Thursday, February 10. 2011

C - Geography 12 - Today we'll do a brief introduction to maps. Maps and charts are the language of Geography not the subject matter; they are a tool that we use to show geographic information. I'll have you work on an 11x17 map of the school campus from memory and then you'll get together with three other people in the class in order to draw a large scale map combining all of your geographic data. Think about what maps depict (show) and the things that are used on a map to show data (scale, symbol, orientation, etc...). Tomorrow we'll look at topographic maps and understand them in greater detail. Take a look at the following website for more information: USGS What do Maps Show?

D & A - Criminology 12 - Today, we'll examine where we get our information about trends in crime (UCR, PRVS, Self-Reports). We'll look at the BC Crime trends from 1998 - 2007 and then we'll talk about the disparity (difference) between the public perception of violent crime and the actual rates of violent crime in Canada. This will set us up for our next blog entry on Monday.
UVIC Study on Violent, Property and Drug crime rates in BC






B - Earth & Space Science 11 - Today we will begin our first lab in the course. Before we get to the lab we'll review our notes on the identification of minerals. Yesterday we looked at colour, hardness, luster, streak, cleavage, specific gravity and other special properties. The lab is on mineral identification and you and a partner need to work through the mineral identification chart in class today. We will continue working on this tomorrow. For extra help on mineral properties check out:
rocksandminerals.com
mineralogy4kids.com
mineralmatters @ San Diego natural history museum
amethystgallery physical properties of minerals
This Dynamic Earth @ Smithsonian museum of natural history