In the early 1940s, geologist Joseph Pardee first identified these wavy landforms as ripples not unlike those seen in the bed of a stream. No one had thought of them as ripples before because of their outlandish size: up to 35 feet high and several hundred feet between crests. The ripples provide perhaps the strongest evidence for monstrous ancient floods.
		5. Clark Fork River Imagine a glacier filling this valley so that only a few mountaintops poked above the ice. The glacier, a southern tongue of the great Cordilleran ice sheet that covered western Canada in the last ice age, dammed up the Clark Fork River, creating Glacial Lake Missoula. When the ice dam (which stood in the far right of this image) burst under the lake's enormous pressure, up to 500 cubic miles of water barreled down this valley in just 48 hours.
		6. Scabland Coulee The floods left behind "coulees"—dry streambeds or gullies—all over what is now eastern Washington. Here, an old homestead sits in the bottom of a coulee within the "scablands," the term early settlers gave to the region's flood-scoured lands. Sagebrush blankets the steep, flood-cut slopes, while above them wheat fields take advantage of rich soils the floods didn't reach.
		7. Palouse River Canyon Geologists have long known that the modern-day Palouse River is too modest a creek to have carved these massive canyons. Lying just north of the river's confluence with the Snake River, these basalt canyons provide further evidence that giant floods thousands of years ago did the brunt of the work.
		8. Dry Falls This lake is one of a number of plunge pools left behind when Glacial Lake Missoula's debris-clogged waters rushed over the rocky precipice known today as Dry Falls. Picture floodwaters more than 250 feet deep pouring over a falls five times wider than Niagara, and you get an idea of the immensity of the flood. Note the huge, water-carved potholes known as "kolks" (at right in image).
		9. Lenore Caves South of Dry Falls, in a stretch of flood-chiseled canyon called the Lower Grand Coulee, raging waters gouged out holes in the basalt cliffs, forming shallow caves like this one. Archeologists have found evidence that Native Americans lived and stored goods in these caves.
		10. Frenchman Spring Coulee Remarkable as it seems, this now-dry waterfall (cliffs in background) periodically vanished underwater as Glacial Lake Missoula floodwaters, muddy with sediment and debris, drained thunderously off the Quincy basin into the Columbia River. The glacial water continued wreaking havoc all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
		11. Saddle Mountains Flowing south (left to right in image), the biggest floods actually overtopped portions of the Saddle Mountains seen here, which gives an idea of just how much water was involved. Crab Creek Coulee, shown here, lies just south over a ridge of mountains from Frenchman Spring Coulee.
		12. Rowena Gap At places like Oregon's Rowena Gap (seen here), the Columbia River Gorge served as a bottleneck that piled up waters from the floods to heights reaching 1,000 feet. The gorge's andesite bedrock, including the rugged cliffs found in this spot between the towns of The Dalles and Hood River, reveals scars of this almost unimaginable assault.
		13. Multnomah Falls The floods left near-vertical walls along portions of the Columbia River Gorge, resulting in spectacular waterfalls like Multnomah, the second-highest year-round waterfall in the U.S. After flowing down from Larch Mountain, Multnomah's spring-fed waters plunge over 600 feet into the gorge, a spectacle that draws thousands of tourists each year.
		14. Willamette Valley Erratics Courtesy of the floods, Oregon's fertile Willamette Valley boasts not only rich soils that once mantled the scablands far to the east but also glacial "erratics" (rocks carried far from their site of origin). Geologists believe these erratics arrived inside icebergs caught in a Glacial Lake Missoula flood. When the bergs grounded and melted here, the rocks were left high and dry, hundreds of miles from where they once lay.

Up the Yangtzee:

2007 documentary about people who are affected by the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze river in Hubei, China.

Three Gorges Dam: is the world largest hydroelectric power station. This was a large project taken up by the Chinese government to improve economic prosperity. 148.365 billion Yuan was used to construct, relocate affected families, and financing the project.

The film showed how capitalism and socialism/communism work together in China.

The Dam contributes to the displacements of families who live along the river because the river rises and thus will engulf houses and even villages. The people in these villages are poor, so they do not have a say in this process what so ever. They must move their location in order to live. This causes a problem because the families are uneducated and only know how to live off the land they grew up on and this makes them have a narrow skill level. The skills they know are limited to their lands, and when they have to move off the lands, this poses a risk for survival and extreme poverty.

The documentary shows how a family struggles with the changes. They have to be replaced and that is completely NOT up to their discretion. Therefore, the uneducated parents have to make decisions that are painful to them because they know that it is not the decision they would make if life went the way they wanted it to go. When a family has no control, stressful and irrational decision will be made.

The main character wants to go to school, but she ends up working on a cruise ship. This shows that flaws in globalization, westernization and its influences to the expense of others.

