Category: 5th Grade

A Long Walk To Water Questions

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In class, we are reading a book called “A Long Walk to Water”. It has the views of two people Nya, who is a fake person but shows the view of an everyday girl who lives in Southern Sudan  and is fighting for life walking to a far away pond two times a day to get water. Salva, a real child who is placed in the midst of the civil war between Southern Sudan and Northern Sudan. He is fighting for survival. Our teachers gave us a few questions to answer about the book these are two of them.

The qualities of effective leadership are when, the leader is brave. A leader who is filled with cowardice is not a good leader. This is because, a leader has to be someone who can protect innocent without hesitation. One who cannot do that, is not good because, a leader is at some points, a protector. This brings up another idea of, how people see a leader as. A leader is someone who has a effect on people. For example, If you have a bucket of water and a rock. If you pour the whole bucket of water on the rock at one time then, it has no effect on the rock. But, if you pour the water on to the rock, drop by drop, eventually it will have an impression made into it. This can be a good or bad impression. A good leader is the kind who goes drop by drop. Another quality of a good leader is being open minded.  This means to examine a problem from all angles. Otherwise, the leader would be biased and that would not only make him unfair but at the same time it would make that person unlikeable. These are just a few qualities of leadership.

Salva demonstrates these qualities many times in the book. One time he was brave was when he went to give the suffering men water. This is an act of bravery because he’s willing to give up their main source of life (something they have little of) to strangers that he has never met. Bravery can come in all ways. Salva’s way was, sacrifice. One time he had an open mind was after uncle’s death. His death had made it to be so that no one looked after Salva. Faced with this problem, Salva kept his face up and said “They think I am weak and useless. There is no one left to help me. They are wrong and I will prove it.”  He looked at the problem with pessimism and optimism. These are some ways Salva demonstrated these qualities. Further on in the book we will most likely fine more.

Rube Goldberg #6 My reflection

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I think that this project not only tested our skills at designing, but it also tested our patience. To get to this finished product it took a long time and we had to keep on testing and modifying. It also tested how well we knew the design process because if you skipped just one step it could throw the whole process off. I think this was a good learning experience and I think that this project was very fun. Maybe if we had even more time then we could make these projects superb.

Rube Goldberg #3 Steps & Changes in the Plan

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As I said in my last post, I intended to make 2 more blog posts. This post is to clear up our steps, share our changes in the plans, and explain in pictures what we are talking about. First I will clear up our plan (Look at the pictures below to help).

1-2 : Our first step was to have a robot push a car in the opposite direction of a springboard. On this springboard there are weights keeping the spring down, full of potential energy. These weights are attached by a thick string, to the car. When the car moves in the opposite direction of this springboard, it pulls the weights off with it.

3: The springboard that is now released has a ball on it. When the potential energy turns into kinetic energy the springs leaps up, throwing the soccer ball off.

4: This soccer ball, then hits a piece of wood that has a cup full of rocks balancing on top of it. “Why rocks?” you may ask. This is because we need a weight in the cup. This will be explained more in the next step.

5: The cup of rocks will fall. There are more weights, but, they are held on with velcro, ever so slightly, that even one push or tug of a heavy object will make it fall to the ground. This is where our cup of rocks come in. Once those rocks tug on the weight with velcro (they are attached by a string), the weight with velcro falls to the ground.

6: This weight just happens to be attached to a pulley. On the other end of the pulley is a few books. They were only held up because of the weight on the other side. Since this weight is no longer there, the books fall. This is not the end.

7: The books fall on a lever. A seesaw, basically. And when the books drop on one side the other side goes up.

8: This other side is wedged into a laptop screen, so then when the side goes up it opens the laptop screen.

Our changed plan:

  1. An RC car pushes a wedge that is on a ramp.
  2. This wedge is what is holding a plastic car from going down the ramp. The slightest push and the plastic car goes rolling down so when the wedge is pushed the car goes rolling down and pulls the weights with it.

3-8. Stay the same.

