Life in space

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwidp7_smbLiAhU8FTQIHc79AdMQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpixabay.com%2Fphotos%2Funiverse-galaxy-space-atmosphere-2250310%2F&psig=AOvVaw2QEv0-4mUVcdH8PVcnq4oo&ust=1558719760342262

          I believe that there is life somewhere in the universe besides earth.  The universe in infinitely large and that creates and absolutely small chance that there is not life somewhere else in the universe. If there is life on earth, why shouldn't there be life somewhere else. I do not believe they have contacted earth or even possibly discovered earth, but there is life out there.
          The Elements and molecules on earth appear all over the universe. There are also a multitude of planets in the habitable zone around stars. Everything that made our planet here was a big game of chance, but the universe in infinitely large so it is near impossible that the same conditions here on earth do not appear elsewhere.
           Even in our small part of our (relatively) small galaxie, we have found so many habitable exoplanets about the same age as us. There is still the rest of the galaxy too. And even then, there are millions of other galaxies and nebulas out there. There is no way that we are alone in this universe when even so close to us, there are so many possibilities.

Weekly Blog (5/19/19) Astronomy

Summary:
Astronomy is the study of space.

Weekly Blog (5/5/19) Seasons

Summary:
The seasons on earth are caused by the earth axis being tilted and the revolving around the sun. When it is at a different position around the sun (as shown in the diagram)the different hemispheres will get more or less direct sunlight. The earth is tilted at approximately 23.5 degrees and if it was more, then our seasons would be more extreme. If it was less, then our seasons would be less extreme.
S&EP:
This week we used online gizmo simulators to explore how season work and how direct sunlight changes the temperatures on earth.

XCC:
This is cause and effect because the earth's tilt and revolving around the earth causes seasons and for it to get hotter and colder in different positions around the sun.

Re-do Blog (4/11/19) Water Conservation

Summary:
All over the world people are running out of water due to people using way to much water. It's not like we are running out of water on earth, but we using water faster than our environment can replenish. We are using up fossil water supplies like aquifers and they will soon be empty. We have to cut back on our use so that the environment can replenish our supply at the same rate or more than we use it.

S&EP:
 I recognized patterns in data and see relationships between variables. For example, I observed that in Mexico City, they are using too much water from underground, causing their city to sink. That aquifer took a long time to fill and is taking a relatively short time to empty.

XCC:
The more water we use, they less water we will have available. Eventually, if we keep up our water usage habits, we might run out of these aquifer reserves and have to find a better source of water.

weekly blog (3/31/19) Analog Vs. Digital

Summary:
Analog is anything that works mechanically with moving parts and doesn't require programing. Digital requires programing and is not as physical. There are different benefits of both and many different purposes to chose one.

S&EP:
I constructed physical, mental or conceptual models to represent and understand concepts by creating graphs to represent different sampling rates of digital recordings. This helped me understand how recording on a digital interface works. We didn't do the same for analog since we already know how that works.

XCC:
There are two sides to this, Digital and Analog. There would be issues and reasons to choose both sides.

Project Blog (3/24/19)

Summary:
We created a musical instrument for this project. The instrument is very similar to a ukulele in looks but there are many differences. The first, minor, difference is that ours has 3 strings in order of lowest- highest and ukuleles have 4 strings in a different order. But that is just a minor difference; ours also produces sound in a different way. The strings are not necessarily to pieces of the instrument that directly vibrates the air and creates sound. Instead, when you pluck the string, it vibrates against the small cardboard piece on the base kind of like a snare drum. This grossly amplifies the sound since it shakes the whole instrument made of cardboard which is hollow so that helps too. It also makes the instrument have a whole new sound that I have not heard in anything else.

Backward-Looking:
I do a lot of music related activities so I already knew a lot about this subject. I do mostly percussion instruments so I have spent time observing how it worked and how it vibrated. When percussion instrument you can see it vibrating and sometimes feel the vibrations when you put your have near a cymbal soon after you hit it.

Inward-Looking:
I do like this piece of work in general. I really like how I used the idea of how a snare drum works to produce lots of sound, which is not used ever in string instruments. But I don't particularly like how it looks. It looks far too much like a ukulele which would make it un-original. Even if I had no say how it looked because of my partners. But another thing I don't like is the surface of the top cardboard and how ripped up it is.

