The Ones About School

Wow, another post. It’s almost like we need to cram a bunch of projects in at the last minute

But I’m here and that’s what matters. This is another health and Career post, about… Me. Plot twist

This is about the things I carry. But this doesn’t mean only physical. Also mental. See, we’re getting all metaphorical here at Seycove.

We had to do a keynote presentation on the things we carry. We had to choose ten things and do a presentation on it. Easy, right? Actually, this time, yeah. I’ve attached a link below where you can see my wonderful slide show.

 

Yeah, I’m really proud of it and I hoped you enjoyed. Fun fact: I was supposed to do this presentation on a Friday but I was in hospital getting my appendix removed! Yay!

So read ya later

Ruby

Another blog post? What? This is another Health and Career Post, amazingly.

Its about careers. Now, the question anyone is high school fears is “what are you doing to do when you’re older?”. Seriously, if any adults are reading, that is a terrifying question. It makes us have an actual existential crisis

Yeah. But we had to do an entire project on it! Yay…

This project included making a timeline of our life, setting five goals for the future, and taking quizzes about what careers we should get.

Then we had to ask a video talking about what we should do in the future.

Lets start with the quiz results. We had to take three quizzes to see our recommended jobs we should have. My results:

Quiz 1:

Quiz 2:

Quiz 3:

So everything thinks I should go into either some desk job or work with technology. Or be a dentist.

So naturally, for the video, I chose to be an actor.

In my defence, I like acting and I think it could work out.

But more on that later. Let’s look at my lifeline:

Lets break it down. The One colour pastel images are my past. The rainbow ones are my goals for the future.

Then there’s the video. The video is going into more detail about those goals. I knew doing a normal video was boring, so I switched it up a bit. It’s been taken in pictures, like you’d see in a story book, and I’ve voiced over it and edited the pictures. Hope you enjoy

So that’s all for this blog post.

Read ya later

Ruby

So if you remember a while ago, we did this weird and wonderful thing called a math monster (dun dun duuuun). Well, we continued on that project. And it was a lot.

We had to write a story, make a video, and create this thing called a frankenstuffy. A frankenstuffy is a mess of a bunch of different stuffed animals combined into one hell demon… I mean adorable stuffed animal.

For this to actually make sense instead of me word vomiting all over this post, I’m going to break this down into categories. There was the science, the book reading, the story, the geography, creation, and the video. In short, or not so much, it was a big project.

THE SCIENCE

We studied ecology. That meant everything from learning where each animal lived to fancy words like biotic and abiotic. I honestly don’t want to go into all of this, so if you want to actually learn something, then click this fabulous link.

THE GEOGRAPHY

We studied geography as well. Part of this project was researching different parts of Canada, to see where our frankenstuffy would go. I chose North East of the Interior Plains. For reference:

The Book Reading

Another part of this unit was making an epistolary story [pronounced eh-pist-oh-lair-ee]. Pretty much, it’s a style of writing done in either diary entries or letters or logs. So we got the read a story in this style. And what better story than the Martian?

This of course inspired me to make an edit with Martin Freeman

Anyways, we read the book. Which is actually quite good, it’s science-y and funny at the same time. We read it, and did a bit of research. And I did a lot of research either debunking or proving the science. If you want to get into that, I’ve left the paragraphs I wrote below

On the poop science:

Growing potatoes on mars is possible. It all boils down to three key factors, which would be surviving on just potatoes, growing them, and the soil. Surfing on them is easy. Potatoes have everything a human needs to survive, besides a few vitamins and calcium. But with the rations and the vitamin supplements, Mark should be fine. The gravity is 1/3 of what it is on earth, so he isn’t using as much energy and burning as many calories as he would be normally. For growing them, the potatoes would grow slower, as mars is 1.5 times further away from the sun than earth, and gets 60% of the light. There are nutritional deficiencies in mars soil, though the poop makes up for it. Raw poop can’t be used as fertilizer, but the poop in the Martian has been freeze vacuumed and exposed to the mars atmosphere. That kills the pathogens in the poop, making it available for fertilizer. The soil is the last thing. 0.6% of Martian soil is made up of perchlorates, which are salts capable of disrupting the body’s metabolic system. They interfere with abilities to absorb iodine, messes with production of thyroid hormones, which throws mood, temperature, appetite, sleep, and more. Long term exposure to perchlorates result in a higher risk of thyroid cancer. The typical human consumes 100mg of dirt a day. Mark would be consuming 1mg, from the perchlorates in the dirt as well as what he’s getting from the potatoes. If he’s there for 500 days, he’s eating 500mg of perchlorates. But he’d still be fine, according to research. It would take much more and much longer to start to affect him. That’s why poop science in Martian isn’t crap.

