It’s a trap!

In a galaxy far, far away, Admiral Ackbar created one of the greatest Star Wars memes of all time with his groundbreaking phrase, It’s a Trap! I’m pretty sure you can figure out what this post is about.

So, if you keep up with the latest PLP activities, you probably know about the PLP Exhibition that happened a few days ago on the 14th Of December. Hopefully you came and saw our wonderful decorations and projects. If you didn’t, I’ll catch you up.

The Exhibition is kind of like a cooler science fair. There are 2 every year. A small one in December and a big one in June. For every Exhibition, the PLP teachers pick out a theme. For December’s, as you can probably tell, our theme was Star Wars. The students pick out a question each that relates to a topic. After they pick out a question, the students to hours of pain staking research to answer the question. Every student’s research must consist of 3 resources. A website, like Wikipedia, a video, and an interview with an expert in the field. This process all leads up to the Exhibition.

Now, let me tell you about my Exhibition experience. This Exhibition was really special to me and the other grade 8s because it was our first Exhibition. When we started working on the Exhibition, first of all, we had to pick an inquiry question. They told us to think of as many questions as possible about one single topic. After we brainstormed some questions, we picked out our top 3 to consult with the teacher about. Here is a list of my questions:

I then proceeded to have a conference about my questions, and I decided on the question “Would Star Wars cybernetics similar to Vaders’ Work in real life. After a bit of tweaking, I finally decided on a final question. My final inquiry question was, drumroll please,

HOW WOULD STAR WARS PROSTHETICS OR CYBERNETICS WORK IN REAL LIFE?

So, after I figured out my inquiry question, I got started on my research. I started on my website research first, and found this great website called wookieepedia, which is basically like a Star Wars database. Link to wookieepedia right here. On said website, I found a page about prosthetics or, as they’re called in the Star Wars universe, Cybernetics. That was the main website that I used for research. Finding a video was even easier. All it took was a quick search on YouTube to find the perfect video. The video that I used was called Star Wars Science – Prosthetic Limbs by HelloGreedo. Link down here. ⬇️

I really liked this one because it compared both Star Wars and real life, and goes into in depth detail of each aspect. And lastly, I interviewed someone from Pentlands Prosthetics and Orthotics. Pentlands is a company that specializes in Prosthetics and fits people with custom Prosthetics that best fit the recipient. Unfortunately, I had really lousy timing and emailed them during a very busy period and wasn’t able to schedule an actual face to face meeting. Even though they were busy, they agreed to answer some questions that I had about prosthetics.

After we all finished our research, the PLP teachers revealed our groupings. The Light and Dark sides. We then got grouped into smaller groups. I was on the Dark Side and in the Impact on Today’s World group.

Armed with my knowledge of prosthetics, I got started on creating my project. I went and made a big ol’ prosthetic hand model. Long story short, it ended up looking like a statue.

I built it out of plasticine, which is probably why it looks like a statue. I was going for a robotic look, but I ended up getting a modern art feel to it. I also made a posterboard. Yes, a posterboard. A staple of all middle school science fairs worldwide. My posterboard was pretty horrible to begin with. It looked like this.

Yeah. Pretty bad. After getting pelted with criticism, I went home and used that criticism to improve my posterboard. The next day, I came back with my posterboard looking like this:

Much, much better. Don’t you agree? Alright, let’s cut to what you’ve all been waiting for. The night of the Exhibition. Exhibition day was pretty stressful. Not gonna lie. We spent nearly the whole day decorating our respective spaces, with the Light Side occupying the PLP room and the Dark Side occupying the Library. First of all, our main problem was light. We had to turn all of the lights in the library off, so we all had to bring as many lights as we could. Our second issue was the walls. I’d say about half of the time we spent decorating the room was on putting paper all over the walls to cover up the fact that it was a library. The rest all fell into place after we finished those things. Then, in a flash, it was Exhibition night. Not gonna lie, I was pretty nervous. That and the fact that I had way too much pizza before the Exhibition was a deadly combo. I had worn a sick Darth Vader mask to the Exhibition.

That did not work out very well though because A: I didn’t have the full costume so I looked like Darth Vader at an employee picnic, and B: The mask gave me absolutely no peripheral vision at all.When the people started rolling in, I got myself together and gave some presentations to the people that came over to look at my project. Halfway through, I went and ran the bar. We served “Vaderade”, which was pretty much a mix of Red Powerade and Gatorade. We also had some assorted snacks. Overall, I’d say the Exhibition went pretty well. One thing I would do differently would be to manage my time better. I didn’t make full use of my time. Next time I’m definitely going to get started constructing much faster.

OK. That’s it. Whew. I hope you didn’t get too bored reading that. It was a pretty fun experience and I have high hopes for the big one in June. Make sure to be on the lookout for my next post on religion.

Yours Truly,                                                                                                                                                                        Jason

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