Charity Fair Project Blog 12/20

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S1_6YWG6rtJ4_6YY2cL5oTjbxMHGDh7t/view

For Charity Fair this year, our group chose the charity The Children's Defense Fund, a charity that helps children in poverty. We launched the project in Social Studies, where we researched our charity and what it does for the issue(s) it tries to solve. The Children's Defense Fund strives to give each child the future they deserve by abolishing child hunger, poverty and lack of education. The founder, Marian Wright Edelman, dedicated her career to helping these children and making the future more hopeful for them. Every child should be able to have the life that they deserve, so our team decided to to make tote bags with the Children's Defense Fund logo on them to raise money for this charity. Once the products were made, we had to make an Ignite Presentation on the topic that we would present on the night of Charity Fair.The presentation had to have meaningful images that supported what we were saying. The link above leads to the pre-timed presentation that my team made. 

Backward-Looking:

• How much did you know about the subject before we started?

I'm an eighth grader here, so I've been to four Charity Fairs. The concept was the same: make a product and an Ignite and sell on Charity fair night. This year, though, we were selling in the gym for more space. We also needed to make a business card for our 'company' to hand out to people at our booth on Charity Fair. I liked selling in the gym, and I thought that it was nice with the business cards. It had our charity's information on it as well, so if we were already sold out, people could still donate on their own time. 

Inward-Looking:

• How do you feel about this piece of work? What parts of it do you particularly like? Dislike? Why? What did/do you enjoy about this piece or work?

I'm really proud with what I made on Charity Fair. My group sold out, and our Ignite presentation made it into the finals, so we stand a chance of getting $5,000 donated to our charity. I liked presenting the presentation to everyone the most; I felt that I had worked the most on that, and we did a really good job. I thought that our trifold and booth was also nice. There were a couple of things with the making of the product that I would make neater, but I'm really proud of my work.

Outward-Looking:

• Did you do your work the way other people did theirs? In what ways did you do it differently? In what ways was your work or process similar?

Everyone had the same assignments, but everyone did theirs a little bit differently. At home, I made the base of our product and the team added final touches at school. Other groups made the whole things at school, and some made it all at home. We also split up the work among two people each and did what we were best at for the trifold. Some people did decoration while others typed and some printed. Other groups just worked on the same thing.

Forward-Looking:

• What would you change if you had a chance to do this piece over again?

I would make the product a little bit neater in some places, and I would manage my time a little bit better if I could do this over again. The hardest part was time management. We finished everything in time, but I would still manage better. 

Physics 12/14

Speed is a scalar quantity, using a numerical value and units to describe how fast an object is moving. Velocity is a vector quantity, using a numerical value, units and direction to describe how fast an object is moving and in what direction it is moving. Speed could be 75 km/hr, 61 mph, or 3 m/s. Velocity would look like 32 m/s North, 8 ft North, or 6 mph SW. Velocity is important. If someone told you that you had to go 7 meters at 1 m/s to get to the bathroom, you could go in as many directions as you wanted to and you would have a very low chance of ever reaching the bathroom. if someone told you that you had to go 7 meters to the left at 1 m/s, you would be able to find the bathroom right away. To show the relationship between the position of an object and time, we use position v. time graphs. Position v. time graphs show where an object is and the time it took to travel there. On the graph, the horizontal axis is time, and the vertical axis is position. If the line on the graph is horizontal, that means that the object is not moving. If the line is vertical or sloped, the object is moving at a steady speed.

Image by Mariana Garcia-Serrato/GoFormative

The first part of the line shows that the object is moving at a steady speed and that time is passing. The line cannot end halfway through the graph because that means that time has stopped, and that can't actually happen (yet). The horizontal part of the line shows that the object has stopped moving and is stationary. Then the third part of the line is more sloped than the first, meaning that the object has picked up speed and is moving after. 

S&EP: SP4 Analyzing Data

This week, we analyzed data in tables to match different graphs, tables and stories together. Different graphs can have different stories that go with them. For example, the graph above can have a story like this: Jerry started out on his walk to school. His watch fell off of his wrist, and he stopped for a while to look for it. When he found it, he started to run because he was going to be late for school. This story matches the graph, because the object/person started out slowly (walking) and then stopped (looking for the watch), then picked up speed (running because he was late). Using graphs can help find the average speed for different objects. On Friday in class, we built a Hot Wheels course and ran four different cars down it. We measure the distance the cars moved and how long it took them to move that far, and then we calculated their average speeds to see which was fastest. 

XCC: Cause and Effect

In the example of the hot wheels course, cause and effects can matter a lot. When measuring the speed and velocity of the cars and comparing them to see which is the fastest, it's important to keep the course the same. If a green car ran one course, and a black car ran a steeper course, then the experiment wouldn't be fair. Both of the cars need to run the same course for the experiment to be fair. A steeper course could make the car go faster, and a flatter course might let it go slower. Even if both cars were on an unchanged course, an accidental push of one of the cars could let it go faster or move further than it would've on its own. 

Physics 12/7

Motion is just one branch of physics, and there are multiple branches of motion. Scalar and vector quantities can impact things like distance and displacement.

Scalar and vector

Scalar quantities are quantities that are measured by magnitude or some sort of numerical value alone. An example of a scalar quantity is 109 mph. Scalar quantities can be how big, how fast and how quick.

Vector quantities are quantities that are measured by a numerical value and a distance. An example of a vector quantity is 27 km/min NE. direction can be right, left, up, down, north, south, east, west, etc. If there is no direction, it is not a vector quantity.


Reference Points

Reference points can be anything. A tree, a rock, your couch, the bus that just passed your car. Reference points can decide whether you are moving or not.

If the distance between you and your reference point changes, than you are moving. If you were sitting still in your car and the reference point was your seat, you would not be moving. However, if the reference point was a tree in a yard your car passed, than you are moving. Your car passed by the tree, and the distance between the car and the tree is changing, so even though you sit still in your car, you are moving relative to the tree.

Distance and Displacement

Distance is kind of an easy concept to get. You walk two miles south, get in your car and drive 10 miles west. What is your distance from your starting point? Twelve miles. But displacement is a little bit harder to understand.

Distance can be moving straight or turning. You start at your house, walk three blocks, turn left and walk four blocks to get to your friend’s house. Displacement starts at the same origin (beginning) but it travels in a straight line. While distance is a scalar quantity (numerical values only), displacement is a vector quantity, meaning that the displacement is written incorrectly if there is no direction in the answer. Based on the question above, what is your displacement?

If you walked three steps forward, three steps left, three steps back and three steps right, you would end up at your starting point. Your distance would be equal to twelve steps, but your displacement is equal to zero because you moved back to your starting point (origin).


S&EP: SP5 Using Mathematics

I used math (ex: the pythagorean theorem) to calculate distance and displacement while completing the formatives this week. Math is useful in this case because it helps you calculate a faster way to get places. In the google map example, we can see how math is useful to find the distances between places. If you were going around museums and ended up in the place you started at, you displacement would be zero, no matter what your distance.


XCC: Structure and Function

This structure (the model) works very well. It is a visual representation of distance in displacement. While not to scale, it is still useful. The function of this model is based on its structure. If you draw the model wrong, you won’t be able to use it and may end up with an answer that is completely wrong. The mistake could be putting the lines in wrong and saying that the displacement is going in a different direction than it actually is. It could be calculating the displacement incorrectly and ending up with the wrong numerical values. Whatever the case, building the structure of this model correctly directly impacts its function as a tool.

