How Hurricanes Form

Hurricanes can be both beautiful and incredibly destructive
When a tropical cyclone reaches sustained winds of 74 mph, it is called a hurricane.
The official hurricane season is June 1 to November 30, but hurricanes sometimes occur outside of this season.
In the North Atlantic, and the central North Pacific, the term hurricane is used.
The same type of disturbance in the Northwest Pacific is called a typhoon.
Meanwhile, in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, the generic term tropical cyclone is used.

Hurricanes need the following ingredients in order to occur

A group of thunderstorms that move over the ocean

Warm moist water. In fact, the water needs to be 80 degrees or higher.
Also, this warm water needs to be about 200 feet deep

Unstable air that allows the moist air to rise  this rising air needs to be humid up to 18,000 feet
This large amount of water vapor supplies latent heat energy for the storm

Gentle winds in the upper atmosphere traveling at the same speed and direction to avoid ripping the storm apart

A high-pressure system in the upper atmosphere

Put all of these ingredients together and you may get a hurricane

Storms that form north of the equator spin counterclockwise. Storms south of the equator spin clockwise.

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Indian Seat Day Hike-Sawnee Mountain

This summer, my wife and I have found a new trail or park to explore each Friday. It has been a lot of fun and we have discovered some great parks.
One trail we discovered was the Indian Seat Trail.

Indian Seats Trail Loop is a 3.1-mile loop trail located near Cumming, Georgia that features beautiful views, winding trails, and a mix of hardwood and pine trees
The trail is rated as moderate.
The Indian Seats Trail eventually makes its way to the summit of Sawnee Mountain, which has outstanding long-range views of the North Georgia mountains.

The mountain is named after a local Cherokee Native American, Sawnee. 
The Sawnee Mountain Preserve Visitor Center is the ideal place to begin your visit to the Preserve. Hours of operation are Monday - Saturday, 8:30AM - 5:00PM.  Admission is free of charge. The Center features interactive exhibits a Mountain climbing wall and area, summer programs and much more.


There are three access points
4075 Spot Road
2500 Bettis-Tribble Gap Road
2505 Bettis-Tribble Gap Road

This area was once the site of abundant gold mining prospects back in the 1800s and you can see evidence of past gold mining.

If you have young children they can explore in a fort and then use the picnic tables for a nice lunch.

Sawnee Mountain Visitor Center

Directions

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Layers of the atmosphere for kids

Learn about the major layers of the atmosphere.
These layers are the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and the thermosphere.

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Difference between AM and PM

If you live in the United States, Canada, or Australia, you use a 12-hour system for telling time.
If you look at this clock it is 7 o’clock.
However, is this 7 o’clock in the morning or 7 o’clock at night. This is where am and pm help.
The 12-hour system divides the 24 hours of a day into two periods lasting 12 hours each.
The first 12-hour period is designated as am. It runs from midnight to noon. The second period, marked pm, covers the 12 hours from noon to midnight.
AM comes from the Latin phrase ante meridiem, which translates to, before midday
and p.m. from the Latin phrase post meridiem which translates to past midday.
There are 24 hours in a day, this requires the hour hand to pass the 12 twice.

Most often midnight is considered the start of a new day.
Midnight is classified as 12:00 AM.
The hours after midnight and before noon are written with am
These 12 hours start late at night then transition to early morning.
3 am is late at night, but 7 am is when many people are waking up.
12 pm is considered midday or noon.
The hours between noon and midnight are written with pm.
These hours start during sunlight and end in darkness

Let's apply what we have learned

Drew wakes up in order to go to school at 7:00 o’ clock
Would you use am or pm?
Drew wakes up after midnight and before noon so you would use am.


Adam’s favorite restaurant stops serving dinner at 8:00 o'clock
Would you use am or pm?


Dinner time is after midday or noon but before midnight so you would use pm.


The sun rises at 6:00 and sets at 7:00 Which would you use?
The sun rises after midnight and before noon so use 6:00 am and the sun sets afternoon and before midnight so use 7:00 pm.

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Geocentric vs Heliocentric Model of the Universe

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If you look at the sky at night, it appears that the stars are moving. This is called apparent daily motion. 
From this perspective, it is very easy to assume the earth is the center of the universe. This was the accepted theory called the  Geocentric model for many years. Great minds like Aristotle and Ptolemy proposed and supported this view of the universe. Geocentric means “earth-centered”  and it just seemed right. However, there were some problems. For example, sometimes the planets appeared to go backward or have retrograde motion. In order to explain this small orbits called epicycles which are orbits inside an orbit was proposed to explain this backward motion.
This model did not sit well with Copernicus and In 1543, he published “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres”, in which he explained what many had suspected: that the sun is at the center of the universe and we move around it along with all the other planets. This is called the Heliocentric Model.
He proposed that each orbit was a circle and that the earth like other planets revolved around the sun. This solved several problems including the retrograde motion of the planets arguing that such motion was only perceived and apparent, rather than real.
With the help of his telescope, Galileo Galilei discovered the moons of Jupiter and observed that smaller objects revolve around larger ones.
Johannes Kepler proposed that the orbits of the planets were not perfect circles but ellipses Our planets travel in an ellipse and actually speed up when closer to the sun and slow down when furthest away from the sun.
The retrograde motion of the planets was explained because it is caused by planets that move more quickly pass other planets and it appears the planet is going backward.
Sir Isaac Newton in his book Principia Mathematica proposed laws of motion in or to explain how objects interact with the world and with each other.
His law of gravity identified the responsible force behind the celestial motion

We now know the sun is one of many stars and is not the center of the universe but the planets do revolve around the sun and not the other way around.

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Percent of a number (3 easy methodsfor figuring percentages)

Learn how to solve 25% of 45 or 35% of 350.
In this video, I cover three different methods or formulas for finding the percent of a number.
Method one, convert the percent to a fraction
Method two, convert the percent to a decimal
Method 3. If possible you can estimate using 10%

These three methods will help when figuring percentages.
Example problems include,
60% of 120
15% 0f 20
20% of 45

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Factors of 24

The factors of 24 are all of the factors of 24 that multiply together to equal twenty-four.

Factors of 24 equal 1,2,3,4,6,8,12.24

Prime factors of 24 equal 2,2,2,3

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