Airplanes!

Over a few days, we learned a lot about airplanes! At first, we learned how to fold the normal paper airplane:

Then, we experimented, making planes like:

But, none of the planes I made worked very well! =P Some even did loops in the air, which wasn’t really what I wanted, though it was interesting. Many of them just slammed into the floor, though, which was disappointing. I knew that planes were supposed to have wings, but nothing more than that, so I felt confused on why it wasn’t working. I wondered why only the normal paper airplane was staying afloat long enough.

To find out why, we explored the features of planes, including that it uses the forces of gravity (the force pulling down on the plane), lift (the force pulling up on the plane), drag (the force pulling on one side of the plane, and thrust (the force pulling on the other side of the plane. But, gliders like paper airplanes, only have three forces, since it doesn’t have thrust. Finally it made sense! The reason all those planes didn’t work was because they had too much of one force. It felt, to me, like airplanes that work were a delicate balance of all these forces, which I found really cool.

I made a paper airplane called Sailor Wing Plane, from this link:

https://www.foldnfly.com/28.html#Sailor-Wing-Plane

This is what I got:

I didn’t do the lifted tail part, since I found that it flew farther without it. Or maybe, it was too hard a step… =)

It flew farther than the normal plane, which was awesome! =)

 

For my future wooden airplane, I think I would want to make it sort of like the Sailor Wing Plane, having high delta wings, and good center balance. I also think I should change it a little bit, and add dihedral wings, which is more stable than a horizontal wing, since it can self-correct itself when facing things like turbulence.

So far, I found that this project is a lot of fun! =)

How It’s Made — Gummies Physical Properties

Today in class, we did a short project where we choose a “How it’s Made” video and look for physical properties in the making of the object. I chose gummies for my video:

In this video they did two different candies: licorice, gummy worms. I will split it into sections:

1. Red licorice:

0.32: “They cook the mixture for two hours 102 degrees Celsius…They cool it down, then put it through extruders. Extruders work like icing nozzles, shaping the paste into a design such as the twirls…” This shows how the paste can easily be molded into the twirl-like shape.

0.55: “A water-lubricated knife slices the continuous strips into eighteen and twenty-one centimeter lengths… The cut licorice goes on aluminum trays. The stacks of trays then go in an oven to dry for 8 hours at sixty degrees Celsius. As the excess moisture evaporates, the licorice shrivels.” This shows how the temperature can change how moldable the paste is.

2. Gummy worms

2:08: “To make gummy worms, for example, they mount the gummy worm board on a stamping machine. The machine then stamps the worm shapes onto trays of corn starch. This creates a series of corn starch molds for the gummy worms.” This means that the corn starch trays are not very resilient, as it created the gummy worm holes just by the machine stamping it. It also means that it can be easly formed (formability) by the stamping.

2:45: “…cooks the mixture at 115 degrees Celcius. A machine called the depositer pours the mixture into the cornstarch worm holes. The molds then go into a refridgerated room. In 12 to 15 hours, the candies cool and solidify.” This means that the gummy worm melted mixture can be put into molds, but would need the tempurature to cool before it can hold.

Through this project, I looked at things mindfully, which really gave a whole other experience. Overall, this was a very fun project for me!

Computer Technology Blog Post #7

For Computer Technology class, we were to make either a maze, pong, or scrolling game. I chose to make a scrolling game, because I thought that it might be a fun challenge! I think that the hardest part was making the different versions of my game (easy, medium, or hard). I had to think of different ways that the versions would differ! I think that I am most proud of that part! If I had more time, I would probably add more levels or versions to my game. Here is my game: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/403198073

Not only did I make a game, but I also looked at others. One of them caught my eye, and this is the link: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/403473470 I found this project interesting, because it gave me the idea that instead of starting at zero and gaining points somewhere in the game, I could instead get a certain amount of points at the beginning, and lose points during the game. I also found that this game was amazing, because it had an enemy (the moving bat), and every time the ball moves (using the arrow keys) it would change colors, which I thought added to the excitement of the game. Good job, SMS4PLP!

