Earthquake Hazards in California

The first earthquake happend in Los Angeles 1796 by tha San Andreas Fault. In January 1857 neart Fort Tejon there was another earthquake that threw buildings down and large trees.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/index.php?regionID=5

Seismic Waves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_wave

Seismic waves are the waves of enery caused by the sudden break of rock within in the earth. The waves are energy that travel through the earth and is recorded on seismographs.

Properties of Ocean Water

In natural water (see Standard Mean Ocean Water), almost all of the hydrogen atoms are of the isotope protium, ¹H. Heavy water is water in which the hydrogen is replaced by its heavier isotope, deuterium,²H. It is chemically similar to normal water, but not identical. This is because the nucleus of deuterium is twice as heavy as protium, and thus causes noticeable differences in bonding energies and hydrogen bonding. Heavy water is used in the nuclear reactor industry to moderate (slow down) neutrons. By contrast with heavy water, the term light water (i.e., ordinary water, no special isotopes) designates water containing the most common form of hydrogen, the protium isotope. For example, light water reactor emphasizes that a reactor uses the less often found light water design

http://www.seafriends.org.nz/oceano/oceans2.htm

Global Warming

Global warming is an increase in temperature on earths surface, air and ocean. Temperatures have increased since the 20-th century. The increase of global warming is mostly because of green house. Burning Fossil fuels is part of human activity and harms the invironment. If Global Warming keeps happining it can affect us all beacuse oceans rise and ice caps melt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Temperature Inversion

A temperature inversion is a thin layer of the atmosphere where the decrease in temperature with height is much less than normal (or in extreme cases, the temperature increases with height). An inversion, also called a "stable" air layer, acts like a lid, keeping normal convective overturning of the atmosphere from penetrating through the inversion. This can cause several weather-related effects. One is the trapping of pollutants below the inversion, allowing them to build up. If the sky is very hazy, or is sunsets are very red, there is likely an inversion somewhere in the lower atmosphere. This happens more frequently in high pressure zones, where the gradual sinking of air in the high pressure dome typically causes an inversion to form at the base of a sinking layer of air. Another effect is making clouds spread out and take on a flattened appearance. Still another effect is to prevent thunderstorms from forming. Even in an air mass that is hot and humid in the lowest layers, thunderstorms will be prevented if an inversion is keeping this air from rising. The opposite of a temperature inversion is an unstable air layer
http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_is_a_temperature_inversion.htm

Solar System

 Our Cosmic Neighborhood  From our small world we have gazed upon the cosmic ocean for thousands of years. Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars. They called these objects "planets," meaning wanderers, and named them after Roman deities—Jupiter, king of the gods; Mars, the god of war; Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the goddes of love and beauty, and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture. The stargazers also observed comets with sparkling tails, and meteors or shooting stars apparently falling from the sky.

Since the invention of the telescope, three more planets have been discovered in our solar system: Uranus (1781), Neptune (1846), and, now downgraded to a dwarf planet, Pluto (1930). In addition, there are thousands of small bodies such as asteroids and comets. Most of the asteroids orbit in a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, while the home of comets lies far beyond the orbit of Pluto, in the Oort Cloud.

The four planets closest to the sun—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are called the terrestrial planets because they have solid rocky surfaces. The four large planets beyond the orbit of Mars—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—are called gas giants. Tiny, distant, Pluto has a solid but icier surface than the terrestrial planets.

Nearly every planet—and some of the moons—has an atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere is primarily nitrogen and oxygen. Venus has a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide, with traces of poisonous gases such as sulfur dioxide. Mars's carbon dioxide atmosphere is extremely thin. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are primarily hydrogen and helium. When Pluto is near the sun, it has a thin atmosphere, but when Pluto travels to the outer regions of its orbit, the atmosphere freezes and collapses to the planet's surface. In that way, Pluto acts like a comet.

Moons, Rings, and Magnetospheres

There are 140 known natural satellites, also called moons, in orbit around the various planets in our solar system, ranging from bodies larger than our own moon to small pieces of debris.

From 1610 to 1977, Saturn was thought to be the only planet with rings. We now know that Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have ring systems, although Saturn's is by far the largest. Particles in these ring systems range in size from dust to boulders to house-size, and may be rocky and/or icy.

Most of the planets also have magnetic fields, which extend into space and form a magnetosphere around each planet. These magnetospheres rotate with the planet, sweeping charged particles with them. The sun has a magnetic field, the heliosphere, which envelops our entire solar system.

Ancient astronomers believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun and all the other stars revolved around the Earth. Copernicus proved that Earth and the other planets in our solar system orbit our sun. Little by little, we are charting the universe, and an obvious question arises: Are there other planets where life might exist? Only recently have astronomers had the tools to indirectly detect large planets around other stars in nearby solar systems.

—Text courtesy NASA/JPL Solar System http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/science/space-sci/solar-system/solar-system-sci.html