This week I began my first inquiry: Ocean Plastics. I focused on research this week, in order to get the background information necessary to create my simulation. There is so much research that I need in order to make my simulation as accurate as possible, I only got to surface level research this week. I will continue to dive deeper into the background information for my inquiry in the coming weeks. So far, I have began researching on how the oceans were created, the diversity of marine life,and ocean currents. All of this information will be used in my simulation in order for me to be able to create an accurate representation of ocean ecosystems.
You can view a detailed account of my current research by clicking here, but you can continue reading for an overview of my research so far. Our oceans were created as the Earth cooled when the Earth was first formed. The water in the Earth’s atmosphere turned from a gas to a liquid as the temperature of the Earth cooled, causing the torrential rains to pour down on the Earth’s surface. The water filled the Earth’s basins, creating the oceans. Slowly overtime life formed in the oceans, developing from simple, eukaryotic organisms, having only one cell, to more complex, prokaryotic organisms, often begin multicellular. The oceans became very diverse; the variety of organisms found in the oceans increased exponentially. All of life’s most important elements, including: carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon, and calcium, can be found in ocean water, which aided the development of marine biota. One of the most vital organisms in the oceans, is plankton. Plankton come in many different forms, but they are all an important food source for many ocean animals; plankton feed the food chains of the ocean. Ocean currents also affect how the oceans work. These currents form circular patterns and there are two main types of ocean currents: those at the surface, called tropical gyres, and those in the depths of the oceans, called thermohaline circulation. Tropical gyres are mostly dependent on wind patterns and the rotation of the Earth on its axis. These gyres mostly affect whatever is floating at the surface of the ocean. Thermohaline circulation affects everything within the ocean. These currents are formed due to the differences in water temperature in different regions of the Earth. Due to the natural tendency for all nature to be uniform, the heat in the oceans tend to try to disperse as evenly as possible. This causes the areas of warm water to move towards areas of colder water, thus causing deep-ocean circulations. All of the information that I gathered this week, will enable me to understand how the oceans work. By using this background research, I will be able to create a more accurate simulation of how our ocean ecosystems are affected by plastic.
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Overview of my InquiryIn this inquiry I hope to learn about how our ocean ecosystems work, the effect of ocean plastics on our oceans, and what we can do to lessen the effects of ocean plastics, through research. Once I have my background knowledge, I hope to be able to take what I learned and model it in a programmed biological simulation using starlogo nova, which is a programming language. My simulation will be able to vary the amount of plastic that reaches the oceans, the toxicity of the plastics to the ocean life, and the amount of ocean creatures in order to take data from the simulation on how ocean plastics affect ecosystems and what makes a healthy ocean ecosystem. Once I finish working on the simulation I will write up a summary explaining what I learned and connecting it back to what we can do to help our ocean ecosystems. Through this, I will be learning about scientific writing.
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