What do I know?

What do I know?

1. The geologic time scale: I know the mnemonic device come over some day maybe play poker two jacks cover two queens, but I can not remember any of the periods they stand for besides Cambrian Mississippian and Pennsylvanian
---When I looked it up - Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, Quaternary.  This is the order from oldest to present.

2. About fossils: I really don't know much about fossils at all. I know bones are considered fossils, that there can be imprints of old living things, and amber holds a lot, but that's about it.
---When I looked it up - Fossils are preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. Amber is tree sap that is fossilized. Trace fossils are things that indicate life was there such as footprints and burrows. Petrified wood is wood that has been replaced by minerals. Other fossil types include, mold and cast, carbonized leaf fossils, and the whole animal caught itself.



(http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=EoiVb503YFJ7gM&tbnid=gLMEeNWwuc3ptM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdefendingjehovahswitnesses.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F12%2Ffossils-links-to-information.html&ei=Go4rUd-XN-TB2wX1zYHgCQ&bvm=bv.42768644,d.b2I&psig=AFQjCNE-5WCp1bEgdwkpX0eUdYt1jUY6GA&ust=1361895311068258)






On Monday in class we did an experiment with making fossils. My group decided to have 3 different mixtures. One cup was a 50/50 ratio: 40mL of sand and 40mL of plaster. Another was 60mL of sand and 20mL of plaster. The last cup started out with 60mL of plaster and 20mL of sand, but we had to add 5 more mL of sand to cover the whole shell, making it 25mL of sand. Today, Wednesday, we broke apart these cast and molds. We found out our 50/50 mixture was the easiest to break and was the only one that came out whole. However, this was a flat shell compared to our other two swirly shells, so this could have had an impact. The one that had 60mL of plaster was extremely hard to break and the fossil came out in bits and pieces, but the pieces did have good imprints on them.