The Manhattan Project Project

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In humanities lately we have been learning about the end of WWII, more specifically the Manhattan Project. We started off with learning about the first Nuclear Bomb being dropped in Japan. It was a huge deal as it had never been seen or heard of before. What the Americans did revolutionized war, and how it would be fought. We actually did a small project on how the news would tell the world.

After that, we started to delve deeper into the Manhattan Project and what it was all about. We first learned the basics which was about how the Manhattan Project started out as the idea that would end the war if they did it before the Germans. One of the first things the Americans did was secretly buy areas of land that were isolated and in the middle of nowhere, as they needed this to be a secret. They even told people that they had 30 days before they had to be out of their house, of course they gave them money for their house but many would say it was way below market value.

We then started talking about what they were doing with these areas. The main thing was uranium and plutonium production for the nuclear bomb, and one of them was built for a test site. We discussed how they got the plutonium and uranium as it is not something you can buy from you closest  supermarket.  They essentially just had to mine it but it was really hard to find, and they got Canada involved in it as Canada had a lot of useful uranium that they could use.

Lastly before we started working on the end project we learned about the science behind the Atomic Bomb, we learned about you could do it through Fission and Fusion. Essentially one way was to split an atom  and the other was to force two atoms together. The end goal of both processes is to create a chain reaction, which is what happens when a nuclear bomb is detonated.

After we had learned the basics of everything we then were told we were going to have to do a large project on the Manhattan Project. We had to essentially make a video that included 5 facts about the manhattan project, relating to Hanford which is where the first Nuclear Reactor was built and where we were going on a field study. We were put into groups of three and told that the first thing we had to do was think of a topic to base the video off of. We thought that we should base it around every day life at Hanford. That was specific enough to the point where we could go into enough detail that after the video the people who watched it would actaully learn something but at the same time it wasn’t too specific that we didn’t cover very many topics.

At first we essentially made a script and planned out what we were going to do while we were in Hanford and what we thought was the most important things to cover while we were down there.

 

Astronomy, Eh

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So recently in my science class we started learning about astronomy. Astronomy is such a broad topic and so hard to learn in a short matter of time. Our teachers solution to that was to have everybody split up into groups of two, and then we do a lottery to see which topic each person gets. My partner Robbie and I got “Nuclear Reaction and How Stars Work”.

We thought that this was going to be an interesting topic as the sun itself is one giant ball of fire slowly getting bigger, and we wanted to know how that exactly works. Most of or project was just doing basic research. We wanted to add an experiment in where we take some object and just cover it in something highly flammable and light it on fire but, its not a greate idea becuase, that is how one fo us burns ourselves, and also it wouldnt really accomplish much.

My partner and I then decided to put this information that we had acquired and put it into a video. We thought that a video was the best way to portray our information, as it is done all the time by proffestionals, and we also thought you could do a lot more with a video than with a Keynote, as that was our other option. So here is our video on how stars are created and sustained:

Lastly becuase there are so many different parts of astronomy we had to learn interconnect everything we learned about astronomy, and here that is:

This project was a lot fo fun, and I plan on learning more about astronomy in the future as there is so much even scientists dont know about it, and this topic intrigues me a lot.

Blue Sky Again, Eh

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Yet again I have done a Blue Sky project. It is actually crazy to think about  but this is the 6th that I have done. This year was basically like any other, I had to come up with a project to do that I could show at a Exhibiton, although this year there were some constraints. This year our teacher wanted us to focus on some development goals based that came from the UN. Of course we weren’t planning on solving world hunger, so we tackled there goals on a smaller, more local scale.

The goal that my group and I were interested in was number 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities. For my project I was in a group as you could do a group project or a project by youself but, a couple of my friends and I crafted an idea together, and we believed that it was enough work to split into 4 people. My group and I decided on improving the public transit system, as we believe that there were areas that could be better. The reason we chose to focus on public transit was becuase in Vancouver, there is a lot of congestion in traffic becuase, the city has a fairly high population for it’s size. That is why the traffic is not very good here, another negative to having that many cars on the road is that it creates a lot of carbon emissions. We believed that if we could get more people out of there cars and into buses it would reduce carbon emissions and congestion. We basically focused on what would make buses more attractive to the average person. In my group of 4, two of us worked on making the buses almost more luxurious kind of like a first class bus. The other to worked on making a better bus route that would be more attainable and useful for most people.