Charity Fair - Journey of Stuff 11/30

This week, we began to create our Charity Fair Journey of Stuff map. This year, my group is supporting the Children's Defense Fund by selling handmade tote bags. The map above shows the journey all of the materials took to get to us before we made our bags. Using this information, we needed to calculate our Carbon Footprint. 

On the map, we added the manufacturer(s) of our raw materials. To make our tote bags, we used bed sheets, sewing thread, fabric paint, wax paper, and buttons. We had to look up the manufacturer(s) of the materials online. This was difficult because we hadn't actually bought any of the materials we needed; we had them all laying around the house. We used walmart.com and michaels.com to research how much we would've spend on the materials and where each material was manufactured.

Next we needed to decide if our materials traveled by train, airplane or truck. If the item was manufactured in another continent, it traveled by plane. If the item was manufactured in the same continent, it traveled by train. If it was manufactured in the same country, it traveled by truck. All of our materials were manufactured in the United States (as you can see from the map), so they were transported by truck to get to Walmart and Michaels. They took a car to get from the stores to our school (also on the map).

After placing the destinations and drawing the lines between them, we used the number of miles each material traveled to calculate our carbon footprint. In total, we used 1207.6219 grams of carbon dioxide/kg. 

S&EP: SP2 - Using Models

While we were doing this, we were definitely using models as we created this interactive map. The map shows the distances from manufacturer to retailer, retailer to school, and it gives lots of information, like how far each item traveled separately or all together. Using an interactive map is helpful because you can insert all the information you want and find any information you want.

XCC: Structure and Function

In order for manufacturers to produce and ship their products, they need a working structure. They need a working system that ensures that all products are shipped to where they need to be in time. Things like mode of transport, time and cost can also pop up. Manufacturers need to make sure that the products are being shipped on the proper mode of transport by the time they need to be. They also have to keep in mind finances like gas money for trucks. All of these things build the structure so that the manufacturers can function.

Evolution Project Blog 11/15

Our evolutionary project was finished this week. For the Designer Species, we needed to create a new species of animal that would be able to survive on an alien planet of our choice. Along with that, we needed to create a slideshow presentation about our organism to share with the class. My slideshow presentation is embedded above, along with the complete final drawing.

I really learned a lot about how organisms develop different traits in order to survive in their environment. Their habitat may pose some challenges for them - drought, downpours, poisonous plants, little to eat - and organisms can find ways to survive under any of these circumstances.

In order to see better, the Darkat’s eyes are extra large, and it has bioluminescence on antennae to see better while it hunts. It teaches its babies how to hunt, fight and hide to survive. It can dig small holes to live in so that the nocturnal predators can’t even get inside their shelter. They are able to swim, climb and dig to survive, and all of these traits help it live.

Backward Looking: What problems did you encounter while you were working on this piece? How did you solve them?
In this project, some problems I came across started with not understanding what to do for the slideshow. I wasn’t really sure what the teacher wanted, so I asked my classmates what they were thinking of doing until I understood what we were supposed to be doing. I also had trouble with timing, so I had to wake up really early on Thursday and work on my drawing for an hour before class.

Inward Looking: How do you feel about this piece of work? What parts of it do you particularly like? Dislike? Why? What did/do you enjoy about this piece or work?

My favorite part of working on this was the drawing. It didn’t matter if I messed up, because nobody knows how it’s supposed to look, anyway. I made it up, so only I know what it needs to have. The drawing part was really fun for me. I’m proud of the work that I did, and I hope other people like it, too.

Outward Looking: What the one thing you particularly want people to notice when they look at your work?

Whenever anybody asks me this question, I always say that I want people to notice how hard I worked. This is true for this project, too. I’m not one of those people who always does the bare minimum. I always throw in my best effort and think, ‘if my best isn’t enough, than I don’t know what is.’ I always try to do my best in everything I do because my best is enough for me. I always want people to know how proud I am of the work I accomplished and that I worked hard on whatever I did.

Forward Looking: One thing I would like to improve upon is …

One thing I would like to improve upon is my timing. I was doing a lot of research, and I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I was a little bit behind at the very end. I’m still proud of how my work turned out, but I know I could’ve done even better if I had more time. I’m proud, but next project, I’m definitely leaving myself time!

Darkat - Designer Species Project 11/10

Darkat - Designer Species by Liliana Echeverria

To study evolution and how organisms adapt to their environments and habitats, we’re creating a completely new organism. The project is to choose an alien planet from the chart and create a new animal that would survive under the circumstances on the planet.

The planet that I chose to go with was the first one. The first planet is cold and dark all the time, and it rains almost all day, every day. The terrain is very mountainous, and the only organisms that can survive are fish, insects, mice, cats, moss and fungi.

Our organism could not be at the top of the food chain. It had to eat something, and something had to be able to eat it as well. The picture above is a rough sketch of my organism, the Darkat.

To make an organism that would fit into the food chain and would be able to survive on the planet, we first had start by finding out how it was going to find food, what it’s going to eat, how it cared for its young, etc. We could mix traits from different organisms to give the animal unique senses that could help it live.

Since my planet was so dark all the time, the animal needed to be able to see in the dark or have some way to make light for itself. I was thinking about using sonar to help it locate food in the dark.

Sonar works when the organism emits a noise or screech, like a bat. The sound echoes off of organisms or obstacles near the organism and gives them a picture of where the things are. However, my animal was going to be swimming through dark lakes to catch fish for food, and it can’t be underwater and make the noise at the same time. I decided on bioluminescence. The Darkat has two antennae in front of its face that have bioluminescence on the ends, which emit light even underwater, helping the Darkat see.

Anglerfish have bioluminescence in front of their face that help them lure prey in the darkness of the midnight zone, the same way that the Darkat does. It also uses the lights to see where it’s going in the darkness.

The Darkat also has traits from a housecat. Cats have flexible paws that help them climb. Though cats usually climb furniture, the Darkat uses its wide, flexible paws to climb the rough, steep terrain. It has claws to catch mice with and thin teeth to pull apart their prey.

To stay dry in the constant rain, the Darkat has oil glands above its tail like birds. When the Darkat grooms itself, it spreads oil over its fur, making it waterproof to keep it dry and warm.

S&EP: SP8 Obtain, Evaluate and Communicate Information

Mixing traits from different organisms to make a whole new one that can survive on an alien planet helps me to see how evolution helps organisms adapt to survive in their environments. Seeing how new traits are evolving across generations in different species to benefit the way they live relates to creating a new organism. Taking traits that would help it survive from a few different animals show how organisms adapt to their habitat. If I, say, had chosen the desert planet, there would be no need for thicker fur or antennae with light because of the heat and sun. Maybe the tail would shade the organism, or it could survive for longer without water. Maybe its paws would be tougher so it won’t feel the heat of the sand or wouldn’t have claws to help it climb.

While researching for this project, I was also creating a presentation to teach the class about how I created my organism and what traits it has/how it survives. Researching traits that could potentially help the Darkat survive in a cold, rainy place was helpful because there are many places that are cold and wet where organisms thrive. Collecting information on this topic gave me multiple options for traits that could help the Darkat. For sight, I was debating sonar or bioluminescence. I weighed the pros and cons of both options and settled on the one that would benefit the Darkat more.

XCC: Structure and Function

When I was creating this new organism, I had to think about how I would structure its body and which traits would help it function. If I placed eyes further up on the head, would the organism see higher? Would the change benefit it, or would it make no difference? Does it matter where its tail is, or if it even has a tail at all? I took lots of these questions into consideration to see how the creature would benefit from my decision about its structure.

