Hanover Mall -- April 25

42° 08' 47" N
70° 50' 31" W
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This has been a year of "firsts" for EarthView, and today is yet another. The EarthView team will have a public program at the Hanover Mall today, courtesy of the South Shore Children's Museum, which is providing this as a special event for April vacation week.

We will be near the museum from 11 to 4 today (Friday, April 25) near the museum in the Sears wing of the mall. Free and open to the public. Bring socks if you want to go inside!





Dr. Reed Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Geography, enjoyed a chance to see Earth View for the first time.

Massachusetts State House

Massachusetts State House

Boston Marathon

Taylor Soell

Melissa Medeiros 

42° 21' 30" N
71° 03' 50" W
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The notable Boston Marathon, has been running continuously since 1897 and is considered the oldest annual marathon in the world. The first race only included fifteen runners who were men because women were not officially allowed to run the race until 1972. Although female runners had participated beginning in 1966, they were opposed by the race sponsor, the Boston Athletic Association. Boston Marathon was the first major marathon to include a wheelchair division in 1975 for men, and eventually included a wheelchair division for women in 1977. The beauty of the marathon is that it brings different cultures and nationalities from around the world together to participate in a 26. 2 miles long route to the finish line.

                                                                     Source: Adidas

This table represents the amount of victories based on different nationalities around the world. As shown, the United States has gained the most victories compared to other countries with a total of 98 wins. Kenya, falls second after the United States with a total of thirty-one wins, and Canada in third place with twenty-one wins.

Source: Marathon Winnings 

The historic course starts on Main Street in the rural New England town of Hopkinton and follows Route 135 through Ashland, Framingham, Natick, and Wellesley to where Route 16 joins Route 135. It continues on Route 16 through Newton Lower Falls to Commonwealth Avenue, turning right at the fire station onto Commonwealth which is Route 30. It continues on Commonwealth through the Newton Hills, bearing right at the reservoir onto Chestnut Hill Avenue to Cleveland Circle. The route then turns left onto Beacon Street continuing to Kenmore Square, and then follows Commonwealth Avenue inbound. The course turns right onto Hereford Street (NOTE: against normal traffic flow) then left onto Boylston Street, finishing near the John Hancock Tower in Copley Square.

Map Source: BAA

Massachusetts State House -- Earth Day -- April 22 ... PLUS April 28

42° 21' 30" N
71° 03' 50" W
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EarthView has been on display in the Massachusetts State House several times, but this year will be a first. The general public -- including legislators -- will be invited to go inside the Earth on Earth Day.

Please plan to join us in historic Nurses Hall between 9 am and 2 pm on Tuesday, April 22. Bring your friends -- and remember to bring socks!

Also, we have the great fortune of being invited to return the the State House just a week later. We will be in Great Hall on Monday, April 28 from 9 am to 1 pm.

The State House is a secure facility with metal detectors, but is free and open to all. After you visit EarthView, be sure to explore the People's House, and consider taking a guided tour. 

Photo: Ashley Costa

Tenney Grammar School - March 21

42° 43' 53" N

 71° 10' 39" W

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The EarthView team is excited to be at Tenney Grammar School in Methuen again! As you may know, there is a plane that departed from Malaysia that has been missing since the 8th of March. As of the 5th-8th, unidentified "pings" have been heard underwater by China and Australia. There is no certainty that these "pings" are those from the black box of the plane, rescue teams have been cleared to search for the plane.

 


 The rescue teams are using thermal and satellite imagery, along with "buoys equipped with hydrophone listening devices" to aid the search for the missing plane. Should there be any signs of finding the wreckage of the Flight MH370, a miniature submarine will be deployed to map out the ocean floor and pinpoint the location of the plane.


Speaking of planes, a new plane is surging from Switzerland. The Solar Impulse 2, an idea from the Solar Impulse team, led by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, is the second running of solar planes from the team. The idea behind this is to make the plane run solely on solar energy from 17,000 solar panels. This plane will have a wingspan of 72 kilometers (or as we would know it, about 236 feet), and match that of a Boeing 747 plane.




Despite its wingspan, this plane is small, and weighs around the same as a large car. there is a cockpit that is big enough to house one person inside "comfortably" and will have an auto-pilot feature that acts as a co-pilot. The plane is scheduled to travel the globe in 5 months, never needing to stop to re-fuel, but making stops to switch over pilots. The plan is to make the journey happen in 10 different stretches, some lasting over 5 days. This plane may not be ready for the masses to travel in, but it is definitely a huge step forward in the future of solar technology.


Our visit is on April 11th, which is also the date when the Treaty of Paris came into effect in 1899. The treaty had been signed on December 10th, 1898, and signified the end of the Spanish-American War. One of the effects of the treaty was for Spain to cede Puerto Rico to the United States.