To do this project we have to go through a process, we call this process the L.A.U.N.C.H. Cycle. As you can see, that is an acronym, and that acronym stands for:

L-Look, listen, and learn – Goal: Awareness, seeing a problem and having a sense of empathy
A–Ask tons of questions – Goal: Sparked by curiosity, leads to understanding the process or problem.
U–Understand the problem or process – Goal: Use authentic research experience (interviews, analyzing data, articles, watching videos)
N–Navigate ideas – Goal: Brainstorm, combine, analyze, and navigate ideas to generate a concept for what they might create
C–Create a prototype – Goal: Could be an action, digital work, tangible project, work of art, or event
H–Highlight and fix – Goal: Fix what is failing, for every mistake brings you closer to your final product

Since I have done Blue Sky 6 times now that acronym has been engraved into my brain. That seems like it would also be a long process, but we did it in about two weeks. It was a bit of a shorter of a timeline than last year, so we basically sped the process up a bit more. Most of the project was a mad scramble trying to get everything done on time.

Of course we started with look, listen and learn part of the project which I have already talked about previously in this post. We also asked tons of questions to actually figure what we wanted to do and that was figuring out what are some of the problems in Vancouver, and that was traffic congestion. The next step was to acutally figure out and understand what we had to actually do to complete this project in the short timeline. That is why we decided to split it into two projects for 4 people. All four of us talked for most of a class to figure out what we were going to do, we had man different ideas before we finally settled. We then moved onto creating our first prototype. Our first prototype was just a drawing of what we were going to create. We then moved onto our second prototype which had to be something that was physical.  We then for the third prototype had to create our final product but, once we were done that prototype we had to fix and improve it to make it ready for the exhibiton. Now that I’ve told you the process of this project I will now show you what I actually did.

As you can see that is my partner and I’s first prototype. Probably the  first thing you notice is that it is a chair. The reason for that is tha my partner and I decided to focus on how to make the inside of a bus more attractive. We decided to focus on the chairs becuase you can change them many ways and they aren’t the best chairs in the world either. We then created another prototype that was a lego model of that. It doesnt really look to much different, but the final product is the prototype where everything came together and we created a pretty solid chair. Another thing to add to our project was that I tried to show all of the negative things about driving and I did that by doing a small write up and creating a chart. Here is that information:

What are the Positives to Not Driving?

The problem at hand that we are focusing on is the amount of congestion and carbon emissions in Vancouver. We believe a lot of that has to do with the fact that once people get their drivers licence, they do not use public transit. These past couple of weeks we have been thinking about what will attract people to use public transit more often. We came up with the idea of making a more luxurious bus. That essentially means creating a “First Class Bus”. We have made it more comfortable by completely changing the bus seats, and adding more room per passenger. There are also some negatives to driving cars, such as you cant multi task, you have to find a parking spot and sometimes pay for one, and every once in a while you might have to deal with road rage.We have also decided that a lot of people would get out of their cars and into buses if they new they were saving money, and I have decided to show you exactly how much money you are saving. To calculate how much it cost to drive, I took into account: insurance, gas, yearly, maintenance, and cost of the car. Some of the things I did not take into account was the cost of accidents, from minor fender benders all the way up to complete write offs.

This was all based on average costs in Canada.

That was my project that I did this year for Blue Sky. I feel that it is probably the best one that I have done yet. I think that has to do with the fact that I was very engaged the entire time I did this project, as this topic was very interesting to me.

LOTF, Eh

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Yet again we have finished a unit, and thankfully this is the last one before summer starts. This last humanities units was probably one of the most challenging for me, for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is that I had to read probably one of the most famous and confusing books that I have ever read and public speaking was required in this unit which is not one of my strong suits. This unit was probably the most diverse unit I have ever done, as we showed our learning in many different ways.

Before we started the unit, our teacher came up with an interesting plan to create groups. That plan was to lock us in a room together and have us create a groups based on what we thought would be reasonable or fair. We generally split people up by making diverse groups with their skills and abilities.The book that we read was Lord of the Flies. I assume you figured that out by the title of this post. If you have not read LOTF I highly recommend it, as it is one of the best books I have ever read. It has one of the most interesting storylines to it, and shows off the true colours of human nature. It is very dramatic with times where everybody is civilized and others where people become complete savages. This book is so diverse that even with all of that going on it has fear, sorrow and even anarchy. If that interests you I highly recommmend that you go and read this book, as it is probably one of, if not THE best book that I have ever read. To make sure we were actually reading the book our teacher made us to do chapter tests. It wasn’t too hard as long as you read the book, plus you took the test as a group. Another thing that went on throughout this unit was a point system. Since we were put into groups, that essentially made teams. So each group was competing against each other to get the most points. You could gain or lose points based off of basic things like tucking in chairs or forgetting to hand in an assignment. It made it so that the team members had to rely on each other to succeed, and it made us more well behaved in class which was a plus for our teacher.

