Geologic Sandwich Science Lab Activity

This is a classroom activity my wife taught me.  Her student teacher years ago taught her this.  It is a lab activity to teach the evolution or development of life on Earth over the last 4.6 billion years.  This lesson is fun but stinky.  (Some people don't like the smell of some of the ingredients.)

Geologic Sandwich Labsheet

Ingredients or Lab Equipment or Supplies Needed:
-paper plates
-butter knife
-mayonaise
-green food coloring
-loaf of brown wheat bread, although any sliced bread will do
-raisins
-oysters and or clams
-sardines
-celery sticks
-thin sliced pastrami
-chicken lunch meat
-Turkey lunch meat
-Turkey lunch meat
-onions (scallions)
-sliced cheese

Talk to the students about each organism as the organisms are placed on the bread.  Put a piece of bread between each of the organisms.

Start with green mayo on a slice of bread.  This represents the single celled organisms that were the first life on Earth...in the oceans actually.  There are 6 kingdoms of life.  They evolved as follows:  First were Kingdom: Archaebacteria about 3.5 Billion years ago....then there  Kingdom:  Eubacteria 2.5 billion years ago or so....  These bacteria kingdoms had single celled bacteria that do not have nuclei in theer cells.  then about 1.5 billion years ago the single celled protists.  Kingdom Protista are mostly
single celled but they DO have nuclei.  The slime or green mayo represents these forms of life.
On the worksheet or labsheet the students write the name of the Precambrian Era.

Next add a piece of bread and place raisins on it.  Raisins are the trilobites.  Trilobites were the first arthropods...that is, animals with an exoskeleton...like insects, spiders, crabs etc.  Trilobites were preceded by sponges and jellyfish, but we do not have anything in the lab to represent them.  On the labsheet write the name of the Paleozoic in the Era column and in the Periods column write Cambrian.

Add another piece of bread and place oysters on it.  This represents invertebrates like cephalopods or brachiopods.   Now wrtie the name Ordovician in the Periods column.

Add another piece of bread and place another oyster or a clam on it to represent more invertebrates.  Write the word Silurian in the Periods column.

more bread and add a couple of sardines...canned sardines.   These represent the age of fishes or the Devonian.  Write down Devonian in the Periods column.

More bread and add a few pieces of celery to represent non-flowering plants.  You could be more accurate and add pine nuts instead, but i am severely allergic to pine nuts so I don't use them.  You could explain that the celery looks like a cycad trunk.  Also explain that in Europe they use the term Carboniferous for the two periods that we call the Mississippian / Pennsylvanian.  Write those down in the blank in the Periods column. 

Another piece of bread and a piece of salami.  This represents the first amphibians and reptiles of the Permian Period...so write down Permian in the Periods column.

Now we are in the Mesozoic Era.  This is the age of Dinosaurs.  Write down the word Paleozoic in the Era column.  Add on the next piece of bread a piece of chicken lunch meat.  Write Triassic in the Periods Column.

Now another piece of bread and add a piece of turkey lunch meat and write down Jurassic in the Periods column.

Place more bread on the sandwich you are working on and add a piece of lunch meat turkey.  Last period of the Mesozoic Era is Cretaeous so write it down.

Now we are in the Cenozoic Era so write it in the Era column.  Now add more bread and place an onion to represent the explosion of flowering plants.  Write the Period... Tertiary.

Lastly more bread and a piece of cheese to represent the age of mammals.  Now write down Quaternary in the periods column.

Now explain that the rock layers often get vey compressed so squash the sandwich and then explain that rock layers break, so cut the sandwich.  You can now use the sandwich halves to explain strike slip faults like the San Andreas Fault in California.  (Slide the halves horizontally along the cut.)   A normal fault would be like the mountain/valley faults seen in Utah and Nevada.  (Slide the halves up and down)  Thrust faults are like where India crashed into Asia to create the Himalayan Mountains.  (Push halves together.) 

