Monthly Archives: May 2019

How to clone a dandelion (Cloning and cell life)

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How to clone a dandelion (Cloning and cell life)

Hello again, you are now reading another science post.

We just finished a project about mitosis and asexual reproduction. So I got to clone plants with my partner Jason Guan. We initially started off with some dandelions and then we did some garlic.

Mindmap:

Well of course there’s the mindmap, that’s always there.

Project:

We started off the project with a bit of planning.

Then we went and picked out some dandelions. Jason and I made sure to grab the biggest and healthiest ones we could find but it didn’t end up being much use because none of our 12 dandelions broke the surface and we only had like 2-3 or three that started growing.

However to get there we went through several steps. Obviously first went to pick the dandelions, but the most important thing was to grab as much of the root as we could. We then cut the roots into about 1inch pieces and put them into cups with dirt. We then watered them every day in hope that they would grow but not enough time.

We then tried to clone some garlic which turned way better, although I was away for a few classes in that time. When I came back we had some garlic pods. And some pretty good ones at that.

After we grew them, we prepared some wetmount slides to look at our garlic through a microscope and actually see the mitosis happening.

We also made a keynote on all the steps to making fro preparing the slide. Below is two of the phases of mitosis we found through the microscope.

Curricular Competencies:

Planning and conducting:

Collaboratively and individually plan, select, and use appropriate investigation methods including field work and lab experiments to collect reliable data (qualitative and quantitative). We decided to clone some garlic which turned out to be a very healthy specimen. We did almost the exact same procedure we had with the dandelions but they grew a lot better.

Evaluating:

Connect scientific explorations to careers in science. Throughout the unit we thought like scientists by making a hypothesis gathering materials, designing procedures to test our hypothesis and drawings a conclusion from what we had done.

Communicating:

Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon. We made a document that showed all the stages of mitosis in our garlic and compared them to some drawing of the stages of mitosis and pointing out the similarities.

Questioning and predicting:

Make observations aimed at identifying their own questions, including increasingly complex ones, about the natural world. Our initial little project toi clone dandelions wasn’t as successful as our garlic. Although we did get one that was starting to re grow.

Well that’s the end of this post. See you soon.

Why matter cycles matter?

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Why matter cycles matter?

Hello. This is another science post about matter cycles.

So the hydrological (water) cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the phosphorus cycle which are all crucial to life on Earth as we know it.

My partner Kyle and I chose the water cycle. Our driving question for our presentation was how can we help fix pollution in waters?

We decided to do a bit of research on biodegradable plastics because these could stop us from throwing out so much plastic into our waters and instead just let them decompose quickly.

Below is our presentation.

Below is my staple mindmap for every Scimatics unit.

Curricular Competencies 

1. Make observations aimed at identifying their own questions including increasingly complex ones, about the natural world. We showed this by identifying a problem in our world’s waters however it isn’t exactly tied to the water cycle.

2. Contribute to finding solutions to problems at a local and/or global level though inquiry. We showed this through our research and idea of starting to use more biodegradable plastic instead of having millions of tonnes of waste lying around for generations.

3. Communicate scientific ideas, claims, information, and perhaps a suggested course of action, for a specific purpose and audience, constructing evidence-based arguments and using appropriate scientific language, conventions, and representations. We showed this by laying down several facts and numbers about the pollution in our waters and how we could try and help.

Well that’s it. New releases in a few days.

Les Voyageurs (Heritage Minutes)

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Les Voyageurs (Heritage Minutes)

Back at it again. This time it’s Humanities. I was a Voyageur (which if you don’t know what that is, I can explain later).

My group members were Emerson, Taylor and Kiera. We were assigned the Fur Trade as a topic. But that’s very broad so we narrowed it down to the Voyageurs.

We researched what they did, what they wore, and how they traveled. The Voyageurs were mostly French Canadians who worked as contractors for the Fur companies. They rode canoes up and down rivers across Canada to deliver goods, and receive furs. They tended to be short to have the most space on the canoes. To keep morale up while on their canoes, they sang.

Our initial filming was pretty rushed and way ahead of everybody’s because Kiera was leaving and all of us had busy schedules. However we got the most important footage down. We later had to refilm the talking seems because the French wasn’t good, we had a little profanity, and some of the shots we just thought about better angles.

 

Here’s our video.

https://youtu.be/xuPCvpELGAc

I mostly realized from this project that it is not easy to try and film something and make it look like it’s form another time, partly because you can’t find props from the era. If I were to change something with the video is more preparation for certain shots because we already knew we didn’t have too much time to film.

 

We finished off by sending the videos from our class to Historica Canada, the company who makes the actual heritage minutes.

We emailed Historical Canada to get some feed back from them. We got responses from Ryan Barnett and Joanne Archibald. Joanne is the Heritage Minutes coordinator.

Well that’s it. See you soon.

Workplace safety

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Did you know that 34 young workers are injured every day in B.C.? Did you know that young workers are more at risk than any other workers? Probably not. And that’s why we are taking the career education class. To help us out when we do get a job or if we already have one.

We started off by watching a very old video that turned out to be very gory however educational.

We would also take notes like the ones below to have for later.

These classes have come at a perfect time because a bunch of people in the class started getting spring and summer jobs. Some of us are still looking for one including me most of us realized we didn’t have much money. Also our parents are making us pay for things more and more. Which is good but no comfortable.

 

One of the biggest things we learned is the requirements of the employer. Orientation, training and supervision. If your employer hasn’t given you this they are breaking the law.

There are many pages with laws an regulations about workplace safety which are made by WorkSafe BC. An entity from the provincial government that has makes he regulations and enforces them.

We also learned that if you feel that a part of your job is unsafe you have the right to refuse it however you have to immediately report it to your boss so they can investigate. They in turn have to immediately investigate what you said was unsafe. If they find something, they can give you extra training or make a deal on what do to do. If they don’t find anything that imposes a risk, you have to go back to work. If you still find it unsafe, the employer has to report it and bring in somebody from WorkSafe and a worker member of Union you belong to.

My artifact:

I made a short video about workplace safety and how you have to have the proper training before working with my friend Nik.

https://youtu.be/sfMoJ0tZzt4

The point of the video or just an artifact was to show what we’ve been learning in the last few classes.

And it was very fun to film. It is now like the 3rd or 4th video I’ve made with Nik and it’s always a great time. As you can probably tell however we were on a time limit and you could say no budget but we made it work.

This unit has been very useful and helpful. To top it off we take a 25 question quiz about it and if you pass with 75% or more, you get a certificate for life.

Well that’s it. See you soon with another post.