On the logic of the storm that gets him stranded on mars:

So it turns out Martian wind storms can, at top speed, reach 60 miles per hour. In the book, they’re hit with 175 km/h storm, which translates to 108.74 miles per hour. This doesn’t make any sense in the book. So technically the entire book is wrong and shouldn’t have happened. Seriously, the poop science makes sense and this doesn’t.

On being able to survive 17 months on only human bodies:

So Johanssen implies that if they don’t get the probe, she was the chosen survivor, and could survive off of rations and her dead crew mates. There are a few flaws to this. Such as scurvy. The human body can survive 90 days without vitamin C before you catch scurvy. Flesh would have vitamin C, but maybe not enough. She could catch scurvy, which takes 6 weeks to die from. If she doesn’t die from the other diseases the raw bodies could give her. Cooking them wouldn’t be wise, as that takes out vitamins and nutrients. But she can’t cook them anyways. But if she miraculously survived the diseases, would five bodies be enough, plus nine months of rations? Well, if the average human weighs 50 kilograms and eats roughly a couple thousand calories per day, one human body can sustain another human for one month. Seeing that Johanssen mentions she is smaller, and if she rations it, we can stretch that to a month and a half. So that’s one body per every one and a half months. That gives her 7.5 months worth of food. Plus the nine months of rations, that gives her sixteen and a half months. But she needs 17 months. She’ll be fine for water, as the bodies will supply that along with the water tank. It takes maybe 20-40 days to die from starvation. She would start to starve before she made it back to earth, but she could maybe survive, if she doesn’t die of disease or start to starve

Yeah, it gets deep. But we got to learn how to write an epistolary story is the point, I just got off track.

The Story:

We also had to write stories on our frankenstuffies. Eight chapters, and it had to include a beginning, a shift in the environment, our frankenstuffy evolving, and either the frankenstuffy stopping the change or running away. The main question was ‘Who’s in control, people or the environment?’. We also made a math monster earlier in the year, and we had to include that. If you’d like to read it, I’m going to link to a separate blog post with all of those chapters here.

The Creation:

Aside from everything else, we had to actually make our frankenstuffy. Mine was supposed to be a lynx with wings. But there was one issue

Finding a lynx stuffed animal is actually impossible. Seriously, they don’t sell them. So I went for the next best thing. A cat. Okay, in my defence, it’s the closest thing I had

Thats pictures of the creation of my stuffy (feat Claire).

The Movie:

Finally, we had to make a movie. After all of that, I was like “sure, it’ll be easy” So what did genius me decide to do?

I of course made a stop motion. Not that I regret it, but

Okay I regret it. It looks really great and I’m proud of it, but it took SO LONG. Seriously, three scenes took the whole day. Every single photo. Frame. By. Frame. But it turned out well! Here it is:

And that’s all for this blog post!

Read ya later

Ruby

It is I, back for another wonderful post.

If you remember this post from a while ago, I mentioned a project that was to be announced. Well…. here it is.

We got to study fantasy, and hands down it’s one of the best projects I’ve done. We got to study the art of making people believe that fantasy is real, and making people have an immersive experience while bejng in these fantasy worlds. We at first studied Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was awesome. And then we went to Florida, and went to Disney World to study the rides.

The actual project: studying one of the rides at Disney world and doing research on what draws people to that ride and why it’s such an immersive experience. And then we had to make a small video on it.

This was really enjoyable, as I love studying these kinds of things. It’s about visual arts and psychology and I’m a giant nerd so of course I’m excited.

I got to study the Jungle Cruise ride, which is a ride that takes you through the experience of being on a jungle cruise with a bunch of bad jokes and animals. Right up my alley.

We got back from Florida, and so the editing of the videos began. The draft of my video can been seen right here. So watch that.