Recommendation:  Don't try and eat it,

Remember that eras are divided up into periods.  Older eras and periods are on the bottom and younger ones are on top.   This is the law of superposition..

Review of Eras and Periods for worksheet;

    ERA                                       PERIOD
Cenozoic                           Quaternary
                                          Tertiary

                                        Cretaceous
Mesozoic                         Jurassic
                                        Triassic
   
                                        Permian
                                        Mississippian/Pennsylvanian  (Carboniferous in Europe)
Paleozoic                         Devonian
                                         Silurian
                                        Ordovician
                                         Cambrian

The Greatest Showman circus coloring pages

I was so inspired by the new movie The Greatest Showman.  It was so well done.  I am a person  physical and health disabilities or challenges.  I live with a tracheotomy T Tube in my throat.  I could relate to the characters that were much of the cast.  These were called the freaks by some unkind people in the movie.  I can tell you that those of us with different bodies than normal are still worthwhile and often very good talented people.  The song "This Is Me" made me shed a few tears.  I know how the characters feel.  Yet in my life many good people have accepted me and made me welcome in their lives.  That would include thousands of students who let me teach them without ever saying anything rude.  ONE time a student was rude about my disability and the rest of the class chided him so I did not feel the need to.

Bearded Lady, Little General, and Tattooed Man

Did you know that things did not really happen exactly like they did in the movie, but some parts were  right on.  When Barnum lost his fortune his good friend "TomThumb" or the "Little General" contacted him and went on  a European tour with him and restored Barnum's fortune.  So it appears to me that 

P. T. Barnum really did have a good relationship with his performers.  

The circus performers were from different races and many of the people of New England or New York were still very prejudice in the 1800's.  Not in the movie is the fact that Barnum was a strong supporter of the North or Union in the American Civil War.  He spoke against slavery and said all people were children of God.  It was a Confederate sympathizer that burned his building  down.  

Trapeze Artist female 

Trapeze Artist redo

Trapeze Artist 2

I drew a trapeze artist but she clearly does not approach the beauty of the actress Zendaya who played the female trapeze artist in the movie.   Today, February 17th, I am adding a redo of the above drawing and a closer version of the drawing.   I could draw this much better than this drawing with fine point markers on a coloring page.  The more detailed kind of drawing with pencils and airbrush takes about 40 hours.  In any case,  I highly recommend this wonderful movie.  Every song was inspiring!!!  We've seen it twice now and are going again next week.

Since so many people are interested in this circus coloring page I made a second.  However, so it will be easier for you I am adding those drawings here as well. 

Ringmaster and Circus Performers from The Greatest Showman

Jumbo was an African Elephant who was orphaned as a calf.  He was living in the London Zoo when P. T. Barnum purchased him for the circus.  Jumbo was huge.  He died when he was hit by a train...possibly when he was trying to rescue an elephant calf that had wandered off.  The calf got a broken leg.   Jumbo did not make it.  He may have been 13.1 feet or 4 meters tall in his prime.  Of course P. T. Barnum said that were the measurements and he was known to exaggerate things like size.  The word "jumbo" has come to mean large sized.  Jumbo was not featured in the movie:  The Greatest Showman.  More about Jumbo on my later post titled:
 "The Greatest Showman Coloring Pages 2".  

Jumbo

Jumbo the circus elephant takes on the Train

Apostle Peter and the Unclean Beasts

Peter and the vision of Unclean Beasts

Peter was the lead apostle which in my religion means he was the prophet after Jesus ascended to heaven.  Peter was staying at a friend's house when a good man, a non-Jew or Gentile...sent his servants to see him.  Peter did not know it but the man had had a vision and had been told to go get Peter.   This man was a Roman Centurion or officer.  He was a good man who feared God and gave much to the poor. 