Having flexible paws means that the Darkat can climb the mountains that make up most of the planet, thus helping it reach the caves higher up where it lives and catching prey up on the mountain. Having flexible paws helps it climb steeper areas or places where there are hardly any footholds. This part of the Darkat’s structure helps it function better, because lots of its life is in the mountains, so it needs to be able to climb.

However, the tail doesn’t really do anything to help it survive. It isn’t bad, but it doesn’t do anything to benefit it. I’m still trying to decide if I want to remove the tail or not. I want to make sure that every piece of its structure helps it survive and doesn’t make a negative impact.

Cladograms 11/2

Cladograms are the charts scientists use to show how closely related organisms are and what traits they share. Cladograms are helpful because they can show you where the common ancestor of two or more organisms is and what organisms share traits.

Venn diagrams are helpful when building a cladogram. The organisms, traits and names can get mixed up, and venn diagrams help organize the information.

To see how cladograms work, let’s build one. Here are five organisms:

There are a lot of similarities between these five organisms. Let’s organize them in a venn diagram before building the cladogram to make it a little bit simpler.

Images

Notice how we eliminate one organism as we move towards the center of the venn diagram. All five of the organisms have a backbone, but snakes don’t have four limbs, so they were eliminated from the next box. Humans don’t have tails, so they were removed from the next box on. Tigers eat meat, but cows and giraffes are herbivores. And giraffes have those horns on their heads. (You might argue that cows have horns, but this specific breed does not.)

We can now move on to building the cladogram. We start at the middle of the venn diagram and move outwards.

We need to fill in the names of the organisms and the pictures at the top in the empty box and the traits where the red lines are. We’re going to go right to left, starting with the giraffe.

Images

We can look at the first red line underneath the snake and know that every organism to the right of it has a backbone. That is true for every red line. When we look at the line that says tail, we know that the organisms to the right (tiger, cow and giraffe) have a tail and that the organisms to the left (human and snake) don’t have a tail.

Cladograms help us see which organisms are closely related and which share traits with each other.

S&EP: SP2 Using Models

A cladogram is a model that scientists use to show which organisms are closely related and which share traits with each other. Cladograms are helpful because they help organize the information and make it clearer to see. I used cladograms to determine the closest relative of the T-rex and estimate what it most likely tasted like. Using information found at T-rex closest relative, we compared information and found that the T-rex’s closest relative is the parrot, meaning that the dinosaur probably tastes most like chicken. Using the cladogram was helpful for me because there were multiple organisms that were closely related to the T-rex, and using the cladogram helped me figure out which one was the most closely related.

XCC: Structure and Function
While I was studying the T-rex’s closest relative, there were several interesting things I noticed about its structure that I didn’t notice before. Both the T-rex and the parrot have fingers, even though the parrot’s look like they are hidden in its wings, which they are. I noticed that both organisms were missing their four and fifth fingers, unlike the caiman, another close relative. The T-rex and parrot also are bipedal, meaning they walk on two legs. Using the cladogram helped me discover this new information and compare it to new information.

Image links:

Cow: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/201409_cow.png by Wikimedia Commons

Snake: snake-3254415_960_720.png by Pixabay

Giraffe: giraffe-1151683_960_720.png by Pixabay

Tiger: animal-2057646_960_720.png by Pixabay

Human: woman-2859008_960_720.png by Pixabay

Evidence of Evolution 10/27

All living things evolve from one common ancestor. But what evidence do we have of this? How do we know that evolution has actually occurred?

There are several ways to know how evolution has occurred.

- Morphology
- Embryology and development
- The fossil record

Morphology

Morphology is the differences and similarities between living things. ‘Morpho’ is the Latin word for ‘shape’, so morphology (also called comparative anatomy), is the shape of bone structures and their similarities and differences.




This image shows the arm structures of a frog, a lizard, a bird, a cat, a whale, a bat and a human. Based on the similarities and differences, or morphology, in these bone structures, which animal(s) is the human most closely related to here?

Embryology and development

Embryology and development is how things develop before and after birth. While the fetus of a human is still developing, it may look similar to that of a monkey. However, after it is born, more differences begin to appear.




In this image, the pictures colored in blue look the same. The pictures that are yellow, pink or green look different from the blue ones and all the others. You are able to see the similarities in the developing fetuses of a human, a monkey, a pig, a chicken and a salamander. Based on this, which animal do you think is most closely related to the human in this image?

The fossil record

The fossil record is the observations seen of organisms that existed in the past. At this link, we are shown evidence and what it tells us. We can see that the fossil of the curled up trilobite may be trying to protect itself by curling up, similar to today’s pill bugs. Fossils of many of the same organism in some place helps us determine that these organisms may have traveled in packs. Seeing the same fossil on two separate continents may lead to inferences about continental drift. For more information of the fossil record, go here.

S&EP: SP2 Developing and using models

This week, we used to models in the images above to look deeper into the evidence of evolution. The first model had us use colored pencils to color the bones in each organism’s arm structure. This helped up see the bone placement of humans and other organisms. In the second image, we examined the developing fetuses of organisms and looked into the similarities before and after birth. These models helped me see and understand the evidence for evolution. Seeing the similarities between organisms helped support the theory that all living organisms evolved form one common ancestor.

XCC: Patterns
Patterns between organisms help us see the similarities and differences between them. In the first image of the similar bone structures, we can see the organisms more closely related to humans because of their similarities. When we study things like the fossil record, we can connect patterns to study extinct creatures and organisms that may have evolved into modern-day organisms. Trilobites from millions of years ago shared traits with pill bugs from today. We can make predictions that organisms from millions of years ago may have evolved into some of the most common creatures today.

Natural Selection 10/21

Darwin's finches by Wikimedia Commons

The theory of evolution was started up by Charles Darwin, the scientist who established that all living things come from one common ancestor. He introduced the theory that evolution results from the process natural selection.

Natural Selection

Natural selection is one of the forces that drives evolution. Organisms that are well adapted to their environment will generally survive long enough to pass on their genes to their offspring. Organisms that have genes that are harmful to them are unable to survive long enough to pass on genes. As a result, no offspring will be produced. The harmful genes/traits are unable to be passed on and will die off within that population/species.

The peppered moth is a common moth in Europe, Asia and North America. The moths has two appearances, the light, speckled morph and the dark morph. These two morphs help it camouflage from its biggest predator: the bird.

When the moths were light, they would rest on woodland lichens, camouflaging in the flowers and staying hidden form the birds that preyed upon it. When the industrial revolution came, soot killed the lichens and turned the trees black. The moths were no longer able to camouflage on the dark trees. They were killed and eaten. Over time, natural selection killed off the light genes, and dark moths replaced the lighter ones. In 1956, the Clean Air Act removed soot from the nation’s sky, and the trees began to turn light. Once again, the moths were exposed, and once again, they evolved to stay hidden.

As could be seen from the moths, the more favorable traits are passed on, while the harmful or less desirable traits are lost.

Darwin’s finches

Charles Darwin came up with the theory of evolution. He visited a series of islands to study organisms and how they lived. There, he noticed finches, a type of bird.

Darwin noticed that the birds from the different islands looked similar and were the same species (finches), but they weren’t exactly the same. A finch on one island had a deeper beak than a finch on the other island. Darwin wondered why that was and came up with the theory of evolution.

The finches from the different islands were perfectly suited to the resources of their island. Once island had seeds that had hard shells, so the finches developed sharp beaks to crack the shells. Other finches from another island didn’t because their seeds are easy to eat as they are. If you put a finch from the easy seed island onto the tough shell seed island, it would either die or starvation or evolve to develop a beak to eat the seeds.

Natural selection helped the finches evolve to develop the favorable traits that would help them survive on their own respective islands and resources.

