General Alfred Holt Colquitt

Atop a terrace in Macon's Rose Hill Cemetery Civil War general, can be found the grave of Georgia's  famed Alfred Holt Colquitt. The commander of the famed Colquitt's Brigade, he led Confederate troops in some of the most desperate fighting of the war. Part of Stonewall Jackson's command, Colquitt and his men fought at the Battles of South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Sent south to defend the Carolina's, Colquitt's Brigade rapidly moved south to reinforce Southern forces in Florida fighting against an invasion by Union troops. It was in Florida on February 20, 1864, that he was given field command of the roughly 5,000 Confederate troops that terribly mauled a Union army led by General Truman Seymour at the Battle of Olustee, Florida (also called the Battle of Ocean Pond). It is a little known fact that based on the number of troops involved, Olustee was the bloodiest major defeat for the Union during    the entire War Between the States. He was elected Governor of Georgia in 1876, spearheading a movement by the Democrat Party to regain control of the state. He was reelected to a two-year term in 1880 after his party achieved dominance and drafted a new constitution. General Colquitt was elected to the United States Senate in 1883 and served in that body until his death on March 26, 1894, at the age of 69. source: http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/colquittgrave.html

Death of a Sunflower

Once again my attempt at raising a plant-child has come to an abrupt end. While there was no mistreatment of my little plant, she decided that it was not her time to grow outside of her seed to meet the outside world. No matter what care I gave, the seed refused to take root in the carefully watered soil. Hopefully in the future I will have more luck.

Mitochondrial Eve

Mitochondrial Eve is the hypothetical mother who gave all humans our mitochondrial DNA. We all can trace our mitochondrial DNA back to her, with very few exceptions where the DNA became mutated.


5 different types of people:
Swedish: Tall, Blue-eyed, blond, with fair skin.

French: Olive complexion, dark hair and eyes, strong facial features, slender

Chinese: Flat face, brown eyes and hair, rounded chin

German: Lighter hair, blue/green eyes, average height

Russian: Lighter skin, longer face, full lips, lighter colored eyes.

The faces of races:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1McvPc/www.mediadump.com/hosted-id167-average-faces-from-around-the-world.html

Sunflower Life

The soil has been kept moist but not overly wet, still no sign of sprouts. Seed is being given full access to sunlight from inside.

Day 3: Still no sign of growth, plant seems to be hiding from the cold weather

Day 4: Despite regular water, plant is still not growing.

Day 8: Sally has still not appeared, and I am beginning to think she will never grow. Looks like the cold weather does not agree with her.

Soils

While soil may at first appear to simply be the stuff we walk on, it actually has various characteristics and varies depending on its location. This can contribute to the type of plants and animals that live in those areas. It is composed of silt, sand, and clay in various percentages, as seen by the diagram below:

You can estimate the type of  soil by following the intersecting lines as follows: sand is the upward left lines, clay is the horizontal, and silt is the downward left lines.

The Munsell Soil System helps specify the colors of the soil based on hue, value, and chroma.
 It was created by Professor Albert H. Munsell in the first decade of the 20th century and adopted by the USDA as the official color system for soil research in the 1930s.
Several earlier color order systems had placed colors into a three-dimensional color solid of one form or another, but Munsell was the first to separate hue, value, and chroma into perceptually uniform and independent dimensions, and was the first to systematically illustrate the colors in three-dimensional space.^[1] Munsell’s system, particularly the later renotations, is based on rigorous measurements of human subjects’ visual responses to color, putting it on a firm experimental scientific basis. Because of this basis in human visual perception, Munsell’s system has outlasted its contemporary color models, and though it has been superseded for some uses by models such as CIELAB (L*a*b*) and CIECAM02, it is still in wide use today.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell_color_system








  The USDA, or the United States Department of Agriculture, has created 12 groups of soil types to differentiate between the world's soils. If you click on the image above, it will take you to a site that can give you more information about each type of soil.

Based on several factors, it appears that the primary soil type of Georgia is the Tifton soil series.. The Tifton soil series was one of the first soils to be established in Georgia. The Tifton series was established in Grady County, Georgia, in a 1908 soil survey conducted by Hugh Hammond Bennett.
A typical Tifton soil profile consists of an 11 inch topsoil of dark grayish brown loamy sand. The subsoil extends to about 65 inches, strong brown fine sandy loam to 22 inches; yellowish brown sandy clay loam to 40 inches; yellowish brown mottled, sandy clay loam to 60 inches, and strong brown, mottled sandy clay to 65 inches. Two distinctive features of the Tifton soil profile are the presence of more than 5 percent ironstone nodules in the upper part of the soil and more than 5 percent plinthite in the lower part of the soil.
source: http://www.mo15.nrcs.usda.gov/news/state_soils/ga_ss.html

Rocks and Minerals

 When combined, minerals form rocks under certain circumstances.
Quartz is a compound of one part silicon and two parts of oxygen, silicon dioxide, SiO₂. It is prominently  found in Brazil, but there are smaller deposits found in Guatemala, Columbia, and within the United States.



