Mapping America

Today at The Hillwood Herald we visited Mapping America: Every City, Every block. That's where we enter an address and then the site shows us that street, city, state, etc. The site also shows us the population of the area, and it reveals rivers, lakes and other forms of water. You can even type in a word like feather or glasses and the site would show you a place called feather lane or street.

I had looked up "kitty" and a city called Kitty showed up! I enjoyed searching the city because cats are my favorite animals. This website is educational as well because you can learn the populations of many different areas and the ethnicities of them.

The census helps us because we will be able to know what our population is and how many seats will have to be provided at the Congress by each state. That, in turn, affects things like funding for education and social services -- elements of our life in San Francisco!

Fruit Fly

These images are from a New York Times slideshow.

These three pictures show the different regions of the fruit fly that control various muscles. The first one shows the beginning of the fruit fly. As it grows so does the controlling of it's muscles. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany.

This is a picture of one of Saturn's Moon's discovered by NASA. This next one is of a 48 year old Gorilla that has been trained to get its blood pressure taken. This one is of an ant taken in and treated as family because that ant has lost his queen. This last one is of Seals that scientists have discovered can sleep underwater.

These two ants are from different colonies. Researchers found out that when a colony has lost their queen, Neighboor colonies take in the worker ants and treat them like family.

The Making of the Berlin Wall

Construction of the Berlin Wall started on August 13, 1961, which fell twenty years ago and was anywhere from 20 to 100 feet some places.

The wall had a lot of security. It had a watchtower, and everything from spike mats and vehicle ditches to, to tank traps.

This graphic from The New York Times show that the Berlin Wall was no regular wall.

Below are some close-ups that I found interesting.

The Science of Good Grades (and Class Rank) Revealed

Student: Angela and Alysen

Do grades and class rank matter to your health as a student? Read this New York Times article and the report, the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, it sources. Write a news story highlighting the report and its findings. Include the five W's of a good news story. Who conducted the study and why? Who participated? How might the report's findings be relevant to your peers at Hillwood? Include information on what, exactly, a longitudinal study is. What might be some of the benefits of such a study?

Remember to include at least two images, sources, labels, and links.