Passion Project on Exoplanets Day #1

In school everyone had the choice of doing a passion project. This is like a mini capstone. At first I didn’t know what to do so I thought I wasn’t going to do the passion project but then I decided to do it on Exoplanets because I’m interested into space. Exoplanets are planets outside of our solar system that orbit a star. Today for my research I focused on how do you discover Exoplanets? I surfed the web until I found a reliable resource to use. I understood the concept of Radial velocity easily but what confused me was Micro lensing. It was confusing because the word ‘light’ appeared so many times and I couldn’t picture it in my head until I read it many times, then I finally understood how it worked.

Nerdy Derby

This week at school we did something called a Nerdy Derby. The Nerdy Derby was when people from curious on Hudson came to let us construct our own cars and race them. My car won all races. We built the cars using a small wooden rectangle base, then hot gluing two metal poles(axels) with wheels on them to the base. That was just the start of our cars. We mostly added materials to our cars, I added a big round ball to the middle-back of my car and taped it down, this also let my car flip a 360 degree at a bump at the end and still continue on. This was a very fun project that let us learn more about friction, speed and weight.

Fish In A Tree

Fish In A Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. Ally the protagonist has dyslexia. Dyslexia a reading disorder makes it so that it’s difficult to read and interpret the words but still have a normal amount of intelligence. Ally tries to hide her reading disability and sometimes is very shy, especially around school where kids laugh at her, but ally is also is a troublesome kid at school when she tries to do the right thing and hide her dyslexia, but she does the wrong thing and gets in trouble. one time Ally got a card for her teacher who was pregnant and got the card because it had yellow flowers but couldn’t read the card and it was actually a sympathy card. When Ally is alone she always thinks about her problem and school. Ally also thinks about the next day of school and what she’s going to do when she’s at school.

Science, making water filters

This unit in science we have been working on water filters. Throughout February we were working on designs and materials for water filters. We were also talking about rivers and water sources that are polluted in different ways, we also talked about how important clean water is for humans. For this science unit we also read a book called Saving Salila’s Turtle in our science groups. Saving Salila’s Turtle is a book where a girl named Salila who tries to save a turtle in the polluted Ganges river, later in the book she designs a filter to make the water clean for the turtle’s water tank.

Finally today we made our first water filter designed by ourselves. Our first design of a water filter had materials that consisted of two screens, sand and gravel, and a wipe. Our group wanted to use screens because they would get out all the big particles, we wanted sand and gravel because before we tested it out and it cleaned out the polluted water very well and we wanted the wipe because it’s holes are not visible to the naked eye, only the water could get through. We got scored on each of the final products. We got scored two to three for this design, its color looked the same as the graded example three, but it had no particles at all. Our first water filter design did quite well, but it was slow. It went drop by drop through the stopper, taking about two minutes to fill half a cup. I think it went through very slowly because of the sand and gravel, but I think it worked well because of the wipe that took all the dirty particles away, plus the sand and gravel also helped take away dirty particles. After that we added more gravel and sand to the first design, it lightened the color a tiny bit but did nothing else except for slow it down a tiny bit.

Our last design had materials that consisted of a cotton ball, one screen, sand and gravel, and a wipe. We decided to take out one screen because we didn’t really need it and it was broken, also we added the cotton ball because it would take the darkly colored contaminated water and suck some of it up but not too much too make the water lighter and take some particles out. We only put one cotton ball because it would suck up to much water. This design worked better than our first design, the process was much faster but the final product was only a bit better. I think it went faster because we took out one screen and added the cotton ball. There were also no materials in it but the color was lighter which must have gave us a good two! This was a very cool process and I learned that the wipe can take away a lot of dirty particles but soaks up a bit of water, and I also learned that it is hard from keeping some of the sand from going into the water. I also found out the screen’s holes are too big so it can only keep a few big particles out.

A long walk to water

 

In class we are reading A Long Walk To Water by Linda Sue Park. We started to talk about what skills you require to become a leader. Being a leader requires you to be brave, strong, to have perseverance and be trustworthy, confident, patient and more. You have to be brave and strong to protect people, you have to prove yourself trustworthy because if you agree to a deal, you can’t break it, people have to trust you and see you as a great leader. Confidence is always needed for a leader without that they might fail at tasks or give up, and they will never be able to face real challenges. You will definitely need patience, have patience, don’t give up if something is hard, work with it even if it takes time. This is what it takes to be a leader.

Salva the protagonist demonstrates these qualities because he is brave and strong. When his uncle died he had no more family members with him, and after that not even friends, he had to beg other people for food until he reached the refugee camp. He never cried along the way to the camp and just kept walking. Salva had also perseverance, confidence and patience, he kept walking to the refugee camp across the desert in the hot weather with barely any water, having some hope that he would find a family member in the camp. Even in the camp after a day he still had confidence and had hope in himself that he could find a family member in the camp. At the start of the book when they split the men and women and children up, he had confidence to go to the men’s side to where he would become a soldier and show he was strong. Salva demonstrates himself as a leader throughout the book.

Salva’s philosophy might help me in my life by setting an example to me of his bravery and persistence and all his leadership skills. My problems would be easier in life to do things bit by bit, also having confidence in myself.

Perseverance is very important in everyone’s life because if Salva didn’t have perseverance, he would have never made it through the desert. Talking about the long one year and a half walk from Ethiopia to Kenya! Salva would never have survived without perseverance. In my life I would have failed in projects, chess, piano and many more without perseverance. This is why perseverance is important.

To better develop my ability to persevere I should gain more confidence in myself, work harder, and having more patience. If I gain more confidence I would be able to tell myself, Alex you can do this, and maybe I will listen to myself and grow my ability to persevere. If I work harder and have more patience, I will be used to working hard and not giving up and that will help my ability to persevere.

 

 

Immigration Stop Motion Animation Day 2

Today is day two of filming! Me Max and Harry (Our group) worked very well today. There were some problems at the start but we solved them. Today we finished our whole introduction. Harry our group member bought some paper letters at Michael’s and we did some stop motion with that to make our title and who it’s by. First the the word Transportation flies in from the right to left then wind blows it away. After that the two words come in from both sides saying in immigration then they crumple up into a pile. After that the the words by Harry Max Alex spread out of the pile. So the intro says Transportation, In immigration, by Harry Max Alex. I am looking forward to more filming!