Category Archives: Grade 11

Poetry 11 final project

Posted on by
Reply

Image result for wealth and poverty

 

Crossing train tracks

I look ahead towards the distant road

The teasing tracks that separate our class

The slums beside enhance the gloomy sky

While the villas across the tracks do glow

Few have the right but some have the privilege

Do they not know the tingle of hunger?

And do inquire the source of their next meal?

The ample discrepancies separate,

Yet they bring assortment to turn us whole

I didn’t choose my meager ancestry,

I thought as I walk and a train had passed,

Visualising a greater tomorrow,

To outdo heritage is to cross tracks

 

Analysis

Crossing train tracks is a poem written by Colin Penk in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) that explores themes of social class.  The poem describes a town, separated by train tracks that has a rich side on one side of the tracks and a poor side on the other.  The speaker of the poem is from the poor part of town and is questioning hierarchical structures in society.

The poem starts off with the author describing the town.  He uses imagery to describe the difference between the rich and poor side; saying that the slums “enhance the gloomy sky” making the poor side of town seem really dark and eerie, contrary to the way the “villas across the tracks do glow”.  The tone of the poem is very discouraging.  The narrator finds it unfair how some people in this world are lucky and born into a rich family while others are unlucky and born into a poor family.  The end of the poem is a little more hopeful because the narrator thinks he can cross the tracks to the other side of town and to a better life.  The train tracks in this poem are a symbol for the obstacles that some people must overcome and cross in order to achieve a better, happier life.  However not everyone has as many obstacles due to some people being born into a higher social/economic class.

This poem illustrates how some people in this world are a lot luckier than others.  Sometimes one must do more and work harder than others in this world in order to get what they want and achieve their goals.  Colin Penk’s poem illustrates how much luckier some people are compared to others.  For example, the different life styles lived in Canada compared to an African third world country like Kenya.  But in the free world, anyone can do whatever they want if they work hard enough and put their mind to it.

 

 

Side Note: I was originally trying to write a sonnet but found it difficult to make a good poem in iambic pentameter that also had to rhyme.

Week 18 – Top 5 Things I Learned in Pre-Calculus 11

Posted on by
Reply

(In no particular order)

  1. Solving quadratics: The skills I have acquired learning how to solve quadratics has helped me tremendously in all aspects of my math skills.  Learning how to factor has helped me not only in this unit, but the majority of the semester since it is one of the most useful skills in Math.  As well as learning how to use the quadratic formula, which helped me in my physics class and completing the square which was also useful in analyzing quadratics.
  2. Solving rational equations: This is probably the most useful thing I learned in Math 11.  The improved skills in solving algebraically and utilizing factoring and common factors is probably the most practical thing in Math.  The most complicated form of solving I have seen to date, and solving is definitely one of the most useful skills in Math.
  3. Sine and Cosine law: Learning these trigonometric laws are extremely useful since they can be applied to every triangle and not just right triangles.  Trigonometry is an extremely important area in Math because triangles are a crucial part of the real world in physics and engineering and learning these laws were extremely important.
  4. Analyzing Quadratics: Quadratics are everywhere in the real world and knowing how to find the vertex, the domain, the range the scale factors and transformations were crucial to my understanding of quadratics.  This knowledge was crucial in improving my visual learning and visualizing graphs in Math and gave me a new understanding of how useful graphs can be both in Math and in the real world.
  5. Infinite geometric series : Everything else on here is here because of how useful it is and how important the skills are, however I put this on the list because it was by far the most interesting thing I learned this year.  I find it so cool how we are able to calculate the sum of a never-ending, converging series.  I always thought that infinite was more of a concept and could never really be applied to anything, but when we learned how to calculate an the sum of an infinite set of numbers it blew my mind.

Week 16 – solving rational equations

Posted on by
Reply

Solve: \frac{x}{x+3}=\frac{8}{x+6}

For solving, the first thing you want to do is make sure everything is in factored form.  Since this cannot be further factored, we can go to our next step which is to find the non-permissible values.  We cant have the denominator equal zero, therefore x cannot equal -3 or -6.  Now we can cross-multiply to get rid of the fraction and make it a lot easier to solve.

(x)(x+6)=(8)(x+3)

 

Distribute: x^2+6x=8x+24

 

Move everything to one side following the rules of algebra so that it is a quadratic that equals zero.

x^2-2x-24=0

Now we can factor to find the values of x and solve the equation.

(x-6)(x+4)=0

x=6           x=-4

 

Week 17: trigonometry-sine law

Posted on by
Reply

This week in Math we learned about sine law.  Sine law can be used to find an unknown side length or angle of any triangle.

Ex.

When using sine law, plug all your numbers from the triangle into the formula.  Then, look for the term that has all its values  filled out and use that one and the one with your unknown into an equation with only one equals sign.  Then solve the equation by cross-multiplying to get your answer.  If you are looking for an angle, don’t forget to also multiply your answer by inverse sine to isolate the angle.

 

Bloglog – School material affecting risky behavior in teens

Posted on by
Reply

Article:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/upshot/worried-about-risky-teenage-behavior-make-school-tougher.html

This article is about the correlation between the difficulty of school and risky behaviour among teens.  This article interested me because of how school is currently affecting my life and I was interested to see what is happening on a broader spectrum.  The author had a good style and writing because he was objective and because he expressed his points through the example of graduation requirements changing, requiring more courses and as a result risky behaviours such as drinking have dropped among teens.  This article raises the question: Should school be harder to try eliminate bad behaviour for good?  I think that no matter how hard they make school, there will always be some kids who don’t care about there future and will not try and get into bad habits, but for regular kids who care about their future this could be a positive thing for them in the long run and gives them less opportunity for risky behaviour.  It also will make kids mentally stronger and more resiliant for future challenges when they go to university and will all-round improve the rate of advancement in society, since kids will generally become smarter.

Week 13 – graphing reciprocal functions

Posted on by
Reply

This week in Math we learned about reciprocal functions.  The reciprocal of a number would be the inverse of its fraction form, for example the reciprocal 2/3 would be 3/2.  So for reciprocal functions, if we have the parent function y=x, then we change that to y=1/x.

Image result for reciprocal parent function graph

The  above graph represents the function y=1/x.  If you had a table of values representing  this function you would notice that as the x value increases, the y value decreases getting ever closer to zero but never reaching it and as the x value decreases below 1 than the y value approaches infinite; and then the second line does the same thing except in the negative section of the graph.  The lines formed by reciprocal functions are called hyperbolas.

When graphing, the points 1 and -1 on the y axis are very important.  Because the reciprocals of these numbers are the same as the original number, on the graph these are known as invariant points.  The linear parent function y=x will only intersect at the invariant points and this function is very helpful when graphing.

Since the hyperbolas will always approach zero, but never reach it, we call the line that it will never cross an asymptote.  There is a horizontal and a vertical asymptote.  Because this is the parent function, the asymptotes will just simply be the x and y axes, so you would say the vertical asymtote is x=0 and the horizontal y=0.