Science 9

Mutation Story

alexr2015
  • What questions did you need to research in order to create your mutation story?

I asked what Kniest Syndrome was, first of all. I knew absolutely nothing about the disease, so asking what it was seemed like a good start. After that, I asked what symptoms can appear if you have Kniest Syndrome, and “cures for Kniest Syndrome”.

  • What new or familiar digital tools did you try to use as you worked through this project?

Google is possibly the most familiar “tool” at my disposal, so of course I would use it. Google was used to find things like videos, articles, and webpages on Kniest Syndrome.

  • What was the process you used to investigate the topic?

I read up on Kniest Syndrome as much as I could. I didn’t want to write the short story as I studied up on the disease. Writing a story on something that you’re learning about at the same time is like trying to eat your cheeseburger and drink some pop at the same time. It never ends well and you’ll probably be unsatisfied at what happens in the end. I speak from experience, as disappointing as that is.

  • How did you verify and cite the information you found?

I cited all of my websites below this post. I checked multiple websites to see if they were all the same. If multiple websites were talking bout the same thing, and things like “abnormal skleletal growth” and “problems with hearing” were on those websites, I would know that they’re correct.

  • How did the process of completing this challenge go? What could you have done better?

I feel like that I rushed the end. I could have started working on it earlier, like when it was assigned on Monday, but I didn’t start working on it until Wednesday. But that’s me with all my work. I end up procrastination and I don’t start the assignment until there’s only a couple days left between me and the due date.

Citations:

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/kniest-dysplasia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoliosis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoliosis

Now this is my story…

—————————————————————————

 

Kniest Syndrome.

That’s what I was called. I never had a name. I was simply a section in a very, very long code of DNA in chromosome 12. A part of me was different from all the other genes of my host, Oscar. That’s what he’s called. A small part, a very small part of me was different from the other genes. I’ve asked around with the other genes in chromosome 12, they say they’ve seen this problem before. Other genes have had the same problem as me. But absolutely no one knows how it happens. It’s happened for as long as any gene can remember.

Braus_1921_84

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Braus_1921_84.png#filelinks] Licence here

If you want the science of it, Kniest Syndrome doesn’t actually make my host shorter. It messes with my host’s growth of bones. His limbs can grow abnormally large or small, his spine can even grow in an interesting direction. People’s spines grow straight up, kinda like a tree trunk. Oscar’s spine grows up, deviates to his right side, and comes back to the center in the end. His spine looks sort of like a reverse C. With this, his rib cage is also offset a bit. I drew something that kinda looks like his spine on the right

I don’t affect just his bones. Well, actually I do, but when my genes mess with his bones, other things go wrong too. He needs glasses, because his sight is poor, and it’s all because of me and my Kniest Syndrome. I also caused his hearing problems, and it’s not because he listens to music with the headphones at max volume, or that he plays drums without ear protection, It’s because of me.

The whole thing doesn’t affect me, all that much. It’s my host Oscar, who suffers because of me. Because of me, he’s short. Not just 5’5” short, more like 4’9” short. He’s in his early 30s, and his wife Jamie got a job opportunity in Seattle. His family had to move from Toronto to Seattle. So he’s been looking for a new one for a couple of months now.

Whenever he meets someone for the first time, he always hears a short joke. He’s so abnormally short, that it’s somehow impossibly tempting to say something like “You look taller in your pictures” or whatever. He hears it every time (Or he doesn’t, I wouldn’t know).

At least, there’s been some good things that have come out of his shortness. Everyone thinks he’s adorable. Even his kids. He has two sons, and they both love LEGO to literal pieces. With his shortness, he seems like one of them, which the kids seem to like. He always plays LEGO with them because he’s secretly a child on the inside. His oldest son is nine, and his other son is going into kindergarten next year.lolol

I feel like I could have destroyed his life. I’m sure I could have. He would be abnormally short, he would probably be the butt of everyone’s jokes, he could fall into some depression and commit suicide because he was bullied at school for being so short. All of that, for simply being shorter. It’s happened before.

But the cool thing is, he wasn’t.

Oscar lives a happy life because he has people to look towards if he ever needs support. When he was a kid, people thought his short height was super cool. His friends were always so protective of him. Every day, he came home to a loving family, his wife and two kids. He would play LEGO with his kids, he would always talk with his friends over Skype as they played League of Legends, and he would always tell his wife, before they went to bed, that he loved her. Every night. He never forgot. Not even once.

I think he was pretty lucky to have such an awesome life.

 

My Day With the Drug Loo (Take Your Kid to Work Day)

alexr2015

So yeah, Take Your Kid to Work Day was yesterday. I went to my mom’s work on Wednesday. My mom works with the CBSA office down town in the intelligence division. I think.

