The Star Wars Project. Our task was to create an inquiry question based on the movie series in which the famous phrase: Luke I am your father! Was first said. AKA Star Wars. If you haven’t seen any Star Wars Movies, well a) you should go see one (at least] and b) basically, the movies are about a dark side and a light side fighting on weird creature infested planets and in space. It’s slightly more complicated than that 😅.
Moving on, in this post I will be covering two things: the Star Wars Project and the Exhibition, in which we showcased our project.
The Star Wars Project
Inquiry question: How can creatures from Hoth, such as TaunTauns, survive on Hoth, an arctic like planet?
Side note: the reason TaunTauns survival puzzled me was this: TaunTauns are classified as Lizards. Hoth is an arctic planet. Cold blooded animals and arctic like environments don’t exactly mix.
I took several more steps to attain gather further information about the subject and attain a conclusion.
Research
Pt.1 Searching the web. Before going deeper into my research, I had to get to know more about TaunTauns. And I did. I discovered that TaunTauns infact had fur, horns and blubber. And two nostrils, that’s simply an interesting fact and not relevant.
Pt.2 Contacting a reliable ressource. I contacted the Herpetology Hotline.
The Hotline was INCREDIBLY useful. The person who wrote back to me was a PhD Candidate at the Univeristy of California Riverside. She wrote to me about Endothermy (organisms that regulate their body temperature by generatinghttps their own heat i.e.: mammals and birds) and Ectothermy (organisms that rely on the heat of their environnement to regulate their body temperature). The responder from the Herpetolopy Hotline also proposed that it was a possibility that TaunTauns had convergently developed Endothermy. She mentioned the scene in Star Wars where Han Solo stuck Luke Skywalker in a TaunTaun to thaw, so to speak. Only a warm blooded animal could have worked to “un-thaw” Luke Skywlaker.
Conclusion
My conclusion was that TaunTauns could survive in the Star Wars universe. How? They appear to have developed Endothermy. In other words they have adapted to be able to survive on Hoth. BUT, and this is a big but, they probably couldn’t survive on our planet. Why? TaunTauns are Lizards, and if lizards were subject to normal physiological rules, such as they can’t be warm blooded, have horns, blubber, fur and still be a Lizard. They would freeze to death on our planet.
Author’s note: Since all of this is based on a fictional universe, my conclusion or hypothesis is not concrete and cannot be fully validated.
The Star Wars Exhibition
My display
For the Exhibition we had to set up a display for it. I chose to go the good old fashion way with a poster board. I was told to enhance it with further visual elements and displays. So I made wearable TaunTaun horns.
My project set up
Kiers, the first to put the TaunTaun horns on
Setting up the room
Our teachers decided that to add to our presentation and get into character we had to decorate, no, not decorate… transform our room. The class was divided into two, the light side and the dark side. I was a member of the light side. The group decided to transfer the room into a rebel base. And the outside of the base. Since I was part of the environmental/ biology/ science group I was on the outside of the base. The base we decided to re-create was the one on Hoth. To transform the room, we hung bedsheets to create the rebel base’s walls, sleep raging Hoth from the rest. We opened windows to make it cold and I had the idea to put blue paper over the lights in order to create an icy look. In total it took us 4 hours to decorate the room. And to get even further into character, I dressed up as a Wampa (big furry snow monster).
My Wampa feet, part of my costume
We used blue papers to cover the lights for an icy look.
My thoughts on this project
I absolutely loved this project. I mean it was pretty stressful but I loved the topic! I also believe that I benefited greatly from it as a learner. I also worked on my communication skills with people for information.
A big thanks to the Herpetology Hotline and the very helpful and kind person who responded to me.
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!
Overall the post is very well layered out and descriptive, and have plenty of information. A couple things to work on and fix is to make sure that there are photos throughout the post, separation each at paragraph, and not just at the end and only in the middle. Also, make sure that you don’t use the same word in one sentence, find some synonyms for the word and use those instead. I really like the reflection at the end, it adds a lot. I really think you are heading in the right direction.
Thanks! I found your comment very helpful and I will be doing my best to fix it. Feel free to add anymore feedback!