I got some critique, and eventually came up with the final draft. *cue the music to the Final Countdown with terrible kazoo*

Im really proud of this video, and it shows how far I’ve come from the beginning of the year. I hope to do more work of this quality, and I really strive to do that next year.

So, that’s all for-

“Hold on, Ruby” you may be thinking. “Why is this post titled The One With Bohemian Rhapsody”. Well, let me explain.

This who project is about making fantasy real. And what’s the first line of Bohemian Rhapsody?

Right. There you have it.

Well, that’s all for this blog post

Read ya later

Ruby

So I’m back for another post. This one is probably about my favourite thing in the world, besides Musicals and Cinema.

Food!

Yeah, I’m very excited. Lettuce Celebrate! (I’m so sorry). This is part of our Health and Career Unit, and we’ve done a quick section on Healthy Eating. To start, we watched four videos, which I will link to in a second. They were all really interesting, though I had to say the first one was my favourite.

This one I found interesting because it wasn’t only about food. He changed pretty much his whole lifestyle, and I found that interesting. It’s also cool to see him talk about the perfect healthy life, with earbuds and helmet on constantly. I can’t imagine living like that, but apparentally it’s healthy. For reference, no. I won’t be sporting a helmet to school, I’ll stick to my beanies thanks

This one is about eating bugs. And before I get started, I just want to say that the grainy video quality really BUGGED me. Haha, I make bad jokes. Anyways, it was talking about eating bugs. And how we already eat up to 500mg of bugs per year. That’s two cups of bugs down the hatch. It’s just such a crazy idea. But the fact that they’re so high in protein and calories is also interesting. I also will not be having chocolate covered crickets for lunch, don’t worry mom.

This one is about food and climate change. This just amazes me at a) this guy’s hatred for cows. Come on, cows are great, despite what he’s says in the video. And also how much farmland affects things.

Last one is about obesity and hunger. It’s really interesting to see the facts, about one billion people being obese and one billion being hungry. It’s just so shocking to hear see facts that we’re usually so sheltered from, because ‘it’s not our problem’.

Then came the second part. We had to make ourselves a portrait. Easy, right?

We had to make ourselves a portrait out of food. That’s right, we’re going full Guiseppe Arcimbolo up in here. We had to take what we eat most and put it onto a photo of ourselves. Warning: disturbing content ahead.

Let’s list off the things on my face here (never a sentence I thought I’d say):

– Banana

– Chips

– Pancakes

– Popcorn

– Cereal

– Grapes

– Corn

– Pop

– Pasta

– French fries

– Raspberries

– Tim Horton’s Creamy Chocolate Chill

– Lettuce

This took so long, as each article of food was individually placed. This means every single pop corn kernel there. It took a while.

But not all of these options are healthy, very few are. I have a goal to start eating healthier, even if that’s adding more lettuce into that salad I’m making, or eating the vegetables in the pasta bake mom made last week.

So that’s all for my healthy living post. I hope you all are healthy, and if not, don’t stress out too much trying to be the best you can be. Set small goals.

Well, I’m gonna beet it. (Oh god these are getting worse)

Read ya later

Ruby

It is I, only the best of blog post writers. Side note: I’m writing this on May 4th. So may the fourth be with you!

Anyways, this is another science post! We did a lab about….. strawberries. Yeah, but it was really cool! We wound up extracting DNA from them.

Little refresher, DNA is the stuff that’s stored inside the nucleus of a cell. It makes you who you are, or in this case, the strawberry who it is.

We started off with 5ml of soap, 30ml of water, 2.5ml of salt, and half a strawberry. We crushed that all up in a bag, then put it in a beaker:

It looks kinda weird, but it’s pretty. Then we added in some alcohol (not to drink) and let it sit for five minutes. It wound up separating the DNA, as when we crushed up the strawberry, it destroyed the cell wall, making the DNA easier to pick out of. It rose to the top, and looked like this:

Side note: sorry these are sideways. I don’t know why, I’ll try to fix it.

We then put it underneath a microscope and looked at it. It looked weird and bubbly.

Well that’s all for this blog post, hope you enjoyed!

