Hello, welcome back to my blog! Today’s post will be about my latest Scimatics project: Comic cells! In this project, we made a comic about diseases and how they interact with cells. The driving question for this project was “How do cells and diseases interact?” Let’s get into it.

First off, let’s talk about the core competencies (yay?)

Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest

I definitely could have done better with this competency because I didn’t spend enough time in class working. I got distracted too easily and ended up having to do most of my comic at home. What I did do well in class was researching. I managed to research almost all the information in class.

Communication: Communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies

I think I did really well on this competency because my comic communicated all the information needed pretty easily. I had over 10 science vocabulary words, and I explained everything pretty well.

Evaluating: demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence

I think I did pretty well on this competency, but definitely not my best. I did show how the characters/cells interacted, and I did that well. What I didn’t do was talk about the symptoms.

Next off, let’s look at the milestones.

Milestone 1: 

As always, we started off with out mind map. Here’s mine: 

Milestone 2:

After we finished the mind map, we moved on to milestone 2, creating a wanted poster. Basically we had to create a wanted poster for our disease that we were doing. Here’s mine:

Milestone 3:

Milestone 3 was a Khan Academy test. I got 100%!

Milestone 4:

For this milestone, we created a storyboard for our comic.

Milestone 5:

Milestone 5 was our comic. To make our comic, we used the app Comic Life 3. Here’s my comic, I hope you enjoy reading it:

Bob & Bab

In the end, I think I did pretty well on this project. I hope you enjoyed reading my last grade 8 scimatics post.

Hey guys, welcome back to my blog! This post is about my latest project in Scimatics, the ultimate design challenge. In this project, the driving question depended on what you were building. Our driving question was “How can we design a house to have maximum surface area?”

Speaking of which, this project was done in partners. My partner was Hannah.

As you can tell by reading the driving question, the thing we chose to build was a house. We were aiming to have maximum surface area, in order to attract heat to keep anyone inside the house warm.

Here is what our house looked like:

These are the different shapes we used:

-Cylinder

-Triangular prism

-Rectangular prism

-Cube

-Hexagonal prism

-Octahedron

-Cone

-Dodecahedron 

-Pentagonal prism

-Sphere

Can you spot all of them?

Here are the calculations we made to calculate the surface area and volume:

Next, I’m going to talk about the Curricular Competencies.

Applying and Innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through personal or collaborative approaches.

-All class time is used efficiently for learning without distractions.

I think I accomplished this competency. Near the end I dipped off and had to finish some work at home, but most of the time I was able to focus and work in class.

Reasoning and Analyzing: Model mathematics in contextualized experiences.

-A 3D object is designed using TinkerCad or other design software. The design is optimized for either maximum volume or maximum surface area. The design should include at least 10 basic 3D shapes. A model should also be build cooperatively for a group of 2.

I think I accomplished this competency because I managed to be successful in creating my object and designing it for maximum surface area. One thing I definitely could’ve done better was making it look good. It wasn’t exactly beautiful, but it got the job done.

Communicating and Representing: Explain and justify mathematical ideas and decisions

-The surface area and volume are measured, calculated, and compared for efficiency. There factors are explained in detail in a keynote presentation to the class.

I think I accomplished this competency. The shapes were all measured and calculated correctly, and explained while we were presenting. We put together the presentation nicely and included all the information, including the total volume, surface area, and ratio between the two.

And that wraps up this Scimatics project! See you in the next blog post!

Hey guys, welcome back to my blog! Today I’ll be talking about my most recent Scimatics project, Chemistry Coding. This project was really interesting to me, because I already know my way around coding with Scratch, and thoroughly enjoy it.

At the start of the project, as per usual, we made a Mindnode, which we completed at the end of the project. Here’s mine:

Here are my core competencies:

Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

I think I did well on this competency. I demonstrated it by going deeper in my Scratch game, by adding things like Scratch plugins, allowing my game to involve different concepts outside of simple buttons and clickers. Another way I showed this competency was in the assignment where we drew diagrams of molecules/atoms, where I put effort into my drawings and researched the information I needed.

Scientific Communication: Communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies.

I think I did really well in this competency. One piece of evidence of this is the “What is this?” page on my Scratch project, which used scientific language to explain a few simple concepts that were included in my game.

Reasoning and Analyzing: Use logic and patterns to solve puzzles and play games.

I think I decently extended on this competency. My reasoning for this is that I added the Scratch plugin and included motion sensing on my game, and went far deeper on the coding aspect of this project than was necessary. You can see evidence of this in my actual game, which is embedded in this blog post.