Moran Middle School at NERC! -- April 8-9

This is a guest post by geography students from Moran Middle School.

41° 29' 07" N
72° 49' 49" W

Hello! We are James H. Moran Middle School in Wallingford, Connecticut. We are in the 8th grade, and we entered an ACER contest to win tablets for our social studies classroom. The contest entry was supposed to be a video that explains why we deserve to win the tablets. We are one of the top ten finalists, if you could, please vote for Moran so we can discover more in our classroom! Vote here: http://moourl.com/votemoran Here is our video:

 

Some 8th grade Moran students attended NERC this year, and we set up our own tables and taught guests attending NERC how to use social media and other internet resources for educational purposes. We taught participants how to use Twitter, Instagram, Google Docs, Flickr, and we also did special interviews and a green screen that could take a picture with your favorite historical person!

It was very fun for us kids to teach adults how to use these things. Hopefully these teachers will take their new knowledge and spread it to their classrooms, maybe making the class easier and more enjoyable. We also hope that the people that visited us had just has much fun as we did. We also did a special interview inside of an inflated Earth. See the video
here:
 

Some Moran students pose with EarthView at NERC!

The same students from a different perspective:

See more photos and some videos of the Mustangs at NERC on Flickr.

NERC 45, Sturbridge -- April 7-9

42° 06' 51" N
72° 05' 22" W 
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The EarthView team is very pleased to be joining our colleagues at NERC 45 -- the 45th annual Northeast Regional Conference of the National Council on Social Studies. This meeting takes place each year in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and brings together teachers of social studies from throughout New England.

On Saturday, EarthView was part of a program for science teachers on Cape Cod, and this week it is part of a program for social studies teachers from all over New England. This is because geography is a subject that has connections to many other subjects -- as the diagram below illustrates.

The relationship between geography and the other social studies subjects is so important that the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance will be hosting a Geography Policy Forum as part of the conference. We hope it will be just the first of many public forums held throughout Massachusetts over the next year.

Incoming?

This photograph looks like an image from a science-fiction movie, in which a meteor has somehow come to rest on a Spanish village without crushing it. Or perhaps it could be someone having fun with Photoshop.

The reality is that this is a photo taken in a street in Setenil de las Bodegas, a small town in Spain, just a bit north of Gibraltar. Blogger MessyNessy explains how and why much of this town lives under a rock in an essay that includes many more fascinating photographs. It does not, however, include a map, which is provided below. Feel free to explore by zooming out and switching between map and satellite views.

What else can you learn about the region of Setenil de las Bodegas from exploring the map. What kind of agriculture appears to be prominent in this part of Spain?

Town of Barnstable

41° 39' N;  70° 17' W
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Climate Change

This Saturday, the EarthView team is visiting the town of Barnstable for a teacher-development workshop, and to talk about climate change. One relevant consequence of climate change is increased risk of coastal erosion.

Barnstable has been affected by erosion, especially because of Hurricane Sandy. Beaches in Barnstable and along the cape, were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, and a lot of them look like the picture above. People have been coming together to clean up their beaches and prepare for the future, for when something like Sandy happens again.

Because understanding climate is an important first step in understanding climate change, the workshop will include a discussion of factors that influence the present distribution of climate zones and biomes. Our Cape Cod location is also an ideal place to focus on the importance of ocean currents in shaping climate. It is because of the currents that important differences in marine life are found on the north and south sides of the peninsula, just a few miles apart. 

EarthView is an ideal place to visualize the thermohaline circulation, otherwise known as the ocean conveyor belt. Learn more about the conveyor belt from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute  

Massachusetts Geography Bee -- Worcester Academy, April 4

42° 15' 07" N
71° 47' 28" W 
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EarthView will be resting this Friday, as some members of the team help to officiate the National Geography Bee. For the second year in a row, the Massachusetts portion of the event is proudly hosted by Worcester Academy. It is fitting that the event has returned to the Academy, one of whose graduates was an early president of the National Geographic Society and the first editor of its magazine.



The Bridgewater State University Department of Geography is supporting the event with a couple of maps. Dr. Boellstorff printed out a beautiful map of the state that will be on stage, with an opportunity for each participant to "pin" their hometown. Meanwhile, BSU student Jason Covert prepared the map below, based on registrations for the bee.

As Bay State participants are all aware, last reigning National Geography Bee champion is Sathwick Karnik of Plainville, Massachusetts. He and his family have been with EarthView several times during his victory year! Just as Sathwick met Alex Trebek at the final round last year, today's winner will meet Soledad O'Brien when she debuts as host this May.