Smart Board

In class, we enhance our learning by using a tool called the Smart Board. This board looks like a normal dry-erase board, except it has its own special markers that allow it to write on the screen, because guess what? the Smart Board is connected to the computer! The screen displays the images that come up on the computer, and we can interact with it since the Smart Board is a touch-screen tool. With this, class is more fun and interactive. With the Smart Board, we play games, and it is fun at the same time educational. There are also special markers that can be used to write on the smart board that have it show up digitally on the smart board, and the computer screen. I think that the Smart Board is a very cool new piece of technology, and very helpful in a classroom environment.

Symbiosis in Three Parts.

"Together Life." That's the literal definition for symbiosis. In which, the actual definition for symbiosis is: the living together of two dissimilar organisms. Symbiosis is divided into three groups; Commensalism, Parasitism, and Mutualism. In commensalism, one of the species benefit, and the other is not harmed nor helped. It remains neutral. For instance, clownfish and anemone have commensalism because the clownfish benefits from the poisonous tentacles of the anemone because other fish avoid it whereas the clownfish is protected with a layer of mucus that makes them immune to the stings. Parasitism is when one organism benefits, and the other is harmed. An example of parasitism is a flea and a dog. This is considered a parasitic relationship because the flea benefits from living on the dog, whereas the dog is harmed because of the flea causing irritations to the dog's skin. The last division of symbiosis is mutualism, where both the species benefit from the relationship. For example, bees and flowers both share a mutualistic relationship because the bees benefit from the pollen that is collected from the flowers to create honey. The flowers benefit from the bee's pollenation because without them, the flowers would begin to wilt. As a result, I believe that symbiosis is a very important factor in our ecosystem even with parasitism. Because without symbiosis, some of the organisms in our ecosystem will become unbalanced, and there would not be any friendly relationships between two different organisms.

Here is a site to learn more about symbiosis.

Landfill Transforms Into Landscape?

Picture this: Layers and mountains of dirty wrappers, napkins, and papers. Mounted atop those mountains, are moth eaten mattresses, worn and dirty of couches, broken stoves, TVs, toilets, refrigerators. Anything that people do not want anymore, either broken, torn, dirty or stained, that are thrown away and put into a certain place. Now imagine all that garbage transformed into a green and agricultural National Park! This landscape restoration named 'The Valley of Joan', has won the Energy, Waste and Recycling category at the 2008 World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, Spain. The Valley of Joan project was conducted in 200, and just completed earlier this year. It is a remarkable recovery from a polluted dump, back into natrual nature. Recreating the landscape after pouring hundreds of thousands of pounds of garbage onto the field is a gracious task to do. I think that this act, by far, helps our environment rebuild itself and regain it's natrual look, before all of our waste overpowered the nature.

Learn more about The Valley of Joan: here

The Inspiration II

In this picture: Barrington Irving, the youngest and first African-American pilot to fly solo around the world.

Summer camps are probably one of the places you wouldn't want to spend your summer vacation if you lived in Miami, Florida. However, if you signed up for 'Build and Soar', a 10-week camp offered by Barrington Irving, you will not be disappointed with your summer. In this program, inner city highschoolers learn how a plane is put together piece by piece, how the sky is not the limit, and how to work together to acheive a finale: Building a plane by themselves. The highschoolers who participated in 'Build and Soar', also engaged in learning opportunities where they constructed rockets, wind tunnel aerodynamic flight testing, and participated in both real and computer simulations. On October 15, Irving boarded a Zenith XL aircraft that was constructed by the high school students, and took it for a test ride. "I feel excited because it's very inspirational to know I built a plane," said Denzel Brown. Irving justified his thoughts to the crowd that had gathered to watch and cheer him on. "I'm not nervous about flying this aircraft because I believe in our students," he said, just shortly before taking off. The highschoolers named their aircraft the 'Inspiration II', in honor of the plane Barrington used on his trip around the world. Usually, it takes a year to build even an experimental plane, however, these students spent ten weeks on this project, and was still able to make have it take flight and fly a thousand feet above the ground. I believe that this was a major accomplishment to the highschool students, knowing that they've created an aircraft that is stable and can, in fact, take flight. This also creates a spark of inspiration for children and teenagers to know that they too can create a stable model, and the sky is not the limit.

Original Article

picture credit to: google images.

Drilling For Oil!

I have always thought that the process of discovering oil was simple, with nothing too complicated, or too expensive. However, after today's class, I was proven wrong. In today's class, we were taught about one of the earth's most common resources, which is oil. Oil is formed from the remaints of plants and animals that lived from 10 to 160 million years ago. The remains are buried under mud, sand and other minerals, which prevented immediate decay. However, since the remaints were buried in layers and layers in the mud and sand, the lack of oxygen caused the remaints to decay into carbon-rich compounds. After mixing with several sediments and more pressure and layers are added, these remaints turn into oil. The experiment we performed today, was an example of how scientists would drill for oil. We were given 3 maps to trace, with the three components that we needed for oil to be present.