One of the other things that we  focused on was Politics. Generally not the most interesting topic in the world but, I acutally enjoyed learning about it. We mostly focused on how different electoral systems worked. Some of them made sense, and then there were confusing and seemed like a dumb idea. We also talked about how a pipeline is trying to be built across BC coming from Alberta. In my opinion there are a lot of people who care about it but, theres probably even more who don’t care. The people that dont want it are worried about oil spills. That is completely understandable, but if it isn’t built then many people could lose their jobs, and the pipeline that has been there for about 70 years has never had a leak except for when somebody drilled through it.

Lastly the biggest part of this unit, the debate. As I said we were put into teams, and those were our debate teams, and at the end of the unit we had to debate against another team. We based the topics off of ideas from LOTF. To prepare we did these things called concept journals. To do them you essentially pick a topic like Humanity vs. Inhumanity. Then you essentially make an argument for one of the sides. Here is what I did for human nature:

Be it resolved that “It is human nature to be good at heart unless tempted by evil”. William Golding made this statement, as it is true and there are many examples of it all around us. Humans are constantly trying to make a difference in this world, they are trying to improve Earth itself, and the people on it. Progressively through history, the general population has shown more acceptance, kindness and love. A good example of that is the acceptance of LGBTQ, with San Francisco leading the charge. That example shows how most people are showing their inner kindness through acceptance. That is again showed the same way through the reduction of racism over some of the most recent decades. A different example is how we are currently trying to mend with First Nations, after we destroyed most of what they owned and part of their culture. Everybody who is not indigenous is currently trying to give back and support them, because humans are naturally good at heart and humans feel sympathy towards others. My last example of humans being good at heart is the fact that a lot fo people donate to charity. That shows that humans aren’t naturally evil or greed, although that doesn’t mean that humans cant be evil or greedy. One of the most common things that will make a person evil or greedy is money. Money can change a person into a monster. Money will make people sabotage peoples plans or even something like a sports game. Referees are constantly bribed in sports because getting money is more important to them than staying true to their profession. Even though humans can be greedy or unfaithful, doesn’t mean that they cant be good at heart. Ralph shows that at the end of Lord of the Flies, as he breaks down in tears in front of a Naval Officer because he had finally come back to reality and realized all of the horrible thing that had happened on that island.

For preparing for our debate we also listened to a debate podcast called Intelligance Squared US. It was actaully very interesting I highly recommend you to listen to one. Then we basically just studied our topic like there was not tomorrow. My group had to argue that it is human nature to put yourself above others. Here is the debate:

I thought that this unit went very well. I am very happy with the results, as I believe that my group had very strong arguments. It wasn’t perfect as I wish that I had said a couple different things. I felt that I have learned a lot and that I have grown a lot in this unit as I feel my public speaking has gotten a little bit stronger as well as my writing. At the beginning I was not to happy about having to debate but I am very happy that I have done it as it was a great expierence

 

TPOL’s Are Back, Eh

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It is now that time of year again where we have to reflect on this past school year. A lot has happened this year and of course that means that I have to think about what were the best, and worst parts of my year. We were given a driving question this year,” Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?”. As well as trying answer that question we have to do this to complete our TPOL:Reflect on your growth as learner in Humanities, Science, Math, and Maker , reflect on work ethic, work habits, and areas for improvement, and lastly provide strong evidence (using examples from your learning portfolio) of revision, teamwork, responsibility, and production of high quality work as a
PLP learner.

I believe that this year I have grown a fair amount compared to last year. The reason why I say that is becuase the quality of my first drafts have improved since last year. I noticed this as I have been spending more time on my first drafts than I would normally, and I would put more effort into them aswell. This was shown very prominently in the video I sent to High Tech High. That was probably one of my best examples of a good quality first draft. Another example would be the book review I wrote on Unbroken. I feel that I did a very good job of creating an authentic book review on my first draft.

