Month: April 2019

Technology: The Periodic Table

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Recently, we learned a lot about the Periodic Table of Elements. The Periodic Table has all the known atoms that the world is made up of. Each atom has electrons, which have a negative charge, neutrons, which have a neutral charge, and protons, which have a positive charge. To learn more about atoms, go see one of my previous posts.

Anyway, the Periodic Table has different columns, which are called groups. The elements in each group have the same number of electrons in the outer orbital. Some names of groups are noble gasses or halogens.

If you pull up a chart with data on a certain atom, you’ll see that this chart has some numbers on it. These numbers are called the atomic mass of an atom and the atomic number. The atomic mass is the number of protons and neutrons in an atom. The atomic number is the number of protons in an atom.

There are two types of atoms; A neutral atom and an ion. A neutral atom is where the number of protons in an atom equal the number of electrons. An ion is when the number of protons does not equal the number of electrons in an atom. If there are more protons in an atom, that atom has a positive charge. If there are more electrons, the atom has a negative charge.

Below, I posted a picture of an atom that is labeled.

Technology: Circuits

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Today in tech class we made a circuit. We were given a battery, some wires, a light bulb, and an switch. The goal was to use these items to make the light bulb light up.

It actually wasn’t as easy as it probably sounds. Since other classes had used the same wires before us, the ends of the wires were very stringy. This made our task harder since we had to wrap the ends of the wire around the screws in the light bulb, the battery, and the switch.

At first, I wasn’t able to do it. The wires wouldn’t twist around the screws and everything kept falling apart. So, I asked my friend for help. She held the items while I put the wires in and helped my screw in the nails. Thanks to her, when we flipped the switch, the light bulb lit up.

This light bulb lit up because electricity flows through a thin tungsten wire in the light bulb called the filament. The filament used in a bulb has a property called “resistance.” A filament has a lot of resistance to electricity. Therefore as a result of this, the filament heats up and starts glowing, converting electrical energy to light energy, which causes the bulb to light up.

Technology: The Smallest Movie Made

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Today in tech, we watched a movie that was created by moving atoms. It was so cool! The characters were literally made out of atoms! It was mind blowing, especially when our tech teacher told us what this technology could help us do.

The atoms were moved with a device called the tunneling microscope. This device allowed a breakthrough because being able to move atoms is something that could benefit mankind.

Now before I go on, I need to explain something. In everyone’s phone. There are magnets. These magnets are really tiny and there are about a million atoms in them. The magnets in your phone store data. So, technically if the magnets get smaller nd more can fit in a phone, your data storage increases.

By being able to move atoms, scientists predict that they can change the number of atoms in these magnets from a million to twelve. That means that your phone will have a much bigger data storage.

Right now, your phone can carry two or three movies, right? Well, with these new magnets, your phone could just about carry every movie that was ever produced. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

If this happened, it would be a really big breakthrough for technology. I’m really excited to see what happens in the future!

Below, I’m posting a video that shows how the movie was made. I’m also posting the movie in case anyone wants to watch it

Technology: Atoms Part 2

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So I know I made a post about atoms earlier, but in class we did a little more on atoms so I felt the need to make a part 2. Since we will probably be learning a lot about atoms, I will write more posts about them accordingly. Today we focused on what atoms are made out of.

Atoms are made of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Protons have a positive charge, electrons have a negative charge, and neutrons have no electrical charge. Electrons fly above the nucleus in a cloud. The nucleus, the positively charged central core of an atom, consists of either 1 or more protons and, in most atoms, a certain amount of neutrons. These protons and neutrons provide the atom with its mass. Different types of atoms have a different number of protons. If you change the number of protons in an atom, it becomes a completely different type of atom. The number of protons in an atom also decide what place the atom has in the Periodic Table. For example, hydrogen, the first element, has 1 proton. On the other hand, the number of neutrons in an atom can be a little different from another atom with the same number of protons in it. For example, a nitrogen atom always has 7 protons, but can have 6, 7, 8 or more neutrons.

If you’re interested, here’s the video we watched in class. You can watch it for more information about atoms if you’d like.

Technology: Our Universe

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Today in technology, we started to learn more about atoms and what they are. But, before we started to learn about atoms, we had to put our galaxy in scale. Here are some really interesting facts that I learned.

Voyager 1 was a space probe launched in 1977. It is currently the fastest man made object. Its max speed is 38,610 mph. In August 2012, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to cross into interstellar space.

At the center of the universe is a black hole, which has the same diameter as the orbit of Neptune and Neptune takes 200 years to orbit the sun. That’s how big a black hole is. Not even light can escape one because it’s so dense that it can suck up anything.

There 400 billion stars in our galaxy and, as estimated by the Hubble telescope in 2018, about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. The universe is always expanding though, so we can never know for sure. Our galaxy has a radius of 52,850 light years. A light year is the distance light can travel in a year, which is six trillion miles.

Since it takes light so long to reach Earth, if you look up at the night sky, you can see stars that exploded a long time ago. That means that the stars you see tonight might not be active in space right now. Isn’t that so cool?

