Google Reader

Cool....I like Google Reader and not because I read EnglishTeacherWarrior's blog entry about it first. It's pretty cool how you can make files of your favorite blogs and podcasts. I also liked how Google Reader already had listed for me the blogs that I foolow from the 21st Century Skills class. To that list I added: NASA K-12 lesson plans (NASA Quest), Weather lesson plans (Free Online Weather School), NSTA (National Science Teachers' Association), Bad Astronomy, and NASA Earth and Space Science Education News (keeping track of Hubble images and so forth). (I know what you're thinking, I AM a real egg-head, so kid away!)

I watched, fascinated by the real time (mostly) news coverage, the Chilean earthquake aftermath this past weekend on TV. I was riveted to the TV set by the impending tsunami in Hawaii. Thank goodness the tsunami was very mild in most places, including Hawaii. When I subscribed to the NSTA blog feed, the first thing I saw was an article there from National Geographic entitled, "Chile Earthquake Tsunamis Smaller Than Expected - But Why?" Well, I had to click and read the story since the same question had been on my mind since this past Saturday. It turns out that the predicted tsunami in Hawaii was 4 feet and the actual tsunami was 3 feet - not a bad prediction at all considering the thousands of miles the waves had traveled across the Pacific! It was simply that most people had remembered the horrific 1960 tsunami in Hawaii and were expecting something similar although that was not what was predicted. Another reason the tsunami was not as bad, geologists hypothesize, was that the Chilean earthquake took place beneath shallower waters off the Chilean coast so the tsunami did not build as high as it would have had it been generated in deeper waters (think Indonesian tsunami several years ago). I am glad I found Google Reader so I could get this information. I don't know that I would have looked for an answer to my question about this weekend's tsunamis without the impetus of the Google Reader assignment. Thanks, Emily.