TWIS #15 Milestone

This week in science we did a milestone. The milestone was called the "Marshmallow Challenge" which we did a couple times before. In the marshmallow challenge we were put in groups of 4, and given a paper bag with materials such as spaghetti, a marshmallow and tape. The point of the marshmallow challenge is to make the tallest sculpture with the materials you are given BUT, the marshmallow is suppose to sit on top of the sculpture without making it fall. My group and i did not do too well at first but, then we got the hang of it and we did ok. We definitely used a lot of tape and we were afraid the marshmallow was going to fall but, we helped each other out and it actually stood up.

I felt really different when i did the marshmallow challenge this time because i felt like i helped more than i did before and i got along better with my partners. It also went more smoother this time because we all know each other better, and were more comfortable than before. It was kinda hard to not talk but, we were able to write to each other but, that wasted a little bit of time so we started sketching how we want it to look and agreed that it would work out fine. While we were making the sculpture it was way harder than we thought and it didn't really come out the way we wanted it to but, it stood up without falling so we were happy about that.

This was our marshmallow challenge sculpture.

This was the sculpture when it was completed.

this is us building and trying new ways to make the sculpture.

TWIS #14

This week in science we have been going over things that will be on the region exams. We used this week mostly for review. We also made posters about different sources of energy. After we were done with the posters we had to present in groups in front of the class. My group and i had to make a poster on wind. We explained how wind can get polluted and how windmills work. We also labeled the different parts of a windmill and explained how each part worked.

Plankton | Tropical Marine Life DVD

TWIS #13

This week in science we made our spider habitat better. We planted some spinach and some mushroom. We also put in slices of orange for the fruit flies, we put in more fruit flies for the spider and we put more water. So, basically every living thing in the tank has something to live off of.  Lastly we sealed up the tank.
We just got our tanks back and we saw the condensation happened. There is water dripping down the sides of the tank and off the seal. This happened because there is no more air flowing through the tank so its humid inside the the tank, kind of like a rain forest.

This Week in science #12

This week in science i made something called a spider observation log. Everyday were suppose to record how the spider is doing. We also feed them genetic fruit flies. Genetic fruit flies are made so they can't fly. We also learned about producers, consumers, carnivores and herbivores. A producer makes its own food and the consumers eat the producers. Carnivores are meat eaters and herbivores are plant eaters. Another thing we learned about was mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism. Mutualism is when both animals are benefited, commensalism is when one animal benefits and nothing happens to the other and parasitism is when one animal benefits and the other animal gets affected.

TWIS #9

This week in science we learned about dissecting. First we learned a little bit about the animals by doing a background research on each organism. Then we chose which organism we were gonna dissect. My group  chose a mouse and a frog. My partner and i dissected the mouse. First we took pictures of the mouse then we had to make the cut a certain way, so we took our time with the scalpel. After we cut it open, we took some more pictures, looked at the organs and even took some out. We were told to draw out the dorsal,external and internal view of the organism.
I learned that some of the organisms were pregnant and some weren't. The organism me and my partner had was not but, it looked like an adult mouse. We had a hard time finding out the gender though. We guessed that is was a female but, we were wrong. It did not have any ovaries so we found out it was a male .

This Month In Science #10

This month in science we are working on creating a human impacts t-shirt design. He got a visit from a few people from the human impacts institute, and they showed us some examples of slogans and pictures to help people understand how were impacting the world. We made up our own slogans and created a design concept for our t-shirts. My group is focusing on how pollution and oil spills are impacting our ocean water. The slogan we came up with is "Water you gonna do when its gone?". We thought it was very simple and catchy. After that we came up with an illustration for the T-shirt. The illustration shows four glasses of water, under each cup is a year. This illustration shows how we will lose water as the years go by. Each of the four cups lose water every ten years(in our drawing:1997,2007,2017,2027). It goes from past to future and show that if we keep polluted the ocean, we won't have any water left.
This month in science we learned how slogans and pictures(about human impact) can either be about awareness or action. Some of the pictures we saw were boring and had too much writing of a boring picture. Most of the other ones had interesting pictures and catchy slogans. They were straight to the point and sent a great message to people. Something else that i learned about was how hydrofracking, oil spills, and pollution is damaging our ocean alot. Soon all the oceans will be contaminated and they'll be no fresh water left. Hopefully my groups poster will make people realize whats happening to our ocean water .