Category: Unit Reflections

The Manhattan Project Project

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In humanities lately we have been learning about the end of WWII, more specifically the Manhattan Project. We started off with learning about the first Nuclear Bomb being dropped in Japan. It was a huge deal as it had never been seen or heard of before. What the Americans did revolutionized war, and how it would be fought. We actually did a small project on how the news would tell the world.

After that, we started to delve deeper into the Manhattan Project and what it was all about. We first learned the basics which was about how the Manhattan Project started out as the idea that would end the war if they did it before the Germans. One of the first things the Americans did was secretly buy areas of land that were isolated and in the middle of nowhere, as they needed this to be a secret. They even told people that they had 30 days before they had to be out of their house, of course they gave them money for their house but many would say it was way below market value.

We then started talking about what they were doing with these areas. The main thing was uranium and plutonium production for the nuclear bomb, and one of them was built for a test site. We discussed how they got the plutonium and uranium as it is not something you can buy from you closest  supermarket.  They essentially just had to mine it but it was really hard to find, and they got Canada involved in it as Canada had a lot of useful uranium that they could use.

Lastly before we started working on the end project we learned about the science behind the Atomic Bomb, we learned about you could do it through Fission and Fusion. Essentially one way was to split an atom  and the other was to force two atoms together. The end goal of both processes is to create a chain reaction, which is what happens when a nuclear bomb is detonated.

After we had learned the basics of everything we then were told we were going to have to do a large project on the Manhattan Project. We had to essentially make a video that included 5 facts about the manhattan project, relating to Hanford which is where the first Nuclear Reactor was built and where we were going on a field study. We were put into groups of three and told that the first thing we had to do was think of a topic to base the video off of. We thought that we should base it around every day life at Hanford. That was specific enough to the point where we could go into enough detail that after the video the people who watched it would actaully learn something but at the same time it wasn’t too specific that we didn’t cover very many topics.

At first we essentially made a script and planned out what we were going to do while we were in Hanford and what we thought was the most important things to cover while we were down there.

 

Chemistry, Eh

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This past unit in science, we have been learning about chemistry. We got to learn about many things, ranging from balancing equations to covalent bonds. I was really interested to learn about chemistry this unit as the job that I would like to do is Chemical Engineering. Obviously you can tell by the name of the job title that it involves chemistry. Anyways that motivated to me to try and learn about chemistry for this unit.

Before this unit I did not know much about chemistry, as I had not been taught much about it until now. I said earlier that we learned about covalent bonds and balancing equations and a lot of other things in between, well at the end of the unit we had to show what we knew about chemistry. This is my mind map.

During the chemistry unit we did a lot of worksheets but, we also had to focus on a project that would be due at the end of the unit. For the project I got paired up with one of my friends Aiden, and we had the task of having to create a video with characters in it creating a chemical reaction. The characters in the video had to be elements like Oxygen, Lithium, etc. The way we started was by picking a chemical reaction then figuring out what the chemical equation was and then making a story about it. However, we also had the option to do a chemical reaction which I regret not doing as I think I would have enjoyed it more. One of my other friends Ryan did the reaction click on eh to see his blog post.

(Insert Video Here)

At the end of the unit I realized that I had kind of struggled through this unit as I don’t feel that I learned as much as I could of. I almost wish that I could do it over again but, that would mean more school and I am not doing that.

“Fun” Math Games, Eh

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This past unit in math, we have been learning about polynomials. There not too hard to understand, but for some reason there are letters which make me wonder if theres going to be numbers in English soon. Anyways, I am going to explain to you how this is linked to a “Fun” Math Game.

In math we learned about three different things, the first was expanding. we basically had to take an equation with letters and numbers and make it look bigger. We then learned about factoring which is the exact opposite of expanding. With factoring you take the product of something that has been expanded and turn it into its original form. We then learned about perfect squares, which brings me to my next topic, algebra tiles. Personally I hate algebra tiles, I don’t know why, I just think it kinda of messes with my head as I would rather just do the equation normally. We ended up doing a lot of worksheets in class for a couple of weeks. After those couple of weeks were over we brought a project into the picture, which was intriguing at first until I found out it had to involve algebra tiles. Im only kidding I don’t care that much about algebra tiles. Anyways the project that we had to do, was make a math game that uses algebra tiles, skill, and chance.

