Month: March 2018

Yep, I’m back. And it’s DI! Don’t make me explain this again.

Did you read that link? Understand? Okay, cool. So, we got assigned the engineering challenge. We being Chadam, Claire, Mimi, Ryan, Michael, and myself. This was the video we got to describe our challenge:

This had a lot of deliverables. But most importantly, we had to think of a name. Originally we were French Vanilla (don’t ask), but we didn’t like that. So, we thought of a much more sophisticated and professional name:

(Above, our team outside of a restaurant called Tender Greens)

Then we had to think of a story. In years past, we’ve always gone with a funny story. I find it easier to write funny (as you know if you’ve ever read my blog) because I like making people laugh. So it was a step out of my comfort zone when we decided to do a serious story on the topic of social anxiety. Claire volunteered to be the main character, a girl with anxiety. Mimi got to play the teacher, Adam played a jock-esque character named Chad, Ryan played Claire’s brother, and Michael played a nerdy character named Garrett. Naturally, I got to be the antagonist. I was the physical embodiment of anxiety.

So we have Claire, Teacher, Chad, Garrett, Claire’s Brother, and me. An actual demon. It’s like the Friends cast, but a lot worse.

Anyways, our story talks about the life of a girl who has anxiety, the physical embodiment of anxiety following her around telling her everything that she’s doing wrong. Eventually, our Sudden Impact is that she has a panic attack in class.

Our structure that we had to drop weights onto wound up being a simple cylinder, with a lot of self-deprecating words on them. The point in the story where we dropped the weights, I would be shouting at Claire things such as “you suck”, “you’ll never go anywhere in life”, “Chad is judging you”, etc. It was a fun part to play.

For the Event Depictor, something that has to predict the sudden event, we had Michael make a podium with built in speakers, that would play disruptive noises as Claire has her panic attack.

Finally, we had to have two Team Choice Elements, that show off our team’s skills and interests. First of all, Claire is really good at making things aesthetically pleasing, and makeup. So Character Design was our first one. Chad had tattoos, Ryan got a beard, I got angsty raccoon eyes. Our second TCE (let me abbreviate things in peace, MOM) was our background, where we projected images to help support the story telling of where we were.

Next came practice. It was hard, at first, to get our whole team to get together. But it worked, and we banged out an amazing performance.

(Editor’s note: to “Bang Out” is not a phrase. It sounded right at the time)

Then came performance day. I was nervous, partially because I had a splitting headache and my head was screaming at me

But we went, and the day went really well! We got a few photos, and you can see what we looked like on the day:

(Chad discusses important things with Claire, such as French homework, as a Wild Anxiety judges them silently)

(Anxiety gets to scream mean things at Claire while others watch. Fun times)

(The teacher explains the homework. No one wants homework, so they’re all just pretending to listen)

I can confidently say that’s the best I’ve ever felt about DI. Our raw scores were very good, better than I’ve done in the past.

We wound up getting 3rd place out of 7, so that’s not bad!

Thats all for this post

Read you la-

We did math! It’s math class, after all. This unit was focussed on algebra. Algebra: When the alphabet gets incorporated into math to make it more confusing.

Also, are you enjoying the title? I’m proud of it.

(Whoops, that an old meme)

Anyways, back to algebra. We were given the task of created an algebra game using algebra tiles. For anyone who has ever used algebra tiles, you know that this was a pain. And the logistics of making a game is so hard, surprisingly.

Fair warning, before this begins, I have found a series of science gifs and memes to use. You have been warned

So, in case you can’t tell, we did a chemistry unit! This involves a lot of things that I didn’t know a lot about. I know the basics of the periodic table, and what an atom is, but not much else beyond that. Though, I really enjoyed this unit. Though I can’t name specifically what I liked, it was really fun to do.

We learned a lot during this unit, so let me break it down. For starters, we studied the periodic table, along with Bohr diagrams, Lewis structures, and how to do an experiment.

Bohr Diagram

A Bohr diagram is an easy way to show off what the atom of an element looks like. Since we did a lot of work, I’ll show you one of my drawings:

Lets use the Be (Berilluim) as an example. You see how there’s a tiny 4 beside it? That’s how many electrons are in the atom. The rings around the atom are called ‘valence shells’. The closest valence shell can only hold 2 electrons, and the next one after than can hold eight, and then the rest can also only hold eight. So, the Berilluim diagram shows two electrons on the innermost valence shell, and two more in the outer, because there are four electrons.

Lewis Structure

Onto Lewis diagrams. The diagram below shows Four hydrogens bonding with carbon

I feel like that’s fairly simple to understand. The hydrogen and the carbon are sharing electrons, so they’ve bonded.

Lab Procedure

This has a bit more to do with our project, that I’ll explain further down. So, you need to start off a lab with a driving question. Let me use an example we did in class: is there Hydrogen in our breath?

Next, you created a solid hypothesis: Yes, there is Hydrogen in our breath. Obviously there is, but we’re doing an experiment to prove that.

Then, you need your materials. The materials we used were a straw, a beaker, some water, and some bromothymol blue, which turns yellow if it detects acid. Acidic things are acidic due to hydrogen, so the Bromothymol Blue should turn yellow if there’s hydrogen in our breath.

Create a procedure that’s simple and productive. What we did for this was put some of the B.B. (I abbreviated it, so sue me) in water, and then blew air through the straw into the solution.

