Hey everyone and welcome back to another blog post.
This post is all about the 2018 winter exhibition. There’s just one catch: I wasn’t there for it.
In the end, it all worked out fine for me and my group. In this blog post I’ll be explaining to you the steps I took with my group for the exhibition before I left, then I’ll talk about where I went and what I did. Let’s do it!
Our exhibition really started to move forward in science class with Mr. Gross. We had just started a new unit involving atoms. We then learnt that atoms would be a big part of the exhibition, so learning this stuff was crucial.
One of the first things we did was use a interactive website that helped us understand atoms and elements a bit more. It was here that we learned about how electrons, protons and neutrons. I learned that protons, neutrons and electrons make up elements. Each element varies on the different number of protons, neutrons and electrons. I didn’t know this before. This was a very helpful way to differentiate elements.
In the photo above, I created the element lithium.
After finding out how to make and identify elements, we started learning about how each elements has a valence shell. The valence shell is a ring of electrons around the elements. There is often lots of electrons in an element. In any case, lots of elements have incomplete valence shells. Since the goal for atoms is to complete their valence shell, they want to bond with other elements. If they can bond, they form a bond between the two of them. Here’s an example: if one element was 2 electrons short of a full valence shell, he would look to gain 2 electrons from another element. The element that he would bond with would have to be a +2 element because it’s looking to give away two electrons. If they meet, the +2 element would give the two electrons away so they now both have a full valence shell.
Mr. Gross has us try and understand this concept a bit better by making brief animations using Keynote. We learned that our first task for the exhibition build up was to create a video using Keynote. It had to have a bond during it and the animation had to tell a story.
There are two different types of bonds, an ionic bond and a covalent bond. Am ionic bond is a bond between a non-metal element and a metal element. A covalent bond forms a bond between two non-metals. They are still bonding, it’s just a different definition for the two.
So anyway, we started to work on our video. The video had to be relatively long (5 minutes I think) and it had to be an animation. I was paired off with my acquaintance, Aedan. It turns out that it was around here that we found out the project had extremely small time constraints. This was because we started so late. This meant Aedan and I had to come up with a story and then turn it into a 7 minute animation all in the span of Monday to Friday. We started out by planning our story and video. The plot was pretty simple. A guy named calcium lives a pretty boring life. He lives alone and has always wanted a girlfriend, but has never had much luck. He discovered a dating app named Bond. At first, he downloads it and then goes out with a girl named barium. This goes horribly because calcium and radium don’t bond. They are both +2 elements. Calcium then gets really sad. He finds out a few months later that “Bond V2” has dropped. He decides to give dating another try and this time, he’s lucky in love. He matches with a sulphur and they live happily ever after.
We planned this out by writing and editing a screenplay. Here’s what that looked like.
It was good to have planned out the story before we actually animated it.
Then, it was a bit of a grind. Aedan and I both had conflicts and weren’t able to work on the story that much. We struggled to complete it, but in the end I thought that our animation turned out alright for the time period we had to work on it. (Aedan or I will upload this to YouTube at some point and I’ll put it here for you guys to see shortly)
After we had watched everyone’s video, they put us into bigger groups. In these groups, we were supposed to collaborate ideas from our story. In my group there was Aedan, Izzy, Amelia and Anika. We were just starting to form a story and then it happened. I left for the coolest place I’ve ever been to.
Thailand 2018 was a great time, that’s all I can say.
Our trip started out very early in the morning on December 7th. We took a 1am flight from Vancouver to Taipei. Looking back, this was the worst part of our trip due to the fact that it took 12 hours and my littlest sister got violently motion sick. Fun times. After landing in Taipei, we took off for Bangkok shortly after. It took 18 hours of traveling, but it was great to be there. The jet lag was crazy, so after a bit of exploring near our hotel, we all fell asleep at about 6pm local time.
Since we only had two days in Bangkok, the second day was a lot more eventful. In the morning, we went to a market which was very noisy and busy. After that, we went to the Royal Palace and looked at the Buddhist temples. It was crazy to think how much effort went into building them all.
After our two days in Bangkok, we traveled down south into the gulf of Thailand onto a small tropical island. It was called Ko Pha-ngan (pronounced Ko-pang-yang). We were there for 10 days and the island was awesome. We had a sweet AirBnB with a pool and an ocean view. From our house, it was just a short walk down to the beach and surrounding village and restaurant.
After a few days, we fell into a routine. We’d wake up and go to the beach around 10 or 11. Then we’d play in the sand and surf and when we got hungry we get lunch at this little kiosk that served fruit shakes and Thai food. Then, we’d hike back up the hill to our house and chill there for a bit. After a few hours, we’d walk back to the village for dinner. After dinner, we all had a quick jump in the pool and then it was bedtime. I really liked the pace of island life.
After 7 days, we went to the other side of the island. The only notable part from this house is that I ate a club sandwich and promptly got food poisoning, which sapped my strength and basically knocked me out for 3 days. After that, it was time to move to our next destination. We took a ferry, then a van and then and plane to get to the northern part of Thailand, Chiang Mai.
Our first day in Chiang Mai happened to be the day of the exhibition. Since our hotel wifi sucked, I wasn’t able to contact my group.
The same day, we embarked on a 3 day jungle trek through the jungle of Chiang Mai. We stayed in native villages and saw some incredible views.
It was a really cool experience to go on the trek. Along the way we river rafted on a bamboo boat and also met some elephants.
After the trek was done, we had 5 days in Chiang Mai before returning home. My parents wanted to make it an extremely eventful 5 days. Off we went!
The night we got back, we went to the famous Chiang Mai night market. They blocked off a few blocks and every single inch was crammed full of stands. My favourite block was the block full of food stands. Every stand there was something more delicious.
Another thing that we did was ziplining. Our parents wanted to take us ziplining on Christmas Day. It was really fun. One thing that stood out to me was the lack of a safety demonstration. All we did was put on a harness and helmet and off we went. The zip line was incredibly scenic. We were able to enjoy some crazy views of the forest as we zipped by at fast speeds.
Another awesome thing we did was explore some caves. We rented a car and drove about an hour off north. We used a guide and explored these incredibly cool caves. The nerve racking part is that all we had is a lantern and flashlight. It was pitch black without them. It was neat because we had to squeeze through these tiny gaps in the rock to go where we needed to go.
A vacation/adventure wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t go golfing at least once, so after multiple pleads to my parents, my dad took me to a driving range. I rented a singular club and hit a bucket of balls. It was a ton of fun.
A couple days later, we had to go home. In what was a long day of traveling, we made it home at 6pm Vancouver time on December 28th. As sad as I was to leave, I was also happy to be back.
Well, there you have it. That’s what I was doing while my peers were pulling off what sounded like a great exhibition. I hope you enjoyed this post and as always, I’ll see you next time.
Nik.