Outward-Looking:
We simultaneously did our work similar and different than others. Multiple other groups had a similar idea with the shape of a guitar/ukulele just with different takes on it. But what was unique is our take on it as I mentioned earlier with the rubberband buzzing on the cardboard.

Forward-Looking:
I would like to improve upon making it look nicer since it looks kind of scrappy due to the fact that we had many iterations. I would also like to have teammates that knew kind of what music was and how it worked or at least admitted that they didn't really know and didn't take over everything until the very end when I had figure out how to make it actually work.

Vibrations of the inner ear (3/3/19)

Very loud music or any loud noise is very harmful to your hearing. When your ear is exposed to sound, your eardrum vibrates and after a few steps with the hammer and the anvil. There are nerve endings in your middle ear the send signals to your brain to process it as sound. But when I sound is too loud, those sensitive nerve endings start to die and cause problems such as hearing loss and tinnitus. If it is really loud, then your ear drum has a chance of rupturing.

Weekly Blog (2/3/19) Forces

https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/forces-and-motion-basics

Summary:

Force is any interaction with any object that will, in some way change the motion of an object. That means that if an object is in place and not moving it will stay that way until it is acted upon by an external force, causing it to move. Same goes for if an object is already in motion. It will stay that way until acted upon causing it to change course or slow down, speed up, or change it's motion in any way. If multiple, opposing forces, are present then you subtract the lesser force from the greater to get the net force.


S&EP:
To demonstrate this concept as a model, we used a few of the simulations from the link under the image above, including the one portrayed in the image.

XCC:

If everything is stable, there is 0 net force nothing will ever change until one force becomes greater than the rest or another force is applied (stability and change).

Weekly Blog(1/20/19) Acceleration Graphs

Summary:

Acceleration graphs are very use full for documenting how fast something is accelerating. The x axis is acceleration and the y axis is time. That can be useful if you are doing something like buying a race car and you don't want it to take forever to get up to speed. It is also useful for measuring how much force is needed to bring something up to speed.

S&EP:

We used models

Project Blog (12/20/18) Charity Fair

Summary

  Charity fair is an event where we research a charity and what it does. Then we make a product and a ignite presentation to try to advertise our charity. Then the top few groups get a share of the money earned on charity fair donated to the charity that they campaigned for. We always raise a lot of money on the night of charity fair selling the products with the board that we worked on for the past few days.

Backward-Looking

Before this started I knew that shootings were a big problem in the US but I didn't know how much we could do about it. I thought that the only way to prevent these shootings was to make guns or at least semi-automatic weapons. But there are so many other things you can do, since we aren't really getting anywhere with law against guns. There a ways to be alarmed if someone has the symptoms that they might do a shooting and give them mental help and support that they need.

Inward-Looking

I feel like the whole project, in the end, turned out pretty good. Our final presentation of the ignite presentation on charity fair night actually turned out good. Our board looked good too. But I felt like we could have had another product that people would have been more happy to buy.

Outward-Looking

Weekly Blog (12/16/18) Speed vs Velocity

https://www.fs.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Speed-and-Velocity.png

Summary

          Speed is how fast something is moving. Nothing to do with direction or how it is moving just the pure, well, speed. Velocity is speed and direction with mass.

S&EP

          We put cars down a track and measured the time it took different cars to get to the end. We also watched a lot of videos explaining these different functions and what is the difference. This helped me toward mastery because it helped me understand how speed is a lot more general and velocity is speed and direction.

Weekly blog (12/8/18) Motion

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*sOGYN3djYzO3Kcu-wMGtCg.jpeg

Summary

          Motion is the process of moving something from one place to another. There are different types of motion. One of these is relative motion which is motion in relativity to something else. If you are walking, you are moving in relativity to the sidewalk. If you are lying down you are staying still in relativity to the bed and earth. But you ARE moving in relativity to the sun the the rest of the cosmos. Moving is all about relativity. Everything is moving from galaxies flying through space and unbelievable speeds to the atoms vibrating inside of us. But a lot of things just appear to be stationary around us because we are moving with them.

S&EP

          I constructed physical, mental or conceptual models to represent and understand phenomena when I graphed people's motions to figure out their displacement vs distance they traveled. This helped me understand the difference between displacement and distance traveled.

XCC

          Everything that has matter has some sort of energy. It is nearly impossible to have matter with no energy in it. This is why everything is moving. If something has energy, it's molecules and atoms will be vibrating. Everything is always moving.