 

Technology: Gilbert’s Experiment

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In technology class, we learned about a scientist named Sir William Gilbert. He was Queen Elizabeth the First’s docter and lived in the 1600’s. He invented the word electricity and made many cool experiments.

Today in class we learned about one experiment that he did. In involved a closed jar with some tinfoil inside of it and a wire connected that tinfoil to a rod sticking out of the jar. It also involved a stick and a some wool.

First, you rubbed the stick and the wool together really fast. After a while, if you had rubbed the stick and the wool together for long enough, you would put the stick near the rod sticking out of the jar. Then, the tinfoil inside of the jar would move!

Apparently, Gilbert tried to explain why this had happened for years. My teacher explained it in a matter of minutes. When rubbed with fur, amber gains a resinous electricity. However, when glass is rubbed with silk, this lets glass gain a vitreous electricity. Electricity repels the same kind and attracts the opposite kind of electricity. Scientists thought that the friction actually created the electricity. They did not realize that an equal amount of opposite electricity remained on the fur or silk. Dr. William Gilbert, realized that a force was created, when a piece of amber was rubbed with wool and attracted light objects.

This was a very cool experiment in class and I hope to do more like this soon!

 

 

Technology: Atoms

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So today during technology, we learned about atoms. Adams make up everything in the world, from cars, to TVs, to the new IPhone that everyone’s going crazy over. Atoms are so tiny that you can’t see them with the naked eye. The average atom is about one-tenth of a billionth of a meter across. But there isn’t just one type of atom, there are multiple. 118 have been discovered. These are called elements and can be found on the Periodic Table. Each element contains a different amount of protons. For example, all hydrogen atoms have 1 proton while all carbon atoms have 6 protons.

There are three parts to an atom. These three parts are protons, which have positive electrical charge, and are found together with neutrons, which have no electrical charge, in the nucleus of each atom. The nucleus is the positively charged central core of an atom, consisting of protons and neutrons and containing nearly all its mass. Negatively charged electrons orbit the nucleus.

Fun Fact: The word atom comes from the Greek word for ‘uncuttable’ or ‘undivided.’ For a very long time, people believed atoms were the fundamental “uncuttable” unit of matter.

Below I posted a video we watched in class. It will give more information about atoms.

Here’s a cheesy joke about atoms that I found on the internet

Q: Why should you never trust an atom?

A: They make up everything.

Technology: What I hope to do

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Tech class just started this week and it’s been really fun! Recently, we did a really fun breakout and learned a little bit about what we were going to do this year. But in this post, I’m not going to talk about what we have been doing here. Instead, I’ll be telling everyone what I hope to do in technology.

In technology, we’re going to learn how to find unique solutions to questions. According to Mr. Calvert, the first step in finding a solution is identifying a problem. That’s usually easy since problems are everywhere. After this step, you put yourself in the people who are facing the problem’s shoes. This helps you make a relevant solution to the problem and it also helps you understand the problem more. Once step is completed, brainstorm ideas to solve the problem. These ideas that you come up with can be very realistic or they can be moon shot ideas. Moon shot ideas are ones that are a little far fetched, but can still be accomplished. An example of a moon shot idea in history is when John F. Kennedy announced that Americans could go to the moon. After this, decide which ideas you will use and come up with a way to make them work.

I am excited for this in technology because I think that finding solutions to  problems is a very important skill in life. Once you are able to do this, you can do just about anything because you have the tools to find a solution. That is why finding solutions to problems is something that I am really excited about for tech class and I really hope that we start doing this soon.

Technology: The Breakout

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Hi guys! It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Anyway, now I’m in Sixth Grade Technology. I just started the class in the beginning of last week and it’s been really fun! A few days a ago, we did this really cool breakout.

Apparently, the custodians locked the keys to the safety glasses box in one of the breakout cases and we had to get them out. We had a certain amount of time to do this. In addition to the three locks that we had to open, there was also a separate tiny box that wasn’t necessary but could make our lives easier. The class split up into two teams to solve the breakout. Luckily, each team had a different box in which the key might be in, so we didn’t get in each others’ ways.

The first clue was a piece of paper that showed a story about a kid who broke a bunch of technology rules. We were also given a sheet showing which number these rules were. Using this sheet, we counted the rules that were broken and used their numbers to open the lock.

For the second lock, we found a sheet of paper that had some good rules and bad rules. The good rules made a path and we used this path to get to safety. The directions that this path took were the answer for the second lock. We got the right combination immediately but my team didn’t pull the lock properly so we took a while to open the lock.

Right before we opened the final lock, my friend came up to the team and said that she had opened the box with the hint inside of it. The team that I was in crowded around my friend and took out the hint. It said to go to the sign that said ‘Safety always comes first.‘ In addition, there was a flashlight inside the box. We shined the flashlight at the sign and saw that there was marker written over the sign. This writing was only visible if you flashed the light on it. The word safety was boxed with the marker. Seeing this, we realized that the last lock, a word lock, was using the word ‘safety’ as its password.

We opened the lock and found that the key had been placed in our box! Even though the other team had opened their box first, we had both opened it in less than the time given, so technically, both teams won.

This activity taught us how to work together and showed us that you have to listen to everyone’s ideas. Even though it was hard, it was a great start to the tech class!