Thanks for reading!

Hey, welcome back to my blog! In this post I will be talking about my most recent Scimatics project, Laser Laws. This project was all about the law of reflection and the pythagorean theorem.

The driving question for this project was “How can we test the pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection at the same time?”

The first thing I’m including in this post is my MindMap. This was created at the start of the project, and I added answers to some of the questions now, as the project has been finished.

As you can see, I’ve gained knowledge about the pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection.

At the end of the project, we used the knowledge we gained to create a laser display using only one laser and mirrors! Here’s a photo of mine:

 For this part of the project I worked with Max, Ronan, Owen, and Keira. Check out their blogs by clicking on their names!

Now it’s time for the most important but most boring part: the core competencies.

Questioning and Predicting:

I don’t think I did too well on this competency in the building knowledge stage, because I didn’t really care about the work and barely paid attention in class, but once I got past building knowledge, I started to pay attention more and invest myself in the ways that lasers and triangles work.

Communicating and Representing:

I think I did well in this competency because I prominently showed a right triangle in my laser display and calculated the various angles to prove the law of reflection. The entire laser display was basically the way that I communicated the mathematical ideas involved in the pythagorean theorem.

Applying and Innovating:

I think I did very well in this competency because I built a full on in-depth laser display co-operatively with my group, communicating the triangle idea well while making it look good, and divided the work evenly.

Thank you for reading this blog post!

How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design? That’s the question, isn’t it. Well, we’ll answer it later. For now, I’m going to talk about how I learned the answer. For this project, I worked with Naomi. We built a board game, which we called “Tectonic Smash.” In this blog post, I will include the game outline and I’ll be answering the driving question.

The game outline consists of four parts: the pieces, the evidence, the turn and some examples of probability. We’re going to start with the pieces. The game included these items:Next, I will talk about the evidence. In this case, evidence means proof of tectonic movement within the game. Some proof of tectonic movement is volcanoes, mountains, earthquakes, and sea floor spreading. It also literally had plates that you moved within the turn, so that one’s kind of obvious.

Now, I’m going to talk about the turn. The board is split up into four quadrants, with one player at each. At the start of your turn, make sure that you are holding seven cards. If you aren’t, pick up cards from the pile until you have seven. At the start of your turn, the wise thing to do is analyze the board. What types of boundaries are each plate? are they even overlapping/far apart? Is there already a hotspot token on the board? If so, make sure to use that information strategically. Now, in your turn, you will place down a card. You can start with a plate boundary card, or if there’s already a useful plate boundary that fits your requirements, you can place down an attack or defense card (ex. if there’s a divergent plate boundary already on your quadrant of the board, you can place a sea floor spreading card there to revive one heart.) If you’re placing a card to attack someone, you must place it in their quadrant of the board. Make sure to roll the die to make sure your attack is activated. Instead of placing a boundary card, you could instead place a hotspot token or an epicenter token. Once you have attacked or placed a plate boundary, and (if applicable) revived hearts, then your turn is over.

Lastly, I have some examples of probability in the game. This is showing the chances of getting a certain combination

• Pulling an earthquake card and able to attack with it: 5/90 (How did I get this? Probability of drawing an earthquake card= 5/45. Probability of rolling even numbers= 1/2. 5/45 x 1/2=5/90)
• Pulling a volcano card and not able to attack with it: 5/90 (How did I get this? Probability of drawing a volcano card = 5/45. Probability of rolling even numbers = 1/2. 5/45 x 1/2 = 5/90)
• Pulling a volcano card or protection card: 7/45 (How did I get this? Probability of drawing a protection card = 2/45. Probability of drawing a volcano card = 5/45. 2/45+5/45=7/45.)

Now it’s time to talk about the core competencies.

Evaluating: demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence.

In this project I demonstrated this competency by including important things in the game, such as sea floor spreading.

Questioning and predicting: demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

I demonstrated this core competency by doing extra research at home. I was interested in the topic as soon as the project started, and after school that day I read quite a few articles about it.

Understanding and solving: develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving.

I demonstrated this core competency by showing how I was able to apply probability to the game (above.)

Now I’m going to try to answer the driving question. Remember, the question is, “How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design? Well, as you can see above, there’s probability used within drawing cards and rolling dice. When that’s in a game, you can use mathematical elements to determine the chance of each possible outcome.

So that was my blog post. I hope you enjoyed reading about this project and my game!