Blog Post #3 Daniel Topr Capstone

   Overall Capstone was a very interesting project. When I was in 4th grade I saw all the fifth graders doing their capstones and that got me very excited because I was going to do it next year. My expectations for Capstone were better than expected. First of all, I stressed so much about getting an interview, but it was straightforward in the end. Especially because Andrew Rader responded so quickly and accepted the interview. Another thing that took me by surprise was the project I was going to do. My brain was like a roller coaster in the process of choosing what way to present my topic. At first, I thought I was going to do an ignite because my dad could’ve helped me with it the most. Then I realized I was the only one so I switched to a movie days later I switched back to an ignite because I thought it was going to be the easiest and most fittable with my topic. I was wrong, I had to memorize my Ignite which was why I didn’t choose a TedTalk. 

   Then I moved back to a movie. That was very hard because I had to transfer my whole ignite script into a movie script. After I finished with that I got approval from my teacher to start the movie. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. But the timing was very challenging and finding research was also challenging. One exciting part of the research process was the interview. The interview was where a lot of my research came from. And not just any average Wikipedia facts, my research was straight from a worker at Space X with experience and inside information Wikapidea can’t inform you of. In the process of researching, I learned a lot about rocketry and its history how the engines work, and other cool facts I didn’t even know about as I started to research more and more, the more interested and fascinated I became so I took it to a whole new level and piled up with information.

   I choose rocketry because I wanted to try something new instead of basketball and it worked. My dad gave me the advice to do my topic about rocketry but I barely knew anything about rocketry. After taking time to decide what my project will be on I took consideration from my dad and decided to do it on rocketry. I immediately loved it and I took rocketry by surprise. Thinking that it will be hard starting from scratch and not knowing anything about it but my thoughts changed. 

   Some challenges was not knowing anything about it so I didn’t know where to start. Another hard part was deciding what my main inquiry question should be. I wanted it to relate with good sub-questions. I wanted this because I had a few main inquiry questions I wanted to do but I couldn’t decide between them. So I chose the main inquiry question that I could break down into the sub-questions that I wanted as my main inquiry question. I wanted my main inquiry question to be how they work or the math and physics and science behind them or the history of them. So I made my main inquiry question: What types of rockets are there and how are they designed based on their particular use? This question works perfectly because it matches good sub-questions like the ones I mentioned before.

   In conclusion, Capstone was a very fun and interesting project and I am very excited to present it on Wednesday, June 15th, 2022 to my friends and family. 

 

Capstone Blog Post #2

The interview aims to get more research from an expert to support your project. I think that I enjoy the aspect of interviewing someone to gain more information and it contributes hugely to your research. Here’s the story of how I interviewed Andrew Rader. I was looking for books about rocketry to gain more research but we didn’t have any in our class so I decided to check In another teacher’s classroom (she gave me permission) and she told me that she could get an interview with Andrew Rader. At first, I didn’t know who that was but then she told me that he works at space X. I got really excited and surprised because he must’ve been a cool dude, and a smart man to ask about rocketry because he worked at space X., To be honest, I really thought that getting an interview was going to be hard and became really nervous. But in the end, it was easy, the process of writing questions was the hard part because I had to write at least 10 of them. It did not go as expected, first of all, I wrote to him twice. Once to request an interview and the second time to confirm the interview the day of the interview hours before. I learned so much from the interview about all the inside news at space X and all of the crazy missions in the past as well as other cool facts that really amazed me. The interview did not go as expected because I thought that it would be a challenge because it was my first time interviewing someone. To make my worries increase the guy I interviewed was a professional Space X engineer, who went to MIT and sent 24 Falcon Heavys to space. In conclusion, my interview was a success and I learned a lot.

Capstone blog post #1 Daniel Topr

Capstone is a project where a student chooses a topic they are interested in and research that topic. Then they make a main inquiry question and sub-questions. Then they interview an expert about that topic and once they have all their research, they make a movie, ignite, or ted talk to present. I like capstone because it lets me be creative and express my knowledge in different ways. I was really excited when my teacher told me that we were going to start capstone.

Coming up with my topic was definitely a challenge because I was interested in doing so many things. My first thoughts were about doing Basketball but I thought that I should change it up. So my second idea was war world ll but that didn’t seem right. So I asked my dad for some advice and he told me to do it about rocketry. So I did some research and I become really fascinated with rocketry. 

The process of coming up with my main inquiry question was difficult because there were so many options to choose from but I finally narrowed it down to what types of rockets are there and how are they designed based on their particular use? Rocketry is such a broad topic so there are so many topics to research. I also thought about which main inquiry question would involve the best sub-questions. 

The process wasn’t too difficult because coming up with those sub-questions let my mind roam freely and I had many ideas for sub-questions. One hard part about making the sub-questions was having to shorten all of my sub-questions to only 5 of them.  

All in all, I think this will be a great project and it will be very fun, and creative!

