Week Number Thirteen

Why?
Why is commonly mistaken for the letter Y. Y is the first letter in the word yellow. The sun is yellow when drawn in pictures. The sun is the center of the galaxy. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way. Milky Ways are a type of candy bar. Many candy bars are made by Hershey's. Hershey's produces up to 1 million pounds of chocolate every day. One million British pounds is equal to 1,578,949.45 US dollars. Benjamin Franklin is present on $100 dollar bills. Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity with a key attached to a kite. Keys open doors. Doors are present on almost all buildings and structures. A barn is a type of building. A typical barn is painted red. Moscow has a Red Square. Moscow is in Russia. Czars used to rule Russia until the Russian Revolution where the last, Nicholas, was killed. Nick is an abbreviation for Nicholas. Old St. Nick is another name for Santa Claus. Santa Claus comes down the chimney. Chimney sweeps clean chimneys for a living. There is a song about chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins carried an umbrella. An umbrella protects you from the rain. Rain is typically seen as depressing and gloomy. Edgar Allen Poe always wrote depressing and gloomy poetry.
Thus....
Why? Edgar Allen Poe.


Results may vary.

Week Number Twelve

After dissecting frogs and worms this week, I really don’t see why so many people get so worked up over the entire topic. Before this week, I had only dissected sheep eyes and chicken feet. It was really cool dissecting the entire body of the frog rather than being limited to just a single section like before. I really liked the atmosphere in the room this go ‘round over the classroom back in 7^th grade with Mrs. Strode. From the worm dissection, I found that the scissors in the lab kits hate right handed people when the specimen is facing certain directions. That was great fun. With the frog dissection, it was really neat seeing all the different organs that are similar to ours. I expect the pig dissection in December to have strong similarities as well. The only part of the dissection that I wasn't very comfortably with was removing the eye of the frog. Using tweezers as the handout suggested made the task the equivalent of ripping the eye out of its socket which is not a comforting thought. Nonetheless, we succeeded and actually proceeded to the second eye.

On a side note, I really want the weather to either warm up or snow 3 feet. There must not be an in-between. (One must not turn the thermostat to 74 unless proceeding to 75. 75 is the temperature one must count. 76 is right out.) I do not like cold but if the amount of snow is substantial, I can stay inside my house and be perfectly warm. That's what I really want for my birthday.

Week Number Eleven

Given the vastness of space, I believe that there must be life forms somewhere. Currently, humans have only been able to see 4 galaxies out of millions. It doesn’t make sense to me to say that life on other planets is impossible. Humans can evolve and adapt to survive in harsh conditions. Animals can as well. At the most basic level, humans require oxygen to breathe, food of some kind to eat (which requires sunlight), water to drink, shelter, and other humans to survive. It’s kind of nice to live in an environment where the sun doesn't roast you alive or the air be full of toxins too. Life in space doesn't have to match life on Earth completely; life forms in other places probably look completely different and require different things for their existence. They may not breathe for all we know. Anaerobic respiration all the way! There are all kinds of possibilities for ways of life on other planets. But above all else, technically speaking, there is life in space. Earth is part of the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of many galaxies that make up space. Thus, there is life in space.

Judging a Book by Its Cover- Independent Project

Here is my presentation of my independent project.

Week Number Ten- Biology Class Reflection

Biology has been a very interesting class so far. This is the first 'real' science class I've taken with labs that have been fairly consistent. In 6^th and 7^th grade, Mrs. Strode conducted labs with us but they were far and thinly spread throughout the year. Mr. Cole's environmental science class was all book work with an obvious absence of labs. Because of my lack of experience in the field, I was kind of dreading biology, which is understandable. I have always wanted a class where we were instructed to do various projects that were actually substantial. My favorite project has been the film project, by the way. In practically every class, I dread group work. I am an introvert (as it has been previously discussed) and don’t cope well in social situations, in my opinion. In biology, our group projects and activities are different and I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly makes that so. The terms ‘eukaryote’ and ‘prokaryote’ had been passed around in previous years but this is the first time I have ever had the terms actually explained in depth and in an understandable way because the background information was also provided. 

Week Number Nine: Biotechnology Film Reflection

I really enjoyed making our film for this project. We named it “The Sane” it took a lot of work. I did a lot of the editing and I’m very pleased with how it came out, especially because I was using new software that I had never used before and I was teaching myself new things the entire time. My group didn’t have any real problems that I know of. We met after school the first Friday after the group had been defined and started brainstorming. We had plenty of ideas to work with like alien invasions, zombie apocalypses, and a few other thriller themes. After eliminating a few because of the lack of effects possible, we decided on the storyline that our film follows. We tried to meet after that without incident but with multiple deaths in Logan’s family and birthday parties and family obligations for various other people, we had a little difficulty gathering everyone together but it worked out in the end. The music played in the background came from a variety of artists and was rather random when assembling it all together. Songs from the Pirates of the Caribbean, Linkin Park, West One Music, Bastille, Soft Cell, and Phaelah were used. One thing that really took me by surprise is that I had no idea that video files were so large. After producing them through my program we chose to upload them to Google Drive and the final video took around 10 hours to upload. It would have been faster to transfer it to a flash drive. Google Drive files are much more versatile, in my opinion.

I really liked the idea behind the other group's movies, especially Kaylee and Quenton's. I found it to be really fun and although the blue screen left Quenton without legs for a portion of it, I felt it added to the overall presentation. If the whole thing had been serious, I don't think it would have worked as well. Sophie and Mikayla's group have had some technical difficulties and I wish we could have seen the real final cut of their video. Savannah and Jacob's video was really clever. I liked how Savannah brought in themes from our Principles of Technology class into it. 

I really hope the next group to do this enjoyed it as much as my group did!