 source:http://www.mindat.org/min-3337.html


There are 3 major types of rocks:

Igneous rocks-created by the cooling of original materials, igneous rocks can be created extrusively (above ground) or intrusively (below the ground). An example of igneous rock would be granite, which is created from a blend of quartz, feldspar and hornblende.  Igneous rock may form with or without crystallization, either below the surface as intrusive (plutonic) rocks or on the surface as extrusive (volcanic) rocks. This magma can be derived from partial melts of pre-existing rocks in either a planet's mantle or crust. Typically, the melting is caused by one or more of three processes: an increase in temperature, a decrease in pressure, or a change in composition. Over 700 types of igneous rocks have been described, most of them having formed beneath the surface of Earth's crust.
source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igneous_rock

Their chemical makeup relies on several components.
For instance, they can be:

• felsic igneous rocks containing a high silica content, greater than 63% SiO₂ (examples granite and rhyolite)
• intermediate igneous rocks containing between 52 - 63% SiO₂ (example andesite and dacite)
• mafic igneous rocks have low silica 45 - 52% and typically high iron - magnesium content (example gabbro and basalt)
• ultramafic rock igneous rocks with less than 45% silica. (examples picrite, komatiite and peridotite)
• alkalic igneous rocks with 5 - 15% alkali (K₂O + Na₂O) content or with a molar ratio of alkali to silica greater than 1:6. (examples phonolite and trachyte)

source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granite

Metamorphic rocks-arise from the transformation of existing rock types, in a process called metamorphism, which means "change in form". The original rock (protolith) is subjected to heat and pressure, (temperatures greater than 150 to 200 °C and pressures of 1500 bars^[1]) causing profound physical and/or chemical change. The protolith may be sedimentary rock, igneous rock or another older metamorphic rock.
An example of a metamorphic rock would be marble, which is a non-foliated metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is most commonly found in  mountainous areas all over the world...in particular, Italy, China, Turkey and Mexico, but also in Belgium, France, Great Britain, Spain, India, and in many parts of the United States, such as Vermont, Colorado, Tennessee and Alabama.



source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_is_marble_found


Sedimentary rocks-  are types of rock that are formed by the deposition of material at the Earth's surface and within bodies of water. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause mineral and/or organic particles (detritus) to settle and accumulate or minerals to precipitate from a solution. Particles that form a sedimentary rock by accumulating are called sediment. Before being deposited, sediment was formed by weathering and erosion in a source area, and then transported to the place of deposition by water, wind, ice, mass movement or glaciers which are called agents of denudation. Simply put, sediment becomes a rock by being compacted together. Limestone, which becomes marble when it undergoes metamorphosis.



source: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/geology/geologictopics/rocks/ocala_limestone.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedimentary_rock

Plants, Trees, and Flowers

On our walk across campus, we saw many different types of plant life. While identifying them, we learned a little about each one's characteristics and origins.

We saw flowers:

Snapdragons (Plantaginaceae antirrhinum):
They come in white, red, and pink. They can grow to be dwarf (6-8), medium (15-30), and tall (30-48). We saw several by Penfield Hall.

Angel Trumpets (Datureae brugmansia):
named for their drooping flowers that resemble the trumpet, these plants can grow several feet high. They are are favored for their pleasant smell and pretty appearance. 

 

  The bushes we saw were:

Sago palm (Cycas revoluta):

Not actually a palm, the Sago Palm is poisonous if ingested. Typically stops growing after a certain height, unlike other palms that grow much taller. Difficult to recognize as a bush, the Sago Palm is usually assumed to be a tree.

 

 Loraetalum (Loropetalum chinensis):

leaves of a dark purplish color, these bushes can grow pink flowers. Typically kept trimmed down for aesthetic reasons, these plants can usually grow much larger.

 

 Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica):

This bush grow little white flowers and also smells great when in bloom. This plant is very easy to grow in multiple locations. 

 

  

Finally, we saw multiple types of trees with various leaf styles and characteristics. 

Douglas Fir (Pinaceae pseudotsuga):

Using the A + B = height of the tree formula, we found out that this tree was 2064 cm. The Douglas Fir's wood is used in construction because of it's ability to withstand high weight loads. They are native to the west and east coasts of the United States. It is believed to be a biblical tree.

 Pecan Tree (Carya illinoinensis):

Common in the south, these trees bear the well-known pecan nuts which can be picked off the ground and shelled.  We measured the height of the tree by using a clinometer, and measuring tape. The formula A+B=tree height gives us the equation 69 cm + 1920 cm = 1989 cm. 

 

Bradford Pear (Pyrus calleryana):

While appearing attractive, these trees can smell awful when in bloom during the spring. They are extremely resistant to diseases. Their seeds are softened in spring, which are then eaten by birds and spread through the birds' waste.