 

Immigration 2# Blog Post

My experience conducting a movie was very fun. I had to find photos of my interviewer that part was very fun. One challenge I had was finding photos. Making the movie was a new experience for me because I tried using adobe spark and I loved it more than video because it was very easy to work with it made everything look good. Another reason I enjoyed this project was that I was able to gather a lot of information from my dad. And I learned a lot of new things that I didn’t know about my dad before like the fact that he settled in forest hills New York. I started off by finding a noncopyright picture of my dad’s birthplaces’ flag. Then I used my phone to take photos of frame photos of my dad. Then I used the Adobe Stock photos for the rest of my slides. Which wasn’t really easy because some of the photos I wanted weren’t available. But in the end, I loved this project.

Immigration #1

In school, we were learning about immigration and emigration, about the push and pull factors of leaving and entering a new country so to help us understand more about this topic we were assigned to interview someone we knew so I choose my dad. The process is a lot more than it seems coming up with 20 questions isn’t easy because they all have to be different from the others in every way. I considered using an example document of questions and I checked if my questions were green light questions or red light questions. The interview was conducted in person, it didn’t go as I expected it to go because my dad couldn’t remember the answers to some of the questions straight away because he and his family immigrated a long time ago happened a long time ago. In conclusion,n this is what the experience was like.

Rube Goldberg Daniel.T no.2

My overall experience designing a Rube Goldberg machine was great. Before this project, I have seen different Rube Goldbergs in movies, cartoons, shows, and videos. I knew how they worked and I enjoyed watching them but I never really knew where and when to find them. Until now when I had to do this project for school. One thing I realized is that things look easy on TV but not in real life making a Rube Goldberg project is really hard. It all starts with the planning, then you have to write your sketch detailed and with labels, only then can you start building your project, but you’re not done there you still have to make your movie and two blog posts. But I love a good challenge. My favorite simple machine that I used was the inclined plane because I used it 3 times. I took inspiration from the YouTuber, Joesph’s Machines. Here’s a link for my youtube video https://youtu.be/q0A6smj16Bo  My resources that I used were youtube and the website Joesph’s machines. Credits Recording- Mom and me Building- me Moviemaking-

My sketch

 

Shark debate experience Daniel Topr

My experience preparing for the video was very fun. The process of preparing, research, note taking, and working with my partner Gabriella to make reasons and good evidence was a challenge but in the end it worked out and I loved this project.When I got on the debate stage I was very nervous and I started a bit but in the end I did well. One thing I enjoyed the most was looking through all the articles that supported sharks should be protected and sharks shouldn’t be protected. Another thing that I enjoyed a lot was rehearsing our lines with our group. One thing I didn’t like was the debating going on between the two sides. But the most annoying part out of it all was side B I wanted to be side A and I wanted to be the group to protect sharks but my group had to be against sharks and I loved sharks so that upset me. Working on side B was a challenge because I had to encounter the other group. It was hard because many people love sharks and want them to be protected so I couldn’t find a lot of reasons and evidence that go against sharks so I thought outside the box And it really helped because I had a long and strong conclusion and a long and strong reason. One thing I really enjoyed about this project was from the day one we were all excited and we started taking notes even though later on in the project we realized that they were going to not be in the same groups. Even though there were seperate sides we is still gave each other compliments even though we were in different groups and we gave each other tips on how to make it better.

Rube Goldberg Daniel.T blog no 1.

The process of starting the Rube Goldberg project was fun very fun. Some resources I used were dominos, hot wheel tracks, and other useful objects like cups and paper toilet rolls. Another resource I used was the videos attached to the google document, I count them as resources because those videos gave me ideas. Something frustrating is that on some of the tries it was very close to working out, but then it would malfunction and that got me frustrated. One thing that was challenging was getting the sketch to look like the actual machine. Another thing that was very tricky was when the machine would break down in the middle of an attempt. One revision I had to make was because my car didn’t have enough power to go down the track and activate the spring machine to launch hot wheels so instead I used a hot wheel power pusher, that revision helped me a lot. I have three simple machines my first one is a lever my second one is a wheel n axle and my third one is an inclined plane. One moment I had was when I realized that my pulley wasn’t going to work for this machine.

 

Constitution project John Lewis blog post Daniel Topr

After finishing this project I learned many things about not just John Lewis but about the whole civil rights movement. I had a very fun experience researching and recording this project. This was a hard project because I needed each google slide to be 15 seconds and I needed lots of information. I even got an answer on one website different from the answer on a different website. I chose this topic because I was interested in John Lewis’s accomplishments throughout his life. As well as how he affected the civil rights movement which was my question topic. Overall I think I successfully answered that question topic. My motivation was that John Lewis worked tirelessly to end segregation and he was a big part of the civil rights movement. He was the one to lead the march on Selma, he was one of the 13 freedom riders, he helped pass the voting rights act and so many other things discluding that he was the chairman of the student nonviolent coordinating committee. https://youtu.be/ATJXNDDKynU

Sleepy Hollow narrative writing Daniel Topr

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AF2MDc0qe25H3orib43dW_RtHHJ0EvECk3DcMLr7TZ0/edit

I had a lot of fun writing my narrative. I experienced some difficulties there and there but overall I had a very fun time writing my narrative. As a writer I need to improve in descriptive wording and making my writing nice and clear. I think I did  good job with diolouge and show not tell. Another thing I enjoyed is as I was writing I made something up in the end. I really enjoyed writing this narrative because as I wrote I remembered me actually being their. It was a creepy experience being there. One thing I am going to improve in is making my narratives long and strong.