Weekly Blog (11/30/18) Carbon Footprint

https://www.kisspng.com/png-carbon-footprint-ecological-footprint-low-carbon-e-958742/

Summary

          Transportation of almost any sorts (besides stuff like walking and riding your bike) puts extremely large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. After figuring out the carbon footprint of our product we found out how large of a number it really is. Yes, there are a lot of things being shipped at once so it ends up a much lower number but that is still such a large amount of pollutants overall. This is what is causing a lot of global warming.

S&EP

          We made a model by plotting all the places that all the components in our product have been. Then we thought of what mode of transport was most likely used for that shipping. After that we calculated how much CO2 must have been produced for that journey. Then we added all that together to get our final carbon footprint. This showed us how much co2 out product produced to be made and shipped.

XCC

          The more of a demand there is for an item and the farther away it is the more Co2 is produced. And the more CO2 is produce the more the world heats up. 

Project blog(11/24/18) evolution

https://s25878.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/88.jpeg

Summary

          There are many types of animals. They have not always been how they are today. But things will also change in the future. And sometimes you just think two animals can combine to make something cool and powerful. But sometimes those things can actually be functional cool animals.

Backward-Looking

          Before this project I knew that evolution was a process that happened naturally that changed a species over time. While working on this project some difficulties included deciding which traits made it to the final species. I ended up solving this by choosing some of the traits that are most prominent and "cool" to add to the final species.While working on this piece I also had to find all my information about these two individual species to combine them and come up with something that worked.

Inward-Looking

          I generally like this piece of work in the end. I think the final product ended up conveying our original vision. I don't like how our creature looks a little unbalanced and awkward. It was satisfying to finish with a piece of work that generally looks like our plans without too much changing.

Outward- Looking

          One thing my group did differently from everyone else is that we only combined two species to make our hybrid. But we did it similar in the sense that we still combined multiple species to make a hybrid. One thing I would like people to notice while looking at this piece of work is that we put a lot of work into making the creature look nice along with the habitat around it.

https://www.birdlife.org/sites/default/files/styles/1600/public/news/andean_condor_
in_flight_1.jpg?itok=8c1dfMpb

Forward-Looking

          If I could do this project again one thing I would do differently is I would incorporate more of the bird into our creature so that it looks less like a narwhal with wings and a beak. I would have liked to make it's features more birdlike. One thing I would like to try that my classmates did is see what would happen if I added more creatures to the mix. Even if that is what makes ours unique.

Weekly Blog(11/4/18) Biodiversity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErATB1aMiSU

Summary

          Everything on earth is at least slightly different in their genetic makeup. Evolution happens when that genetic makeup in species changes over time. An increase in biodiversity in the world happens when a species drifts apart and branches off into two separate species. But there will never be two species on earth with the exact same genes besides twins and clones. Even then we are all different in little ways. Some people read a little too much into this though.

S&EP

         I used tables, graphs, spreadsheets, etc. to display and analyze data in worksheets. We looked at charts to see what species are closer to each other and may have come from a common ancestor. This helps us see how everything came from a few of a certain animal or plant and branched off and evolved.

XCC

          Everything changes over time whether it's mutation or anything else. When things get separated they change over time in different ways because of their surroundings. It is and almost infinitely small chance that two things will be genetically the same unless they are twins. It is impossible in quantum physics to have two of the same thing in our universe. Everything in the universe just like life on earth came from one thing. The universe and everything came from a big mass that exploded as the big bang and turned into what we know now. All life on earth came from one or two bacteria that over time changed, spread and evolved into everything we know today.

Weekly Blog(10/28/18) Proving evolution

Summary

There are many ways to prove evolution. When you look back enough sometimes you see a species that looks very similar to two different today. This is comparative anatomy. You can also took for useless organs and body parts that may have once been used. As an example, whales have a bone that serves no use near where legs would be. And sure enough if you go back, there is a fossil that is pretty much a whale with legs.
S&EP
I constructed physical, mental or conceptual models to represent and understand phenomena when I learned about the whale bones. Another example would be the appendix. We don't use it now and the most it might do is get infected.

XCC

All things change over time. Patterns occur and there is nothing we can do. Everything will always and has kept evolving and changing. 

Weekly blog(10/21/18) Genetic drift

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_24

Summary

Genetic Drift is the process of how when a population gets split, they slowly differ more and more. They start the same and slowly they adapt to there different surroundings and events. In this picture, group 1 will most likely be more green than the other two.