Peter was taking a nap in the day, on the roof of his friend's house.  He saw a vision in a dream.  He saw many unclean or common beasts in a huge sheet let down from heaven.  He was told to rise and kill and eat them.  Peter protested that he had never broke Jewish law and eaten unclean beasts.  But the voice from heaven told him, "What God hath cleansed call thou not common."  

This was a message to Peter to start spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.  Peter was told that the men were at the door and to go with them.  Peter taught Cornelius and his household and many of his friends.  Peter told them that God had told him to not call any man common or unclean.  Many Gentiles, including Cornelius and his family and friends accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ.   This goes to show that God is no respecter of persons or that can be said by saying that God loves us all as His children.

Halszkaraptor the Swimming Raptor Dinosaur

Halszkaraptor about to go Fishing

NOTE:  My main computer is still broken so I can not scan this cleanly so
there will not be a printable version for a few days.

Have you ever heard of a SWIMMING dinosaur... I don't mean a marine reptile, I mean a dinosaur that actually swims to hunt for prey...AKA fishing.  Well, you are about to hear about one...

Halszkaraptor escuilliei is a recent find from Mongolia.  The fossil was in a private collector's collection but it had been illegally exported from Mongolia.  It was so unusual that paleontologists at first thought it was a fake.  Synchrotron tomography (a type of cT x-ray scan) revealed that this was a real animal that lived an unusual lifestyle.  It had many sharp teeth and a nerve cluster in its snout called a plexus.  A plexus is what crocodilians have for detecting movement of prey underwater.  The Halszkaraptor also had flattened feet that would have made great paddles.  All these clues led paleontologists to conclude that it lived an amphibious lifestyle.  It was not an amphibian but it did live both in and out of the water.  This is an amazing discovery!

This bird looks remarkably like the flightless cormorant from the Galapagos Islands.  The cormorants in other parts of the world fly and dive into the water from up high to catch fish.  The flightless cormorant lives on the rocks of the Galapagos Islands and dives directly from land into the ocean.  It evolved to the point where it no longer needed to fly.  There were no predators and the fish were plentiful.  I think that the same conditions existed where Halzkaraptor lived in Mongolia, back in the Cretaceous Period 70 million years ago.

When two organisms evolve to have similar characteristics this is called convergent evolution.  Another example of convergent evolution would be how dolphins are shaped much like an Ichthyosaur.  Both have  long streamlined bodies, flat fluke tails, flippers for legs, and a flat tail for propulsion through the water.   These traits are all useful for living in the water so many animals that live in water have these characteristics...even though they evolved completely independently.  A dolphin and an Ichthyosaur are not related at all.  One is a mammal and the other is a reptile.

Thomas S. Monson as a boy

Thomas S. Monson as a Paperboy

We heard the news this morning that our Prophet, Thomas S. Monson passed away last night at about 10:00 p.m.  I that  know many of you who print my pages to color are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  That is fine, I just want to share a little bit about one of the men who LDS people like me have loved over the last 50+ years.  I am aware that there are good leaders of other religions that do also much good in the world.

We call our prophet the president of the church.  So, President Monson was a great man because he gave much of his attention to the common man.  He once shook my brother in law's hand (when my brother in law was only 15).  Then Elder Monson was dedicating the new ward building or chapel in Belle Fourche, South Dakota.  Afterwards Elder Monson shook hands with all the children's and youth's.  This brother in law, named Myren, went to BYU in Provo, Utah, 3 or so years later.  One day he was walking across campus and Elder Monson was walking the other way. Elder Monson looked at Myren and said, "Hello Myren."  Myren was shocked that Elder Monson could remember who he was.  At the time Elder Monson was a junior member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.

Many people over the years came to love him because he could remember their names and he truly cared about them.  When he was a bishop of our church at the young age of 22 he took care of over 80 widows who lived in his ward boundaries.  A ward is a congregation from a given area.  Bishop Monson kept in touch with these widows and even after he was released and was no longer theri bishop he always checked in on them until the very last one passed away.

