This Week In Science #15 ; Milestone.

 This week in science we did the marshmallow challenge and we learned a lot of things since the first time we did it. Also we did our introduction video for next year. We did the marshmallow challenge, that we had done 3 times in the year. The challenge of the activity was that we couldn't talk to each other, I though it was going to be hard but it turned out to be pretty easy. We build it and since we knew what went wrong the time before we used that to build a better tower. We had an AH! moment when they gave us post notes and we knew we could use that to make the tower stronger.The day after we did the marshmallow challenge we did a video, introducing ourselves to our next years teacher. We had to first build a script and then recorded it. It was funny to record it because Nazia was next to me and people kept passing by and distracting me, but I eventually finished it.

This week in science we learned a lot things. Like when we did the marshmallow challenge for the 3rd time. We learned how to make the structure of the tower hold the marshmallow and stay up high, we realized that we had to make it stronger by making it thicker. We used everything we could to make it hold up and we improved a lot since the first time. It was fun to be in our old group and interesting too. When David first told us we couldn't talk the first time I thought it was going to be hard but I learnend that since we already knew each other in the group it was easy to communicate without speaking. Working in groups for me is kind of hard because I don't like when people i'm in a group with don't do their work but it was really nice going back to my first group. I think we work together good because we know each other very well and also we are dedicated and know when its time to play and time to work. I think thats how our group did so good in the marshmallow challenge because we understand each other and we know when its time to work. I think to get to the point of being able to be in a group and do all your work and get good grades is by at least liking the person your working with and to be professional and focused on what you're doing, not fooling around and thats something I learned from this experiment. I really like the marshmallow challenge and I hope we can do it again next year and I wonder of its going to be hard since we'll be with a lot of different people.

This Year In Science - 10th grade intro video

This Week In Science #13

a) If we were to leave these spider habitat tanks sealed but removed all of the plants a few things would happen. The first thing would be that the spiders would die. The spider would die because they wouldn't have a source of oxygen and eventually all the carbon dioxide the spider is releasing would kill it because it wouldn't be able to breath.

This Week In Science #12

This week in science we learned and did many interesting things. We finally put our spider into our environment, we named ours Cudi. We made a little book where we put some definitions and we will be writing future observations about our spider and our spider's environment. It was really cool to feed the spider because we were able to see how he captured his pray.

We also learned things like what an energy pyramid is and the type of relationships animals have. We learned that at the bottom of an energy pyramid its always the sun and it is basically the opposite than a food chain because the arrow goes out from the thing that is being consumed showing that, that thing is giving energy to its consumer. We learned about the relationships some animals had with each other like, a mutualism relationship like a clownfish and an anemone, where they both benefit each other . A commensalism relationship like a barnacle's and a whales where one benefits and the other one doesn't get effected. And lastly a parasitism relationship like an alligator's and a leaches where one benefits and the other gets hurt from it.

This Week In Science #11

         This week in science we did a few things. We are beginning to prepare for getting a spider and observing how it does in the environment we built them. First David pot posters all over the room with different topics such as photosynthesis and plant cell, we had to tell what each thing was and place it on the poster. The next day after we did that but my group told me they went out and they collected things for the habitat and also took pictures. They also put all the things they collected into the tank we are going to put the spider in. We also collected information on cellar spiders, learning a lot of things about them.

Spider Habitat

           This week we learned a few things that are going to be useful in our spider habitat. We learned about cellar spiders, what they eat, where they like to leave , ect. We learned that cellar spiders are also called daddy long legs because of their long legs and even vibrating spiders because the way they vibrate when danger is near. When my team mates went out to collect things for the habitat they learned things like what animals used the plants. They also learned what things should be put inside and that plants wasn't a good idea because they would die.

This Month In Science #10

This month is science we did and learned many things, that mostly had to do with the impact we humans have on the world.We went out in the street and asked people questions about their daily habits, like how long the watched TV and how long they left their faucet running when brushing their teeth. Then, had people from the Human Impact Institute who helped us learn a lot about human impact. First we watched a couple of videos about human impact and things that had happened that effected the Earth. After that they showed us posters of human impact campaigns and we broke up into groups, which were transportation, water, energy and waste. We did an investigation where we found out how much energy things we used daily like cellphones used and how much we used in total.We came up with our slogan for the campaign we were going to work on and began drawing sketches of what our posters would look like. Lastly we started drawing our poster in poster size paper and making it pop would with Sharpe markets and we will soon make those designs into t shirts.

