Category: Scimatics

The WinderWow!

Welcome to the world of the WinderWow! This is a product my friend and I created in science class. The goal of this project was to create something that generated energy from either water or wind. No solar panels, and no help from humans to create the energy. We created the WinderWow which is a mini wind mill that can charge up to 7 phones a day! So, heres the video we made to advertise our product!

THE VIDEO

MIND MAP!

Heres a classic science class mind map to show some things I learnt!

CURRICULAR COMPETENCIES!

This project was really challenging as our product had to go through many prototypes, and many revisions. Something I would fix if I was to revise this video would be to fix my wording from watts per day to watt hours because well… Watts per day and Watts per hour doesn’t exist! So, what am I proud of? This is where the circular competencies come in!

REASONING AND MODELLING: I had to thoroughly analyze and apply Scientific ideas to this project as thats what the whole goal if it is! I had to visualize my ideas and use everything I had to make them real. I went out of my comfort zone and came up with an idea (the model magic around the handle) that no one else had done and tested and revised it until it was good.

UNDERSTANDING AND SOLVING: To hand in a project that actually makes sense, I had to understand the science of the project. I did this through taking notes and questioning myself in the beginning of the unit. Here are some of my notes…

COMMUNICATING AND REPRESENTING: In the video we explain why we created the WinderWow, and why it’s important. Through advertising techniques we communicate the message we want to get through in the video! We use scientific vocabulary to make sure we can convince the buyers and our teacher!

CONNECTING AND REFLECTING: I engaged myself in the problem solving this project. An example is when our wind mill wouldn’t move because of the off balance centre, I started testing things we could do to fix it. I tried so many things but the thing that ended up working was adding weight on the end of 3/8 of the propellers!

Overall, this project was fun yet challenging and taught me a lot about something we see everyday, ENERGY!

Kevin!

For this math project, I created a character named Kevin who needed to find a phone plan that works for his busy and travelling schedule. Kevin needs 6 GB per month, out of country roaming, and unlimited calls/texts. I found plans for Bell, Telus and Rogers that were all very similar, included the same data etc… But Kevin needs to know which is the cheapest!

This is where the equation y + mx + b comes in… To find the cheapest plan for Kevin short and long term we had to do some math to find the intercept points. Where the intercept points are, is where the plan costs are the same. We solved these graphically and algebraically.

THE MATH

The data for the math of the project!
The equation…
Solving graphically
Solving algebraically!

With all that math out of the way, we learned if Kevin needed to leave the country for under 5 days per month, TELUS was the way to go. If he left the country for more than 5 days, ROGERS is the winner.

CIRCULAR COMPETENCIES!

UNDERSTANDING, AND SOLVING: The math for slope intercepts confused me a lot at the start. It took me a while to fully understand what it all means. This took a lot of practice and studying. Once I understood it, I made sure to solve the equation aka the driving question for this project. I feel this is the main competency I used for this project as it was a lot of Math, determination, and brain power!

CONNECTING AND REFLECTING: I used mistakes I made in the math process as learning opportunities and always made sure to learn how to fix them. I connected the project to a real world thing people have to decide, which is phone plans with out of country roaming. I feel the character Kevin also made the project more humanized, and relatable as all PLP students ms will be Kevin once we are kicked off our parents phone plans :D.

COMMUNICATING AND REPRESENTING: The keynote I made I think fully represented the math I did, in a visually nice way. I communicated the project well, and didn’t have a script because I knew the math and topic well. I justified the math in my project when questioned if it was correct, and revised anything needed to be fixed.

Overall, I think this is my best project this year and I’m proud of myself for understanding and doing this project!

Can Cousins Be Twins?

This unit in science we were focusing on answering the driving question through an animated video. What is the driving question you ask?

“CAN COUSINS BE TWINS?”

Odd question, I know. My partner for the project Alivia and I started brainstorming on how we were going to answer this in a story type way. We decided we wanted the storyline to be about a woman who has her daughter and niece with her, and can’t figure out who’s who. This was a funny and partially “realistic” approach to this project. We first wrote the script…

The script for the video!

Then starting making the video. This was a time consuming time we I had to draw all the charecters, do the animations themselves and edit. Alivia and I split this mostly evenly, and got to work. I used keynote and iMovie to make the video, and used Alivia’s sciency animations.

The stars of the video!

And finally, here is the video. I’m really happy with it. We get all the facts we need to get across while having an interesting story. I loved this project and learnt so much about twins!

Here is the video and a mind map of the information I learnt!