Ninth Grade Honors: Science Readings

    This page contains articles that extend and enrich the units that are taught in our Ninth Grade Science course. Regardless of how your teacher chooses to use these, feel free to follow the links to explore these interesting, topical writings and books.  Some of the articles are online (they have a "printer friendly" option) or they are in an Acrobat pdf format (to view and print these you will need the free Adobe Reader plug-in). These articles are used in the Ninth Grade Honors Science course and utilize a rubric and quia.com for some of the assignments. Any of these articles can be printed from the computers in our libraries. In addition, we have listed one or two recommended books that are linked to their amazon.com description. These are not mandatory, just recommended, if you like the topic.

Geology

• Article A: Worlds in Eruption - A volcanic eruption is the most spectacular and frightening phenomenon we can witness on Earth – but terrestrial volcanoes are dwarfed by the monsters recently discovered on other worlds. This article come to us from FirstScience.com.

• Article B: Nuclear Planet - This article, from Discover magazine, discusses a new theory that the center of the earth may be radioactive. (pdf)

Recommended Book for this topic:

• Annals of the Former World - John McPhee, one of the best writers of geology and the history of earth.

Evolution

• Article C: Snowball Earth - From Scientific American, this article describes how scientists learn that ice entombed our planet hundreds of millions of years ago, and complex animals evolved in the greenhouse heat wave that followed. This is an online article.

• Article D:  Rulers of the Jurassic Seas - Fish-shaped reptiles called ichthyosaurs reigned over the oceans for as long as dinosaurs roamed the land, but only recently have paleontologists discovered why these creatures were so successful. This article is from Scientific American and is an online article.

Recommended Books for this topic:

• The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time - The book that won this Doylestown resident his Pulitzer Prize.

• At the Water's Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea - Carl Zimmer

Oceanography and Invertebrate Physiology

• Article E:  The New Ice Age - An article from Discover magazine that suggests that global warming could have unexpected consequences for different areas of our planet. (pdf)

• Article F:  The Bluewater Revolution - An article from Wired magazine about the present and future of aquaculture of the oceans.

Recommended Books for this topic:

• Fire in the Turtle House: The Green Sea Turtle and the Fate of the Ocean - Osha Gray Davidson

• Blue Planet - "This book is so well written, so cleanly designed and so perfectly illustrated that it is required reading to all nature lovers, particularly those interested in the strange, beautiful and other-wordly life of the deep sees. Brilliant and sure to appeal to ages ranging from 8 to 80 years old." (Amazon.com Reviewer)

Paleontology and Vertebrate Physiology

• Article G: Once We Were Not Alone - An article from Scientific American detailing the variety of hominids that have existed on our planet. (pdf)

• Article H: Food for Thought - An article from Scientific American about the role of food in the evolution of primates.

Recommended Books for this topic:

• Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution - "This book is terrific for anyone interested in understanding more about how the planet formed and species evolved, and I'm sure a teenager with a scientific bent would enjoy the straightforward tone and lack of pretension. Trilobite! has spurred me to read more about science." (Amazon.com Reviewer)

• Walking with Prehistoric Beasts - As a writer who specializes in novels about prehistoric life forms continuing to exist into the present, this book is an invaluable reference. For anybody interested in prehistoric life, this beautiful book presents artistic and extremely life-like images of the extinct fauna that came to populate the planet following the dinosaurs. (Amazon.com Reviewer)

Botany

• Article I: If All the Trees Fall in the Forest - Two sleuthing scientists track down the cause of sudden oak death, a new disease that threatens every oak, redwood, and Douglas fir in the country. (pdf)

• Article J: Don't Eat Again Until You Have Read This!- More than half the foods in U.S. supermarkets contain genetically modified ingredients. Have they been proved safe for human consumption?

Recommended Books for this topic:

• The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World - "Honestly, I'm not sure why I read this book. I'm not a gardener and, really, I couldn't care less about botany and biology. Yet I'm not regretting reading it. This was one of the most intriguing reads I've had in awhile." (Amazon.com Reviewer)

• The Secret Life of Plants - Peter Tompkins

Ecology

• Article K: Vanishing Frogs - All around the world, familiar faces are disappearing: the population of frogs and other amphibians is in a serious decline. Scientists have known about the problem for a few years, but only recently has the magnitude--and the causes--of the problem become clear. (pdf)

• Article L: Sea Sick - Killer whales that live near Seattle are dying too soon and too often. Are they harbingers of an oceanic collapse— and are we next? (pdf)

Recommended Books for this topic:

• The Future of Life - E.O. Wilson "Wilson is one of our foremost thinkers and writers on biodiversity and conservation. Other books have spent time looking at the diversity of life across the globe and the forces that have and continue to play upon nature's existence. Following these, Wilson takes a look back, then takes a big breath and looks forward to where we are going." (Amazon.com Reviewer)

• The Control of Nature - John McPhee