S&EP: SP2 Using Models

GoFormative used simulations that helped me study natural selection. Using this simulation on the Explorelearning Gizmos, I was able to pretend to be a bird and practice trying to catch peppered moths on light and dark trees. This simulation and the graphs/charts helped me understand how the camouflaged moths were able to stay hidden from birds more than the exposed ones. This model was very helpful because I was able to see the graphs that were made based on the number of moths I ‘caught’ during the simulation.

XCC: Structure and Function

Natural selection helped the finches on the islands evolve into a structure that was better suited to their environment. Each of the finches had a different structure based on their island. A finch on an island that had tougher seeds would have a sharper beak in their structure. A finch on an island that had lots of insects would have a more delicate and longer beak to pull bugs out of holes. The finches don’t need to crack thick shells, so their delicate beaks would not be able to open the seeds. The finches with the sharper beaks wouldn’t be able to reach bugs in the holes because their beaks would not be long or thin enough. The way the finches are built directly affects how they survive and function. If the finch is not built to crack seeds, it will die if it is placed on the seedy island. If the finch has a wider and sharper beak than another finch, it is less likely to survive on a buggy island than a finch with a thinner beak. If the finch is not built for the environment, it will not be able to survive.

Evolution 10/12

Human Evolution Scheme by Wikipedia

Evolution is any change in the gene pool over time. Cutting your hair is not evolution because it isn’t happening over time, and it’s not a heritable trait. Evolution happens over multiple generations, and the change is hereditary, meaning that you can pass it on to your offspring.

There are five things that influence evolution, and they can be remembered by the fingers on you hand.

The pinkie finger is population shrinking, also called genetic drift. Genetic drift is the term scientists use to describe shrinking or increasing of a specific gene or trait in a population. If five people were stranded on a desert island, and two of them had red hair, some of the offspring would have red hair, but, since the red hair population wasn’t very large to begin with, the red hair trait might die off in the next few generations.

The ring finger is mating with specific traits. This is an obvious way that genes would be passed on.

The middle finger is mutations. Mutations change the DNA and genes of an organism randomly, and the mutation can be beneficial, negative or neutral to that organism. If a cat was born with floppy ears and neither of its parents had floppy ears, that would be a neutral mutation, meaning that the ears neither benefit nor harm the cat.

Gene flow is the pointer finger. Gene flow is when genes move from one population to another. In that population, those genes that were carried to it didn’t previously exist. If a white dog ran into a population of black dogs, their offspring would be white and black.

The thumb is natural selection. Natural selection is when there are two traits in the gene pool. One of the genes is more beneficial to a certain species than the other. The more common trait is passed on, and the other trait dies off. Natural selection eliminates certain traits in the gene pool to cause change in heritable traits. If green and blue birds lived together in a population, and the blue birds were eaten more often, there would be less blue birds to reproduce. The blue bird gene would soon die off, and only green birds remain in the population.

S&EP: SP3: Planning and Carrying out Investigations

We collected data in a mutations lab simulation. Each group of four received 25 M&M’s in a cup. We first began with counting the number of M&M’s in each color and wrote the numbers down. We had to find out the percentage of the total population that color was. Each person at the table had to pick five out of the cup randomly. The first person went, and then we recounted and recalculated, adding in five red hots so the total population stayed the same. We repeated this, each time dumping out the M&M’s and matching them up in pairs of the corresponding color. If there was an extra red and yellow, we would pair them up and set them to the side. If the pairs had two of the same color, we would add another M&M of that color to the cup. If the pair was of red hots, we would add a red hot. If we had a pair like the red and yellow pair, we chose one of the colors to add. This way, colors could ‘die off’ within the population. In our group, the brown candies dominated and the red ones died off. This lab helped us see the way that evolution worked with mutations.

XCC: Stability and Change

IN NATURE, SOME THINGS STAY THE SAME AND SOME THINGS CHANGE. CHANGES CAN BE FAST OR SLOW.

Evolution is the perfect example of how slow changes occur in nature. Change is only evolution if it occurs over several generations, meaning that the changes are not immediate. The five fingers can cause evolution. Evolution can occur because of a mutation that causes the organism to change, like a puppy with extra furry ears even though its parents did not have extra fluffy ears. The puppy will pass on the fluffy ear trait to its descendants, and the descendents will pass it on, and soon the puppy population will have lots of puppies will fluffy ears. As long as the changes in the organism are hereditary (able to be passed on in genes to offspring) and last several generations, the changes are evolution.

WAC | We are not in a sixth mass extinction | 10/5/18

Despite what scientists are saying and thinking, we are not in a sixth mass extinction. Though signs may point that direction, we aren’t there yet. It is possible that in the very near future we will enter a mass extinction, but we haven’t reached that point. Five mass extinctions have been recorded in Earth’s history, each wiping out 70% of life on the planet or more. However, as stated by the 22nd paragraph in AEON’s article We are not edging up to a mass extinction by Stewart Brand, “There were soon many more species alive after each catastrophe than there were before it.” Even if we were in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, it would take decades, maybe even centuries to the see the results, and if anything was still alive, it would find a way to adapt to the new environment, or it would die. Eric Worrall states in his article Paleo Expert: Earth is Not in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction that “...this is because by the time a mass extinction starts, the world would already be over.” It would take a long time to see if we were in a mass extinction, and by the time we had entered it, everything would already be gone. As has been noted, scientists are saying that a mass extinction might be coming in the very near future, but it won’t begin for a while. Still, scientists are not denying that humans are the reason this might happen. 

Even though some might argue that climate change is the reason more and more species are going extinct, there are quite a few that are actually adapting to the circumstances around them and finding new ways to survive. It might not be easy, but it is possible. Stewart Brand’s AEON article brings up a good point in saying, “Move, adapt or die. When organisms challenged by climate change respond by adapting, they evolve. When they move, they often encounter distant cousins and hybridise with them, sometimes evolving new species. When they die, they leave a niche open for other species to migrate or adapt into, and a warming climate tends to open the way for more species rather than fewer.” Take the Galapagos islands for example. They started out as nothing but a barren wasteland of volcanic rock and ash, and when organisms moved to them or were swept out to sea and were stranded, they either had no way to get back to where they were or they didn’t want to. Lizards that ate leaves were moved to an arid island free of vegetation and had to evolve to dive deep and reach the nearest plant: seaweed. Over hundreds of years, the lizards that used to be living in trees were diving into the ocean to reach seaweed to survive. Animals and other organisms are able to adapt to their circumstances and help each other, no matter what may happen. Climate change could be affecting animals and organisms, like marine life or organisms that inhabit rainforests. When we destroy habitats for our own gain, that can deplete entire species that were once proliferating. As mentioned earlier, most organisms can adapt, but there are some that are unable to and die off completely. Just because some species are going extinct doesn’t mean that we’re in the midst of a mass extinction, but it does mean that if we keep it up, we could be. 

Even though another mass extinction event seems to be coming, we still won’t be around to see it. If another does occur because of human activity, it will happen within the next few decades or even centuries. That doesn’t seem so close, but most mass extinctions in the past took hundred to thousands of years to physically begin destroying the world. 