Now onto what has showed my teamwork skills. I believe that I showed my best teamwork in the renewable energy project I did. The project that we did involved a lot of teamwork as each member of our group relied on each other to get a part of it done. As a group we divided up the work to each person based on there skills and abilities. The end product of that project showed that we worked well together, and I say that because I am proud of our outcome.

Throughout this whole school year a lot has happened. I have produced a lot of good work and a fair amount that was not very good, but I believe that overall the most beneficial part of the year for me was the California Field Trip. That field trip was one of the most eye opening expierences for me. It had so much interesting information from how Silicon Valley was turned into the innovation capital of the world, all the way to the culture and history of San Francisco. That whole trip my jaw was hitting the floor. Even after that trip I was still surprised with how much I had learned, as it was probably the best field trip I have ever been on by far.

Even though I have grown as a learner and have created more consistently quality work throughout this year, I still have a lot to work on. I feel that my focus level is still quite low and I need to become more engaged in class and outside of class. I feel that that is the main thing that I need to work on. To improve my quality of work I am going to try to do my best work on the first draft like I have done on a couple of assignments and projects, and those projects generally have been some of my best examples of work. I am looking to do that in this coming up Blue Sky Exhibiton as I am very excited to complete my project as I am very interested in it and I believe it could possibly be one of my best examples of my best work. I think that to actaully create my best work I have to be passionate about what I am learning about.

To sum everything up this year I think that I have improved on many fronts that has resulted in overall better quality work but, I have not done very well when it comes to staying on track. I have lost focus many times throughout  the year but I believe that I have been a lot more focused this past term. I am looking to continue staying focused in class next year, as I believe that with me being more focused I have produced better quality work. With that growth that I have been doing over this past year I believe that I am ready to go into the next grade level and grow some more.

Phone Plans, Eh

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In Math Class, we ended up starting a unit on system of equations. Our teacher explained to us that systems of equations can be used in many different ways and still involve somebody’s regular life. For example we decided to focus on phone plans. We used the prices of each phone plans to decide what is the cheapest phone plan over time. We got paired up with a partner based on how many gigabytes of data you use every month.

My partner Robbie and I decided to compare three different phone plans, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Mobile Costco, and Koodo. All of the plans had a minimum of 8GB of data. We decided to choose 8GB of data becuase we generally use a lot of data, and its nice not having to worry about going over your limit.

Because we had to incoraporate math into this project we created a linear graph including each phone company. This way it easily showed what is the best choice for us.

It very clearly shows what the difference in price is for each plan, which is exactly what we wanted to help us make our choice.

In conclusion we chose Virgin Mobile, as we though that was the most accommodating to our needs and wants. Now that I look back at this project I think that it was really useful as it shows how you can use math in everyday life. The project was a lot of fun and was very eye opening, and I believe I will use system of equation later on in my life.

 

Renewable Energy, Eh

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Not too long ago in Sci-Mathics class, I was up into a group given the idea of creating something that can turn on a light using renewable energy. I was put into a group of four. We immediately started thinking of the best ways to create a renewable energy source.

We ended up moving towards the idea of creating a water wheel. We tried making many different versions of it but, basically every single one didn’t work. We probably went through 4 different designs before actually coming to one that that actually worked. We made the water wheel out of everyday  materials. It consisted of solo cups, a plastic container, PVC pipe, and a lot of glue.

Every model we made before either, didn’t rotate,  was too complicated, or wasnt strong enough. We found that this design was the best because it was sturdy and held together fairly well, and wasn’t complicated at all, and the solo cups were large enough to hold lots of water to rotate it.

After we were done building it, we were given another task. That task happens to be that we had to create a video advertisement for our product. We had to basically show all of the science behind and explain why you should buy this. In reality nobody would buy it as it can only just turn on a LED light but, it can charge a phone, it just takes you like the whole day to do so.  We made the video without much problem, two of our group memebers were in the video itself, one person edited it, and I did the voice over in a corny voice. It was the most awkward thing to record ever.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=g07osiGFfxg

The project was lots of fun to do, and I am proud of what my group members and I created.

#BCTechSummit, Eh

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Not too long ago my class and I went on a one day field trip to the BC Tech Summit. At first I had no clue to what it acutally was, but the more I learned about it the more intrigued I became. The BC Tech Summit, is almost like an exhibition where a few thousand people go to one spot in downtown Vancouver, and look at new forms of technology and how it is changing our world. Another cool part about is that entrepreneurs, and people like motivational speakers from generally BC, come to the Summit and talk about there expierences in life or more specifically with technology.

