A few days ago, we were doing our jewelry piece. I made an “L” pendant and a moon pendant. If you want to see how I made the pendant, you should look at Tech Blog 2 Jewelry Pieces. After finishing my pendant which took a few days, I wanted to make it into a necklace. You needed a string for it, but I couldn’t do it at Technology class, but Mr. Calvert said that I could fill out the google form to do it at lunch time.

So I did it at lunch time. I came to the technology room and Mr. Calvert helped me put on a chain. Actually, Mr. Calvert did all of the work for helping me put on the chain.

Also I wanted to put on a chain for the moon pendant, but Mr. Calvert didn’t have enough chain for the moon pendant, so I had to use a string. I haven’t put the string on yet, and that moon pendant is living in my bin.

My mom was really happy with her new necklace! I enjoyed making the jewelry pieces!

A few days ago, Mr. Calvert announced that we will be making jewelry pieces for someone else. The pieces were pendants made from metal wire with a frame, and inside there was some sort of design (like an eye or a wave or a leaf…). First Mr. Calvert gave us these brainstorming sheets. Each sheet had about twelve circles. We would sketch a design in the circle using less than six lines. Then, we would pick three or less designs that we would like to make.

I finished my brainstorming sheet. I couldn’t choose between the leaf, moon, or clover, so I pick all three of them plus an “L” to make for my mom. The day before yesterday, I had made two jewelry frames. I knew that I could only choose three jewelry designs, because the frames were pretty hard to make.

In order to make the jewelry frames, you need to have a six inch wire. You roll the wire around a thing that is made out of wood, so that the wire is round like a ring. Then, use a tool to bend the “tails” of the wire up. Take one of the wires and bend it to the side. Use a tool to make a little circle with the wire you bend. Trim the extra edges. With the tool that you used to bend the wire, you wrap the wire around the loop. Also trim the extra edges.

You are finished. We had to make more then one jewelry frame. Even though it was annoying to do something over again, I think it was still fun to make!

Today in Technology class, we learned about atoms. Atoms are very tiny things that make up everything on Earth. They are so tiny that you have to make a grapefruit the size of the Earth in order to see its atoms. Each of those atoms are going to be the size of a blueberry. The stuff that atoms are made out of are still too hard to see if the atom was the size of a blueberry. So you have to make an atom the size of a giant field in order to see its material.

What are atoms made out of? Mr. Calvert told us that atoms are made out of protons, neutrons, and electrons. The protons and neutrons are in the middle that forms a nucleus, and that is the only part that has weight. There is something around the nucleus (the protons and neutrons), and that’s where the electrons live. The atom as many layers around the nucleus. For example, the first layer has two elections. There is a space between the nucleus and elections, which appears to be nothing. Nothing at all. Not ever air, because Mr. Calvert said that air was made up of atoms too.

The things that atoms are made out of each has a different charge. For instance, protons have a positive charge. Electrons, on the other hand, have a negative charge. So, what charge does a neutron have? Neutrons have no charge. So what is it for? All protons have a positive charge. So that means that they want to move away from each other. Mr. Calvert also drew a funny picture of two angry protons staring at each other. Then he put an arrow behind each proton to show that they want to move away from each other. Thanks to the neutrons, the protons can’t move away from each other because the neutrons act like glue and stick the protons together.

Some fun facts about atoms is that atoms do not touch each other. When you are walking on the floor, your feet aren’t touching the floor because the atoms aren’t touching each other. Also not everything in the universe is made out of atoms. For example, there is something called dark matter. Nobody really knows what dark matter is, but scientist say that it is some invisible stuff that is not made out of atoms.

This is my blog about atoms. I learned lot about what atoms are, and also about the charges that atoms have. I was really surprised that atoms don’t touch each other! I hope you enjoy my blog.

After coming up with our main inquiry and sub questions, doing research for at least twenty-one days (three weeks), we are finally finishing up the capstone project! I am very happy with my project and I feel good about it too.

