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 #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!