Useful articles and sites.

I am using this post to keep track of pages, sites, etc. that I might want to access later. I know I'm so unorganized that if I write them down somewhere, I won't be able to find the information when needed! Hopefully this will be here when I need it.

Primary, Secondary, & Finding Sources:
http://www.knowledgecenter.unr.edu/instruction/help/primary.html

Why do some months have 30 days and others have 31 days?

I looked through a couple of science books that I have at home, but I haven't found a print source yet. (Maybe I will get a chance to stop by our public library...)

Using Google, I located
in "Curious about Astronomy? Ask an Astronomer."

"If it takes the Moon 28 or 29 days to orbit the earth why are most months 30 or 31 days long?

This has resulted from a compromise. Initially, months were mostly 29 days long and the average length of a month was 29.5 days which is the time taken by the Moon to orbit the Earth. However, this resulted in a year of only 354 days while the orbital period of the Earth is 365.2422 days. As a result, the calender became out of sync with seasons which was bad. This was initially corrected in an arbitrary way by adding a 13th month, but soon the calender was thrown into severe confusion.

In 46 B.C., Julius Caesar reformed the calender by ordering the year to be 365 days in length and to contain 12 months. This forced some days to be added to some of the months to bring the total from 354 up to 365 days. To account for the extra 0.2422 days, every fourth year was made a leap year. This made the average length of a year to be 365.25 days.

However, the Julian year still differs from the true year and by 1582, the error had accumulated to 10 days. So, 10 days were dropped from the year 1582 so that October 4, 1582 was followed by October 15, 1582. In addition, a modification was made that century years that were not divisible by 400 would not be considered as leap years. For example, 2000 would be a leap year while 2100 would not. This made the year sufficiently close to the actual year and this calender is called the Gregorian calender.

As the year is now set up to follow the seasons accurately, it no longer follows the phases of the Moon.

July 2002, Jagadheep D. Pandian (more by Jagadheep D. Pandian)"

I like this answer. It gives a lot of the information that I found on the web, but seemed to answer the question better in layman's terms.

I spent WAY too much time trying to zero in on a good answer using the online reference section of National Louis' library. I think that my frustration was fueled by the fact that I didn't know how to choose good search terms. Almost anything that I found on this subject had a huge history of calendars from the "beginning of time." I was just wanting to find something that discussed the idea that 365 days can't be divided evenly into 12 months! Maybe a little more facts with it. . .

How did Mother's Day begin?

Print source:
Holiday Round Up selected by Lucile Pannell & Frances Cavanah
Copyright 1950 (seventh printing)
Macrae Smith Company: Philadelphia

Miss Anna Jarvis, of Philadelphia, arranged to have a church service honoring mothers in 1907. (This was the anniversary of her mother's death.) The city of Philadelphia observed the day in 1908, with President Woodrow Wilson designating the second Sunday in May as "Mother's Day" in 1914.


Through National Louis' online library I used Infoplease where I found the following information:

Origins of Mother's Day

The custom of honoring mothers goes back at least as far as 17th-century England, which celebrated (and still celebrates) Mothering Sunday.

Mother's Day in the United States originated in 1872 with Julia Ward Howe, a writer, abolitionist, and suffragist who wrote the words to "Battle Hymn of the Republic." In 1911, President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday.


Googling, I found the following information at Chiff.com:

"Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, suggested the idea of an International Mother's day to celebrate peace and motherhood in 1872. There were many other women who were active with local groups holding annual Mother's Day remembrances, but most were more religious gatherings and not the holiday that we know today.

One of the women, who was working on establishing Mother's Day as a national celebration was the mother of Anna Jarvis. Mrs. Jarvis held an annual gathering, Mother’s Friendship Day, to heal the pain of the Civil War. After she died in 1905, Anna campaigned for the establishment of an official Mother’s Day to commemorate her mother.

"Miss Anna Jarvis was as good as her word. She devoted her entire life to the struggle to have Mother's Day declared a national holiday. In the spring of 1908, Anna wrote to the Superintendent of Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where her mother had taught Sunday School classes for over 20 years. She requested that a Mother's Day service be held in honor of her mother. Thus, the first official Mother's Day celebration was held at Andrew's Methodist Church on May 10, 1908, with 407 persons in attendance. Anna Jarvis sent 500 white carnations to the church in Grafton. One was to be worn by each son and daughter and two by each mother in attendance. Another service was held in Philadelphia later that afternoon where Anna resided with her brother. Anna had requested that the first official service be held in Grafton, where the Jarvis family had lived so much of their lives and where her mother had served for so long as a teacher and public servant." ( Mother's Day Shrine.org)

Anna Jarvis' campaign is the reason we have a formal holiday. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared that Mother’s Day should be celebrated as a national holiday on the second Sunday in May."

I have included all of the text above because it has information that agrees with different facts from both of the other sources. This shows that it is very important to confirm the information that you obtain . . . Now I just need to learn how to do this, so I can teach this skill to my students.

How far is it to the sky?

Print source: Planet Earth by Peter Murray
The Child's World, Inc. 1993
Distributed by Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corp.

This book has gorgeous photographs and discusses the atmosphere, which it describes as a blanket of gasses. The troposphere extends from the Earth's surface outward approximately five miles. The various layers continue upward for over 600 miles, so the "sky" actually starts at Earth's surface. (The ozone layer, which protects us from the sun's radiation, is about twenty miles above the Earth.)


Blogging, using Wikipedia:

"Sky" is defined as "the part of the atmosphere or of outer space visible from the surface of any astronomical object." It also says that "during the day the Sun can be seen in the sky, unless covered by the clouds." To be more accurate, it should probably say that the Sun can be seen "through the sky," and the clouds just block/obscure our view of the Sun. I prefer their definition of "the denser gaseous zone of a planet's atmosphere" which would confirm that the sky starts at Earth's surface.


Using Credo Reference from National Louis' online library:

The New Penguin Dictionary of Science defines horizon as "the line dividing the Earth and the sky." This definition also confirms that the sky starts at the surface of the Earth.

How do tulips know when to bloom?

"Googling", I found the National Gardening Association's website. www.garden.org

For tulips to bloom, they must experience a 6-10 week period of chilling/cold weather before the warmth of spring causes them to grow and bloom. (When they bloom is dependent on geographic location and weather conditions.)

Searching through our school library, I was unable to locate any print materials that answered this question about tulips.

Searching Credo Reference online, I couldn't find the information I was looking for. I think it was a problem with not knowing what to use as search terms. (Anyone have any suggestions?)

New Technology

Hi everyone. This is my first attempt at starting a blog. It will contain questions with the answers that I find during my research process.