Key morals to the documentary:

Western influence and its negative consequences, changing environment for money, profit to the expense of putting people in poverty or lifestyles that always struggles to survive, unwanted decision making, and oblivion of people living in a country. Lies or told and information hidden from the people of country(unethical and immorality).  

THE PERFECT STORM

Andrea Gail crew underestimates the oceans capability, and the crew becomes engulfed in a mess (storm) in the ocean due to the powerful weather fronts and a hurricane.

There are many problems that occur:  Here are a few : 40-foot (12 m) waves crashing on the deck; a broken stabilizer that crashes into the side of the boat; two men were thrown overboard.

 All these disasters made the crew decide to go back, but on their way back, they encounter a rogue wave. A rogue wave is spontaneous large waves that are higher than the significant wave height. Here is a graph of a rogue wave: High winds and strong currents mix to make a great wave such like this one. The crew continues to fight these forceful waves, but it does not work out and the boat sinks and all crew members drown.

History behind the storm:

The combination of a tropical system to another tropical system escalated into a massive storm; these rare conditions that were perfect hints at the title of the movie—The Perfect Storm.. When these two met, there had to be perfect conditions to create this massive storm, and this means that the tropical moisture was added to the cold air that was perfect for creating enormous amounts of energy, which leads to increased rain and wind.  

My BABY(s):

Death, or perhaps... underdeveloped or perhaps.. disabled, but..it does not grow!

The seed that was from the flat leaf never showed anything. It has been about a month and it stills shows nothing. The water that I place in it gets absorbed by the soil, but sadly there is no plant.

The Baby that actually Grows...it is still ALIVE!

It took about three days before the sunflower seed started to sprout.

First, I saw a small sprout, about an inch and two high with a ball on the end outside.  The sprout was light green but the ball on the end was a bit darker, so I knew there was a process going on in there that was getting ready to give birth to something (leaves).

A week later, there was one leaf. It was bicolor, with dark green lines on a lighter color green leaf.

A few days later, there were two leaves.

Then, shortly after three leaves appeared.

Third week later, a leaf appeared underneath the cluster of leaves. Now, there are leaves that have layers. There are three leaves clustered at the top, and two new leaves clustered underneath the fist older three.

All the leaves have the same color patterns. 

Cruz Plaza Mercer University

“We’re going to make it spectacular,” University President Bill Underwood said. “That area will eventually become the main quadrangle of our campus, and we want it to be the kind of place where people will gather.”

Who donated this?

Milton Cruz, who runs Medholdings Inc., a health care management and services company, is a Mercer trustee and 1982 graduate. His wife, sister and father also are Mercer graduates and contributed to the plaza donation.

Who has taken the responisblity for the contruction and design?

The Plaza, designed by the Atlanta landscape architecture firm HGOR

 

This plaza indicates the awareness of Mercer faculty to accommodate to the students needs. They were able to choose a place that students typically conjugate and expand on this observation and in hopes to make it more pleasing and accommodating to the students ambitions and desires to express their selves throughout the most active years of their life!

Crux plaza construction safety and preparation:

Gate the construction area to indicate working area. Place signs that show instructions if on wants to enter the construction site.

Workers must wear bright upper garments to distinguish them from the ground (dirt, trees, ect.)

There are rules to label the containers so that the workers are aware at all time what could be hazardous or safe.

Make sure that walkway is clear to avoid tripping.

Mark off the objects that need to remain on the site.

Medical care shall be provided for all employers, and that’s emergency care as well. First Aid kit should be on the site.

Cranes and vehicle safety: report all vehicle malfunctioning, make sure that all cranes work properly before turning it on. No one drives it unless it is in appropriate condition.

Attitude: a dangerous job and requires attention  from all the workers so have a smart attitude, don’t leave a hazardous path behind when you leave, be cautious of your work. Leave places in the shape or condition that people expect it to be left in to avoid any hazardous accidents

Minerals ROCK!

Hornblende: This is a rock type that gives a opaque green , brown or black color.  Often referred to an amphibole. Has a hardness of 5 to 6. This rock can be deceiving by appearing to be another type of rock.

Diorite: Igneous rock. Plutonic rock that can be associated with granite and a gabbro. It consists of hornblende and feldsbar. Vary in texture. It can be nicknamed “salt and pepper” Forms from partial melting of a mafic rock above a subduction zone.  This rock is pretty rare as it only is found in the Basin and Range province and Minnesota in the USA

Limestone: sedimentary rock. Composed of calcite and aragonite which  are made up of crystals from calcium carbonate. Many are formed from marine organisms. Most have a granular texture. Rich fossil content.

Mica: Makes some rocks sparkle and glitter! Found in granite. Exhibts a layer structure.

Mica is classified into a rock group. Biotite and Phlogopite ae dark colored micas. And the Muscovite and Paragonit is the light colored micas.

Granite: igneous rick that is rich in quartz and feldspar. Forms by the cooling of magma.  High demand for the infrastructure…roads and commercial buildings.