Friday, July 22, 2011

Shays' Rebellion


     Around the 1790s, people were fighting over the world's largest empire, and it was very expensive. Because the states had borrowed money for the war, many farmers around this time, were failing to pay the new taxes because of shortage of money. With the farmers failing to pay these new taxes, the states took away their farms. Even with Daniel Shays' leadership, he asked the states for time to pay the debts, but states continued to seize the farms.

     After this, the farmers were now refusing to take this madness. The farmers came up with a plan in which they were going to defend themselves. They started to burn courthouses to the ground. But then, the states, for pay, sent soldiers to confront the farmers. When some soldiers shoot, four farmers lay dead.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Hearing and Talking

 Today, I will talk about how we hear and how we talk. It actually isn't a sound we hear, it's just a simple sound wave. All this begins with a vibration, like a piano hammer hitting a string. The vibration then causes a sound wave, which can travel through any kind of matter. Here's the cool part. Your outer ear catches the sound wave, which then goes to your middle ear. When the sound wave vibrates the eardrum, it also vibrates the hammer, anvil, and the stirrup. The vibrations then travel to the inner ear, in which holds a fluid-filled tube. As the vibrations go through this tube, they also vibrate tiny hair cells. The vibrations and these hair cells then go through the auditory nerve which they follow to the brain. The brain then contributes these vibrations as sound.

Now, I'll tell you how we talk. Remember how sound starts with a vibration? Well when we talk, our vocal chords vibrate. While talking, put your finger on your throat and see if you feel the vibrations. Also, the pitch of your voice depends on how much you tighten or relax your vocal chords.

Actually, without being able to talk and hear would have been very bad, because how would we have been able to communicate? Talking and hearing have been useful in many different ways, like on a construction site! Well, there you have it! You have now learned how we can hear, and how we can talk.