For our most recent we had to create a machine that uses a natural source of energy to make electrical energy. When I asked if I could force my hamster to run on a wheel for all eternity our teacher said no. Apparently, humans and animals aren’t a natural source of energy. Which is silly, but I don’t make the rules. So just like almost everyone else in the class we created a waterwheel!
Collaboratively and individually plan, select, and use appropriate investigation methods, including fieldwork and lab experiments, to collect reliable data (qualitative and quantitative)
Morgan and I used fieldwork by testing our machine out by the stream. With that, we collected data that showed that our machine works. We also collaborated on the design of the machine and the building of it as well.
Assess risks and address ethical, cultural, and/or environmental issues associated with their proposed methods and those of others.
The reason we started this project is that we wanted to learn about clean energy. There are many forms of energy that are bad for the environment and what with the current climate change talk that’s been happening it’s really good to find other methods of energy.
Use knowledge of scientific concepts to draw conclusions that are consistent with evidence.
After a lot of research into the different types of energy and energy conversion. Morgan and I were able to design a waterwheel that could produce energy. Although our waterwheel wasn’t built for the stream we tested it in, we still implemented the science concepts we learned to build the machine.
Experience and interpret the local environment.
I’ve lived by the stream at cove cliff my whole life and it’s been a place to play and swim for as long as I can remember. It was really cool to learn about how that stream can be used to create energy.
Overall Morgan and I are very proud of the product we created. Our video had some very good humour and we learned a lot about energy conversion. Anyways thanks for checking in, I’m still in school.
Our latest project in math class had us graph phone plans linearly to find out which plan would be better. We used data overages as our measurement. We used algebra to find the slope of those equations. The outcomes are pretty subjective because it depends on what you as the buyer is going to use.
My partner and I decided to compare Telus and Freedom and Rogers and Freedom. The reason for this is because Rogers and Telus have the same slope (overage charges for data) of 10$ per 100mb. That would result in them being parallel lines. Here is our keynote comparing the companies.
This project was a pretty easy one to understand. We had some troubles figuring out what to graph but in the end, it all worked out. I think I’m a lot better at math than science, I guess I just understand numbers more. I like algebra a lot, again, probably because I’m pretty good at it.
Understanding and Solving
We did a good job explaining the slope and Y-intercept in a way that was meaningful. I think this showed in our presentation and in the keynote. We could have zoomed the graphs in a bit more just to make it more clear.
Connecting and Reflecting
We could have done a bit better on this competency by showing the potential savings of each plan. We did do a good job of showing which plan would be better for that person. For example, if you are going to use over 500mb of data than Rogers probably isn’t the plan for you, and Freedom would be the better choice.
Communicating and Representing
In our presentation, we talked about how to find the right plan for you. We made sure to find the cheapest plan for the user’s needs and I think that really showed in the presentation.
Reasoning and Modelling
Our keynote included informational graphs that showed each linear equation and what each plan would offer. We also included solving algebraically as it is a method we learned in class to speed up the math portion. Solving algebraically is a lot quicker than solving with a table of values.
This project was short and sweet but I really learned a lot. It was low stress for such an informational unit and I really enjoyed that. I think this project helped me see again just how much I enjoy math. It gives me a good sense of pride when I know I’ve learned something and have represented it well.
As always, thanks for checking in, I’m still in school!
Welcome to a mini post! Why is it a mini post? Because we did a mini project in math. Our task was to create a project that showed the rate of change of a body of water. We used linear equations to show this. My partner and I created an infographic to show at the beginning of the project while we explained the math.
So as you can see, we have the linear equation above, along with the graph. Next, we showed the class our video we made.
I hope you liked that video. We got a pretty good reaction from my class. It had good humour and personalization.
During this project, I improved on a lot of the core competencies.
Model with mathematics in situational contexts; For this core competency, we chose a real-world issue to look at. We had to choose a body of water and map out the rate of change.
Develope, demonstate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, story, inquiry, and problem solving; Afterwedidthemathcomponentofourprojectwecreatedascriptedstorytoaddtotheproject.
Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial and symbolic forms; We took what we learned in math and represented it in a way that was visual but still showed all the data and information.
Connect mathematical concepts with each other, other areas and personal interests; We decided to make an animation because that was a personal interest of ours and we created a funny but informational script that also showed off our personality.
Even though this project was pretty easy, I still learned a lot. Linear equations are fairly simple to understand and I think that’s what made this project easy to personalize. This was a fun project to end school before the break!
As always, thanks for checking in, I’m still in school.
Welcome back! Today I’ve got a new and exciting post for you today but fair warning, be nice because it’s very reactive.
For this unit in science, did chemistry and it has been a really fun experience. This project was different from our usual projects. For this one, we had to present live to another class. It wasn’t so bad because we were in groups. For me, however, I was with a partner because there weren’t enough kids in our class to make enough groups of three.
