Sticking to the theme of academic posts, what about the stuff we did in science?
So, this unit was chemistry and, oh man, there’s a lot to remember about chemistry. Coming right back into it, I wasn’t feeling too confident as I had forgotten most if not all of the things we learned in chemistry last year. I forget, is Kryptonite an element?
Anyways, like each unit we’ve done in science so far, we created a mind map to show our understanding of chemistry at the time. This meant that we were putting on whatever we already knew or remembered from last year. All in all, it probably wasn’t the most impressive display of my learning but hey, that’s what this year is for!
Yep, probably not a good display of my abilities as a student but I was ready to make up for it in the next few weeks to come… And then they came! We had done a lot more work into the specifics of chemistry; different kinds of compounds, ions and atoms, reactions, etc. We were filling our brains to the max with chem-knowledge but I seemed to be struggling with remembering everything we were learning. When I say “struggle,” I still managed to learn a lot in the process, so I’m pretty happy that I was able to go from the mindmap above, to the mindmap below…
So we were introduced to the big project of our unit again! This time, things were a little different as us students had two options for our project this time! We could either select making a video that followed a certain criteria and showed a reaction along with making the reactants act like characters, or we could just do a very in-depth lab project where we studied and researched a certain reaction that could clearly identify the presence of an element or compound in an object/mixture/material. I went ahead and chose the video option as I felt like I could do something pretty cool with the given guidelines. I ended up being partnered with Simon and we got to work, well, maybe not right away…
What I mean by that is that we struggled A LOT with trying to come up with an idea we both wanted to do. Time was ticking away and we spent our very precious time doing wayyyy too much thinking and not enough doing. Because of that, we got started pretty late into the project which led to a whole plethora of problems…
So eventually, we came up with an idea… We were going to create a Bill Nye parody episode that talked about our reaction. We planned on using inanimate objects to make a funny skit about our reaction which was a Double Displacement Reaction. Essentially, a DDR is a reaction in which two compounds are introduced to each other and the cations (positive ions) and the anions (negative ions) switch places within each compound to create two new compounds. I wanted our skit to show that the elements in each compound were cheating on each other with elements from the other compound. I then wrote a script and had a full vision for how I wanted the video to look. So everything was good then, right? Not right.
So in theory, our video was going to be really cool but unfortunately, it wasn’t so good in practice. We were really pressed for time on filming and editing our video as we had DI coming up, our grades were due, and we had several projects to finish by then. Although I really wish it hadn’t, the science video had slipped under both Simon and I’s radars and we ended up filming and editing our video in one day. The problem with that was that we only had two hours to record before we were split up so we ended up having a very rushed, non animated, not-at-all-fitting-the-criteria, video. The editing had also been quite rushed which resulted in the pice of work that I’m definitely the least proud of this year. Watch at your own risk!
I know, it’s definitely not at the standard that us PLP students have set this year. The good thing is though, there’s always a bright side to things and the bright side for Simon and I is that our teachers encourage revisions! Better yet, our grades also can be changed too! With that, here’s our revised version of our video. As you’ll see, we put a lot more thought into our shots, we used microphones so the audio would be clear, and the editing was much cleaner. I’m definitely way more happy with the results of our second draft as it shows what we can do with a little more planning and preparation.
Well that just about wraps up our chemistry unit! I really like getting the opportunity to be able to approach a project differently and this project definitely let us be more abstract with the way we do things. As always, I really enjoyed making this video as the whole process has started to become a lot more interesting the more I use new skills. Although our video isn’t perfect, I’m really happy with how it turned out compared to our first version. Anyways, I’m pretty excited to see what’s in store for us but until then, that’s all folks!
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