Krakatoa and chaos

I recently saw a show on the PBS series Secrets of the Dead. "Catastrophe" used a variety of scientific and historic data to demonstrate that there was a huge climactic change about the year 535 AD. For more information on the series or show go to http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/flash/flash.html They began looking at the cause. It appears to have been caused by a volcanic eruption and some scientists believe it was an earlier eruption of Krakatoa. If you aren't familar with the 1883 eruption, I suggest you Google it. Basically this volcano located in Indonesia (do you know of any other significant geologic event in this area????) blew and the island essentially disappeared, leaving instead some new, smaller islands around where the old island existed. It caused global climate change as well. But not as severe as the change in the 6th century.

The reason I liked this show so much was that it tied together so many different areas of learning such as biology (tree ring analysis), geology (that's obvious), and history (historical records from Europe and Java). One scientist extrapolated that this eruption influenced a number of historical events including the emersion of the plague and the abandonment of Teotihuacan in Mexico (again, a good thing to Google if you don't know about this).

We so often teach biology separate from chemistry which is REALLY separate from history and heaven forbid we talk about language arts! But the universe is not in compartments. Everything affects everything else. Chaos theory postulates that a butterfly's fluttering on one part of the globe affects weather on the other side. That may be somewhat of an exaggeration but a volcanoe - hey, it has to affect everything. For a lot of great examples of this, read James Burke's Connections or see if you can find the video series. Next time you are eating ice cream think about the fact that a doctor trying to cure malaria (mal = bad, aria = air) invented a cooler (air conditioner) which evolved into the refrigerator, freezer and ice cream maker. Didn't cure malaria though - it wasn't caused by hot, bad air as thought but by a parasite carried by another parasite - mosquitoes, the most deadly animal on the planet.

Look for how everything affects everything else. What did Hurricane Katrina have to do with car manufacturers? And what does that mean for importation of foreign vehicles. And how does that affect the economy in those countries? What does that have to do with politics? I'd love to see other ideas you come up with.