This term in science we’ve been learning about chemistry and the periodic table. We learned about atoms, electrons, protons and neutrons, stuff like that. For our project, we made an animated video about atoms, ionic, and covalent bonds.

We learned a couple different things that I’m gonna list of in point form;

1. Valence shell: the outermost layer of an atom and their electrons. Having a full valence shell make the atom perfectly stable.

2. Ionic bonds: when multiple atoms trade electrons so all members gain a full valence shell. This causes each atom to become either positively charged if they loose and electron, on negatively charged if they gain it. The opposite charges attract one another, causing them to stick.

3. Covalent Bond: when multiple atoms want the same atom(s), so they share it to gain a full valence shell. As neither atom looses or gains an electron, the both stay neutrally charged. Because they are sharing, they stick together.

So, about the assignment.

I was with Kiefer, and we had to animate a video about covalent and ionic bonding, we could choose any atoms we want, but we were told to use a specific family. We used the first couple elements within the “Alkaline-Earth Metals” family, and oxygen.

Calcium and Strontium can’t bond with each other, but they can bond with oxygen, so oxygen was the main character.

One of the requirements was that the video needed to be personalized and unique. While all the other groups had their atoms as characters in their own element-universe where each person was a single atom, the atoms in our story were large masses of pure elements.

Each atom has a different power, and bonding shares these powers between them. Oxygen can talk in any language, calcium can build and repair any machine, Etc.

In our video, humans encounter alien life, the aliens are the atoms. The atoms need to fix their ship, but oxygen is the only atom that can communicate to the humans, so he bonds to calcium so he knows what’s wrong with the ship and can talk to the humans. Because the humans are humans, they capture another oxygen and strontium to study them. Unfortunately, strontium is really strong, and they breakout of the jail cell. They leave the humans with their newly fixed ship, and the humans get what they deserve.

During this project, I learned a lot about the (agonizing slow) process of animating. It took about 10 minutes per frame, and this was a stop motion video. I also learned about ionic and covalent bonds, atoms, elements, and chemistry. While it was boring at times, it was interesting and probably very useful in the future.

At the beginning of this unit, I made a mind map of what I knew about chemistry. I didn’t know a lot, so my mind map was pretty small.

I made another mind map at the end of the unit. I had greatly improved, and the map was much bigger.

In my math class recently, we’ve been learning about linear equations. You know, Y = mb = X.
We did some classes just learning about them, the we started our project. We were given 10,000 fictional dollars for a US road trip. We started in New York City, and could go anywhere we wanted. We only had a few parameters to meet. We had to spend at least $9,500, and we had to be able to get to and from our destination by car.

We had a few sheets we had to fill out, and on that sheet we had a few limitations. Limitations like the car we could use, the baggage we could have, the expensiveness of the hotels we could stay in, stuff like that.

We started with the expenses of food, bagging, and lodging. Because I wanted the most luxurious trip, I went with the most expensive of each, with food being $200 per day, lodging being $500 per day, and bagging being $300 per person. Because im the only person, bagging was a straight $300. So, lets add this up. Y = ($200 + $500 =$700) D + $300.

Now, we need the start and end locations. I chose Trump Tower in New York. After, I didn’t know where to end, so I chose a random number (for the address) and a random city in the States. Well, it turns out that “33876 Chicago – Kansas City Expy, Good Hope, IL 61438, USA“ is quite literally the side of a highway. I was then given an interesting question. If I could only drive for 10 hours a day, it would take 4 days. Then, if my trip took 31 days, I would drive for 1 hour a day.

Part 3: vehicle expenses
Again, I want a luxurious trip, so I went with the most expensive car I could, the Lamborghini.
The lambo costs $160 per day, so we can add 160 to our 700, making it $860. To find the gas cost and mileage, I had to take the total distance (34 miles) and divided that by the MPG of the lambo (13). I got 2.6, or 2.6 gallons of gas. Those numbers mean nothing to me, so lets metric them. 34 miles become 57 km, and 2.6 gallons becomes 9.7 litres. At $2.80 per gallon, im paying an additional $7.28.

During this project, we encountered “the Speeding Cyclist”, a crazed maniac biking faster than the speed limit. I had to calculate how fast he was going, and answer some questions about how fast he was going, and where he might be hiding. For completing all of the questions, I was given and extra $8,000 to spend on my trip. This brings the amount I have to spend up to $17,500.

Now, we have to calculate the cost over 1, 2, 3, and 4, weeks right now, we have “Y=$860d+$307.28” Y is the total cost, and d is the total days. Remember, I have to spend AT LEAST $17,000. From the photo below, 1 and 2 weeks are too short, and 3 weeks is to long. So on the next page, I found an exact amount of days that would work.
I thought that something in between 14 and 21 days would, so i found the cost of 17 days. I still had plenty of money left over, so I found the cost of 20 days, and after that, I only had about $500 left. Perfect! A 20 day trip from Trump Tower to a Kansas City highway and back.

Now, here’s something I wasn’t prepared for: sponsorships. Three different companies, Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Snapple, were willing to provide money for having their products appear during my trip. While none of their sponsorships would give me enough money to extend my trip, I did calculate when each sponsorship would provide me with the best money-day ratio.

So for a recap, we had to plan out the costs for a roadtrip across America. We had $10,000 to spend, and got more from the Speeding Cyclist. I went on the most luxurious trip I could from trump tower to a highway in Kansas and back. After spending $17,500 on my trip, I get the option for a sponsorship to try and extend my trip, but none of the sponsorships actually extend my trip.