Tech Post- Hi

Hi Mrs. Giroux. I have having a pretty relaxing time off school. I am playing outside with my dog a lot more than usual, and also going for a ton of bike rides. I have been doing a bunch of school work and also, my camp has been sending us some fun stuff. Like there was a challenge where we had to build a replica of an area at camp.

 

 

I haven’t, and hope nobody else has, made contact with any of my friends. But I have been face timing, texting and playing video games with many of them. I have been doing a lot outside and spending a lot of time with my family. That is the upside of this whole thing.

Overall, this has been a very challenging time and everyone just has to be careful and follow the rules, because after all, we are all in this together and we will get out of this together.

Tech post #4 – Corona break

Starting May 9th we have been having a break due to a pandemic called COVID-19 or coronavirus. The school told us that we should not have large gatherings and that we should be “social distancing.” Therefore, we have over 2 weeks off and we can’t interact with  our friends. I have found ways to entertain myself though, my family and I go for walks with our dog, we bake things, and I play on my phone and xbox. Obviously I do get bored sometimes and have nothing to do, but so far I am surviving. My mom has been going crazy and buying out every store. We have an unlimited supply of food, drinks, paper towels, tissues and every other thing we need.

Due to this coronavirus we can’t hang out with friends or go to school, but on the upside, we have more free time and we get more family time.

Blog post #3 – Week 3 reflection

In week 3, we did a lot of work on our box. We started with making the top and bottom of the box. We were given a long piece of wood to share with one or two other people. I started from the end of the long piece of wood and measures out my top and bottom of my box while leaving a 1/8 of an inch space in between for the saw. When I had all my lines measured out, I went to a miterbox saw and I cut my wood. I then did the same thing with the front, back and sides of my box. I had to measure the width-1in. because the front and back wood takes up 1/2 in. each.

When we were cutting we had to put a clasp on the wood, so it doesn’t move while you cut. I was hard to cut because sometimes when you pulled back, the saw wouldn’t go back forward, so you had to pick up the saw and reset. The good part about it was it was impossible to make a bad cut because the saw is held in the middle.

Now we are ready to put together our box.

Tech post #2 – Week two reflection

This week was the second week of tech. We did many interesting things this week. These include TinkerCad designs, drafting my box, placing an order for my box materials, and using hand planers. There were many fun and easy things, also there were a lot of hard activities. The first thing I did this week was work on my TinkerCad keychain. It was fun making the keychain and putting the letters in, but is was also challenging to measure where to put the letters and how big they should be. Then, we took our first step in building the box. We designed our box. We had to come up with how big we wanted it to be, the shape, color and details of the box. We had to consider many things when we were designing our box, but eventually I had my box al planned out. The next step in. Making our box was we had to place an order for what wood we would need. We put all the information about our box, into a survey. The last thing we did this week was, we learned how to use hand planers. We learned many things about them, for example the parts of it. There is the front handle, the soul, and the mouth. We also learned that there are different sizes of planers. We also got to try them. The bigger ones were much easier to use than the smaller ones. We had to use two hands for the bigger ones and only one hand for the smaller one. It was much easier to go fast when using the planers, because when I went slow it sometimes made rough cuts and then it would get stuck on the rough parts. Another hard part was lining the wood up straight. It had to be perfectly straight or else, when we would cut straight, the wood would not turnout straight. We did a lot of fun things this week and I can’t wait to start building the box.

Tech post #1

Yesterday we explored some wood tools. We learned how to screw some nails, fasteners etc. into blocks of wood. We used tools of all shapes, colors and sizes. It was really easy to get the screws in that had a pointy edge, however it was much harder to get the screws that didn’t have a point into the wood. There were also a bunch of different types of screw drivers. The end of the screw drivers were sometimes different and some of the screw drivers didn’t fit with some of the screws. There were also a bunch of different sizes of blocks of wood. There was a very big block, and it was much easier to get screws into the big blocks compared to the small ones. some of the screws were pretty easy to get into the wood, for example I was able to get a big grey screw into a block of wood, but then it was very challenging to get the screw out. It took a long time, but eventually I got it out. Some screws were hard to get started, because you had to make a hole to get the screw started. Once the screw was about half way in, it was pretty easy to finish it off. Overall, some combos of screw drivers, screws and wood was easy to get the screw into the wood and some were a lot harder.