My partner Ryan, and I took a while to figure out what exactly we were going to do. We were thinking of ripping off monopoly, then we realized that wasn’t the best idea. Finally we came up with a fun idea of a math game that I wouldn’t totally mind playing. We ended up thinking of the idea of involving darts into the game. The way we did that was by having the person throw a dart, and whatever number they hit thats how many spaces they move forward or backward on the board. After you throw the dart you go and do a question that includes algebra tiles, if you get right u move forward, if you get it wrong you move backward. The questions will be on cards, and they will be mixed up with factoring and expanding questions. An extra rule is if you identify that something is a perfect square you get to move forward and extra space on the board. After we finished making the game we had to play it and make video.

Of course we weren’t very creative so we called it dart algebra. On the other hand I was very proud of this project as I found it went quite smoothly. Although we did fool around sometimes in class which led to us finishing this video last minute and handing it in late. I am still happy with what Ryan and I produced as I felt it was as “fun” a math game we could make.

Aboriginal Rights, Eh

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The past couple of months my classmates and I have been focusing on a unit called Sins of the City, that’s what our teacher named it anyways. The first thing we did was go to the Museum of Vancouver or MOV. The reason why we went there is becuase,  all of the exhibits had something to do with this unit. It had quite a few different exhibits, the most memorable one for me was the exhibit based on labour rights in Vancouver. The reason why I remembered that one the best is becuase I was the most interested in it. We then selected what would be our first, second, and third most interesting topic and one we definitely did not want to do. I ended up getting my second or third choice which was aboriginal rights.

The main focus of the unit was to learn about Vancouver during the interwar years which was the 1920’s and 1930’s. The end result of the unit was a podcast. Anyways, we did many things along the way before we got the final result. This included learning about what acutally happened in between WWI and WWII. We leaned about what happened to the indigenous, for a little bit of the unit. We learned about “The Roaring Twenties”. A main focus in that section of the unit was the changing role of women. This was a focus cause during the First World War, women took the role of men’s jobs, and after the men returned and got their jobs back some women were reluctant to go back to being housewives. One of the big things that happened in the twenties was in 1921, when the women were finally allowed to vote in a federal election. You might be wondering why it was called “The Roaring Twenties”. It was based off of the fact that lots of people were doing things such as going to jazz clubs and motion picture movie theatres, and last but definitely not least, dancing the Charleston. In the twenties, not everybody got to dance the Charleston and do other exciting things like I have mentioned, as there were people with not enough money to pay for extra things that weren’t necessary to live. Some people had to deal with racial discrimination, like aboriginals did not have the right to vote. While we were learning about these thing’s, we were all reading a book, not everybody was reading the same book as there were groups. The reason why we read a book is because we were planning on writing an essay about the book at the end of the unit. We prepared for that by learning how to cite what we said and implement quotes into the essay.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJC21zzkwoE

(If you want to learn how be somebody who was born in the early 1900’s, watch this video)

During this unit we also learned about the immigration into Canada. We were split into 3 groups;1911,1921,1931. We all made charts about what we found about the immigration into Canada during those years. We then learned about Economy, and boom and bust. The next thing we focused on was our essay but, our teacher decided to change the essay topic into something completely different. The reason why we changed course is because basically everybody in the class did not enjoy their book. Our teacher did not want to have to read 25 essays about much they didn’t like the book. The teacher changed it to a each of our group members writing individual essays about the same thing, but the essay is a letter. The letter is meant to make a change in something we believe needs to be changed, underneath the topic of our group. We decided to write a letter about how negative stereotypes directed towards aboriginals, is wrong and needs to be stopped, and a way of doing that is by including a unit of some sort into the curriculum to teach children about the aboriginals history and who they are today. Of course, there are some things we learn about aboriginals, but their needs to be a little bit more just becuase there are still people who believe in these negative stereotypes.

 

Now I am going to finally talk about the end result of the unit which was a podcast. My group of 3 and I mainly researched the Truth and Reconciliation Commision, which our teacher told us should be the main focus of our podcast. Our teacher did not want us to be like every other documentary, podcast or book about, because all of those are sad, and talk about what horrible things happened. Our teacher wanted us to talk about how we are making an effort to mend the relationship non-Aboriginals and Aboriginals have. I could tell you about what else we researched and how we wrote a script, but that stuff is boring and I think the better option would be to let you listen to the podcast.

Although I forgot to to mention that we interviewed somebody for the podcast. I interviewed Joy Fontaine-Cramer, who is the niece of Phil Fontaine.  We had to interview somebody who could back up what we were saying, so that we could prove that we werent just writing random things and this is believed by other people aswell, not to mention people who are expierenced in that field.

This unit was a very interesting unit and I believe that my group and I executed on the podcast very well. I found that I learned a lot and my podcasting skills became much stronger, and I will be able to make podcasts that are as good if not better.

If you would like to check out my groups’ blogs here they are: Sofia Bergman, Willa Bisanz