blog number six, number two on partners content area

             "You awaken at daybreak to catch the Sun rising from the dark horizon." That is the first line on page 314. This line gets my mind racing. how simple of a line, but how all so complicated at the same time. This doesn`t make me at first think of science, but rather the reality of life. The Sun fights every morning to rise above the darkness. This is the same thing we do as humans, we fight every day to find some light in what can be a very dark and confusing world. The book then asks the question is the Sun moving or are we. This makes me thing back when I was a kid in the car and I would race the Sun. I would follow God`s magical tool with my eyes, and become so frustrated as no matter whose car I was in, I could never beat it in a race. I guess I wasn`t a very smart kid.


            I move on to read about how Earth rotates around the Sun. This process takes 365 days. It takes one year for our planet to travel around the Sun. What hits me when reading this is that we are in space. Again this is a simple notion, where else would we be? However I rarely think about Earth being in space. I am moving around in space around the Sun as I read and write about it. It kind of makes me feel like I play a role in this magical process. I feel like a pawn on a chessboard, like a pawn I may only be a small piece, but a part of the game I am. I wonder if I had a teacher when I was young teach science that way, would I have been more interested in it. I never liked the idea of facts or absolute truths. Therefore science has never appealed to me, however I have read these 20 pages now two times, and using this reading process has helped me come to a new appreciation of science. This reading process allows the reader to redefine the subject content and relate it to oneself.

         I notice something I did not see the first time I read these pages. I see Benjamin Franklin`s name brought up. This first of all is an example of WAC in the classroom. That is because the textbook is combining both history and science to reach its point. The book states that Franklin use to receive complaints about why the mail took longer to receive a letter from England, than to send one there. Franklin who was the Deputy Postmaster at the time investigated this. He found out that going against the gulf stream delayed ships sailing west from England by up to 110 km per day. The first thing that stands out to me is that I have read a lot about him in my life and I did not know he was the Deputy Postmaster. It makes sense though since he traveled abroad so much. This also connects science and communication. The currents of the sea were in control of when you got your mail. It makes me think of the battle of New Orleans in 1814. This battle was fought after the war was over. However the people fighting in the battle did not know the war was over, because news traveled so slow those days. In reading this I am able to realize that as science increased, the world got smaller.

       On page 357 the book points out that the high tide and low tide are caused by the gravitational pull of the Sun and the Moon. I think back to times I spent on the Cape with my uncle who is a fishing man. The tides played a role in so much, yet I never ever thought about the connection it had with the Sun or the Moon. I go on to read that there is two high tides and low tides each day, that I did know before reading this. However how organize this whole system is freaks me out a little bit. I kind of like to think as the ocean as a separate life form all to itself, deciding on its own what to do and when to do it. However this book clearly shows that is not the case. It is controlled, just like ever thing that is traveling in what we call space is controlled. There is a reason for it all. I cannot find anything in these 20 pages that the book cannot explain. It troubles me some for my mind has a hard time with that philosophy. It seems like nothing is random, we are all puppets on a string controlled by this vast universe. However in life the more you learn, the more you come to realize how little you know. This book will change as it has many times over throughout the centuries, for what we know today in Science, shall be different from what we know tomorrow.