Why?: We decided the robot probably wouldn’t have enough power to push the car. This is because if the car is attached to the weights you have to add the weights weight and add that to the car. If you estimate that a small robot probably wouldn’t be able to push that car. But, an RC car is more powerful and, with the car on a ramp we also have the advantage of gravity, because it is easier to make it go down.

This is the ramp, car, and wedge
This was our original first step
This is the lever

My Poem

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Poems are short word groups that may sometimes convey an important message, or a regular message, or no message at all. It could just some enjoyable funny poem. This was one of those enjoyable poems. I wrote it because I decided to do something productive for once. Here it is:

      Did see the moon glowing bright?

Or hear the crickets throughout the night

      Did you see the sun just rise? 

Or hear the hawk’s victorious cry

       Did you even think to hear

The music the birds bring to our ears?

I hope you enjoyed my quick poem. And you may have seen a message which I have not seen. If it is a good one, that you think could transcend into life, remember it and keep it with you.

New York Hall of Science

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Last week our whole grade went to the New York Hall of Science. It is a museum but it is a little different. It is an interactive museum.We got to do a lot of pleasurable activities. For instance there was a game room with a rock wall and a surf simulator. It would inflate up an it would feel like we were on a wave. There was a bubble room where we would pull a rope and it would create a giant rectangular bubble. There was also a space exhibit where we got to play a game to grab the rocks with a claw without going out of the ship. We also got to code and drive a rover, just like they would in mars except a little simpler.

We had two workshops. One was about simple machines and we got to use levers, wheels, scales and pulleys. In the second workshop we made a peg board pinball machine and everybody loved it. We used plastic and wood pieces to create a fun game to play, but it was very sad when we had to take it apart.

Overall (since I really like science) it was one of the better field trips.

 

This is the bubble room

Albert Einstein Article

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In school we started writing articles. We are also reading biographies. So we brought the two together and now we have written articles on the people we have studied. I wrote about Albert Einstein.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: GENIUS BUT NORMAL

We know him as “genius.” But have we ever known him as normal? Albert Einstein, amazing mathematician,curious person, astounding scientist, a normal person.

Albert Einstein himself thought it was funny when people called him genius. “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Albert Einstein was very curious. This is something we hear a lot about. But now I will not tell you about his accomplishments but about his personal and completely normal life.

As a child, Albert fought with his sister, liked playing with building blocks and liked to build card towers like little boys would. Although he did build one 14 stories high. He did come up with the theory of relativity, and basically changed the world, but he did have a normal life. Albert Einstein liked the violin and played with his sister. He had a wife, 2 sons and 1 daughter. He had a sense of humor. Not what you would think of from a scientist.

Apparently when Albert was doing something he loved he could not be pulled away from it. But if he was mad, then he would be very very scary. This you might not have heard about. This is something of his personal life. An example of this is if he was doing math, he could not be pulled away from that wondrous world of his. But one time, he was so mad that he scared away a tutor meant to help him with school.

The point of this article was not to insult Albert Einstein and say he wasn’t a genius – he very well was – but to educate you on the part of his life that we rarely hear about.

I hope this made you think of how we view famous individuals.

My narrative

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In class we made personal narrative’s. Here’s mine:

The Big Plan

By Rehma

“We have to use PVC pipes.”  “Yeah! But what do we use to push the water out?” “Um…I haven’t thought of that.” We paused a second, not sure what to say. Finally breaking the silence Dani says, “It would be awesome if we could actually build the water gun.” “Yeah, just go around Spraying Everybody and the yelling, Rehma Dani!.” “ Yeah, like if your sister wants to use it we spray her!” “That would be awesome!” I exclaim. “Oh! I just got an idea for what we could use. But, before we do, do you still have syringes from you hydraulic claw?”

