for taking ten minutes for CNN student news.

Jumping ride in quote he shall from time to time

give to the congress information of the State of the Union.

Article two, section three, of the US Constitution.

What's interesting about this is what it does not say.

The President doesn't have to give one every year at the same time,

it doesn't have to be televised, it doesn't have to be delivered in person,

the President could just send a written note to Congress.

A tradition started by President Jefferson.

So what's happening tonight in Obama's last State of the Union address

is one part constitution, many more parts tradition.

So what exactly is the point of the modern day State of the Union

and the opposing party's response? It's a report card, and it's a prognostication.

It is the President saying, this is what I would like to do in the coming year.

The State of the Union is essentially a homework assignment

from the framers of the constitution to every president who has lived ever since.

The constitution tells them that they periodically must tell Congress

how the country is doing if a president wants to lean

hard to one side or hard to the other side then,

you might see more political purpose in the State of the Union.

Although often, it's just a general sense of let's move this direction.

The whole thing is a huge pageant.

The President comes walking in escorted by members of the House and Senate.

The Sergeant of Arms announces him and everybody stands and cheers.

And there's quite a crowd there. Everyone has assigned seating.

Right behind the President you will find the Speaker of The U. S. House of Representatives

and the president of the Senate, which will be the Vice President of The United States.

And then the two parties generally, generally stay on there side of the isle,

although recently they started sitting with each other

to suggest that they can get along a little bit better than most of us think.

You typically have the Supreme Court there.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff are there representing the military.

And the First Lady will also be there,

usually with some sort of special guest in recent years

that will illustrate the point the President is making.

One of the coolest parts of the Presidential address

is always the missing Cabinet member and figuring out

who it's going to be. One member of the Cabinet

always has to be somewhere else in case something terrible happened.

So presumably you could have the Secretary of Agriculture,

sitting somewhere, thinking about hog futures.

And suddenly he's the President of the United States,

which would be a huge shock to him.

Since the 1960s the opposition has also issued a response,

and that is someone selected by the opposing party

to stand up and refute what the president said,

or say perhaps we have different ideas about how the government

should be conducting itself, and where we should be going in the coming year.

Love seeing you guys tour the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

If you're thinking of taking a field trip this spring,

there's a new option, the CNN Student News with Carl Azuz tour.

It's a VIP offering, it gives an in- depth journalistic journey

specifically focused on CNN Student News and it features moi.

Space is limited and you do need a reservation.

So for more info, please send an email to atltour @ cnn. com.

I hope to see you soon in person.

Up next today, according to the Centers for Disease Control

it's something that kills more than nine people in the US every day,

and injures more than 1100 nation- wide.

Car crashes when a distracted driver is reportedly involved.

Now, many people will hear that and think texting.

But distractions far simpler than messages can

keep the brain from focusing on the road.

We often take driving for granted until something goes wrong,

and then we think what were we thinking?

Driving involves your hands your feet your eyes your ears,

but it's the brain that controls the action.

In fact driving uses about 20 different parts of your brain,

and distracting even one of those from the job at hand can be dangerous.

Let me show you want I mean.

Everything you see while driving is handled here by the occipital lobe,

while the temporal lobe interprets the sounds that you hear.

So taking your eyes off the road or turning up the music

can really affect that input. See that was close.

Measuring distance between cars, changing lanes,

deciding on how to stop that's the job of the parietal lobe

it integrates data from all of your sense it's activated

when you switch your attention from one thing to another

but it too can be easily distracted.

For example just listening to someone talk

reduces the activity of the parietal lobe by nearly 40 %

that affects how you drive. While talking on a cell phone and driving

even with an ear piece. That was said by researchers to be a recipe

for disaster especially if you're turning into oncoming traffic.

I'll bet you're thinking, so if the brain needs to focus so much

why does driving seem so automatic?

Well it's because you've imprinted those motor skills in your brain

as part of procedural memory.

It's your brain on autopilot, it allows you to focus on the more important things,

like getting home safely.

It's time to test your geographic genius, what country's capital is Accra?

If you said Ghana, a nation in West Africa, you got it.

And we're glad to have the students of Ghana International School

watching CNN Student News.

Next, to Kickapoo, Illinois, it's where the Mustangs are roaming

at St. Mary's Catholic School.

And in Tennessee, in the City of Rockwood, you'll find The Tigers,

hello Rockwood High School. We often cross oceans in our roll call.

You're about to meet someone who does that in a row boat,

all alone in the open water.

Her 2011, Atlantic voyage spanned from the Canary Islands

off the coast of West Africa to the Caribbean Island of Barbados.

It doesn't always go well. On a recent attempt to solo from Japan to California

the Japanese Coast Guard rescued her 150 miles off the Japanese coast.

But those storms and a steering failure ended that voyage

her passion for adventure is still going strong.

Ocean rowing is the crossing of any ocean under self power.

At this point in time, many more people have climbed Everest than have actually rowed an ocean.

I think 500 people have rowed an ocean successfully.

It's a hard thing to say that somebody could just throw themselves

into it and accomplish a full ocean row safety, but anything is possible.

My name is Sonya Baumstein.

I am a professional adventurer,

and I'm also the owner of a company called Spindrift Rowing,

and we produce expedition ocean craft.

We're you on this type of boat for your solo crossing?

This is my boat. This is your boat? Yeah. I've spent three years of my life,

6, 000 miles of open water, three seasons on the water, in this, this boat.

This carried 180 days worth of food for me.

And I still had room in the aft cabins.

I started preparing for Expedition Pacific,

which was to be my solo crossing of the North Pacific

from Japan to San Francisco. It's a really difficult thing to prepare for.

Do I know where I am? Do I have enough food? Do I have enough water?

How far away could a rescue be?

I love it because of the emotional roller coaster.

Getting through the initial depression of being alone is a really hard part.

The schedule is the hardest part of anything.

It is committing to what that's going to be and not thinking too far ahead.

So to be very present is a very difficult thing I think for anyone.

Typically I use music as a reward.

But there's so much to do on a boat constantly without

even thinking about I want to listen to music. It's only about surviving.

This is my onboard water maker.

It takes salt water turns it into fresh water.

This is a handheld GPS. If, for any reason, all of my systems are gone, I can use this.

The increase in speed that's come from boats is

very much dependent on having a carbon vessel.

They're just gonna be the lightest.

I think that the scope of adventuring is constantly changing

and it's shifting with our available resources.

And to say that there's one way to do an adventure is never going to be correct.

Well, speaking of the ocean, octopi

usually prefer to hang out in shallow waters around the world.

This one prefers Minnesota. It's an octsnowpus,

and it's the latest creation by three Minnesota brothers.

Who've made a name for themselves, sculpting sea creatures out of snow.

They're using it to raise money to provide clean drinking water in Haiti.

They say it took them 500 hours to shape the squid.

Their previous sculptures included a shark and a turtle.

Its good they didn't squid while they were ahead

we're not sure what gave them the inkling to make an octopus guess

they just thought it was something they ought to do

but when the snow begins it's a ice way to get the sephalaparty started.

I'm Carl Zeus for CNN CNN Student News.