So my partner, Daniel and I chose a simple reaction to base our presentation on in order to have a fair workload. We chose Synthesis as our reaction type. For our presentation, we created a keynote with a short video explaining synthesis at the beginning.
We also conducted a live experiment. For that, we reacted magnesium strips with the oxygen in the air by heating it up with some fire.
This project was an amazing learning experience. I felt that my partner and I met the criteria if not exceeded it. I had a very good understanding of the reaction by the end of the project and we presented our finding very well. We did a good job planning and conducting our presentation, we stuck to our topic as to not overlap with other groups but we also had some ideas and thoughts that allowed for a nice flow into other groups projects. For example, we mention CO2 and how it negatively affects our environment along with conducting an experiment that also classified as a combustion reaction. This led right into the next groups topic about combustion and global warming. We also did a good job processing and analyzing data and information because we identified the patterns of how cars fitted with catalytic converters positively affect the world versus cars without.
Overall I think this project went extremely well. We did a good job reaching the criteria and using the core competencies I highlighted and im very proud. As always, thanks for checking in, I’m still in school.
So welcome to 2019, this is my first blog post. Before the Christmas break, we were working on a partner project in math. We had to create a game that involved algebra tiles and create an informational video about it. Here is our finished video, enjoy.
Its Game Time
So what you just saw was a run through of how to play the game, but we didn’t bore you with how we created it. I still don’t want to bore you so im gonna keep this short and sweet. My partner, Emily and I came up with the theme of the gold rush after going through multiple other themes like building, or gardening. Once came up with the theme, we got to work on the rules and building. Emily was responsible for creating the rules because her mind works well like that. I was responsible for the creation of the board and the pieces because my mind works well like that.
Connect Mathematical Concepts
I think our project is very strong in this core competency. Emily and I connected our math game to an interest of ours which was a show about Gems. (It’s a lot to explain its called Steven Universe) We found a common interest to base our project around. I think we also did a good job or connecting the concepts to our theme, nothing stuck out of looked like it needed to be thrown in for the marks.
Think Creatively and with Curiosity and Wonder
I think this project was a challenging one to wrap our heads around. It really required you to know the material to be able to make something creative. I think that really showed in our project.
Develop, Demonstrate, and Apply Mathematical Understanding
In our project, we integrated the math in a way that was fairly simple. However, it still had all the components from the criteria. I think we did an excellent job developing the idea so it fits in the theme of the game. Our video was clear and demonstrated to the audience the goal of our game very well.
Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial and symbolic forms
Most parts of our theme were sort of symbolic. The gems tiled we had to make it easy to remember instead of remembering the X or X squared tiles. I think our design and images added to the play and aesthetic of the game in a good.
Overall I think this was a really great project. I really enjoyed working on it and working with Emily.
As always thanks for checking in, im still in school.
For this science unit, we had to create a video that answered our driving question;
“Can cousins be twins?”
It is a pretty confusing question when you look at it. It seems like the answer would be “well no cause they have different parents.” But what if they had the same parents? But not really the same parents. What if two sets of twins married another set of twins. Could their children exhibit the same traits to resemble twins?
That is when my partner Marshall and I got to work on our video. During our research, we came to the conclusion that cousins could not be twins cause there is too much variation in their phenotypes. So when we created our video we decided to explore genetic modification. If you could modify the parent’s alleles could they create identical children? Here is our video demonstrating our findings.
This project was probably one of my weakest if I’m being completely honest. I wasn’t really on my A-game during the creation of this video. But I’ve learned from my mistakes and I’m ready to take on the projects we have to come in the future.
As always thanks for checking in, I’m still in school!
It’s me, Jessie! I love science. It’s so cool. I really love physics and I think it’s my favourite subject. Being in grade 10 means we don’t study physics yet. But im super excited to take the course in grade 11. I really like the youtube channel Minute Physics. Their videos are easy to understand and super interesting.
This week for the student blogging challenge the theme is science. The first task I’ve done is the Video Prompts task. This is currently my favourite videos from minute science.
I find this video very interesting. I don’t always understand the language but I still enjoy learning about it. I highly recommend watching this video
Another task I chose to do from this week’s blogging challenge was the A-Z of Science words. So in the following images, you will see some words with letters missing. Underneath there will be a description of the word. In the comments write down your answers.
Thanks for stopping by this week for the student blogging challenge. I hope you enjoyed and I hope you learned something. Also, my intro and title of this blog post is a reference to a youtube channel if you know it, leave a comment.
As always thanks for checking in, im still in school.
Don’t take the name of this post badly cause I actually did try. Not saying I don’t usually try either I just thought it made a good pun. But I actually did try, and I really enjoyed it. I promise that isn’t fluff. Trigonometry was one of the maths that I really understood enough to look forward to doing it.