Anyway, she thought that her little office building was boring, so instead, she sent me to the airport. And what’s at the airport? CBSA, or Canadian Border Services Agency. Basically, a bunch of officers showed us around the airport. We saw how the xray machines worked, and we saw two detector dogs. One of them, a small beagle was trained to find marijuana, and another one, a Labrador, was trained to find money of at least 5000 in someone’s luggage, or more precisely, ink. We were also shown how a “secondary inspection” would go down. Basically, when someone flies into the airport, the first people to greet them is the PIL, the primary inspection line. This line of people would basically question passengers entering Canada about their trip. What did the passenger do there, how long were they there, things like that. This is so they know that they are legitimate people who really were on a vacation, and they aren’t trying to smuggle something into Canada or whatnot. Only takes less than a minute, and if they seem legit, they’re sent on their way. If they seem nervous, they would go to secondary inspection where they would get a closer look at the passenger.

The CC (Chemical Change) in a Bag

alexr2015

I am waiting for my partners to send me photos and videos of the lab.

SCIENCE 9: Bag of Change

 

PREFACE:

In this activity, you will mix 3 unknown substances together in a bag and observe the changes that occur noting chemical change and physical change. Observation skills are crucial for this investigation.   Watch for changes in state (solid, liquid, gas), colour (use noun-colour description), volume (mL), temperature, and anything else you can detect.   Do not smell any of this substances please.

 

MATERIALS:   PLEASE NOTE WHMIS LABELS AND ACCORDINGLY SAFETY

·        Chemical A (a white solid)

·        Chemical B (a white solid)

 ·        Chemical C (a blue liquid)

·        50 mL graduated cylinders

 ·        Plastic bag

·        goggles

 

 

PROCEDURES:    GOGGLES ARE DONNED & NOT REMOVED UNTIL LAB CONCLUSION!!!!

  1. Add one spoonful of Chemical A on the left side of the ziplock bag. Describe and record the properties for Chemical A.  Add 1 spoonful of Chemical B on the right side of the ziplock bag.  Do not mix the chemicals.  Look and describe Chemical C.  Record your observations in the spaces provided below. Observations may include the colour or state of each chemical. Add a photograph of each Chemical in second row below.

 

Chemical A (Sodium bicarbonate) Chemical B (Calcium chloride) Chemical C (Bromothymol blue)
Looks like a white powder. They are not transparent. The bag weighed 11.15 grams

 

 

 

 

 The chemical looks a lot like white rock candies. They are solid and are not transparent. The bag with the two chemicals weighed 11.5 grams. It is a blue liquid. It is stored inside a glass bottle, that seems to have been stained blue on the inside by the liquid. The mixture of chemicals inside the bag weighed about 11.58

 

  1. Mix Chemical A with Chemical B in the ziplock bag. Record observations.  Add 10 mL of chemical C into a plastic bag.  QUICKLY remove as much air as possible and then seal it up.
  2. In the first 30 seconds, squeeze the bag in various places to mix the chemicals.
  3. Detect any temperature changes with your hand.
  4. Record as many observations as you can. After 2 minutes record any new observations.
  5. Add at least two photographs of your ziplock bag.

 

 

 

 

Observations:

 

Chemical A has seemed to simply coat chemical B in the white powder.

Once I added chemical C, it looked like a virus infecting an organ system. Chemical C made contact with Chemical A and B, then the white powder slowly turned yellow. The temperature changed and seemed somewhat warm in my hands as the reaction was taking place.

 

 
PHOTGRAPHS
  1. When you are finished, wash all the chemicals down the drain and rinse out the plastic bag.
  2. What evidence of chemical change did you observe in the bag? What physical changes did you see?

I didn’t see any type of physical change, but the powder did turn yellow when it made contact with the blue chemical.

 

 

POST THIS LAB ON YOUR EDUBLOG

BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR VIDEO!!

 

 

The Laundry Detergent Lab (I’ll post pictures and videos later tonight)

alexr2015

Cleaning Detergent Lab

 

Aim

To find out which laundry detergent has the best cleaning power.

Hypothesis

Which laundry detergent has the best cleaning power?

Prediction

Tide will have the best cleaning power (Stan believes that Woolite is for more delicate clothing like silk. Our rags are certainly not silk).

 

Materials

Five pieces of approx. 5x5cm rags stained with dirt, five beakers, five glass rods, tape (To label beakers), red sharpie, thumbtacks, 4 kinds of detergent, water, stopwatch.

 

Procedure

First, cut out 5x5cm pieces out of a dirty rag. Fill five beakers with 250mL of water, then add 5 drops of different detergent to each one. After that, label each beaker according to the detergent in it. Next, put one rag into each beaker and stir each one for 70 seconds. Let them sit in the water for 10 minutes. Finally, take the rags out of their beakers and pin them up to dry over the weekend.