News article #2: Biden flops in Iowa, Buttigieg and Bernie voters’ top picks

The results are being slow to get out of Iowa’s caucuses, but there are a few things we already know. These include: Joe Biden didn’t do as well as expected, finishing fourth, and Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders were near or at the top of the list. It was clear Biden didn’t do so well, he wasn’t viable in many caucuses. The details of the numbers are a little “murky,” there will be three sets of numbers and maybe 2 different “winners.” In the last democratic election in Iowa Biden participated in without Obama, he failed too. Therefore, he hasn’t had much success in Iowa before either. However, he came first or second in every one of the polls, and is the former Vice President, yet he still bombed Iowa.

My opinion on this is that Biden probably didn’t do so well, that is clear. I think he will probably do much better in some other states, for he is not known for doing well in Iowa. I think Buttigieg and Sanders’ numbers might decrease in certain places due to Biden’s numbers increasing.

 

Summary for coronavirus article #3

The coronavirus is a deadly virus that started in the Chinese city of Wuhan and now is spreading very quickly.  The specific place where the virus is suspected to have started is in a cluster of vendors in a downtown market that offers carcasses and live specimens of dozens of wild animals, like ostriches, baby crocodiles and hedgehogs. Places are already starting to react to this disease, for example, the  Hong Kong government said it would deny entry to people who have visited Hubei during the past weeks to try and restrict the spread of the virus. Also China’s national authorities have locked down Wuhan and several other cities in Hubei. These places have a very good reason to be taking this very seriously, because already the disease has infected more than 2700 people and killed at least 80. Medical researchers have determined that severe acute respiratory syndrome(SARS) which started in 2002 and killed 800 people originated in bats, for this current outbreak a study released by the Wuhan Institute  of Virology, based on patient samples there was a 96% genetic match to a bat coronavirus.

I believe the studies are right. I also think, based on this article, that this disease originated from bats. I believe this because another deadly coronavirus originated in bats, so it would be very likely that this one is, again, originated from bats. Another reason is that another Chinese study suggested that the virus came from snakes, but it is more likely that the coronavirus spread from mammal to mammal, then from reptile to mammal. I also believe the way that people are treating the virus is also the right way. Although it seems mean to not let people that have been in the city that the virus is in come in to a place, it is the right thing, because if someone infected came into a new place, the virus would keep spreading and it would get out of hand. Overall, I believe this is a very dangerous virus and that people should continue to make an effort to stop the spreading of this disease and hope that this disease stays in control and eventually dies down.

Reflecting on Technnology

This quarterly was so fun. I learned so much about electrons and how switches work and basically how electricity works. Along with learning a lot, I also had so much fun making the projects, and circuits. My favorite project was probably the flashlight, because I liked putting all of the parts together and soldering the circuit. My favorite thing to use was the solder machines because it was satisfying seeing the metals parts stick together and harden. I had a really fun time in Technology and can’t wait for next year. Thank You Mr. Calvert!!

Building the Automata

Once I am done with the diagram and base of the automata, the only thing left to do is build the rest of the automata. After the stick was on the top, I realized that the stick was not going straight up and down, so I put a piece of paper connected the cardboard connected to the stick, and the top of the box. I also had another problem, I needed to put more weight on this piece of cardboard, so it is heavy enough to bring the player all the way down and up, pretty fast. To fix this problem, I put pennies on top of the cardboard to weigh it down. Now that I have the whole box working, the only thing left to do is put the player and hoop on. First, I cut out the legs and body and connected it to the stick. Now came the big problems. I had to make the basketball attacked to the wire but not too tight. Eventually I got the wires the right length and attacked them to the hoop. After a lot of problems and obstacles I finally was able to make the basketball player dunk into the hoop.