“Nothing we have done to the climate or the world in general comes anywhere close to the unimaginable circumstances of previous mass extinctions.”, says Eric Worrall in his article Paleo Expert: Earth is Not in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction. “Erwin does not rule out the possibility we might somehow trigger a mass extinction in the future. But killing off a few photogenic species simply doesn’t qualify.” Being the cause of several extinctions isn’t wonderful, but it also isn’t triggering the end of the world. Although some people may think that the extinction will wipe out all life and humanity within the next decade or so, a devastating event is several centuries away. AEON states that “Many now assume that we are in the midst of a human-caused ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ to rival the one that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But we’re not. The five historic mass extinctions eliminated 70 per cent or more of all species in a relatively short time. That is not going on now. ‘If all currently threatened species were to go extinct in a few centuries and that rate continued,’ began a recent Nature magazine introduction to a survey of wildlife losses, ‘the sixth mass extinction could come in a couple of centuries or a few millennia.’” Just because seem like they’re looming closer doesn’t mean they actually are, and our generation isn’t in any danger from any mass extinctions any time soon.

Some people might argue that we are in a sixth mass extinction. Some scientists believe the same things, but there is no solid proof that we are. Still, there are people who are arguing for this position, and there are many reasons why. In CNN’s article Sixth mass extinction: The era of 'biological annihilation' by John D. Sutter, it states that “‘We've got this stuff going on that we can't really see because we're not constantly counting numbers of individuals,’ he said. ‘But when you realize that we've wiped out 50% of the Earth's wildlife in the last 40 years, it doesn't take complicated math to figure out that, if we keep cutting by half every 40 years, pretty soon there's going to be nothing left.’” More people argue for this because studies show that species are depleting faster and faster. “In a 2015 study, biologist Paul Ehrlich and his team argued Earth is in an era of mass extinction rivaling the one that killed the dinosaurs. They estimated Earth is losing mammal species 20 to 100 times the rate of past such extinctions and that the rate is only expected to speed up.”, says Newsy’s article Scientists Can’t agree if we are really in a mass extinction by Sarah Schlieder. However, people have been trying to help the environment by recycling, using eco-friendly cars and solar panels to power things instead of using pollutants. This rate of extinction has probably lowered since the time this study took place, three years ago.This argument is not enough to change the fact that we aren’t in a mass extinction. Eric Worrall’s Paleo Expert: Earth is Not in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction article just about sums it up, saying, “Picture previous mass extinctions; the sky darkened for months, maybe years by gigantic impacts or vast volcanic eruptions which lasted for thousands, even millions of years; Poisonous fumes spreading across the entire world, choking the life out of entire continents; A handful of animals and plants somehow scrounging warmth and food from an almost lifeless wasteland.Compare this nightmarish hellscape to the slight wobble we may have helped introduce to global temperatures, a wobble so small it cannot be reliably differentiated from previous natural wobbles which occurred in the last few centuries.” What we are doing may not be good, but it isn’t ending the world either. 

Even though many amazing species are going extinct faster and faster, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a mass extinction is in the near future. Mass extinctions wiped out over 70% of all life on Earth, and the eradication of a few species, beloved as they are, doesn’t really count. 

Newsy’s article Scientists Can’t agree if we are really in a mass extinction says, “Stewart Brand, president of the Long Now Foundation, says current rates don't signal a mass extinction because the past five wiped out at least 70 percent of all species in a relatively short time. He says current rates are too slow for us to be in the middle of one.” This means that, even though the extinction of several species is bad, it isn’t a massive destructive event that’s going to destroy the world.Eric Worrall’s Paleo Expert: Earth is Not in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction article goes on by saying, “‘Many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don’t have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, much less how truly awful the mass extinctions recorded in the marine fossil record actually were,’ he wrote me in an email. ‘It is absolutely critical to recognize that I am NOT claiming that humans haven’t done great damage to marine and terrestrial [ecosystems], nor that many extinctions have not occurred and more will certainly occur in the near future. But I do think that as scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.’” 

People may think that extinctions are coming to destroy the world, but they need to make sure that they’re getting accurate information. Some people only glance at a headline instead of reading the article below it, which may have a very different perspective than a single line of text. All in all, some people are assuming things that aren’t true or isn’t the proper information. 

The Earth is not in a sixth mass extinction, no matter what things seem like. They might be coming up soon, sometime within the next few centuries, but we’ll all be gone, so there’s nothing really to worry about. Even though several beloved species, like the African elephant and the Black Rhino, are going extinct, that doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is going to die. Like the Galapagos example, organisms are fully able to adapt to their new surroundings and even evolve into an entirely different organism if they need to to survive barren wasteland, underground, in the forest or in a desert. People that just scan for headlines don’t know the full picture. If you don’t read the articles below, you’ll never really know some ideas and information that could change your entire perspective. Even though headlines may read, ‘BLACK RHINO, NEARING EXTINCTION’, that doesn’t mean that we’re all in danger. Next time someone tells you something that may seem questionable, check to make sure that you can see the full picture and both sides of the argument. Once again, even though many people argue against it, we are not in a mass extinction.

Geologic Time Project Blog 9/29

Most of the major events that occurred in Geologic Time happened later on down the timeline, closer towards modern times. Earlier on, animals, plants and other organisms were evolving. Geologic time is a record of the history of rocks and fossils in the Earth, so scientists are making predictions and hypotheses as to what could’ve occurred during that time.

Each of the eras had a remarkable event that was marked off in Geologic Time. For instance, in the Precambrian era, the Earth was formed and life was just beginning to evolve. Bacteria and fungi came before humans, and oxygen even appeared when the Earth developed an atmosphere. In the Paleozoic era, the end-Permian extinction cut off many invertebrate groups. In the Mesozoic era, scientists believe that an asteroid from space crashed to the Earth and wiped out all dinosaur species. In the Cenozoic era, the ice ages occurred, and at the end of them, the sudden climate change caused many large mammal species like woolly mammoths and sabre-tooth cats to go extinct.

All of these events have been marked in fossils and rocks that scientists have studied. They came up with the Geologic Time Scale, which lead to further theories and predictions about what occurred in Earth’s history.

Backward-Looking

What process did you go through to produce this piece?

When producing this piece, I needed to research my era, the Cenozoic. Some important information that we needed to know was how long the era lasted, what major events occurred during the era, and what sorts of animals, plants and organisms evolved during the time. Once we were finished with data and research, we needed to create an interactive poster about our eras as a group. The poster contained all of the information that we had found.

Inward-Looking

What was especially satisfying to you about either the process or the finished product?

I really thought that seeing our super-tall poster with all of our information on it was very satisfying. I knew that I had worked very hard on my era, and seeing it all exactly how I wanted it was very satisfying to me. Also, getting all of my drawings for the poster done was another really big satisfaction for me.

Outward-Looking

Did you do your work the way other people did theirs? In what ways did you do it differently? In what ways was your work or process similar?

Some people did a flatter poster where it laid on a table and you could see what the landscape looked like. Some kids did pop-outs were if you opened a flap, the information and a picture would pop out. Other kids chose to do the poster like ours, where the eras were split up and each was decorated by that one person.

Forward-Looking

What would you change if you had a chance to do this piece over again?

If I could do this work over again, I would’ve gone to some different websites. After the project was complete, I was browsing, and I found some websites that explained the information better than the ones I had used. Another thing I would’ve done is focused more on my drawings. Some of them were a bit rushed, and I think that I could’ve done better.

Geologic Time 9/22

geologic-time-scale1.jpg by canadiangoldprospector.wordpress.com

Earth’s history, or Geologic Time, is split into four eras. The Precambrian era, the Paleozoic era, the Mesozoic era and the Cenozoic era are the four eras that help geologists understand which time frame a major event or mass extinction happened. 

