Category Archives: Science

Capstone blog post #2

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Hello, and today I will be talking about capstone. The interview part. The interview aims to help 5th graders with their main inquiry question and sub-questions. We also had to do a ton of research. That took us about three weeks. During that time it was very stressful but when it was done it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

The interview was challenging because of my topic (organ transplants.) finding a professional was the most challenging part because of how busy they would be. I would call them and they would not pick up. I tried lots of different times, at night, right after school, and in the morning. But the only time was lunchtime so that is hard because I’m at school. The questions we had to write for our interview were challenging because we had to make the questions different but all about the same concept.

My experience conducting the interview was good practice for later in life. It went as expected because it was someone I knew and I was prepared thanks to our immigration project a couple weeks earlier. I learned so many things so here are just a couple. 17 people die each day from having a non-working organ; used to die 22 people. Xenotransplantation is a type of transplant that has an animal donor and a human recipient. Organogenesis is when doctors use stem cells to make an organ. They use stem cells to make an organ because of their ability to turn into embryos.

Overall Capstone and the Research/interview process have made me learn a lot and I hope you do too.

 

 

Rube Goldberg Blog Post #2

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Hello, and today I will be talking about my final Rube Goldberg blog post. I will tell you the changes I made, my final sketch, the building process, the fails, and my successful attempts!

I came up with my contraption by thinking about things that I like, for example, I love to play hockey, so I thought why not make my task getting a ball into a goal. That was my second idea of a task and final task. My first task was getting a ping pong ball and racket. But my pulley did not work. Also, that pulley was a key part of my machine so since that didn’t work I had to start with a different idea, the week before this project is due! Brainstorming my new task was hard because the ideas that I thought of weren’t going to work. But then I thought about one that just clicked in my mind. The most challenging part for me was to find a way, to tip a ball into an inclined plane without pulling one piece of my machine. What was easier than I thought was the funnel part because I kept thinking the ball would not go down because there would be a bump in the funnel from the tin foil. I had four attempts and my last one was my successful run.

My experiences making the video were good because I didn’t really have to constantly re-do my video but I had to re-do a couple of times though. My dad helped me during this project by assisting me if I couldn’t reach something or needed help with how to put a piece on. We were going to have something drop out of a cup into an inclined plane but that didn’t work so well so I decided to have a wheel and axle start my machine. Which worked. The music I picked for my WeVideo was matching the clips that I placed. I also included some of my fails to give whoever is watching a hit what changes I had to make to make my Rube Goldberg work. Last I did a step-by-step to show the people who watch it what was going to happen. 

All in all this project was really fun and hard! I suggest you do it too, and I hope you challenge yourself if you do it. I hope you liked my final Rube Goldberg machine. Thank you!

 

Rube Goldberg Post #1

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Hello and today I will tell you about my first start to my Rube Goldberg project.

First I had to pick my task, my task is getting a ping pong ball and a racket. I’ve decided to start my Rube Goldberg machine by shooting a cup with a nerf gun. In that cup, there is a ball and that ball will go down a ramp. Then the ball will change directions and go into a tube which when it comes out will hit dominos. That is just part of it. The rest I will build later on. The big challenge that I faced was definitely trying to make a pully. I tried so many different things but I just could not get it to work.  

But my three simple machines are an inclined plane, a pulley, and a wheel. I hope so far you like my first steps and task.

Thank you for reading my first start to my Rube Goldberg machine!