Read ya later

Ruby

We did it again! *cue Brittney Spears*

So Destination Imgination happened again. Pretty much, the computers at the Regional Tournament broke, and they sent everyone to the Provincial Tournament. Good job 👍🏽

This meant we got time to improve our project from last time. For starters, we actually had our lines memorized. That was helpful, as last time we had a few group memebers looking at their iPads.

We didn’t awkwardly improvise! Last time we had a solid minute of us standing around and stuttering for words while Tyler encrypted the code. We improved, and added in a few more lines. We still wound up improvising, but there was less and Quinn made a joke about going on wiki-how to survive an apocalypse.

And the gadget. We improved that so much, it was wonderful. Last time, as you should remember, we had a chewbacca mug. Not the best, I’ll admit. But this time we used circuits to make a band. It ‘electrocuted’ me (no Rubys were harmed in the making of this performance).  We don’t have a video of it working, but it lit up when Tyler pressed a remote. It was really cool.

One thing we didn’t wind up improving was the animations. As we forgot to turn them on. I feel so stupid! It’s literally one of our team Choice Elements, and we didn’t turn it on!

Last time, we came in first against St George’s school. This time… well we came in first, but it should have been second.

We lost by one point.

Luckily, the magical people of DI decided to make us tie, so we got trophies and medals.

If I could change something for next year, I think I would switch challenges. I’m not that fond of science, so if I had the choice I would have preferred to do the Fine Arts or Improv, as those are more up my alley with acting.

Well, that’s all for this post

Read ya later

Ruby

You’re probably wondering what’s with this? Why have I suddenly decided to channel my roots and scream ‘EH’ from the top of my igloo, riding my moose, with Tom Hortons, while wearing hockey gear and apologizing for shouting?

I’m not doing that. Though I may, its on my bucket list. Anyways, we had to do a mini video project on ‘What Canada Means To Me’. It started with our teachers proposing the idea to us. Some people from an organization called Here’s My Canada were coming to to help us make videos about what Canada means to us.

I could go into a long thirty page essay about what Canada means to me…. but I’m going to instead give you a thirty second video

IMG_4056-ptwp63

Watch that? Good. If not, I don’t know why you’re reading on.

 

So that was what Canada means to me! Community is really important so that you can gain friends and have people to help and that can help you, like in the video. It’s also helpful if you’re in a zombie apocalypse, you can have people who won’t betray you. I’m looking at you, Walking Dead.

The video was pretty simple to make. It started off with getting the idea. I decided on the story because it gives a more personal connection, taking about my neighbourhood, which is like a second family. The dads shovelling the driveway, it’s always a happy memory for me.

The rest was simple. Record the audio, film a few things, like drawing the Canadian flag and filming the forest, and then we just had to put it together using iMovie.

Anyways, that’s all for this post!

Read You Later

Ruby

Have I used that gif before? I hope not, otherwise this is awkward. Anyways, another post! I know there’s been a lot recently, but bear with me.

I’m so sorry.

This post, however, isn’t about bears. (Small gasp). It’s about… math! I know, a post about bears might have been better, but math will have to do. So, we’ve been doing geometry.

Geometry, more like geome-try-to-understand-what’s-happening. Just kidding, it’s quite easy. Just plugging numbers into formulas and measuring stuff.

So, why is geometry worthy of a blog post? Well, mainly because Pye made us right one…. I mean it’s an exciting project! We got to… make our own monsters!

Out of shapes….

It sounded better in my head, okay? But it was quite fun. We got a formula sheet with all of the formulas for calculating volume and surface area, as well as a basic idea of what our monsters should look like. Torso, head, legs, arms, blah blah blah. Then we had to add three extra things.

I decided to add on horns, wings, and a tail. I pretty much made the devil, yeah. Or a weird dragon boy. Anyways, we had to build them. And he turned out devilishly good

I’ll stop with the puns now. Maybe.

So, we made our monsters. And then came the scary part. The math

We had to calculate the volume and the surface area of each part. Warning: if you have Numerophobia or Arithmophobia, this isn’t for you. Here it is:

VOLUMES:
Horns: 2.0104cm3
Head: 13.5648cm3
Neck: 0.157cm3
Arms: 1.86cm3
Torso: 7.085cm3
Legs: 0.866cm3
Tail: 0.282cm3
Wings: 14.5cm3

SURFACE AREA:
Horns: 2.7632cm2
Head: 35.4192cm2
Neck: 2.198cm2
Arms: 7.052cm2
Torso: 23.55cm2
Legs: 5.024cm2
Tail: 3.108cm2
Wings: 128.5cm2

That was a lot of numbers. Not fun. Anyways, we did that. This is supposed to be for another project in the near future, but I shan’t say anything yet.