Then there was the conclusion. We concluded that there was, in fact, hydrogen in our breath because the solution turned yellow, as it does when mixed with hydrogen.

Very attractive.

The Project

To finish off the unit, we had to do a project. We had two choice: created an animated video to show how atoms bond, or create a lab procedure. My group (Hannah and Willa) chose the latter. Let me show you our lab procedure:

Hypothesis for Project:
We think that there will be different levels of acid in each substance.

Materials Needed:

– Bromothymol Blue
– Dirt
– Banana
– Coca Cola
– Pineapple
– Bath bomb
– Beaker
– Water

Theories of acid levels (highest to lowest)
– Pineapple
– Coke
– Bath bomb
– Banana
– Dirt

Actual Ph levels:
-Coke
-Pineapple
-Banana
-Dirt
-Bath Bomb

Cabbage Juice Explanation:

When the cabbage juice reacted with the base (bath bomb), OH particles attached onto the chemicals in the cabbage juice, which caused it to turn a green colour, indicating that it was a base.

When the cabbage juice reacted to any of the acids (pineapple, banana, coke), it gave hydrogen to the anthocyanin, which caused it to turn more and more red depending on how low the pH was.

The anthocyanin in the cabbage juice is what reacts with the H+ and the OH in different products, which in turn causes them to change colour depended on how high or low the pH in each product is. If the pH is below 7, it turns red or pink. If the pH is exactly 7, it will not react, because it’s neutral. If the pH is above 7, it will turn green or yellow.

This is the anthocyanin without having reacted with anything

This is the anthocyanin after having reacted with a base. As you can see, an OH particle has attached on, causing it to turn green.

This is the anthocyanin with acid. It have more hydrogens, causing it to turn pink.

Chemical formulas for acids:

Pineapple: Ethyl butyrate
C6H12O2

Cola: Coca Cola
C30H32N8O10

Banana: Isoamyl acetate
C7H14O2

Chemical formula for base:

Bath bomb: Sodium bicarbonate
NaHCO3

Chemical formula for neutral:

Dirt:
There’s nothing in it to make it acidic or basic

Indicator:

Red Cabbage: Anthocyanin
C15H11O+

Conclusion:

As you can see, all of the acids have some amount of Hydrogen in them. The cola has 32 hydrogens, which shows that it’s the most acidic, and the pineapple has the least, with 12. The sodium bicarbonate in the bath bomb made it basic. The dirt, having nothing in it to make it acidic or basic, was neutral.

Now, this is all fine and dandy, but what was the actual product? Well, I’m glad you asked. (Yes, I understand that I asked for you, but just go with it)

We created a video of our experiment, which turned out really cool:

So, to conclude this unit, we made two mind maps. One was at the start, about what we knew, and then another at the end, to compare what we learned:

Thats all for this post

Read Ya Later

Sincerely, Me

It’s your friendly neighbourhood blogger! Back with another unit end post, and some low quality puns. We did an entire unit on disruption, and how it’s changed the world, mainly through technology.

Let me give you a quick run down on (my thoughts on) disruption: It’s not good, or bad. Disruption is something that helps us move forward, but it can also make us move backwards. For example, the civil right movement with Martin Luther King Jr was big disruption that helped us move forward and talk about racial issues. A bad disruption, however, could be a hypothetical president who’s made out of bad vibes and Cheeto dust.

And what better way to talk about technological disruption than to go to Silicon Valley? Silicon Valley is where places like Facebook and Twitter started. For our trip, we went to San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco.

Want to read more about the trip?

I really benefitted from this trip, because I got to see the real world examples of disruption, like IMB and the Castro.

So, Claire and I were partnered up to take advantage of the field school and do a project on disruption. We got to do a video on the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and how the habitats are similar to the ones they get in the wild, as well as if the Safari Park would be safer than their actual habitats in the wild.

We got to interview a real nice working at the Safari Park, and heard some amazing stories of animals surviving. And then it came time to make the video.

So, naturally, we made a podcast.

Okay, hear me out. We took a lot of videos, got some good interviews, and even got footage of inside the elephant enclosure:

It was all around a cool experience and a fun day at the safari park. But we felt like our podcast skills were stronger. So, using our fancy new mics, we recorded our voices. We talked about the habitats, how similar they are to the wild, and told a few stories about species surviving better in places like the safari park. One of the stories that we touch on in the podcast is about the California condors. Those used to be an endangered species until the rescue program at the Safari Park came in. Now, they’re thriving. Though, they are quite intimidating.

So, Claire and I made a podcast. It was really fun, and I learned a lot about disruption through the eyes of wild animals and wildlife programs. I’d definitely do a project on this topic again in a heartbeat.

To finish of the unit, we got to write an essay! The driving question was ‘how has technology acted as a disruption throughout history?’ I chose to focus on socialization, and took the stance that it made us less isolated:

Click Write Here (I make bad puns about writing)

This essay was really cool to research, because it’s a topic that I’m interested in. I don’t know why, but I always find the idea of social media helping society really cool. It’s such a useful platform that people can use to contact people around the world. And, as you can see, I’d say it was a good disruption in society.

All in all, I really liked this unit. We got to learn about disruption in so many different ways, from technology, to society, to nature and animals. I’m going to continue looking into articles and books about disruption, such as Little Brother, or Console Wars (talks about the history of Nintendo and Sega. Awesome book).

That’s all for this post

Read Ya Later!

Sincerely, Me