We learned a lot of things this month, and many things that will be good for us to know so we can help the environment. Going out and surveying strangers was a good experience because we learned alot of things, such as how Earth friendly people where and how they effected the Earth.We also did an investigation trying to see how much energy our cellphones used by multiplying the watts they used and the hours we used them and we found out that we used alot of energy and that was good to know. After that people from the Human Impact Institute came and showed us many videos and campaign posters about human impact and we learned alot from it. We saw a video about a guy that by becoming Earth friendly made his life better and another that showed a bunch of dirty water taking over the Hudson river and how fast it moved. We saw posters with pictures that encouraged people to be careful about the environment and we brainstormed ways we effected the environment and things that effected it. We broke up into groups such as energy, water, waste and transportation. I was in the transportation group and we had create a poster. We made a poster that showed how good carpooling was for the world, our logo was " Grab a ride, Save the world." We drew a picture of superman carrying a bus of carpoolers to show how by grabbing a ride you too could save the world. By doing that we learned how to draw good and neat drawings that were easy to understand and that caught peoples attention. We started drawing our poster and we learned from professional people what we should do to make the drawing better. I'm really looking forward to having our design in t-shirts.

Human Impact Ad campaign

our sketches 

This is a picture of superman and spiderman " grabbing a ride" and "saving the world(mother earth)"

We drew many pictures and even separated in different groups. My group and i ( jasmine, Anna and me) decided we wanted something that would catch peoples attention, and who wouldn't love a poster with their favorite superheroes. We though that since superheroes were always saving the world, we could make them actually save the world ( mother earth) by helping a group of carpoolers get out of a jam, you can see this in the second picture. I really loved this idea because superman and spiderman are my favorite super heroes, but there's a little twist to it. Instead of their original logo on the chest, superman has a earth logo and spiderman has a tree logo, that goes out a lot like his original spider logo. We really hope we can go on with this idea and encourage people to " grab a ride, and save the world" by carpooling. We started working on it since the beginning , thats why the first picture of our drafts ( 1st picture) isn't very good and detailed. I'm really enjoying this project because we are helping advertise  carpooling to save the world and drawing.

This Week In Science #9

This week in science we did many things from research to dissecting. First we drew and dissected two small animals, we had to chose ether the giant grasshoper or a crawfish, we chose a crawfish. Than we researched another animal , we had to research a skate, a frog , a mouse and a fish. We chose to do a frog because we didn't want to do any sea animals because they smelled too strong . First we had to examine our frog and draw it and take pictures of its exterior . The next day we dissected the frog. We had to be very careful not to cut through the organs so we could examine them and take pictures of the insides..

We learned a lot this week and even though it was disgusting , it was very interesting. We learned a lot of the organisms we dissected. I learned what the inside of a frog looked like , and even though it smelled disgusting it was interesting to be able to dissect it . We also learned how to manage the tools for cutting and how to cut the animal with out piercing any of its organs. I really liked it because even though It had me gaging we could observe how amazing the inside of an animal looks like. We learned what the dorsal view ( view from the top ) and the ventral view ( view of the bottom ) of an animal.  One thing that was really interesting was that in the frog the lungs where behind the liver , you couldn't even see them with out lifting up the liver! I really don't want to dissect anything anymore because Im scarred of the disgusting smell.


While I dissected the frog my other table mates dissected a mouse, even though the two animals are completely different there were many things that where the almost the same. One orgasm that has the same function but is different in both animals is the large intestine, while its yellow on the frog its pink in the mouse. When dissecting we removed the heart of the frog and only a few drops of blood came out while when we removed the heart of a mouse a lot of blood came out, even though they were basically the same size. In both organisms the liver covered the lungs but only in the mouse it covered the heart because in the frog it was right between the two parts of liver.

This Week In Science #8

Side View

Dorsal View

This week in science we did many things. We started to dissecting  animals  some of us dissected a cray fish others dissected a giant grass hopper. We had to draw the animals first , we drew the dorsal view which is how the animal looks from the top , we also drew the ventral view which is how the animal looks upside down. A proximal is something that is closer to the center of the animals body for example the place where the legs and the body connect. A distal view is the place in the animals body that is not close to the center for example the end of one of the legs of the cray-fish. We dissected the cray-fish starting from the posterior part of the cray-fish ( tail ) to the anterior part ( head). It was really nasty not because of the insides but because of the smell it was very hard to cut it open with out gagging. We look pictures and analyzed some very important feature of the cray-fish the its gills , which where really weird.