The Cenozoic era is the present day era, the one we are currently living in. It began 66 million years ago when the Mesozoic era ended and hasn’t ended yet. It is split into two periods, the Tertiary period and the Quaternary period.
The Tertiary period began when the era started and ended 1.8 million years ago. The first monkeys and apes began to appear around the Tertiary period, and grass began to evolve. Flowering shrubs became the most common plants. The Quaternary period started 1.8 million years ago and has not ended. We are currently living in it now. Mammals, insects and flowering plants dominated the land. Humans began to appear. Later on in the period, about 20,000 years ago, the larger mammals like mammoths went extinct. 

In the Tertiary period, the climate was mostly warm. Plants and animals thrived. Plants had a chance to grow now that the dinosaurs were extinct. Grasses evolved and became food for the ancestors of today’s grass-eating mammals. During the Quaternary period, animals had a harder time. The climate shifted around a lot. It began warm, and then the climate bega to cool. Continental glaciers spread over North America and Europe. The ice ages began. Animals dominated the parts of North America that had no ice. About 20,000 years ago, the climate warmed up again, and the ice melted everywhere but Greenland and Antarctica.
During the Cenozoic era, the oceans widened, causing sea animals to thrive. The Himalayas, the Swiss Alps and the Rockies are all mountains ranges that formed during the Cenozoic era. Mammoths, sabre-tooth cats, giant deer and giant land sloths all went extinct. Flowering plants and grass became common.

S&EP: SP2
While we studied the eras and geologic time, I found that a timeline helped me a lot. There was one in the textbook we were using and showed specific dates, organisms and names, both scientific and not. It was helpful to see it all mapped out and to be able to understand something that was portrayed in a way that was difficult to see on different sources. I also liked the timeline because it gave me a lot of information on each of the geologic eras.

XCC: Cause and Effect
There were a lot of cause and effect relationships in Geologic time. For instance, the climate cooled off in the Cenozoic era, causing the effect of an ice age across the world. Dinosaurs went extinct during the Mesozoic era, causing he effect of proliferating plant growth in the Cenozoic era. The cause and effect we can observe from the past can help us make predictions of what will happen in the present/future. We can study the climate and predict if ice ages or heat waves will be coming. We can predict what will happen in black rhinos go extinct, and then we can do something about it. We can stop extinction, and we can stop global warming. Science and cause and effect can help us prepare for what could be coming in the future.

Rock Cycle 9/12/18

Rock Cycle by L.E.

The Rock Cycle

Geology is the study of the structure of the planet Earth and the forces that make and shape this planet. Geology literally means “study of the Earth”. “Geo” means “Earth” and “logos” means “study of”. 

If things like volcanoes and earthquakes shape mountains and monuments in the present day, we can estimate what could have happened in the past. Rocks that are around today could have been around in the past.

Geologists classify rocks into three main groups: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. 

Igneous rocks are made of fire. They form when molten material from the Earth’s core hardens and cools inside or outside of the Earth’s crust. Igneous rocks can look entirely different from each other based on their rate of cooling or where they cooled. If an igneous rock hardened closer to the Earth’s core than one that hardened on or closer to the surface.

Sedimentary rocks are made through settling. They are made from sediments that have been deposited and then forced together to create a rock. Sedimentary rocks can have sand, dirt, fossils, and shells in them because all of these things are carried through sediments.

Metamorphic rocks are made through change. They are formed when a rock that ALREADY EXISTS is changed by immense amounts of intense heat and pressure or a chemical reaction. 

The rock cycle is a series of processes on and beneath the Earth’s surface that transforms one type of rock to another and back again over time. The rock cycle is the Earth’s way of changing rocks.

Relative and Absolute Age:

The Geologic Time Scale is a record of Earth’s life forms and geologic events in Earth’s history. 

We do not talk calendars when we talk about the Earth’s geologic history because Earth is 4.6 billion years old and calendars are 2,018 years old. 

Geologists use both relative and absolute age depending on what organism it is. 

Relative age is the age of a rock or fossil compared to the rocks or fossils near or around it. Absolute age is the age of a rock since it was first formed. Everyone and everything has a relative and absolute age. 

The law of superposition states that in a horizontal sedimentary rock layer, the oldest layer is at the bottom. The youngest, or most recent, is at the top. The law of superposition helps us determine the relative age in a sedimentary rock layer. 

Determining Relative age:

Cross-cutting principle: when something cuts across a body of rock, the ‘something’ is ALWAYS younger than the rock it cuts across. 

Clues from igneous rock:

Magma that hardens on the surface of the Earth is called an extrusion. An extrusion is always younger than the rocks/soil around or near them. Magma that cools and hardens below the Earth’s surface is called an intrusion. Intrusions are always younger than the soil around them. This is because the rocks and soil were there before the magma cooled and made the igneous rocks. 

Clues from faults:

Faults are always younger than the rocks/plates they cut across. 

Imagine a hole. The hole is younger than the area of soil, grass and rocks around it. You can’t have a hole first and then the rocks, grass and soil. The hole or fault is always going to be younger. 

Index fossils help geologists match rock layers and help to determine the relative ages of rocks in which they occur. To be useful as an index fossil, a fossil must be widely distributed and represent a type of organism that existed/lived only briefly. 

S&EP: SP2

I used models to visually explain how geologists use fossils to estimate relative and absolute age. We used a fossil simulation to match the layers of fossils and help us determine which creatures existed when. We also used a Task simulation on goformative that helped us order the fossils from the oldest on the bottom to the most recent on the top. 

Models are useful in situations like these because they can help you grasp better understanding of the tasks at hand and can help you learn things, like how to estimate relative and absolute age, how to order fossils based on age, and how to make inferences based on your discoveries. 

XCC: Patterns

This image displays an example of a pattern we’ve used in class. This is a screenshot of the fossil simulation that we used to help us. The oldest layer of fossils is on the bottom. 

You are able to see where the same types of organisms line up with each other. This is a pattern, because an organism cannot go extinct and then randomly appear again. Some may live for longer than others, like the fossils that line up in every segment, but some might only live for a little while, like the fossils that accumulate in only one or two of the segments. 

Some organisms can live before others do and live long after some go extinct. Some organisms are able to survive longer than others, or other animals might’ve preyed on the smaller ones, causing them to go extinct before the more carnivorous ones.

Why I came back to AdVenture | 8B Science

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Summary: 

      This 2018-2019 school year will be my fourth and final year at AdVenture. I am currently in the eighth grade here, and there are quite a few reasons why I chose to come back. Firstly, AdVenture is a very collaborative community. In almost every single project we do, we are working in teams, groups or partners. It is very rare occasion that we are doing any individual work, although sometimes we have a choice. I like that AdVenture is so collaborative because other schools don't really teach you many social skills, but AdVenture does. We learn 'regular' subjects, like English, P.E., math, science and history, but we also learn things like video production and engineering for Electives. Another things that AdVenture Elective teachers teach is conflict management. We learn how to read nonverbal signs, like body language, and how to solve problems or make tough decisions. These sorts of skills are incredibly useful throughout your entire life and can help you in all sorts of situations.
      Another reason that I came back to AdVenture is because of all of the extracurricular activities. AdVenture allows kids to join after school sport teams with Herman, like volleyball, basketball, softball, track and cross country. They also let kids come up with ideas for lunchtime clubs, and they must get signatures to make it a real club. Participating in all of these activities gives you school rewards, like Block H, Patriot Bucks and Patriot Power Packs. I also like that there are dances, parties and special treacher rewards that you can do for fun and to get more things. 
      But the main reason that I came back to AdVenture is everything that we do here. Teachers decorate their classroom comfortably and assign fun projects for us to do. One teacher even has beanbags and couches in her classroom. My science teacher gives us 'Boss battles' where we fight a boss by answering a series of question over and over again to earn points within the class and special rank rewards. I really love how all of the teachers personalize their own classrooms and work hard to give each kid their own learning pace. 