My favorite project/area of study was probably this project, making a game in scratch, because it was a fun challenge to make a game that everyone could play in their own way (easy, medium, or hard). It was fun to do this work at home, too, because I could let my sister play the game, and she would give me her opinions, which I could use to change my code for the better. But, the problem with that was that my 2nd grade sister is younger than me, and probably has different options than 6th graders. But, I couldn’t really ask a 6th grader to play my game, because we are far away from each other. Working at home for Computer Technology Class was both challenging and easy, but we managed to get through this time, and I think we should all feel very proud of ourselves! (=

Computer Technology Post #6

Hello! In Computer Technology class, we were given some information. I chose the information about the amount households that have a certain animal V.S. the total population of that animal. I made two functions where I divided the population by households and then averaged it for all the animals. That way, I could see the average amount of pets in a household! Here is the information:

 

I also made a chart:

Photo Essay Blog Post #1

I am going to make a photo essay of my life during the Coronavirus. Check out these examples of photo essays:

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/photos-of-the-week-memphis-under-coronavirus/

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/snapshot-washington-d-c-in-a-time-of-coronavirus/

I made a plan for all the pictures I will take (the numbers show the order of the pictures):

When making this plan, I thought of three words:

-Family

-School

-Nature

These words helped me think of ideas for photos! I am excited to actually take the photos, then put them in a short video. I hope that my photo essay would show people that although the Coronavirus had a lot of challenges, there are still good parts about it, like we get to spend more time with our family. I want to show people that even in harsh times, there are still good parts. I’m so excited! (=

Computer Technology Post #5

This is a puzzle in Swift Playgrounds that I recently completed:

I found this puzzle a bit challenging, because at first, I was a little confused on how I could possibly move the sprite from one place to another using a “for loop!” Then I realized: if I am blocked from the front or left, and turn right before moving forward, then I would get through the maze! This was because whenever the sprite had to turn, it was to the right of it. You had to really look carefully at the maze, and imagine the path in the sprite’s perspective. After I finished it, I felt very proud that I managed to see the way to use a “for loop” in my code! I always find it fun to look for shorter ways to do things. (=

Computer Technology post #4

Hello! This week, for Computer Technology class, we’ve been learning how to code in Swift Playgrounds. We started to learn how to do “Commands” with coding! Here is an example of one of the things I made with coding:

In this example, notice how there are portals with allows the sprite to jump to different areas. This part confused me a little bit, because sometimes it is hard to imagine a sprite jumping to different areas without doing any commands (besides going to the portal), but I overcome that challenge by thinking about it in a different way: instead of thinking of it as the sprite “jumping,” I thought of it as just continuing a path that ended. This let me understand that the direction the sprite was facing won’t change when going through each portal. I managed to finish the code correctly, and I felt proud! (=

Fantasy Unit Blog Post #2

Every time I finish a fantasy book during my Fantasy Unit, I would write a special kind of analytical paragraph. This is the format from Mr. DeBerry:

I find that writing this type of analytical paragraph is a comfortable experience, because it is nice to sum up my thoughts of the book in a way that I am proud of. It is also an interesting experience, because I’ve never before written a paragraph that felt like it should be an essay, but isn’t. It has the characteristics of an essay, except that it is in a paragraph format! It’s really amazing how you can make things seem the same, but just a little bit different. I also felt that it was a bit challenging to write the essay. I find that it is hard to think up a good topic sentence that has enough proof from the book. That topic sentence is a really important part, because you spend the rest of the paragraph talking about only that! 

 

Here is one of my analytical paragraphs (I highlighted the parts I am most proud of!):

Computer Technology Post #3

Today, I watched a music video in Scratch. This is the LINK!

It is called “The music video” by Lillian Liu, and I think that it has very creative animations!

It starts with a chick that goes in and out of its shell, keeping beat with the music. After a few seconds of the song, the chick asks you to press the space bar. Once you do, the chick disappears and is replaced by 3 other sprites that dance to a different song. I think that this is very cute! (=

Also, the music has a nice beat to it, and it switches songs in a very creative way!

Overall, I think that Lillian did a great job!

Fantasy Unit Blog Post #1

I really like to read fantasy books! I think that fantasy lets us escape the sometimes-boring world and into a new, exciting one. I love fantasy so much that I can’t really say what my favorite book is! But, one of my favorites is called Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger (it’s a series). One reason why it is particularly interesting is because it starts out in a normal world, but then becomes different. This lets us form connections with the main character, because she experiences things that we find in our normal world. These are the books I am reading for this unit:

  • Shadow Magic by Joshua Khan
  • Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark is Rising Book 1) by Susan Cooper
  • Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (the Sword of Summer) by Rick Riordan
  • The Spiderwick Chronicles Book 1 by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black

I chose these ones after talking to a friend (who also enjoys fantasy books), and she recommended some to me. I am so excited about this fantasy unit!!!