Of course, we were given assignments while we were there. One of the assignments was to listen and take notes on two of the speakers, after you were done taking the notes you would write about them and about there company. I chose to talk about David Katz, as I thought that his company was rather interesting.  This is what I wrote about him:

David Katz and Plastic Bank

David Katz is the Founder and CEO of Plastic Bank. When he was just starting his company he made an appearance on Dragons Den in one episode. In that episode none of the Dragons gave him an offer as they thought that his company was a scam as it is not a not for profit company and it is made so that he is able to pocket a lot fo the money his company makes. David has spoken at many events, as he is said to deliver a “genuine paradigm shift that inspires his audience to see opportunity, where others see problems”. Now onto what his company actually does. HIs company makes it so that anybody can find plastic on the side of the street or wherever you might find it, and take it to a centre where you can exchange it for money or anything that is use to you look cooking fuel etc. It is supposed to empower recycling ecosystems around eh world and stop plastic from getting into and polluting our oceans, and at the same time it is supposed to help people living in poverty by making it easier to create a better future for themselves. “The Plastic Bank creates social and environmental impact in areas with high levels of poverty and plastic pollution by turning plastic waste into a currency”. Another problem with plastic bank is that he is not really getting rid of plastic in this world as he is just buying plastic off of one person and selling it to other company’s. So he essentially he is just moving the plastic from one place to another. After learning about David Katz and Plastic Bank, I think that he has a great idea, but I think he went the wrong way with it, and if he changed it in some way it could possibly help the world immensely.

Quotes

The other person I decided to talk about was Brent Bushnell who is an entrepreneur for Two Bit Circus. This is what I had to say about him:

Brent Bushnell and Two Bit Cirucs

Brent Bushnell is the Co-Founder fo a company called Two Bit Circus. Two Bit Circus’ main focus is based on youth innovation. The company hosts “Circuses” for youth to come and showcase their work. That is not all that Two Bit Circus does, at these showcase events they also show off some of their own innovations. Bushnell’s company has created a fun way for youth to get creative and try something new, and gain skills that will help them later on in life. Brents reason for Co-creating this company is fully based off of following his passion. I think that following your passion is a great motivation to create amazing work. That is exactly what Brent and Two Bit Circus.

One of the other tasks we had was to look at the options for university’s while we were there. A few university’s showed up to the tech summit, including BCIT, UBC, and UVIC. I mainly talked to the person who was advertising for UVIC. The reason I chose to focus on them was the fact I didn’t know much about UVIC and to be completely honest I hadn’t put any of those university’s on my list. I wanted to hear what they had to say about UVIC. I still dont think I am going to go to any of those universitys as I have thought carefully about what universitys I want to go to. For the past couple of years I have thought about what Universitys I want to go to, currently I would prefer to go to Stanford, even though it is probably to expensive, and the acceptance rate is very low. My next option is McGill. The reason I chose it is, from my perspective it is a very good school, and it seems attainable for me. My third choice is University of Alberta. I chose that based off of the fact it has a fairly good engineering program that I am interested in. My fourth choice is UBCO, I chose that because I believe I can get into it without having to many issues, and it still needed to be decent distance from home as my parents want me to leave the general area of Vancouver.

The last assignment that we had to do while we were there was, to create yet another podcast. We had to interview a mentor who was at the summit to talk to youth about his company. I am not going to talk much about the person as I have a podcast that can explain everything. The person I interviewed was Dave Donaldson from Teck, which is a mining company.

Going to the Tech Summit was truly and eye opening expierence as it showed how quickly technology is effecting th world. It was given to me in many different examples such as entrepreneurs, and people in industry’s such as mining.

WWII, Eh

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This past unit in humanities has been centred around The Second World War. It was definitely one fo the more interesting units that I have ever done, as there was so much information packed into such small period of time. We were told that our end product was going to be a website. The website would be about the different perspectives of WWII, the persepectives would come from the view of each country. There was several different options to do your reasearch in a group on country’s who played major roles in the war but, if you wanted to you could go on your own and do reasearch on a country that wasnt on the list. I requested to do my reasearch on Canada, I now regret that decision as I already knew quite a bit about Canadas involvement in the war and I think it would have been a better decision to learn about another country.

