Scimatics – Page 2 – Jay's World

The World of Atoms!

March 10, 2018 Jessie B Comments 0 Comment

What a strange world we live in! Everything we touch, see, smell, and even our own bodies are made up of atoms. Atoms are microscopic things that join together to make up EVERYTHING!

The world of atoms is a strange and somewhat unknown place. Some of the things we know about atoms are how they bond with each other to create new substances and how they react.

An example of this is when you mix baking soda (NaHCO₃) and vinegar (CH₃COOH) together. Hopefully when you were a child or if you are a child you got/get the chance to make a volcano using those ingredients. When you mix the two it starts to fizz and bubble over. This is because those two are reacting.

Another thing we learned about was how to draw these atoms. We do this by drawing Bohr models.

This is a water molecule represented in a Bohr model. The dots are the electrons that each of them has and where they are connected is how they have bonded. This makes it very easy to understand.

The Project

After learning so much about atoms and all the elements that can be made we moved on to the project! We had to make a video about how atoms bond together, but we had to give each element a character. Our driving question was;

How do atoms and ions act like characters?

Now you are probably wondering, HOW? How do they act like characters they are just tiny dots. Well, you’d be surprised. Atoms come together to form elements and those elements react to different circumstances. Quite like a person.

An example our teacher showed us in class was the reaction between sodium and water. When you drop a chunk of sodium in water the sodium floats around on the top and fizzes around. It also catches fire right on top of the water. Here is a video of it that I found.

The Video

So now the video. The video was a partner project. My partner was Maggie. Our video was an animation. The story was about an atom named Neon who was starting up a law firm. The video is a series of interviews and how the company grew. Here is the video.

So the video, in my opinion, was a success story wise. In terms of the science, it was a little lacking. We didn’t get top marks on it because not all the necessary info was there. We had to show the process of ionic bonding and the process of covalent bonding. We did have some of those bonds in there but the actual process was not shown.

However, we did some revisions and got good marks in the end.

Here was the feedback we got from our teacher. ^^^

I really enjoyed this project. It was really fun and my partner was very great to work with. Thanks, Maggie! I really liked how our video turned out in the end and I’m proud of it. However, I would definitely change some things using the feedback we got if we did a project similar to this again.

I really learned a lot from this project but the most important thing I learned was, never trust atoms, they make up everything. I hope that chemistry joke got a good reaction. See ya next time!

– Jessie✌️

ROAD TRIP!!… it’s not real

February 26, 2018 Jessie B Comments 0 Comment

This term in math class we had to plan a road trip. The road trip had to start in New York and end in New York. Then we had to budget out how much it would cost. We had 10,000$ to spend and we had to spend a minimum of 9500$.

Where to travel!

I went through a lot of different trip options, from short trips to long trips. But in the end, I decided to make a giant round trip!

The Math

We have been learning about linear equations in math class and that is how we did this project. We had to make a linear equation to calculate how much we would spend on any given amount of days.

My trip lasted 20 days and I drove an 8 person Cadillac Escalade Hybrid. I was traveling alone but I really wanted the space, also since I have the money to spend why not use it to be comfortable.

The Cadillac was 98$ a day and for the whole trip, it cost me 207$ in gas. The equation for this was 95x + 207. 98 and 207 are the constant and x is the variable. Then we just add 20 in place of x for the length of my trip and you have what the car will cost.

You can then go and put in any number to see you long your trip could last.

For accommodation, I stayed in hotel rooms which cost me 100$ a night. Food cost me 100$ a day. For that equation, it is the same thing only you add 100+100 and then put it in. 200x + 75. You might be wondering what the 75 is for. Well, it is the cost of luggage. I chose the high-quality duffle bags. So now 200 and 75 are the invariable and x is the variable.

Then again you put in 20 for the amount of days and then you get the total.

NY – New Haven

The first city I went to was New Haven. It was about a two-hour drive. I stayed for 2 days in a hotel and visited the Yale University Art Gallery and the New Haven Green.

New Haven – Manchester US

Then I drove about 3 and a half hours to Manchester US. I stayed for 3 days in a hotel and visited the Currier Museum of Art and the science center.

Manchester US – Burlington Vermont

Next on the trip list is Burlington Vermont. I drove around two hours and stayed in a hotel for 3 days. While I was there I went to Lake Champlain, ECHO Lake Aquarium, and Science Center and Vermont State House.

Burlington Vermont – Watertown

Next stop! Watertown. I drove 3 hours. For 3 nights I stayed in a hotel. When I was there I visited the Public Square, Sci-Tech Museum which is for kids but I got myself in because of my height, and I went to the Thompson Park Zoo and Conservancy.