President Monson served in the U.S. Navy during World War 2.  He then worked for the local paper called the Deseret News.   He started as the manager of the classified ads section.  Then he was made sales manager.  Next he was made assistant manager of the news paper.  His career was interrupted by a call from the prophet to serve a mission as mission president of the Canadian Mission.  He returned to the Deseret News and was made Manager of the Deseret News Press.   I don't know if the young Tommy Monson ever had a paper route but I drew a picture of him delivering papers from the Deseret News.  .  .  a Newspaper where he would be employed and eventually run.  So a drawing of him as a paper boy for the Deseret News seemed fitting.  If he was a paperboy it would have been in the mid 1930's or so.  .   . in Salt Lake City, Utah.

He was called as an Apostle when he was just 36 years old.  You are never released from the calling of Apostle until you pass away.  If you are the most senior apostle you become the Prophet and President of the Church.

Elder and then President Monson taught with stories.  He loved people and loved to serve them.  He would duck out of his busy schedule to go visit an elderly friend in a rest home or a friend in the hospital.

The love of his life passed away a few years ago and now Thomas S. Monson is with his eternal companion for eternity.  We believe that marriage, when you are sealed in the Temple, is for not only time (til death do us part)...but we believe marriage is eternal.  If we are sealed for time and all etenity in the Temple, and we keep God's commandments to be kind, serve others, and stay away from the things that God has forbidden, then we can live for eternity with our Savior Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Parents, and of course our Eternal Companion and our worthy children.

Eros and Psyche with even more illustrations

Eros and Psyche, a love story from Greek Mythology...I am doing a series of drawings to go with this story.   Today only one will be posted today.   More illustrations of this beautiful myth will be added soon. I am also adding more details.  I am changing some names.  Greek Gods and Goddesses and their Roman counterparts can get confusing.  I will only use Greek names but look at the chart at the end of this post to see a few of these names.  Basically the Romans adopted the Greek gods but renamed them.

Psyche was a beautiful mortal maiden.  She was so beautiful that she out shined her two older sisters.  Her father was the king.  The people of the kingdom were so taken with Psyche's beauty that they began to honor and worship her instead of the Goddess of Beauty, Aphrodite.

Aphrodite was NOT pleased.  She was jealous of Psyche so she sent her winged son Eros to shoot Psyche with one of his magic love arrows and make her fall in love with a hideous beast.  But her plan backfired.  When Eros saw Psyche lying there asleep in her chambers he was so entranced with her beauty that he shot himself with one of his magic love arrows.

Eros was in love.  But his mother Aphrodite the Goddess of Beauty was still angry...probably even more angry.  The King and his councilors become aware that one of the gods had been offended and they learned that Psyche is the one who has offended Aphrodite.  Poor Psyche never wanted all the attetion and at times wished she could be less beautiful.  But he fate is set.  She is both married to an unknown being (thought to be an evil hideous snake-like winged dragon) and placed on a mountain top to await her fate.  Her parents mourn her loss but fear to offend the Aphrodite.

Well, it turns out that the unknown being is NOT a dragon.  The god of the west wind, Zephyrus, transports Psyche to a beautiful meadow with a nearby palace and plenty of food and comfort.  Her husband only comes in the dark of night and she learns to love him, even though she has been forbidden to see him.  They become friends as well as they talk at night, even though she can not see him.  She truly loves him but still does not know what he looks like.  She eventually becomes pregnant and still has never seen her husband.

She found that she was missing her two sisters and she pled with her husband to let them come visit.  He says that nothing good will come of this but he allows her to have her wish. She was happy when her sisters came to visit but they were jealous of her opulent surroundings.  They hatched a plan to trick her into finding out who her husband was by telling her that she may have been sharing a bed with a frightful monster.

The next night Psyche lit an oil lamp to see what her beloved  husband looked like.  He was NOT a frightful beast but a beautiful young man with glorious wings.  In fact, he was a beautiful winged god.  Psyche was so startled at Eros' striking good looks that she took a step back, got poked by one of his arrows from his quiver, and dripped hot oil from the lamp onto Eros and he woke up and immediately flew away.