This week in science we learned a lot of things. We learned the parts of the cray-fish like the dorsal view, ventral view, proximal and the distal parts of the cray-fish . We also learned words for things like butt which is posterior and head which is anterior . It was really nasty because when we opened the cray-fish up it smelled really strong and it was hard not to get sick. One thing that was really interesting was the gills on the cray-fish .

This week in science # 5

       This week in science was really interesting and fun. We did many things, from launching rockets to studying crickets! First we had to finish our Rocket investigation which consisted on building rockets using straws as the bodies, index cards for the fins and molding clay for the nose of the rockets. It was really fun because after we did that we got to launch the rockets across the hall. Also we observed animal behavior videos on youtube, some of them were really funny. After we saw the videos we started to observe crickets and even tho they were nasty it was interesting to observe them.




      I learned a lot this week both from the rocket investigation and from the crickets. One of the things I learned from the rocket investigation was that wings and weight of the nose ( tip ) of the rocket really effected how far it went and that was really interesting because during our research all the articles we read said that wings didn't effect the distance but the stability of the rocket. Also while observing crickets we saw many things. One thing that was interesting was that our crickets weren't chirping and a lot of our class mate's crickets were. I wonder why our crickets didn't chirp? Also there were a lot of dead crickets in our container with the crickets, I wonder what happened to them? This week in science we did and learned a lot, but I still have a lot of questions about some things.

This Week In Science #4

                             This week in science we did and learned many things . One of the things we did was that we finished our plant investigation . We also started planning our investigation write up and we created the list for our project planning that helped us figure out what we had to do . In our investigation write up i had to write the hypothesis , draw the experimental set-up and write the variables . Something that we realized this week in science was that when you conduct an investigation the investigation ether our data collected supports or doesn't support our hypothesis , not that our hypothesis right or wrong . 

                                  This week we also learned how to do many things . We learned how to set-up an investigation write up with out an outline and what we needed to have in the write up . Also we how to write a conclusion even tho we didn't get to finish them . Also we learned what graph was best to plot our data and the graph that best suited our data was a line graph because  we were measuring the growth of our Brassica rapa in days . We spent most of the week doing our experiment write-up and we learned a lot about it .

investigation write - up

Our graph and data on our experimental setup

This Week In Science #3 .

     This week in science we did and learned many things . Some of the things we did was we looked at our plants and we recorded how much they grew since the day we had planted them . I had to draw pictures and record their measurements . We also wrote our testable question and our hypothesis. During our data recording we discovered something that proved my hypothesis to be false . I realized that even if you planted the seeds of the brassica rapa deep in the bottom of the cup it would still grow . This week we also wrote procedures of how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so we could we ready to write our procedures of how to collect data for our plant investigation . The last thing we did in this week was that we went around the room and surveyed people on their favorite basketball team and created a circle chart with the data , the chart didn't come out as planed though .

    This week we also learned many things . One of the things we learned was our driving question and what we needed to know , like the " if ... then ... because " format . During our data collecting we also learned that if you plant brassica rapa seeds at the bottom of a cup it will still grow at almost at the same speed of the seeds planted in the middle and top , that was very interesting . We also learned how to make good procedures for our plant data collection and how detailed we had to be . During the time when we surveyed the class about their favorite basketball team we also learned many things . Some of the things we learned was that we should have only have a few teams instead of giving people the option to chose any team because it was really difficult for us to graph all the data collected . We did and learned a lot this week , and what we learned will help us in the future because we realized many things that where small but effected what we did big time .

This Week In Science #2

This week in science we did many things . We did many things relating to our second plant investigation. First we did an observation on poppers and how the the way the looked effected how high they went when we popped them . Then we did research on the plant called Brassica Rapa . We also did a lot of things relating to independent and dependent variables . We created questions about the Brassica Rapa and we created an experimental set up for the plant investigation . Lastly , after creating the setup we planted our Brassica Rapas and that's what we did this week in science.

            We learned many things this week in science . We learned how variables effected the results of an observation . Also we learned a lot about the Brassica Rapa . We learned that the Brassica Rapa is a fast growing plant used for many things , such as food . We also learned how things like the amount of water to give to a plant , the amount of soil , the number of seeds , how much sunlight and how deep you plant the seed can effect the growth of a plant . Things that can be changed in an investigation are called independent variables , and that what is effected by the independent variable , such as how tall the plant grows or how fast it grows is called the dependent variable .

This Is A Picture Of A Brassica Rapa .

This Picture Shows What We Did The Week .