Month: June 2021

The Body vs Bacteria

Hello everybody 👋🏼

Tis’ me, Brooke.

It’s almost summer! I am writing this with 3-ish days left of school and let me tell you, this year has flown by. But this post is not about that.

Driving question

How do cells and diseases interact?

The truth is, different cells will react differently to different diseases. One type of cell has a different job than another type of cell and each would have different jobs when it comes dealing with a disease. In my comic, you will see that some cells are battling head on with the disease and others have jobs that work in the background.

The Project

Our last project for scimatics this year was called “Comic cells”. Basically we each had to make a comic about some sort of cellular process. And as per usual with science projects like this, we started off with a mind map.

I’m really sorry that the photo is so blurry. And if I’m being honest, I’m not incredibly proud of this mind map. I feel like I definitely could’ve added more especially to the questions section.

I came into this project not knowing much about cells, so building knowledge was a very important part of this project. Khan Academy was helpful for general cell knowledge but we also had to do our own independent research for our comics. I decided that I wanted to make my comic about how the body reacts to a wound. And, just for added flavour, tetanus would also enter the wound.

Before we jumped into creating the actual comic, we made a rough draft storyboard. Let me say that again before showing you, it is a ROUGH DRAFT storyboard.

And the moment you hopefully have been waiting for, here is my final comic;

p.s. I couldn’t get it in here as a PDF because the file was too big so instead it is an image metaslider.

Core competencies 

Questioning and predicting

This competency is usually hard for me because it includes using class time efficiently and I am a person who gets distracted easily. But in this project I feel that I did the best I’ve ever done in this competency. I guess that shows lots of improvement compared to the beginning of the year.

Scientific communication 

I really like using interesting vocabulary so this project was a great way for me to use and extend this skill. Learning and using new words is something that I have done a lot of this year and I think it’s pretty cool that I know the pronunciation and meaning of ✨immunoglobulin✨.

Evaluating 

I did SO much individual research to insure that my comic was as accurate as it could be. I think that this project might have actually sparked my interest in biology. Trying to make the comic accurate  without making it overwhelming was something that I was constantly thinking about but I think that I did a pretty good job at.

Conclusion 

Well thank you for reading my post and I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about what you body does at a cellular level. Have a happy summer!

As always, Brooke.

The Ultimate Bedroom Setup Noº3

Hi there 👋🏼

Welcome back to another scimatics blog post.

Fair warning, I am writing this post extremely tired.

Project description

In this scimatics project we worked in a small group to create 3D objects. We had to calculate the surface area and volume of the object we created and then put together a presentation for the class.

Driving question 

How can I design a bed to optimize its volume?

The main contributor of a bed’s volume is it’s mattress. A thick and fluffy mattress makes for added comfort and volume.

The project itself 

My group decided that we wanted to make a three part bedroom set. The set consisted of a bedside table, a bookshelf, and a bed. The object I was going to create was the bed. Before we started creating, we had to decide whether we would be designing the object for maximum surface area or maximum volume, I chose maximum surface area (but that didn’t work out for me in the end).

We would be using a 3D design website called Tinkercad.com  to create the object. At first, I found it difficult to understand the controls but after completing lots of the Tinkercad  tutorials I finally started to get it. I made a few sketches on procreate to help guide me with what the measurements of my bed should be.

My bed ended up looking like;

I also recorded a video where I scroll around to all sides of the bed. Just in case you were curious about what it looks like to use Tinkercad.

As I said in the project description, we needed to create a presentation about our 3D models to show the class. My original plan was to record us giving our presentation but I was so nervous that I forgot ☹️. So I made my group do a screen recording with voiceover so that I could still show y’all our presentation. Here it is;

The curricular competencies 

Applying and innovating: Contribute to self, others, community, and world through personal or collaborative approaches.

This competency was both harder and easier to achieve when working in a group with your best friends. On one hand we really worked well together and had no problem helping each other out. On the other hand I think that we could’ve done better at trying to keep each other on topic.

Reasoning and analyzing: Model mathematics in contextualized experiences. 

My model consisted of 11 basic 3D shapes and of those were 3 kinds; rectangular prisms, triangular prism , and cylinders. Sure my model wasn’t the most complicated but I made the design clean and it matched the other models in my group. I had originally intended the bed to have maximum surface area but later realized that the bed would end up having maximum volume if I designed it as I had planned.

Communicating and representing: Explain and justify mathematical ideas and decisions.

The calculations I made for my model were accurately measured and calculated. My milestone 3 shows the calculations which you can also see in the YouTube video presentation.

Milestone 3 calculations

Conclusion 

In conclusion, it was really fun working with my friends in a group project. I enjoyed learning how to use Tinkercad and I am proud of how I was able to create the model. I definitely feel like my math skills in calculating surface area and volume have improved a TON during the project.

Here are my group members posts on this project

Dana – The Ultimate Bedroom Set Up Noº1

Makenna – The Ultimate Bedroom Set Up Noº2

 

Thanks for reading!

As always, Brooke.