Scientist Wanted-Final

WANTED

Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace

An English mathematician and writer who wrote the first computer program.

This week, we finished our Scientist Wanted poster. My scientist was Ada Lovelace, and I think that she’s pretty cool. Ada was born to parents with an unhappy marriage, and her father left her and her mother when she was three months old. Ada’s mother taught her math and science at home, which I think was cool. That type of education was unusual for a little girl in the 1800s, especially one of royal blood. Ada’s friend, Charles Babbage, created the first calculation program, and Ada thought it would be cool if it could do other things, like play music, do more advanced calculations, and many more things. She was describing a computer-before they were invented! I liked that Ada helped to make the calculation program much more advanced, and because of that, she is considered the first computer programmer. I think that it’s interesting that a woman became the very first computer programmer. I was not surprised, however, to hear that she died young of cancer. If she had cancer at that time, she would have died either way. There was no treatment in the 1800s. I like all that Ada Lovelace has done and I think that it’s cool that she’s a scientist.

S&EP: Communicating Information

For the poster turn-in this week, we did a Flipgrid. Flipgrid is where you film yourself talking, and then you post it to the class, so the whole class can see your video. We needed to talk about how our scientist was important and use their proper name. Once we were done, we attached the link to the poster on the video. Once we were done with that, we had to listen to another person’s video who didn’t do our scientist and respond to theirs about something interesting that we learned. I liked this way of communicating the information because it was easier to film yourself rather than present live. I also liked that we could see everyone else’s and respond to their video. I thought that was fun.

XCC: Structure and Function

This week, I noticed a structure and function relationship when my dog was running after me on my way out of the gate. The way his body is built allows him to run fast and not crash into things as he chases after me. If he had a different body, like the body of an owl, he could not run quickly. Owls do not run fast, so if my dog had another body, he couldn’t chase me as quickly.
An animal like a fox also might have a body type that would allow it to run quickly. Animals like cats, pumas, leopards and cheetahs are all built to move quickly. 

Multiplier: Wanderer

This week, I think that I was a wanderer. Another person was doing Ada Lovelace as their scientist, and if I found a good website, I would tell her about it so that she could do better on her project. I would tell her pieces of information that she didn’t know, and I would help her with some tricky requirements.

Scientist Wanted 5/20

Ada_Lovelace_portrait.jpg

This week in science, we began our scientist wanted poster. We had to choose a scientist from a long list, research the, and create a wanted poster for them. The scientist I chose was Ada Lovelace. I learned a lot about her that I hadn’t known before. Her full name was Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace, and she was born in 1815. Her parents were Lord George Gordon Byron and Lady Anne Isabella Annabella Milbanke Byron. Ada’s father left her and her mother when she was young, so her strict mother taught her math and science. Ada had an unusual education for a girl in the 1800s. I also learned that her mother made her lay still for long periods of time to teach her self-control.

Through her friend, Charles Babbage, Ada was able to take courses at the University of London. She also helped Babbage with his work: he created a program to do calculations, and Ada helped him make it more advanced. Because of this, Ada was known as being the first computer programmer. Ada also wrote some articles about machinery and was a poet like her father. In 1835, she married William King, who became the first Earl of Lovelace in 1838. This made Ada the Countess of Lovelace. Ada had three children, Anne, Ralph and Byron, and died in 1852 at the age of 36. She was buried next to the father she never knew in Marylebone, UK.

I did not know that Ada Lovelace was also a writer and poet. I also didn’t know that she died so young. I was interested about Ada Lovelace because I knew so little about her. I only knew that she was a computer programmer, considered the first. That was all that I knew about her, and I was very interested by the information that I gathered. I also found out that Ada was an only child and she worked with a lot of people. Charles Dickens even read her a passage of one of his books while Ada was on her deathbed, and she died three months later. I was really interested in this scientist because she seemed interesting to me and I had heard of her before, but I didn’t really know much about her.

SP8: Communicating Information

For this week, we had to choose a scientist, gather info and facts about him/her, and then communicate it to the class and teacher in the form of a WANTED poster. We needed to have one sentence of what they did/do (why they’re wanted), birth date, death date/current age, spouse(s), children, where they can be /could be found, and a paragraph about what they did.

XCC: Cause and Effect
A cause and effect relationship that I noticed was Saturday at my soccer game. I kicked the ball up to a girl on my team, and since I did that, I caused her to score a goal. A way to predict the effect of your kick, you look at where people are located on the field: how close they are to the goal, how many people on the opposite team are near them, how quickly they can move and all possible ways for them to score. You can then choose who to pass the ball to and hopefully you’ll score.

Project Blog

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This week in class, we were finishing up our disaster proof housing project. We had to choose a natural disaster and a place that suffered from it often, and then we had to design and build a model of a house that could withstand the disaster. Once we turned them in, we would test them, and the tests have very interesting results. My group chose to do flooding in Bangladesh, and I learned that Bangladesh is very close to sea level, meaning that a small storm with lots of rain could flood the area. We had to use materials that were native to our chosen area to plan out the original house that we would build, and we had to write up what we were replacing and what we were replacing it with. Our original design was very interesting. I learned that Bangladesh has lots of iron, which surprised me. I always thought of Bangladesh as a poorer country and that they didn’t have too many house building materials. Not surprising, they have wood, mud and grass, so our original house in real life would be a wooden hut plastered with a mud-and-grass mixture and coated in iron to keep out the water. It would be placed on stilts with a set of steps to get up. Our prototype had wooden walls, was placed on short stilts, and was covered in clean, white duct tape to keep out the water. When we went to test it, our teacher put it in a big plastic tub and poured a big bucket of water over it. Our house successfully kept out all water, but there was one major failure. Our house was not on the bottom of the tub. It was floating on the surface of the water, bobbing around and floating around the tub. I did learn that the house was far too light to stay on the bottom. My group and I were all very sure that in real life, the house would be strong enough to stay on the ground, but we definitely learned to make sure that it was heavy enough to pass the test. 

Backward-looking

-What problems did you encounter while working on this piece? How did you solve them?

When my group and I were working on the house, we came across the fact that we didn’t have our materials. The house was due soon, and we had a lot of things to make the interior furnishings like hot glue, popsicle sticks, duct tape and paint, but we didn’t have the wood to build the house. We were freaking out a little bit, but we finally solved the problem by taking a visit to the Maker Lab and taking some wood from there. We were able to draw out the blueprint on it, and when we met up over the weekend before testing, we were able to get it done.

Inward-looking

-What was particularly satisfying to you about either the process or the piece of work?

I liked how clean our house looked when it was done. We had covered it in shiny, clean white duct tape, which looked very nice and felt incredibly satisfying to me. I also liked (for some odd reason) how the house was floating on the top of the water. That was the reason that we failed, but it felt very happy and satisfying to me.

Outward-looking

-What grade would you give it? Why?

I would give this house a C. I decided on a C because the house didn’t have any water inside of it, which was the major part of it, but the house was not heavy enough to stay on the bottom of the tub and was floating on the top. The house was supposed to stay secured on the bottom and not move from its original position. Ours sadly did, but the major part of not letting the water in succeeded.

Forward-looking

-What's the one thing that you have seen in your classmates' work or process that you would like to try in your next piece?

I saw in multiple of my classmate's houses that they had put on a slanted roof. The water rolled off of their roofs, making their whole house dry inside. They had coated the roof also in duct tape, which helped.

WAC: Should we go nuclear?