 

Observations

  • Water(1): When the rag entered the water and was stirred, the water seemed to become dirtier. Pieces of fabric and dirt are falling off of the rag.
  • Ultra(2): The water looks very clean and transparent. No dirt is falling off of the rag. Only pieces of fabric. The water seems to be turning to a tint of red. We assume it is because of the Sharpie.
  • Sunlight(3): The water is much more dirty than the rest of the test subjects. Like swamp water, it is not see-through. Many dirt particles are falling off, but there are very little pieces of fabric.
  • Tide(4): The water is reddish-brown, which we think is the result of both the dirt and Sharpie washing off.
  • Woolite(5): The water is dirty, but not as dirty as Sunlight and Tide. The rags are pinned up and drying, and currently the rag that was washed with just water seems the cleanest.

Photos and Videos

IMG_1911             IMG_1915                IMG_1918

Conclusion

The rags are now dry. Comparing the before and after pictures, we observe that sample three (Sunlight) and sample five (Woolite) are the cleanest. I believe that Woolite did the best job.

 

Interesting Questions

  • Would another detergent work better on a different stain, like coffee or berries?
  • Would the results differ if we had stirred each sample in the glass longer? Shorter?
  • Did the material of the sample affect the results significantly? Would the results be different if we used something cotton, and not a towel?

 

 

slava.bagh@gmail.com

kidalex18@gmail.com

legend3546@gmail.com

juliana@waterbyte.net

Playing with “Ooblek” (Or, “The Riddle of the Solid Liquid”)

alexr2015

“Ooblek”. My science teacher, Mr. Horton said. “Real messy stuff. Don’t get it on your clothes, that’s all I ask. I want you guys to experiment with the Ooblek, and answer one question,” I was sure I could answer any question that Mr. Horton threw at me, and if not, I’ll simply do a quick google search.

“Is the Ooblek a liquid, or a solid?”

A liquid that can become a solid. I was skeptical at first. I’ve heard of stories of a liquid that could suddenly change it’s physical state, although I’ve never actually seen such a thing. Other kids say they have, but I haven’t. They’re all baffled at me. Our teacher, Mr. Horton, put all of us into groups of four. With me was Juliana, my partner for my last lab, TJ, and Patrick. Mr. Horton gave each group of four one bag of cornstarch. Patrick grabbed a graduated cylinder and poured exactly 45ml of water into the bag. Patrick violently shook the bag to mix the contents before setting it on the ground. Before we poured the substance onto the table, we poked it while it was inside the bag. I couldn’t say I was amazed at first. It certainly looked like a liquid. I poked at it, and sure enough, it reacted like a liquid, flowing away from my finger. TJ dived right in, and slammed the bag.

It didn’t move.

Kay, that’s a bit odd. We poured it out of the bag and onto the table. It had the appearance of pancake mix. I know the sight of pancake mix well, for my dad makes it for breakfast at least every other week. We were all looking at each other, wondering who would touch it first. I took one for the team, and poked at it. It was cold, and, gooey (I know “gooey” is a terrible word to describe something, but just go with it, please). I immediately tried to pull my finger away, but the “liquid” held my finger there for a second. So it was sticky too. Eventually, all of us started poking at it. I learned three things about it.

1. If you poke it slowly, it’s a liquid.
2. If you poke at it really quickly, it hardens up on you.
3. It’s insanely hard to get off of your clothes (One of my friends was such a victim, getting Ooblek on her black pants).

We all ended up getting our hands covered in it. I tried to make a ball from th Eventually I smelled it, and frankly, it smelled disgusting. I have a weak stomach so eventually I had to stop my fun with the Ooblek, cause my lunch was threatening to come up.

 

So I’ve written all of this, but now, I need to come to a conclusion. Is “Ooblek” a solid? Or a liquid? I believe that can be either a solid, or a liquid. “But Alex, that’s cheating! You need to pick one!” I can hear people say that now. Well, Ooblek is a mixture of a solid (Cornstarch) and a liquid (Water). In the beginning, when we mixed the two together, it was mainly a liquid. But if we hit it fast enough, it seemed solid. It’s simply a liquid with solid characteristics.

But later, when we were playing with it, I noticed something. TJ had a handful of Ooblek, and said that he wanted more water so he could keep moulding his Ooblek. That’s when I realized something. The Ooblek is made up of cornstarch and water, but you need the water to keep on using the Ooblek. Eventually, if you keep playing with the Ooblek, the water will disappear, then you’re only left with wet cornstarch. And what is cornstarch?

A SOLID.

So hopefully, this explains my reasoning on why I think that Ooblek is a solid and a liquid. I want to clarify that I’m not saying that Ooblek is both, I’m saying that Ooblek can switch between the two physical states.

Simple. As. That.

– Alex