Poor Psyche did not see him the next night or the next or the next.  It soon became clear that he was not coming back.  She eventually sought out Eros' mother, the Goddess of Love Aphrodite.  This made Aphrodite feel kind of smug.  She sent poor Psyche on a series of terrible quests with impossible tasks.

In one task Psyche was supposed to sort a mound of different size seeds.  A passing ant took pitty on hie and his colony came and sorted all the seeds for Psyche.  This just made Aphrodite more angry.  She had Psyche go to a dangerous place where very deadly golden sheep lived.  Psyche is supposed to gather wool form these deadly sheep.

Psyche Gathers Golden Wool from Briers

The giant golden  sheep belonged to the sun.  Psyche is not sure how to proceed until a divinely inspired reed tells her to gather the wool from where it got caught on briers. or thorns.  (Apparently some of the other gods were watching and wanted to help poor Psyche out of her predicament.)

Psyche Gets Help from Zeus' Eagle

NOTE:  My computer broke so I can not scan right now so this page will not be in printables yet.  You could print it by getting a screen shot or wait until my computer is fixed.  This drawing was photographed so it will be better when I can scan. 

Next Venus sent Psyche to gather water from the source of the River Styx in the underworld.  The waterfall and cliff she was trying to climb was infested with winged serpent-like dragons and it turns out that the King of the Gods, Zeus, took pity on her and sent his eagle to fight off the dragons and get the water for Psyche. 

Finally Aphrodite said her own beauty was failing as she took care of her injured son. So she sent Psyche to the underworld with the task to get some of Persephone's  beauty. Persephone was the queen of the underworld.  Persephone also took pity on Psyche and complied and another task was completed...except Psyche's curiosity got the better of her and she opened the box.  She was immediately struck with an eternal sleep.

By now Eros was recovered from his burn...he now had a scar, but he still loved his wife.  He found her and gave her a kiss to break the spell.  He removes the sleep from her face and places it back in the box.

Eros Rescues Psyche

Drawing is based on a sculpture seen at the Louvre in Paris

Eros Rescues Psyche

.  Eros  takes Psyche to Zeus the King of the Gods and pleads her case.  Zeus allows Psyche to drink ambrosia and thus become immortal and she joins the gods on Mount Olympus.  They even have a formal wedding for her and Eros.  Zeus warns Aphrodite to let it be or back off.

You might think that  Aphrodite would be angry but no, she is happy.  She endorses the wedding and welcomes Psyche into the family...because it will keep Psyche and her dazzling beauty in heaven (Mount Olympus) instead of distracting people on Earth.
...so she figures that the people will return to her temples.  So Aphrodite, the Goddess of Beauty:", is happy with how things worked out.  However, for a while there, she would qualify as the "Worst Mother in Law EVER!"

So, in any case, it is a happily ever after ending to this myth.  It also teaches a lesson.  Psyche loves her husband even though she does not know what he looks like.  Eros loves her even though at the start of their marriage her beauty is hidden in the dark.   Maybe he CAN see her but he wanted to be loved for more than just his physical beauty.


Here is a short list of some of the Gods and Goddesses from Greek and Roman Mythology

 GREEK GOD OR GODDESS                                 ROMAN GOD OR GODDESS COUNTERPART
  also known as OLYMPIANS                                             to Olympians

   Zues                                                                                         Jupiter
   Aphrodite                                                                                 Venus
   Eros                                                                                          Cupid
   Hades                                                                                       Pluto
   Poseidon                                                                                   Neptune
   Hermes                                                                                      Mercury
   Hara                                                                                          Juno

New Year's Prayer

New Year's Prayer

Heavenly Father please grant my prayer:

May we remember to

Love One Another 

in the New Year!

Note:  It was Jesus who said, "As I have loved you, love one another."  

Jesus appears to his Apostles