Watertown – Buffalo

A 4-hour drive later and I’m in Buffalo! I stayed there for 3 days and visited Delaware Park, the Buffalo Zoo and the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens.

Buffalo – Cleveland

Another three-hour drive and I’m in Cleveland. I stayed there for three days and visited the Rock and Roll hall of fame, the Cleveland Museum of arts, and the house from A Christmas Story.

Cleveland – Washington D.C

The last stop on my trip was Washington D.C. It was the longest drive at around 8 hours. I stayed for three days and visited the White House, and I fulfilled my dreams of being in Night at the museum and went to the National Museum of Natural History and went to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

Back to new york!

At the end of my trip, I drove back to new york where the trip ended. It was a fun trip and I spend loads of money on food, gas, and accommodation. For the whole trip, I ended up spending 2,167$ on gas and car rentals and 4,075$ on food and hotels. The total was 6,242$. The problem was I still had 3,258$ left so I bought a Blue Staffy Puppy for 2,800$ at the end of my trip. I still had 458$ so I bought 9 bunnies for 50$ each. With 8 dollars left I bought 8$ natural toothpaste because having clean teeth is very important!

To bad this trip wasn’t real… until next time!

– Jessie🌈

Neighbourhood the Game.

November 11, 2017 Jessie B Comments 0 Comment

Its a game everyone should have on their shelf. It’s a two-person game that’s great for couples, to play with a friend or to play with your cat if you have no friends! It’s Neighbourhood! By Jessie! That’s me.

In math class, our project was to make a card game that involved math. It had to include order of operations and exponents which we learned recently in class.

Then we got to work. My first thoughts when I thought of card math card games was Pokemon and blackjack. In class, our teacher showed us the game Hearthstone to give us an idea of what the project should look like.

The first thing I started with was the characters. I had an idea of how I wanted it to work so I started to make characters. My plan was to make generic people with generic names and then give them powers. That’s, where I got the name, Neighborhood from. Imagine all these people living in a culdesac and living generic lives but they have powers.

Making the cards was really fun. First I drew the template in sketches pro on my iPad. Then I took that photo and put it in pages on my computer. That’s where I wrote the powers. I used photoshop on my laptop to make the cover of the rule book and the box.

This is the original photo to see it in colour. Our school doesn’t have a colour printer so I had to print it black and white.

Making this project was so much fun. I love card games and board games and any kind of game you can play with other people and I loved that I got to make my own! This was one of the best math projects I’ve ever done and I hope we get to do more like this.

Until next time!

-Jessie🙃

Rise of the Frankenstuffies

November 6, 2017 Jessie B Comments 0 Comment

For the past month or so we have been working on a project called Frankenstuffy. The name is pretty self-explanatory but if you don’t know what it is then I will tell you. Frankenstuffy is a mix of the works Frankenstein and stuffy. We had to create a video project about a stuffy that changed to look like another animal.

During this project, we read the book The Martian by Andy Weir. Some of you might know it as the movie with Matt Damon. The book is about a man who gets stranded on Mars and has to survive. That’s all I’m saying so go read the book its good. During our reading discussions, we had the driving question, Who is in charge, humans or the environment? Every time we had a class discussion environment is would always win. But the real thing that was in control was the potatoes. Read the book and you will understand.

The book is written in the form of epistolary stories or journal entries. For example day 126 I’m still stranded on this island. After reading the book we took the epistolary style of writing and wrote our own story about an animal that lives in a certain location of Canada and how it adapted to its changing surroundings caused by a matter cycle of our choice. E.g Nitrogen cycle or Carbon cycle. This project incorporates both grade nine humanities about Canada and science.

The way our animal had to adapt was by adding something another animal in that area had. Thus making it a Frankenstuffie!

We made multiple drafts of our work. First, it started with the epistolary stories that needed to have 6 episodes.

I’m gonna give you little snippets of the story so you can see how it changed. It’s a lot of writing to read the whole thing and I don’t want to spoil the final video!

Then once those where approved we could move onto the script. Which was to help us with our video.

Then after that was approved we made a storyboard for writing down shots when filming.

The storyboard is meant to give people a visual understanding of the story without being a stop motion. But not all storyboards need to be for others to understand. Everyone has a different way of thinking so to some people my storyboard won’t make any sense but it does the trick for me.

Then we made our video! Here is the final result and I hope you enjoy!

When it came to the making of the video I used multiple tools. I used Pages to write all of my stories. I used Explain Everything for most of my video to animate my stuffie and iMovie to put it all together and add music and sound effects.

This was a really fun project and I learned a lot. I hope you enjoyed my video because I enjoyed making it!