Creating my final project was pretty fun! After doing the research, you have to make it into a video, TED talk, or an Ignite. This was a hard choice for me. First, I didn’t want to do an Ignite, so I debated against TED talk or a video. My teacher told me it was best for me to do a video, so I did one!
Here I go, going to make a video and show it to the public. Like I said before, creating my video was fun! My teacher gave me some suggestions for the video. Like some of my video clips were too long, so then I shortened it. In fact, it looked much, much better. I also really enjoyed recording it.
But there were some challenges. First of all, sometimes I can’t find a picture that I want. I have to go on google to find one, but sometimes I still can’t find it. Then I have to be flexible and use the best image. Other challenges are like underestimating how long my recording is going to be. Sometimes I think that the recording is four seconds, but it is six seconds. Then I have to move everything over. Also, I had to make sure that it was five minutes or less. These are some challenges that I faced. If you want to see my video, please click here

Capstone isn’t just some random project that we do for no reason. It is about me learning about a new topic. I learned more about bird evolution. It is also about answering your biggest question, your main inquiry question. My question is: How birds evolved over time and how scientists came up with the theory that they evolved from dinosaurs? The answer is birds have changed a lot. They were once big dinosaurs, but they evolved into small creatures with feathers and beaks and could fly. Scientists came up with the theory that birds came from dinosaurs because they have more things in common than any other animal. They both have feathers, are warm-blooded, walk on two legs and there are so many more things in common. If you want to see my script, please click here.

After a few months, the journey to Capstone land is over. We have worked hard and learned many things that we didn’t before. This is what capstone is, about all the research, and putting it to show the public about it.

This is my blog post about the interview I did on Capstone. In Capstone, we had to do an interview. I did it on 5/17. The interview went out really nice. At the beginning of the interview, I was nervous, but near the end I was happy.

But, before we started to interview, we had to find a person to interview. That was a real challenge for me. I thought it might be easy (You had to find a person to interview by 5/4. But I found one around 5/14) since I decided to interview my dad even though he wasn’t an expert on bird evolution, but he knew information about it. My teacher suggested I should find an expert and I started to write a google doc on a letter to interview. I had emailed six people, and only two replied. The first one said he couldn’t do an interview, but he could tell me the answers to my interview questions and I did. But it was still better to find a person to interview. The second one got back on me, I asked him to do an interview, and he still didn’t reply. I was getting a little restless, but finally, my mom helped. She told me about a person to interview. That was Dr. Hooper. First, she emailed one of her old teachers and the teacher emailed another teacher. And that teacher told one of her students and asked him if he could do an interview. And he said yes! So I emailed him. He replied and I did an interview.

The interview went perfect. It was planned for 4:00 PM on 5/17 Monday. At the beginning, I wished that mom could turn the air conditioning on because I was sweating from being nervous of meeting him. I thought about all the things that could go wrong. I had login at 3:53 because I was the host and I had to set things up. I had printed out my interview organizer for the questions, I had two pencils, one notebook, and most important, my computer. I was still very nervous. But everything went alright. After Dr. Hooper joined and mom greeted him. I got the interview started. First, I asked him if I could record it. He said yes, and I recorded on Zoom and on my mom phone (if the Zoom record doesn’t work). Second, I asked him about why birds fascinate him. Then I asked my real questions. I skipped two because he answered them in the previous questions. I started talking about featherballs (well at least I call them that) — which are my favorite birds, penguins. My favorite type of penguin was the emperor penguin. 

I learned a lot. For example, I learned that some things that early and modern birds had in common was that they had feathers (different types of feathers but feathers in general), laid eggs, built nests, flexible, small body size, and ate eggs. He also talked about DNA and other parts about bird evolution. Some questions were complicated. He even said that I could be a scientist when I grow up!

I was really happy about the interview. Even my zoom recording worked!

This is basically how the interview and finding a person to interview went. I was really happy and I am still thinking about it!

Hello friend! This is my Rube Goldberg blog post. A Rube Goldberg machine is a complicated machine that does a simple task at the end. The rules were that we had to make a sketch, and for our machine, we had to have at least eight steps and three simple machines (wheel and axle, inclined plane, lever etc.)

My materials changed throughout the process of building the machine. But now, I used yarn, Jenga Blocks, marbles, boxes, a trophy, tape, scissors (for cutting), a CD box, an exercising tool, sticks, the lid that was from a Chinese chess game box, and cardboard. I also included three simple machines: the wheel and axle, the lever, and the inclined plane.

