QUES: Earth processes have not changed over time. The way things happen now is the same way things happened in the past. Mountains grow and mountains slowly wear away. The same process is at work the same as it was billions of years ago. As the environment changes, living creatures adapt. They change over time. Some organisms may not be able to adapt. They become extinct. Becoming extinct means they die out completely. Some geologists study the history of the Earth. They want to learn about Earths past. They use clues from rocks and fossils. They use these clues to make sense of events. The goal is to place things in the order they happened. They also want to know how long it took for those events to happen.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What are the goals of geologists?

QUES: Imagine you are standing in a farm field in central Illinois. The land is so flat you can see for miles and miles. On a clear day, you might see a grain silo 20 miles away. You might think to yourself, it sure is flat around here. If you drive one hundred miles to the south, the landscape changes. In southern Illinois, there are rolling hills. Why do you think this is? What could have caused these features? There are no big rivers that may have eroded and deposited this material. The ground is capable of supporting grass and trees, so wind erosion would not explain it. To answer the question, you need to go back 12,000 years. Around 12,000 years ago, a giant ice sheet covered much of the Midwest United States. Springfield, Illinois, was covered by over a mile of ice. Its hard to imagine a mile thick sheet of ice. The massive ice sheet, called a glacier, caused the features on the land you see today. Where did glaciers go? Where can you see them today? Glaciers are masses of flowing ice.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: How is the landscape in Southern Illinois different from that in central Illinois?

QUES: The Washington Supreme Court is asking the Legislature to approve a $90 surcharge on a court filing fee to help provide legal help for the poor in civil cases, Chief Justice Gerry Alexander said Wednesday. "Some might say, why should we support this when we face tough financial times?" Alexander asked in his State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the Legislature. "It seems to me in America, where we rejoice in the fact that we are a nation devoted to the rule of law, we should not ration access to justice." The recommendation comes from the court's Task Force on Civil Equal Justice Funding, created in 2001 to look for ways to cope with the sparse amount of money available for such cases. As the task force was studying the issue, $900,000 was cut from state support for civil equal justice services. That prompted the state's two main legal services providers - Columbia Legal Services and Northwest Justice Project - to cut their staffs, Alexander said. The change would increase the cost of filing a lawsuit in Superior Court to $200. The total fee would be split, with 54 percent going to counties and 46 percent going to the state for a newly created equal justice account. Alexander also requested money for five additional Superior Court judgeships and one additional District Court judgeships, arguing that increased caseloads require more judges. Two of the Superior Court judges and the District Court judge would be in Clark County, with one Superior Court judge added in the joint district that serves Benton and Franklin counties and one each in Kittitas and Kitsap counties.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What change would increase the cost of filing a lawsuit in Superior Court?

QUES: Have you are burned something on the stove or in the oven? Do you know why things burn? It all has to do with temperature. Changes in matter are affected by temperature. For example, what if you place a cake in the oven and you leave it in too long? What do you think will happen? Thats right, it will probably burn. The same thing will happen if the oven setting is too high and you apply too much heat. In either case, heat has affected the rate of change in matter. Its probably obvious that when the temperature is increased a chemical change, like cooking, will occur faster. What about a physical change? Are physical changes affected by temperature? Most of us have seen steam rising off a wet road after a summer rainstorm. This happens because the road surface is very warm. The warm road and warm air temperature causes the water to evaporate quickly. The liquid water is turning into water vapor, but it is still water. The evaporation of water is a physical change. So yes, temperature affects the rate that physical change occurs.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION:
Give two examples of how heat affects the matter.