Have you ever heard of nuclear energy? Chances are you have. Or at least you’ve heard the word ‘nuclear’. That’s likely. The first thing that probably pops into your mind when you hear the word ‘nuclear’ is a mushroom cloud. A big, giant, ugly, messy explosion. Your second thought is probably toxic waste. Those little caution signs that are shown in movies or pictures that mean nearly nothing except a fictional idea. That isn’t all nuclear energy, true, and nuclear energy isn’t all that. But it isn’t at all a good resource to use. Nuclear energy is a form of energy that doesn’t use fossil fuels or emit greenhouse gases. So it should be good, right? Greenhouse gases are the big thing that causes global warming. So if the power plants don’t let out as much fossil fuels, that should be good, right? Not exactly. There are several problems with nuclear energy, and big ones at that. It’s expensive. Very. It’s radioactive. Very. It’s dangerous. Incredibly. It’s a good source of energy, yes, and mostly clean as well, but before you go on and buy it, at least listen to some evidence. You might be intrigued by the idea, or you might not be. Whatever you think. 

Nuclear energy is not a good form of power to use. First reason why: it’s incredibly expensive. According to PBS learning media, nuclear energy is run by uranium, an extremely radioactive element that needs to be mined out of the Earth. NPR says that it is very expensive to keep the nuclear plants open. The government has to pay to get the parts manufactured overseas and shipped to the plant site. If one of the parts breaks in the transport, it costs more money to fix them, or, if necessary, replace them. And nuclear plants are pretty big. If even one little screw was missing, the whole thing could blow. Besides, once the uranium is used, the toxic waste must be stored in heavy metal caskets and sealed underground-which costs more money. Once that is kept underground for thousands of years, the waste will begin to lose radioactivity and will be able to be recycled, but it’s still very expensive to keep it locked away (and to find places to lock it). More and more people are realizing the dangers of using nuclear energy and have stopped using it, causing the people who work at the nuclear plants to lose their jobs. Even if the plants are supposed to remain open, more and more are being forced to close. The nuclear power comes from little pellets of uranium and plutonium that can generate more energy than a ton of coal. This should be good, since nobody wants to burn coal, but uranium is very expensive to mine. And plutonium. And both of those elements are very radioactive and extremely dangerous. So that’s just one reason why nuclear energy is not the right choice. 

We should avoid using nuclear energy because it itself and the elements that make it up are extremely radioactive and extremely dangerous. The little pellets that are used to bring power to big buildings and homes are made up of two elements, uranium and plutonium. Plutonium is so dangerous, that, as stated by this YouTube video on nuclear energy, “one milligram could kill you.” So plutonium in itself is a very dangerous substance, but, to make matters worse, nuclear energy uses uranium as well. Uranium is an element that needs to be mined out of the ground, and the workers who mine it and handle the uranium should be a bit worried. According to KQED Science, mining uranium and cleaning up after toxic spills increases the risk of thyroid cancer and leukemia not just among the workers and cleanup teams but to the people living near and around the spill sites. Besides, nuclear energy and these little pellets are used to make nuclear weapons. The YouTube video mentions that some countries gave others some nuclear technology for peace and the receiving countries made weapons out of them. As mentioned early on in the video, a nuclear test bomb drop in 1944 (WWII) caused two huge cities to be destroyed with only two nuclear bombs. After that, nuclear power was meant to generate large amounts of energy, but people couldn’t help but think that it was always connected with nuclear weapons.

Some people may argue that nuclear energy is the right choice. There are a few good reasons why nuclear energy is good, but there are more reasons to why it’s bad. The YouTube video 3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Awesome states, “Countless cases of cancer and lung disease or accidents in coal mines have been avoided because of nuclear power.” It also states that many people might have the wrong idea about nuclear power because big accidents caused by nuclear spills will stick in your mind and be all of the news, but coal and oil (and other fossil fuels) kill people without anybody sticking it on the press, so generally, we tend to think that nuclear is bad just because we don’t hear about deaths caused by what we already use. The video also says, “Since 1976, about 64 giga tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions have not been pumped out into the atmosphere thanks to nuclear energy.” Many people believe that if nuclear power doesn’t emit fossil fuels, it’s good. It should be good, but the benefits are not equally balanced with the risks. There are several benefits to using nuclear energy, but they just aren’t enough. Nuclear spills do awful things to beautiful places. Imagine that you lived in a small town just a mile from the ocean. You had the best view, and your world was beautiful. You had a happy little life with your parents, aunt, cousins and grandparents in a little beach house. One day, some workers came in behind your house a few miles and a few months later, there was a nuclear plant. You aren’t sure about it, but your family tells you not to worry. Later that year, the nuclear plant breaks down, and your area is evacuated. You live in a small, cramped apartment further inland until, five years later, you are allowed to return. But when you get back to your home, nothing is the same. All of the pretty plants have been ripped away, and construction workers have replaced the soil with asphalt. Worst of all, the beach path is roped off because too many toxins found their way into the water. And that isn’t it. Your grandparents, strong and healthy people, didn’t make it out in time. Your little baby cousin is very sick with a deadly lung disease that could be the end of her. This sort of thing is real. Areas and environments can be destroyed by these devastating effects of nuclear energy. Humans and animals, babies, elderly and middle-aged alike are all harmed but these effects. Sure, it powers your house good. Who cares? If my family were going to die, I’d rather not have a working electrical panel.

Nuclear energy isn’t just the bad thing. It’s awful. It destroys ecosystems on land and in the seas (if the waste can find a way to get there) and kills thousands of people and animals. This is more than just the power going out for a few days. This kind of thing is real. It can actually happen. And it did, Friday, March 11, 2011, in Fukushima, Japan. NPR tells about this devastating accident and all of the destruction that followed. The World Nuclear Association says, “Following a major earthquake, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors, causing a nuclear accident on 11 March 2011. All three cores largely melted in the first three days.” This is just one example of how devastating the effects of nuclear spills can be. Though the 9.0 earthquake and the 15-meter tsunami were not Japan’s fault, the unstable reactors were. And though the technical cause of the explosion was nature, it is still our fault for not making the reactors strong enough. And what’s worse, that happened in 2011, nearly seven years ago, and people are still relocated; cleanup crews are still cleaning up. And this is all because we figured out how to make and use an incredibly dangerous type of energy that should not be used.

Nuclear energy should not be used. It’s bad, it’s dangerous, and it hurts more lives than it saves. We shouldn’t want to use this dangerous form of radioactive death, but some people just like to argue for the other position. Nuclear energy is a dangerous thing that harms countless people. Even if the plant never did have a spill, there are still potential dangers that we face because of it. Mining the uranium and plutonium to make the power pellets is a dangerous thing to do that can cause harmful diseases. And with the toxic waste that is still the product of the process needing to be locked away for thousands of years to lose its radioactivity and be recycled, people still face dangers and problems. The waste does need to be concealed away, but humans are running out of places to put it. With toxic waste being formed regularly, we’ll soon run out of places to put it. And like the Fukushima accident, the toxins can find their way into the waters and soils and contaminate them. Even now, there are 9 million bags of contaminated soil that do not have a place to become clean. The water is still contaminated, and with our recent water problems, this is one of the worst things that could happen. Solar and wind energy is indeed the way to go, but lots of people argue (and are correct) that solar and wind energy are not strong enough to power the many things that we need them to. But there is a way to fix that problem. If we made our roadways solar, we might have enough energy from that to power the world. Solar power is clean, so that’s a major plus. The benefits outweigh the risks. But this particular idea does have a few problems with it. The problem is that it’s also going to be humongously expensive, btu at least it won’t damage the Earth. And that would be a mighty fine way to fix our problem. Then we wouldn’t have to go nuclear at all.