Today was circuit day! We started learning about batteries, multimeters and the flow of electrons. First of all, batteries contain two cores. The inner core and the outer core. the inner core contains zinc with added electrons, while the outer core contains positively charged copper, or copper with removed electrons. When you connect the two ends with a conductive material, the electrons from the zinc start flowing to the copper, creating electricity. You should never connect the top end and the bottom end, for the electrons flow out of control. This can potentially spark and ignite. We learned all of this today! Tomorrow, we will finally be creating these circuits!

Atoms are completely consist of three particles. Protons, Electrons, and Neutrons. Particles of the same charge repel each other. When they are of opposite charges, they stick to each other. Protons are positively charged, and electrons are negatively charged. Neutrons are neutral. If your insert a neutron between two particles of the same charge, they do not repel each other. That was our lesson today in tech, and it was interesting. Tomorrow we are learning more about attractions and electrons. Looking forward to it.

I finally know the second part of my main question! Pathogen!! Types of pathogen include bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. These things can trigger your immune system immediately. Here is an explanation of all the pathogens:

Bacteria attack and digest tissue for themselves so they can have something to eat. Bacteria are scavengers, so they want to take as much as they can before the immune response destroys them. Bacterial diseases include strep throat, tetanus, Lyme disease and meningitis. Cavities are also just sugar-loving bacteria that eat away at your teeth. Viruses are a bit different. They invade cells and occupy them, so the virus gets all the nutrients they need to survive. They use the cell to multiply so when the cell dies each virus goes for another cell, multiplying even more. If a virus finds itself outside a warm cushy body, like on a door handle, it dies almost instantly because it doesn’t have any organisms to invade. Viral diseases include the chicken pox, Ebola, and HIV. Over 200 viruses are responsible for what we call the “common cold”. Parasites are also scavengers but are usually a little larger than bacteria. They feed on the tissue of the host organism and lay their eggs inside the bloodstream to reproduce. Protozoa are also Parasites, except they don’t lay eggs. Drinking dirty water is a common way to get a parasite infection. Common parasite infections include Giardia, tapeworm, hookworm and roundworm infections.

I have a huge lead in my research today. I already knew what the answer was to one part of my question from the start, but the other part I am still finalizing. My main question is: What are the threats to the human body and how does it protect itself? How does it protect itself is the immune system, that is obvious, but the other part I am still questioning. For my presentation, I am planning on making a brief explanation of organs and cells and whatnot, but I am not going to do this for the whole presentation. In the meat and through the end of the script, I am going to be diving incredibly deep into the immune system and explain how most funcions work and why. I think it is annoying that we have to be presenting for 1st graders becuase my topic is incredibly complicated and I don’t want to stop and have to define normal person terms in little kid language like “cells are the legos of your body”. I hate doing that becuase it interrupts the proffesionism of the presentation. Other peope are doing “dogs” and they can just roll their presentation beggining through end with no stops to define, meanwhile I have to explain phagocytosis to first graders. I wish they would sort the presentations from least complicated to most copllicated, so they can save the most complicated for adults, and save the least complicated for the kids. So talking researchwise, It is going well. I learned that not only phagocytes can kill pathogens, but normal cells can release enzymes called cytokins that can break down the pathogen, so they can eliminate them too. I am hoping to learn the second part of my question tommorow, so I can start writing my script.

Yesterday, My mom and I interviewed Monassa, Rehma’s Mom, who is a rheumatologist. She treats patients with an autoimmune problem. An autoimmune disease is when white blood cells and neutrophils start attacking the body’s own tissue. Rheumatoid Arthritis is an example of this. Cells release certain enzymes that break down the cartilage and ligaments in between the bones, causing movement at the joints painful. Another autoimmune disease is Lupus. This is the same except the cells target vital organs and healthy tissue. This can cause damage to the heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver.

We started off with a few scientifical questions. Since we couldn’t find an immunologist, she was the other option. We had to skip some questions since they had to do with immunology so she couldn’t answer them. The interview went on for 27 min. Rehma and I had to wait for an hour for our parents to stop talking. My mom and I went home in the rain with a lot of information.

Last week, me and my friend Marcello started our design for our Rube Goldberg project. A Rube Goldberg is a complicated machine related chain reaction that you use to complete a simple task. For example, if I want to pour water into a cup, I could knock down dominoes and then the dominoes hit a ball and then ball hits the tap switch and the tap runs water in the cup. A Rube Goldberg is like that except around 8x more complex. To build a machine like this you need to do the following: Create a design, list materials, experiment your design, build the full model, and finally, share it. Me and my friend have done the first three, and we still have to build our full model. Our model has 12 transfers of energy. This means that energy transfers into different things to make them move / rotate. I am worried that we will not have enough time but I hope we will make it before the deadline. The project is due at the end of January. We have two weeks to do this. I like this project and I am excited to share it. We have to figure out certain things but I am sure that my friend and I will know what to do.

 

 

 

 

 

On Tuesday, Dec. 5 we went on a trip to the New York Hall of Science in Queens. I was really excited when I first heard this and when I left in the permission slip, I was dancing around the classroom, (excuse me). We went on the bus trip which was boring, but when we went through the doors there was this mars rover waiting for us. The Cooper kids immediately went and started playing with it, but my group had to go upstairs. It was fine since we went up to the “sports” area. Inside, there was a pitching net that told you how many mph your fastball went, a surfing simulator, racing reaction time, and a wheelchair race. Downstairs, we heard people scream “EEWWW”, so that meant that meant some real science was going down. When it was time to go downstairs, we were introduced to a whole workshop filled with dispensers of smell. The worst one was the one of yeast. It said it was real, but I didn’t believe it. I think this because me and my mom were baking Swedish Christmas buns, and when the dough was yeasting, it was nothing like the smell at the museum. I think they try to do that because they wanted to gross us out . There was this hall of mirrors that was cool because there were mirrors that made us short midgets and another one that made us really tall. There was also an example of bubbles when we got to rim dish soap in metal rings to make huge bubbles. It was soo fun. The people at the bubbles were pugnacious to get  a spot on the line so I suggested not to go again. When we went home, I was very sad, so I plan to come here again sometime with my family.

We are working on a Constitution Project. This is where we study People, Events, Places, Technology, Art, and documents of the Constitutional Period. We rolled die to pick which one we were doing. There was another dice that had Video, Design Something, Explain Everything, Social Media, Padlet, and a photonovel. I rolled and got technology and design something. There were choices and I chose the printing press.

 

Yesterday, I built the main parts of my printing press. The 10-inch thing was made of plywood with bolts and screws. First,  I sawed the wood with my dad. It was hard since the saw got stuck most of the time in the wood. The press works by the main bolt in the middle called a platen. There is a dowel that you press down so the main board presses ink on to the paper. Next, we drilled holes into the pieces. The first piece we had to have a 1-inch drill bit to drill not all the way down. This is the ink board were the platen ends. We screwed together most of it but we still need to screw the board.

Today we finished our 2nd rocket design. There was some disagreement between us when we argued to decide which bottle to use, the short stubby one, or the long one we used last time. I voted for the long one since, 1, we were the highest with that bottle so I thought we should use it, 2, the nose cone did not fit onto the short one anyway. Then we glued the new wings on (they weren’t really new since we just traced the old wing shape onto the cardboard) and I beautifully glued the nose cone on. Jackpot!