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Evey year, PLP does two exhibitions. One in December, and one in June. In December it’s a themed exhibition. Last year, the theme was Harry Potter. This year, it was Star Wars.

We started by learning about why we were doing Star Wars, and we learned why it was so popular. One of the reasons that people love Star Wars so much is because of a so-called “Secret Story Sauce”. This sauce was called the “mono-myth” or the “Hero’s Journey”. The Hero’s journey is a form of storytelling. It starts with a Hero’s Call to adventure. An example of this is when the island in the movie Moana begins to die, and the only way to save it is to leave and go past the coral reef. That was the Call to Adventure.

But Moana’s dad said no because it was too dangerous. This is the Refusal of the Call.

The next step is Supernatural Aid. This is when a usually old man or woman, helps the hero to truly decide to go on to his quest or adventure, or destination. In Moana’s case, this was her grandmother, who showed her a cave with boats to show her that her people used to be voyagers. In Star Wars, this was Yoda.

There are several more steps but I won’t get into that as there are many videos and other websites explaining the steps like this video right here:

I found this method of storytelling very interesting, and in my free time, I used it to overcome writer’s block, and I started writing a story. I’m hoping to turn it into a comic book or turn it into a script for a short-film. I will write a blog post about it sometime soon.

Now back to the exhibition. We each had to come up with an open-ended question; a question which can’t be answered with yes or no, or answered with one word. I had to fiddle with mine a bit, but I settled on, ”What is an ion thruster, and how could it be used in the future?” I think that the question could be much better, and that if I had to do it again, my question would be “how do the engines in ships in star wars work, and how could they be used in real life?”

We also had to somehow implement building something for the project, not just a posterboard and a person reading what is already written on the posterboard. I decided to build an actual ion thruster, which is not as hard as it seems. I have a video here that shows how to build one and I highly recommend you watch the first few seconds of this video :

So, now using the question of  ”What is an ion thruster, and how could it be used in the future?” in mind, it was time to research. We did the research and construction phase over a span of 2 weeks. That might sound like plenty of time, but in PLP time, that’s equivalent to lunch break. We also had to interview someone to ask them questions about the topic that we are researching about. Then I ran into a little tiny speedbump when I was researching how to build an ion thruster. It would cost $250. So I scratched that idea, and instead settled on a model of an ion thruster. I got a fan and taped a tube of cardboard in front of it that was the same circumference of the fan, I put a blue lamp in front of the fan in the tube. The blue was to show the blue glow that most ion thursters produce when they are running. I’ll just put a picture of it. It was quite miserable however:

Then I painted it all black. It was still miserable. But then I had no time to do anything else so I just left it like that. I also made a poster board. And I think it looked pretty nice. I also built a stormtrooper costume with cardboard and foam sheets and I bought a stormtrooper mask online. It was a lot of work but it was really fun. With my project built, it was now time to plan the exhibition, where each project would be, how the space would be used, lighting, food and drinks, and interactive games. We were working with the grade 9’s, and we each spilt up into groups. I was in a group with Jason, Nick, and Kiefer. Our group was Impact on Today’s World.

We asked the drama teacher (Mr. Grant) if we could use his big red floodlights, and with the help of Ms. Maxwell, we got them. But there was a small issue, in that they get so hot that they start smoking and they pretty much turn into an open fire, so we didn’t use them very much.

Taylor from the Philosophy group also brought some old red incandescent Christmas lights, which we were thankful for, but unfortunately, a lightbulb blew up every five minutes so that was… interesting.

One of everyone’s favourite attractions at the exhibition, was the Cantina Bar, We had Vaderaide, Stormtrooper Marshmellows, Tie Fighter Oreos, and Non-Alcoholic Jello Shots! Me and a few other people took shifts running the Cantina Bar, but eventually it got a bit chaotic, when this guy got practically drunk on Vaderaide, and we ran out of everything.

Well now I’m at 900 words, which is already a bit too much, so I’m gonna quickly mention how awesome it was that we all got to go a movie theatre with luxury reclining seats, and got to watch Star Wars Epsiode VIII: The Last Jedi. If you haven’t seen it than I suggest watching the trailer here to intice you to go watch it:

This whole unit was an amazing experience, where we learned public speaking, (telling people about our project) organizational skills, (organizing who brings what and puts what where) how to form an open ended question,  how to effectively manage our time, how to research better, and how to work as a team. I am at 1021 words, now, 1023, and this is me saying goodbye to Star Wars. BYE!