woodchurch science

bbc link, good animation, covers some stuff about tsunamis as well.

this site (breathingearth.net) shows how many people are being born and dying around the world and just how much CO2 is being produced. interesting and just a bit worrying…

this link shows you where earthquakes are going off right now! read more about seismology here.

here’s a link to the copper mine that was seen in the ‘rocket science’ program. the company is called nevada copper. you can download a copy of their information booklet here.

the chinese government has bought an entire mountain in peru and plans to ship it back to china – every last ounce. why? it’s one of the largest copper resources in the world and china is desperate for copper which it is planning to use to re-wire its entire infrastructure. this from the bbc…

The Peruvian government is happy with the $3bn (£1.53bn) that Chinalco will invest in the Toromocho mines. The Chinese will be even happier. They have got themselves a bargain. The copper Chinalco extracts from Toromocho will cost something like US$410 (£210) per ton. Today, the price for copper on the London Metal Exchange was $8,255 (£4,220) – 20 times more. Chinalco stands to make a 2,000% profit on its investment.

here’s a short video clip.

here’s a few places you could look for resources concerning mary anning:
mary anning wikipedia page
mary anning google search
mary anning images
plesiosaur fossil images

here’s a picture from microsoft virtual earth looking directly into the cone of mount vesuvius. you can zoom in further here.

here you can see a stack of images from the last major eruption in 1944.

this downloadable pdf file takes the reader through contraction theories developed by edward suess and james dana in the 19th century, then into why these were rejected in the early 20th century; how alfred wegener put forward his theory of continental drift and its rejection by many, and finally to the development of plate tectonics. it is a story which shows that the development of scientific theories requires more than just evidence in their favour.

this website has been designed by moorland school in clitheroe, lancashire. it provides some evidence for plate tectonics, comment on alfred wegener’s idea of continental drift, and the earlier contraction theory. excellent animations and information support the topics of sea-floor spreading, subduction, and what convergent and divergent plate boundaries are and where they occur. link here

when the eruption of vesuvius started on the morning of 24 august, ad 79, it caught the local population utterly unprepared. at the same time, as we now know in retrospect, all the tell-tale signs were there to warn them. volcanologists of today constantly monitor any changes in levels of seismic activity from an observatory on vesuvius, because they know that the same increase of activity in the deep reservoir of magma (molten or partially molten rock beneath the earth’s surface) causes both earth tremors and volcanic eruptions. through measuring seismic activity, these scientists expect to predict an approaching eruption months in advance.

the casts that you see below were made by 20th century archaeologists of the people, frozen in their moments of death. they are a haunting reminder of what nature can do.