“Shan’t”? What am I, Shakespeare?

Anyways, that’s all for this post

Read ya later

Ruby

Sorry for the long title, it happens. I kind of fell down the rabbit hole with it…. Okay I’ll stop.

So, if you can’t tell by the numerous rabbit hole references I’ve made, this post is about Alice in Wonderland! So, we read Lewis Carrol’s masterpiece in class over the past few months, and I really enjoyed it. But it didn’t stop there, no. We got to write an essay!

So, here’s the thing. I don’t write essays very often. May come as a shock that I don’t decide to sit down and write an essay in my spare time, but I never really wrote them in elementary school. I wrote one, about how pie is better than cake. Yes, I think that. Fight me. No, don’t fight me, that’s a bad idea.

Anyways, back on track. We got the options of two topics for our essay. Either “what Draws us To Imaginary Worlds?” Or “How Does Lewis Carrol Create An Imaginary World in Alice and Wonderland?”. We got one class to plan, and then the next class we had to bring our plan, which included our three paragraph sentences as well as some quotes. And then we had to write the test….. in 45 minutes.

It was surprisingly a long amount of time, I managed to finish ten minutes early. But enough about that, here’s my essay:

Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Alice In Wonderland. These are all very well known titles, and very popular stories. The authors all draw us into the fantasy genre, in a way that’s very unique. A way that no other genre really can. We all love the classic stories, and there’s a very good reason for that. Authors draw us into imaginary worlds by letting us escape from reality, with the appeal of being the hero, and the way that the stories mirror reality and real life issues.

Real life is hard, we all know this. With bills, homework, politics. Fantasy gives us a way to escape from the stresses of reality. We all like the idea of falling down the rabbit hole. As said in Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, “Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end!” (Carrol, 9). It’s a very fun idea to entertain the impossible, to be able to escape into this imaginary world that immerses us. These fantastical worlds let us entertain the idea of a simpler life, with spells that can fix any problem and heroes to save the day. As well as having a distinct contrast between what is wrong and what is right. The fantasy genre lets us escape from the stresses and issues of reality into a simpler life, in a way that other genres cannot.

There is also the appeal of being the hero, the one to save the day. People can all relate to the protagonist of a story, the underdog who rises up. Everyone has been the underdog at some point in their life, whether it was at school or later on in life. Not everyone is liked all the time, much like most protagonists of stories, and we can relate to and become the hero. Everyone always wants their own adventure, to break away from reality. Being with “the voyages of the starship Enterprise” (Roddenberry) is so appealing. We are attracted to imaginary worlds because we get our own adventure to Mordor, or to fall down the rabbit hole. It’s very attractive, the idea of being the strong and courageous hero, because sometimes we don’t have that courage ourselves.

Fantasy and imaginary worlds are very attractive in another way, because it mirrors and helps us understand reality. The origins of the fantasy genre were people making up tales to cope with not being able to understand. Seamen were seeing mermaids instead of fish, and the creaks of the house at night were large monsters. It was all a way to cope with not being able to understand what they’d really seen. As well, the issues do tend to mirror the reality of life. The Queen of Hearts in Alice was a mirror to the government from long ago, in France, possibly. “Off with their heads!” (Carrol). It’s a way to help us understand the impossible and mirror reality in a way that is easier to comprehend.

We are all drawn to imaginary worlds, in one way or another. Whether it be wanting to be the hero and to have an adventure, to escape from the hardship of reality and entertain an easier way. Or to understand the unknown and make up our own small stories. Fantasy is a truly fascinating way of drawing readers in, and letting us be someone else or somewhere else. Whether we’re chasing a white rabbit or flying in the Millennium Falcon. It’s a genre that draws everyone in, and is a great way to escape for a little while. Fantasy draws us in, and it never leaves us to be disappointed.

So that was my essay! I hope you enjoyed reading it, I worked hard on it! This really helped me expand my literary skills, and learning how to intergrate quotes into my writing.

Read ya later,

Ruby