1. Source - Sediment the needs to be heated up and buried, in order to create oil.
2. Reservoir - A place underground used to store the oil
3. Trap - The layer of rock that lies about the reservoir to keep in the oil.

After we traced the outline for those three of the components, we had a map, and we had marked places in which we believed we would find oil. At our lab groups, there was a big tray, and we had a drill pick, in which we used to poke into the tin foil, that covered the tray. For each drill, we would have to pay $225,000, and for each centimeter we drilled, we had to add $100,000.
This experiment showed me that oil is very hard to find, and something very expensive to find, also. This also tells me that I should conserve energy, because of how complicated it is to find oil, and how much money is spent, just to find this resource.

To learn about the oil reserves, click here

Water Cycle! Not a Bicycle.

Earth's water is never stopping. It will keep moving through the cycle it's been going through since the begining of time. The rainwater is turned into water vapor during the evaporation process and then transforms into clouds that are in our atmosphere. When those clouds are full with the water vapor, and can no longer hold it, it rains, or another word is condensation. Condensation is when the water vapor in the air turns into a liquid.

In class, we participated in an experimental activity that demonstrated a way the water cycle could work. We had used plastic spoons, which acted as evaporation, to spoon water from reservoirs. For the reservoirs we used tanks of different sizes, with different amounts of water. The tanks were labeled with what it represented. For example, one reservoir was ocean, another was aquifer, and another was rivers and streams. We also had clouds, which were small plastic cups in which we spooned water into. When the cups were fille dup to a certain point, they were to rain (pour) the water into the reservoir that they were assigned. When the experiment was finished, our supervisor told us that this was an example of a balanced cycle. However, our class didn't think that this was so. Thus, our supervisor gave us another experiment, however, this time we added larger plastic cups, which represented what we humans use. She also added empty tanks for the large plastic cups to fill. When the experiment was over, there wasn't that much water left in the reservoirs, however, the empty tanks for our human usage were practically overflowing! Our experiment supervisor told us that this experiment was an example of an unbalanced cycle, not the other one. I believe that it is surprising that we impact the water cycle, and take so much from the reservoirs, that other animals and plants need to.

Wanna know more about the water cycle? Click here!

Thirty Years Ago

If kids of our generation lived 30 years ago, I doubt they would even be able to survive. Thirty years ago, there would seem to be nothing. There were no computers, no color T.V., and no cell phones. But I believe that the item that impacted the world the most was satellites. Without satellites, cell phones, internet, and probably many other things wouldn't even work, or be present today. Satellites effect everyone, every single day, probably without even them noticing. Without satellites, some of our most modern communication would be exiled, and we wouldn't have them to this day. Satellites are also used for radios, which may be about the news, or just music or comedy for bored people to pass the time. The millions of channels on T.V. would not be present without satellite either. Could you imagine television with just 7 channels? Well, that's how television used to be back then. As a result, I think that the satellite makes the largest impact on society, because once the satellite came along, so did many other types of technology that citizens use or depend on.

Manmade Atom?

In an atom, there are protons, neutrons and electrons. The protons and neutrons are separated into the nucleus, and the electrons are outside of the nucleus. During a class activity, our class made atoms with small green beads, two different colored marbles to represent protons and neutrons, and plastic spheres, both big and small. The small sphere was to indicate the nucleus, and the large sphere was to indicate the atom itself. Worksheets were distributed throughout the classroom instructing us on how to create that certain atom. During this class activity, I learned that in each nucleus there would only be protons and neutrons. Also, if there were more protons than neutrons, this would cause a positive charge, and if there were more neutrons than protons, the atom would have a negative charge. We had made an atom that would look much like an atom within oxygen. However, to figure out how many protons or neutrons were in each we had to examine the Periodic Table, which we had studied in class.

Atoms are an interesting subject to me because I think that it is amazing how something so tiny can create something that we can see and use directly.

Wanna know more? Click here.

Biodegradable Coffins

"Cynthia Beal wants to be an Oregon cherry tree after she dies." That might sound a bit unusual, but with the biodegradable coffins, now slowly being introduced to the United States, this would not be an impossible desire. An example of a biodegradable coffin, is called an Ecopod, a kayak-shaped coffin, constructed out of recycled newspapers. These burials, however, much less damaging to the enviroment, say the Advocates. Fossil fuels have created a reaction of worry when some choose to use cremation as their burial even though graveyard burials are more damaging to the enviroment. These burials have been popular in Britain for years. But now, eco-friendly burials have sprouted up in California, New York, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas. I think that it's important that we try our best to have eco-friendly burials, bottles, cars, and maybe homes even so that our planet can stay sanitary and safe from any more Global Warming.

To learn more, visit:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/01/03/green.coffins.ap/index.html