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Monday 2 December 2019

Ants and other animals

Ants are animals, arthropods and insects.


Although ants are frustrating when they get into your home or when you’re having a picnic, ants do help the environment. They are social insects, which means they live in large colonies or groups. 


Depending on the species, ant colonies can consist of millions of ants.


There are three kinds of ants in a colony: The queen, the female workers, and males. The queen and the males have wings, while the workers don’t have wings. 



The queen is the only ant that can lay eggs. The male ant’s job is to mate with future queen ants and they do not live very long afterwards. Once the queen grows to adulthood, she spends the rest of her life laying eggs! Depending on the species, a colony may have one queen or many queens.

Try to match the names with the different parts of the ant. 
Whales

Whales are criatures of the open ocean. They are marine mammals. 


This is a blue whale, a mammal and probably the largest animal in the world. 
If you want to watch a video about whales, this one talks about the mysterious sounds that they make. 




Leeches are much smaller. They are parasitic and belong to the group of annelids.

Leeches are annelids. 
Beetle. They are insects. 
A beautiful picture of a sponge which is a porifera. 
Tuna is a fish. Some species can swim at a speed of 70 km per hour!!! It's incredible. They're great predators. Here's a picture.

Tuna

Animals

There are five kingdoms of living beings. One of them are animals.

Here I will post some slides that will help you to understand the classifications, first of living beings and second of animals that we will see in more detail.

General classification of ALL living beings.
Let's start with vertebrates animals. Here is a video that will help you.








Here is a video about fish.




Now let's see the invertebrates. We have 6 groups. They don't have spinal column. Here is a video that will also help.




Porifera don't really look like an animal. They seem to be more like a plant but they are considered animals because of their cell structure. 



A BUD is generally used in plants. It's a small protuberance on the stem of the plant that may develop into another plant or flower. In the case of Coelenterates they reproduce by BUDS. So, a small part of them breaks off their organism and then they become a new organism. This happens also with PORIFERA. 



Annelids can reproduce with buds or with eggs. 

Arthropods are a more complicated classification. We have insects, arachnids, crustaceans and myriapods.

1. Insects have 6 legs. 
2. Arachnids have 8 legs. 
3. Crustaceans
4. Myriapods

So, let's review. ARTHROPODS have four big groups: Insects, Arachnids, Crustaceans and Myriapods. These names are difficult so write them down several times until you remember them. You can also remember specific animals, like an ant, a spider, a crab and a centipede. The initials are: IACM. It's a trick to remember:

I

A

C

M

INSECTS

ARACHNIDS

CRUSTACEANS

MYRIAPODS

Here is an example of an insect and more information.


The one on the top right is a cockroach

Finally, in our invertebrate group the last one will be the echinoderms, which is basically the starfish. Don't you think it's a strange animal?



Saturday 30 November 2019

The economy

The economy is a system where we transform raw materials into manufactured products. There has been several industrial revolutions affecting the way we understand the economy.

Here is a mindmap.


To understand the industrial revolution and all the changes that happened in our economy you can watch these videos.



Here is a longer documentary about the industrial revolution that you can also watch to improve your listening skills. 




Friday 29 November 2019

The three sectors of economy

Here is a simple explanation of the three sectors of the economy.

Primary: we extract raw materials: mining, fishing, farming and forestry.

Secondary: we transform raw materials into manufactured products ready to sell.

Tertiary: services including transportation.


As we said the primary sector has four groups: Farming, Fishing, Mining and Forestry.


Remember: Arable Farming produces CROPS and other products. Irrigated Farming is when the farmers have to water their CROPS. 


Deep-sea Fishing takes place far from the coast and uses big ships. 

A QUARRY is an open mine where coal and minerals are extracted. 

The secondary sector transforms raw materials like wood or metals into manufactured products. Normally this happens in factories. Therefore we have industries. The car industry, the textile industry, toy industry, the steel industry, etc.


The secondary sector became more important after the first industrial revolution which happened around 1784 with the invention of the steam engine. 

A textile factory at the beginning of the XIX Century. 

If you want to know more about the first industrial revolution you can search on the internet or watch this video.

THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION


Thomas Edison was an important inventor in the second industrial revolution. He invented the light bulb and people started to use electricity in their homes. 


Three things that made possible the SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION were:

  1. The use of electricity and the invention of the lamp
  2. The invention of the telephone
  3. The first cars with internal combustion
CLUE: In the secondary sector, different types of products are produced. Some products are used to make other products. This type of products is called an intermediate product.