Recycled Roads

In California, a company called TechniSoil is working to repave the roads with plastic. It is an expensive process, since they need special equipment to extract and grind the topmost 3 to 6 inches of asphalt. Repaving a single lane mile would require 42 truckloads of new material hauled out to California. Each lane requires the equivalent of 150,000 water bottles, and that would make a huge difference to the earth’s pollution if California and other states pave most of their roads like this. The article also says that the plastic is more resistant to potholes and cracking, and last 3 times longer than roads with standard asphalt.  Even thought doing this would cost a lot of money, it would also save money with the recycling and the potholes and cracks. The standard process requires heat, but the new process works cold, saving more energy as well. 

One reason why I think that this is a really good idea is that it will reduce significantly the pollution in the ocean and on land, which is really important to me. One of the main reasons that many ocean animals are dying is because they are swallowing PLASTIC, and I think that this will really help with that. Also, like the the article said, plastic can take centuries to compose, so we could reuse it so it wont gunk up the earth for centuries while we wait for it to decompose.  Also, this will be good for our roads. The article said that this will make our roads stronger, and while this process will be expensive to do, it will also save money in the long haul. All in all, I think that this process will really help the earth. It will also help us too.

QUESTIONS

  • Is this happening in other countries too?
  • How long will this take to do all of the U.S if all the states do it?
  • How does this process actually work?

Ice Cream!

Today, the entire class made homemade ice cream. The ingredients that we used are milk, sugar, snow, and a special type of ice cream salt. We mixed the sugar and milk, then went outside and got some snow and mixed it with the milk – sugar mix. Then we poured it into cups and then we got the ice cream. We also learned about the  endothermic and exothermic processes. An endothermic process is when an energy absorbs into a closed system. An exothermic process is basically the opposite, when a system has a process or reaction that releases energy into it’s surroundings.

I was in a group with Maddy and Analie, we went outside, grabbed the snow, and started to shake the substance around to make ice cream. At first we were having problems with it because it wasn’t freezing, and then we were able to get it colder. What was satisfying for me was the process of making it. It was coo to see how you could make ice cream. And, the result was great. When we were gathering the snow for the ice cream, Shane said that the snow was about 30 degrees, meaning that the snow was warmer than the air.  I think that this was one of my favorite projects so far.

QUESTIONS

  • How do people make ice cream in the shops, because I think it’s different from this.
  • How did people discover the two processes?
  • Who created Ice cream? They are a genius.

 

Lava Lake

19 days ago, an article was posted about Hawaii’s Kilauea volcanic eruption created a lava lake.  The volcano had been erupting constantly for almost three decades, from 1983 to 2018. It had stopped producing lava for almost two years now, and many people believed that it was over. Then on December 20th, 2020, the volcano started to produce large amounts of lava for around 11 days.  As of December 31st, 2020, the volcano had ejected over 27 million cubic meters. That is enough to fill over 800 Olympic sized swimming pools! The lava replaced an existing lake with lava lake that is almost 600 feet deep. In 2018, the molten lave flowed through the town, destroying almost 700 homes.

I chose this article because biology really interest me. I like learning about pollution and habitats mostly, but I like volcanoes as well. I think this particular article is also important so we can understand volcanoes better in the future. For example, I didn’t know that a volcano could continue erupting for almost three decades. I also didn’t know that a volcano could spurt out that much lava. That’s what I like about biology. We can use things like these to prevent as much damage from volcanoes in the future, so we will be safer.

QUESTIONS:

  • does any animal live on volcanoes, or very close to them?
  • what is the biggest lava lake in the world?
  • do you think that in the future people will be able to go to the center of the earth?