Besides making the website, we learned about the war in general and all fo the battles. One of the most interesting battles that we focused on was Dunkirk. In the evacutation of Dunkirk, the German Forces had backed the French up against the English Channel. The French were completley surrounded with nowhere to go. The british decided to do an evacuation by sea. The rounded up basically every boat that could go through the English Channel. There were hundreds of boats from pleasure crafts to ferrrys and even fishing boats. Two days after the evacuation started the Luftwaffe bombed the port of Dunkirk, whihc made the evacuation much more difficult. On June 4th, 1940 the evacuation was completed after saving 340,000 people, which was much more than they thought they could ever achieve. ALthough the evacuation was succesful, France surrendered to Germany on the 22nd of June.

Another thing we did was do a book review on one of three books we had to choose form that involved World War 2. I made a blog post on that not too long ago here it is.

Unbroken Book Reveiw, Eh

One of the more intersting portions of this unit was the fact that our class got to interview a German War Veteran. It was so cool to just meet one in general but getting to talk to him about his expierence was completley unreal. The person we interviewed was is Helmut Lemke, as I said he is a War Veteran that fought for Germany, he fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Helmut is also involved with this program called the Historica Memory Project. It was definitely one of the coolest things I have ever done, after we interviewed him we each took a piece of the recording we took of him and made a small podcast out of it.

One of the more boring parts of this unit was learning how to cite videos, websites, and books. It was mandatory as we needed to do it properly on our website. Which now brings me to how we created our website. We used Weebly to make the website as our teacher thought that was the best way to do it as she had created websites previously with Weebly. We later found out that Weebly is super glitchy to use on an iPad, so ended up doing basically on our iPads and then sending it to a computer where we put the info into the website. My group and I evenly split up the work of the website where each one of us would do two pages or so, as there were three of us and we needed to do somewhere around six pages. Instead of me explaining what we did for each individual page I will just show you what we did.

Perspectives of WWII

This unit was one of my favourites and I really enjoyed doing the research on my country, as I found some very interesting information that I would not have found if I didn’t do this unit. I don’t know if I would change anything except maybe explore different website builders for the iPad as Weebly was not ideal. As I said before this was one of the most interesting and engaging units I have ever done. I feel that I have learned a lot from this unit not just in what happened but, I feel that I view the world a bit differently. One of the main things that has changed my worldview was Helmut Lemke, and I quote “No one wins a war”. That single phrase completley changed how I thought about war, because he was completley right, no one does win a war, every country involved lost something. WWII caused every country that fought in it to lose lives, either civilians or soldiers. That was the biggest thing that I took away from this unit.

Job Shadow, Eh

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Back at the beginning of our planning unit, our teacher told us that we were going to have to do a job shadow. We ended up getting the specifics of what we had to do not too much later, after that class I almost immediately decided on who I was going to job shadow. The person who I decided was my best candidate happened to be a family friend that I have known for many years, his name is Brian Webster. My parents didn’t know much about what he did, they just claimed he is a “mad scientist”. What Brian actually does is work in nuclear medicine industry, creating treatments for cancer.

The reason why I chose to shadow Brian is that I am very interested in chemistry currently, and I would like to do something similar to what Brian does or become a Chemical Engineer. Before I went to his warehouse I had no clue what nuclear medicine was, but I figured out that chemotherapy is actually a form of nuclear medicine. After I found out what he actually does for a living I was super intrigued.

On the day of my job shadow I went to work with Brian in the morning and we went to a warehouse, and I was expecting to see inside a large chemistry lab, but instead I saw two large machines that were constantly running. These machines are not machines that you can just buy on the internet, you have to find parts for them then put them together yourself. I was constantly checking out what was going in each part of his warehouse. He currently has two employees to help him take care of what is going on, as there a lot of things you need to do to get the job done. One of the main things you need to do is make sure the machines are working in tip-top shape, so if something breaks somebody has to find a way to solve that problem. The solve those problems by often having to design and manufacture custom parts.

Before Brian created his own company he worked for a company called Nordion, he was a full time chemistry production technician. He essentially worked with radioactive materials, wrote his own procedures, they then later formalized the procedures. Once he made his own company, he started mainly doing physics. What he does now is take certain elements and basically purify them to a certain percentage. The machines do most of the work but he has to do some by hand.

Brian spends most of his time at work at a computer console using spreadsheets to figure out the consistency of the machine, planning for the next shipment, emails, and tuning machines throughout the day.

The job shadow that I did that day, was an experience I will never forget as it was truly eye opening, and it showed me something that I didn’t even know existed until now. It amazed me how much chemistry and physics is used in all of our lives. I am very thankful that Brian gave me that opportunity to see what he does in his everyday life.