Science Lady

In our human history, what we believe, as individuals, as groups, as cultures, as nations, as genders, as children matters. What we believe becomes our reality. In researching the history of Earth for my latest project, a to-scale illustrated geologic timeline, I am encountering many fascinating aspects about our beliefs and the way knowledge and information change us. It wasn't until the mid 1800's that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently came up with the idea of natural selection to explain evolutionary changes that the fossil record was beginning to reveal  (Darwin/Wallace) .  The work of these two biologists was preceded by work in the field of Geology. The early work in geology and paleontology got the biologists thinking about how species changed and why species became extinct.    Around 1800, a British canal surveyor named  William Smith , who had little formal education, began to notice patterns of fossils in the roc...

I started teaching science to young children two and a half years ago. I teach everything; biology, physical science, geology, earth science, basic chemistry, astronomy, evolution. I'm a "big concepts" thinker. I see patterns, connections and am always wondering why and how things happen. One of the first concepts I wanted to share with my 300 plus students was the scale and duration of Earth's history. 4,600,000,000 years is a long time. Many people can not fathom what 4.6 billion years looks like. I made a to-scale timeline. It is 46 meters long. Each meter (100 centimeters) represents 100 million years. My classroom was able to accommodate this timeline beautifully. The perimeter of the room is about 44 meters. I zig zagged the first two meters of Earth's history as the Hadean, the time of coalescence and cooling.  The rest travels around the room to demonstrate the scale of what billions of years of photosynthesizing bacteria looks like. Thi...

  I asked a class of fifth graders what we would look for first if we were searching for life in the solar system. A couple of the kids squealed, "oxygen!". "Nope",  I said. Oxygen on Earth is a by-product of photosynthesis. It is essential for animal life but not for plant or bacterial life.  "What is essential for bacteria?" at this question, I refer to my 46 meter geologic timeline of planet Earth. We scan the timeline for the first signs of life found in the geologic record, about eight meters or 800,000,000 years in, we see the evidence of chemotropic bacteria in Earth's vast oceans. I remind the kids that ALL life on Earth relies on one thing. Water. There is no life without water.   And this is why scientists and laypersons alike get excited about what the NASA / JPL missions to Saturn and Jupiter have revealed.....water, oceans, geothermal heat and the possibility of life within our solar system. Titan has an atmosphere of nitrogen an...

Hi, my name is Shelley Meaney and I am the Science Lady here in Santa Barbara.  I love the natural world. I am totally hooked on it.  I teach Science to elementary school kids, from ages 5 to 12.  Join me on a sweet ride through my favorite aspects of the natural world. We will examine a great diversity of organisms, adaptations within ecosystems,  the changing environment, evolution and the history of Earth and her place in the Solar System.  We will look at the relationship between, life, the air we breathe, water and the rocks that make up all  the surfaces of Earth. We will examine our nearest planetary neighbors. We will decipher the fossils I find on the beaches where I live.  Together, we will notice all that the natural world around us has to offer. It is very much worth noticing.