I thought the machine was easy to build. Even the sketch looked easy! But it wasn’t. The machine kept falling apart no matter how much tape I used. I did a lot of experimenting with parts of the machine, and some parts didn’t work! I got really frustrated with the machine. 

At the end, my simple machine was finished and I had changed most of the parts. Two main parts were I changed the beginning; You were supposed to make a Jenga Block swing and hit the one in front of it. And also the end; the task changed. Instead, I made the marble roll out onto the floor playing a marble game. (And if possible, it can hit another one to make it look like I’m playing marbles)

During the process of testing the machine, the second time it worked, we didn’t video tape it! And that made me frustrated again. However, after a lot of times video taping the thing, I finally got it to work. 

The task changed. The marble was supposed to roll into a box, instead, it rolled to the floor and hit another marble! Though that wasn’t expected to happen I thought that task was entertaining and fun! Like a game.

This is my Rube Goldberg machine. Through all the tasks I went through. It was hard, but fun!

Here is my video:

Today, I’m going to write about my capstone main topic and sub questions that I chose. First, let’s back up a bit. Capstone is a big project that we do at the end of the year in fifth grade. We come up with a main question and research it. At last we show it. I was very excited. 

My main topic is about bird evolution, though, it is not the first topic I was thinking of doing. You see, the first topic I was thinking of doing was black holes. Again. 

But my teacher told our class that we should choose a new topic that we don’t know a lot about. It was true that I knew a bunch of information about black holes. About how they are things in outer space that suck things up. About how they are invisible. 

Then, I thought about doing a project on the universe. I didn’t know too much information about the universe. But I had another problem: the universe might be too big of a topic to think about. The most information about the universe is still a mystery. Even to today!

At last I thought about bird evolution. It was a topic that was interesting, because scientists believed birds evolved from dinosaurs. Also, I know nothing about this topic. Perfect for researching! 

After coming up with the topic, you’ll come up with the main inquiry question. We used a Curriculum Wheel Organizer to come up with questions we can ask. Our questions can’t be too straightforward or impossible (hard) to answer. At first, my question was: How did scientists come up with the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs? But it was a little too straightforward. Then, I came up with a better question.

This is my main inquiry question: How have birds evolved over time and how did scientists come up with the theory that they evolved from dinosaurs? My teacher also helped me with the main inquiry question.

These are my sub questions: 

1. What is evolution?
2. Before scientists thought that birds evolved from dinosaurs, did scientists think that birds evolved from something else?
3. Why did birds evolve into feather-flying things?
4. How did birds evolve into different species? Was it from different types of dinosaurs, or the same?
5. Does living in different areas (forests, Antarctica, deserts, cities etc.) change the type of bird?

This is my capstone topic and sub questions.

In my Rube Goldberg sketch, I first started drawing my machine, then on the top of the page, I added what materials I would need. 

My goal for the machine is to make a marble go into a cardboard made goal. 

Some materials that I needed were: marbles (5 of them), q-tips, paper, scissors (not for the simple machine, but for cutting stuff like paper), Jengo blocks, cardboard, yarn, and ruler (Again, for measuring).

My machine includes more than eight steps, and also includes three simple machines: the wheel and axle, the inclined plane, and the lever. 

I also wrote down what to do instead of only using arrows to point out what to do. 

The first thing hard about this was that I had very little room to write EVERYTHING, so I had to write everything a bit smaller. Luckily, I managed to fit everything in. 

This is what I included in my sketch. 

For the immigration project, I did my WeVideo. I chose pictures on Google and put them in my drive. Then, I put the name of the picture on my script. Sometimes, I can’t find a picture that I want, so I use a title instead. The WeVideo is about my mom and how she immigrated here to learn and study. 

It took a long time, but soon I posted my WeVideo. I liked it a lot. 

On Saturday 2/27/2021, I interviewed my mom. I asked questions that I came up with and sometimes, I even came up with another question. I asked ten questions. 

Some of the questions are: 

1. Why did you immigrate to America?
2. Who was your first friend in America? How did you meet?
3. What was your journey like to America?

These are some questions that I asked. I tried my best to avoid questions that will give a “yes” or “no”. And I also tried to get as much information I could. Also having nice long answers.