We started out by learning the basics of trigonometry, which I didn’t understand at first. I was really confused about the language and process. Every class we would go to white boards in groups and work out trig questions. I found this really helpful because if I didn’t understand I could sit back and observe others until I got it. And eventually I did understand it. Now I can do trig no problem, however I know that will come and bite me in the back soon cause it only gets harder from here folk!
Now I hope you’ve been around long enough to understand that with PLP comes the PROJECTS! And for this project we had to design a triangular structure. The angle theta (an unknown angle between 0 and 90 degrees) had to be the most optimal for a solar panel. That’s where the math comes into play. This is our video about our project, enjoy.
Well I hope you enjoyed this reflection on my trig blog, it was a really enjoyable project and I learned a lot.
For the past two weeks, we have been working on a cause and correlation project. If you don’t know what cause and correlation then here is a brief description.
Correlation and Causation
Causation is one variable that influences another. Causation is often confused with correlation, which is the variables increasing or decreasing in parallel. However, correlation by itself does not imply causation.
Now that you know about cause and correlation I can tell you what we learned in class!
We did a lot of lessons on the subject before starting out the project the first thing we did was analyze graph to see is correlation implies causation. As mentioned in the definition above the correlation does not imply causation.
We looked at a graph like this which shows a correlation. As you can see the numbers on the chart go up at around the same time.
We also looked at charts like this which show a causation. The number of cigarettes consumed by men each year and the number of lung cancers death in men. Cigarettes have been proved to cause lung cancer so if you smoke too many the number of lung cancers deaths will go up.
The presenter in the video was Hans Rosling and he used a tool called Gapminder to debunk several myths about world development. It was a really great example of cause and correlation.
Hand size and Hight
Does hand size have a correlation to hight? In class, we did an experiment to see. Everyone in my class measured each other’s hand and hight and used Numbers to enter our data.
After gathering the data and putting it into a chart we found that it did indeed have a correlation. Taller people seemed to have bigger hands. Now that you know the sizes of the people in my class feel free to get them a nice sweater or a pair of gloves.
Starting the project
On day four of this unit, we started the project. The first thing we did was get a partner. We were allowed to choose our own partner so long as it wasn’t someone we had worked with in the past. So my friend Melika and I did our project together.
The next thing we did was brainstorm two driving questions. The example we were given was;
“Does _______ have a correlation with ______?” and
“Does ______ cause ______?”
The questions we came up with were, “do mangos consumed per week have a correlation with hours of music listened to per week?” and “Does drinking mango juice cause insomnia?”
Next, we made a poster with our questions on it so we could do a gallery walk. We walked around and wrote feedback on everyone’s posters. This helped Melika and me to develop our questions further.
Our Poster
After creating our driving questions we created a project plan. We decided what tools we were gonna sure to collect and present our data. We chose to use Numbers to collect our data and Keynote to present.
(something)
For our correlation question, Melika and I decided to survey the grade 9s at our school. We went around and asked them our questions and we put the results into numbers.
After we got all our data we had to put it into a graph and calculated the mean, median and mode.
The results of our graph showed that the people who eat more mangos tend to listen to less music while the people who eat fewer mangos listen to more music.
The only problem with this was that it didn’t really follow a definite pattern. It only correlated a small amount. Other than that this part of the project went really well.
We had to think about the communication core competency when doing this part because we had to communicate with our classmates and others in our grade. Melika and I also had to collaborate as it was a partner project.
For the mean, median and mode we had to use the thinking competency. We had to first calculate then find an interesting way to present it.
Presentation
Next, we used keynote to create our presentation. We used keynote collaborate so we could both work on it. This gave us a chance to work together and implant our ideas. Working together made it personal and it was a mix of both of our styles.
Im very proud of our overall product. I think this project went really well. If I could change some things it would be the causation part of our project because we didn’t actually have time to do the experiment and that affected the end results. Overall though I think everything was great. Our presentation went well and our correlation data was pretty great!
In our latest science unit, we’ve been learning about the reproduction. The first thing we did was watch a film on human reproduction. We watched the film and then never talked about it again. Instead, we moved on to the reproduction of plants.
We started by learning the reproduction of plants asexually. An example of this would be cloning. Cloning is making a copy of a species with the exact same DNA as its parent. Cloning has its downfalls because if that singular parent has a disease the offspring will as well.
Then we learned about sexual reproduction in plants. Sexual reproduction gets DNA from two parents. This allows for more variety and a chance of creating healthier offspring. Its the same with humans. We have two parents and we are born with a mix of both of their DNA.
Project
For our project, we got to clone our own plants. Specifically dandelions. We were taught how to clone dandelions then told to pick a second plant to clone with our group. My group chose blackberries. After planting and watering our plants for a couple weeks we had to make a video.
In this video, it explains how we cloned our plants so I didn’t want to repeat it on my blog. It also explains meiosis and mitosis. Enjoy;
This was overall a really fun project and I really enjoyed it. My group was super fun to work with and I’m so thankful for all the work they did. Hope you enjoyed see yah next time.