 

A hydraulic claw is something where there is one cylinder on one arm of a claw and there’s a tube that connects the top cylinder to the bottom cylinder. There is usually a liquid in the tube and also in one of the cylinders (in my case the top). When the top cylinder is pushed down, the liquid transfers into the bottom cylinder. The water pushes a part of the bottom cylinder out making the arm move down which is basically having the arm open.

 

“Yeah. Why?” I respond/ask. “ Because, we can use the syringe as a kind of prototype to build a giant version.” “Yeah, but, we have to have rubber for suction. Where are going to find a large rubber disc?” I ask. “We’ll find out later.” “Right, for now we have to focus on the frame.” We decided we would look at materials after drafting, just in case we had to change plans. This was going to take a lot of perseverance.

 

“To get triple the power we can have 3 PVC pipes at the front.” Dani said. “ That wouldn’t give us triple the power,” I explain.”It would just give us different angles.” I pause, not realizing that was a good thing. Dani smacks his head in frustration. “And… that’s a good thing!” I exclaim. “Thank you!” Dani said, clearly happy he didn’t have to tell me. “ We can have one main pipe that the bottle is connected to.” I say putting out a new idea. “Yeah!” “But one thing, before we continue, do you just want to make separate sketches, and at the end make a final plan together.” “Sure.” I agreed.

 

The rest of the night was basically, drafting, revising, checking if we had the materials and drafting again. And then -after all that hard work and perseverance-

soon enough we made a final plan. Now for the hard part… figuring out how much money the water gun costs.   

 

Hope you liked it.

Redesigning our Rocket

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This is our revised rocket

After the first launch my group had to redesign our rocket. Our first step was to analyze the problem. Our problem was that our wings were unbalanced. This was because we only had 2 wings. We also thought it was a little top heavy so we had a lot of debates of if we should keep the extension we had before or take off. We decided we would cut it shorter and put it on the rocket. But we also didn’t know if we should 3D print our nose cone or keep the one we had before. At the end we decided we would add more wings, take away the extension, and 3D print our nosecone. Redesigning was actually very fun and I cannot wait to launch our revised rocket.

 

 

HOME of the BRAVE Question

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In class we are reading a book called HOME of the BRAVE. We have had a lot of class discussions and questions. One of our questions is: Gol is a cow, but Katherine Applegate (author of Home of The Brave) also uses her as a symbol. How does Gol represent Kek’s past, present, and possibly his future?

Gol represents Kek’s past because in his past he used to herd cattle and Gol symbolizes a whole herd of cattle because one cow is like one hundred when you want it so badly. Gol represents Kek’s present because it is showing Kek’s love and hope for his family because Gol is one of Kek’s only connection to his old life. Gol also represents Kek’s future of what he might become. Gol is starting in a “new land” where he will be happy. This represents what Kek can become. Kek can start new in America. “A new land”…

Picture from: goodreads

Rocketry Launch No.1

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In school we have been doing rocketry. Yesterday we had our first launch and everyone was excited. We have recorded data and made graphs to see which groups rocket went the highest, and which groups went the lowest.

Based on the data, Blasting Rockets (My Group) launched lowest yesterday in the field with ≈ 20 m, and J.E.X.L launched the highest with 57.5 m.

Our rocket didn’t go that high compared to other rockets. Why didn’t our rocket go high? The reason is that, the rocket had a 2nd bottle extension.* The extension was to attach the nose cone. We thought it wouldn’t add that much weight because it was hollow. Our hypothesis was incorrect. The extension made the rocket top heavy which made it go in a U shape*. We also only had 2 wings, which made it unbalanced. The mix of those was bad. The reason it was bad is, when we only had 2 wings it leaned a little towards the right. The extension made it fall even more towards the right and eventually it turned completely over and fell at a very low height.

In the second launch, I think we should take away the extension and add more wings. Adding wings will add stability, and taking away the extension will take away that extra weight.

I learned there are different ways to launch water rockets. At first I only knew about the liquid nitrogen and the cork and base. I learned there is also a launch pad with a bike pump. The launch pad is the one we used.

I only have one question now; Will our rocket go the highest after the revisions?