Weekly Blog (10/14/18) Evolution

Summary

          Evolution is how species change over time through extinction of undesired traits and random mutations. One way that undesired trait disappear is survival of the fittest. That is the process on how the best traits continue and the worst traits die out.This process makes sure that the species as a whole gradually advances. The random mutations are the reason there are so many animals.

S&EP

Weekly Blog(9/30/18) Earth through the years.

Summary

The earth has been around a long time. This times has been divided up into the different types of life. First there was the Hadean Eon. This eon is not on the chart on the left because the Hadean eon supported no life and has no rock left on earth to observe. Next was the Archean Eon. In this time, the earth had cooled, and the first bacteria/algae had formed and started to produce oxygen. Next was the Proterozoic Eon. Multi-celled organisms started to form and there where more of them. Next was the Cambrian Period/Explosion. Life was rapidly evolving. There where many trilobites. For the rest of the Paleozoic era things slowed down but there was a mass extinction at the end of the ordovician period and the first brains popped up during the Mississippian Period. Next was the Mesozoic Era. At this time things started to get big. This is when most of the dinosaurs we know romed pangea. Next is the Cenozoic Era in this era a lot of the animals we know. Humans only started to appear at the end of this era and mammoths went extinct. 

S&EP

I constructed physical, mental or conceptual models to represent and understand phenomena when I got with a group and made a poster where we each had to write about a different era. Mine was the Archean Eon. There was not much to write about the archean eon because there was near no atmosphere and there where only single celled organisms. But I think it

must have been very beautiful (besides the fact that sunsets/rises were boring and you would die instantly on the surface). This is because there would be crystals covering earth like in the picture. It would be like a cave without being underground.

XCC

I guess this would all be stability and change. This is because things are always changing and there is nothing we can do about it. Things will always keep on moving. Nothing will ever be the same forever.

Weekly Blog (9/23/18) Rock Cycle and Rock music

http://www.mineralogy4kids.org/?q=rock-cycle

Summary 

The rock cycle is the cycle that rocks go through to become Sedimentary rocks, Metamorphic rocks, Igneous rocks, and everything in between. We didn't really learn anything different this week so I'm to talk about a new angle on what we learned last week. I'm going to talk about how the rock cycle (starting with magma) lines up with the evolution of rock music. First off, in the 60s the Beatles invented this new form of music that people were curious about and kickstarter this new genre of music and culture. This is when the magma hardens and first becomes a new, solid rock.  Next in the late 60s early 70s new bands started noticing what was happening and popping up everywhere. In 1970 the Beatles broke up and some of them made their own music. This is weathering and erosion because the rocks break apart and mix with other rocks, and coming from other places other than that one mountain/volcano. In the mid 70s everything changed. The music started evolving into more disco-ish music. This is like when it turns into sedimentary rock and becomes solid again but is very different than how it was before. In the 80s people started to make the rock music... well... a little harder and louder. The same thing happens with rocks when they go under heat and pressure and become a harder, different rock. The same thing happened even more so in the 90s. In the 2000s things started changing again and getting sad and just overall different. This is when the genre "modern rock" started to emerge in bands like Fall Out Boy. 

This when it changed into magma and the term rock became for liquid and not exact. Finally, some modern music exploded out of a volcano and uses samples of old music and a lot of songs from the 60s 70s and 80s are popular again. Other rock crystallized underground and continues to evolve like the Imagine Dragons album "evolve".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrAV5EVI4tU

S&EP

 I constructed physical, mental or conceptual models to represent and understand phenomena when I made a small comic of a rock going through the rock cycle. To think of the cycle our rock goes through, we had an activity where we went to different tables that were labeled different places like "earth's interior" or "ocean" and we would roll a die to figure out where we were going next. This really helped us understand that not all rocks follow this same, structured cycle that most diagrams use. Sometimes rocks can become little dust particles in streams, the ocean, or even the air. I did not think about the fact that air is part of the rock cycle until I did this activity. It was also pretty fun.

XCC

          I think that this is patterns because everything follows a certain cycle or pattern. From rocks to rock music. I really have no idea if this is coincidence or not. Some things have much larger scale cycles, like the universe expanding and contracting. And other things are much small like an atom turning. All I know is that there are cycles everywhere whether we notice or not.