Category: Science 9

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Mutation Story

  • Part 1: Mutation Story

I’m achrondoplasia, I’m a mutated gene in James’ body. His dad is the one affected by an another achrondoplasia. His gene being the dominant one, there was a chance that their child might be affected by the disorder. It was passed in James’ body. I’m what you call dwarfism. I’m a mutated gene that causes a person to be short. It was a good thing that James’ mother did not have this disorder as well, since if both of the mutated gene was passed to my host, its likely that he will not live for more than a few months after he was born. Being an infant, he survived many things such as death. An infant having the gene disorder dwarfism has a very high chance to die. My host is a strong-willed child. Even though sometimes he was being bullied because of being like a dwarf, he stayed strong.

  • Part 2: The Making of the Mutation Story

1.  What questions did you need to research in order to create your mutation story?

          • What genetic disorder is in the host’s body?

          • What caused the mutation? Was it passed or did it just occurred by some accident?

          • What effects did it do to the host’s body?

          • What is the story of the host? How are they affected? Negative? Positive?

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

  • I did not use any new tools since it wasn’t needed.

3. What was the process you used to investigate the topic?

• Ask, Acquire, Analyze.

4. How did you verify and cite the information you found?

 • I found facts and used information from Wikipedia and skimmed through the other sites that can prove the facts I read.

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

 • It’s not completely that challenging. It was a bit hard since you had to research things. I could’ve done better by using a few more information and a few more parts for the story.

 

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DNA Bracelet Blog

The genetic code is a set of three-letter words. As we know, there is only four letter that makes up the DNA which is A, T, C, and G. And each group of three letters on the DNA is an instruction for an amino acid. The RNA, which is like a relative of the DNA, makes a mirror image of one gene of the DNA, one gene means one segment of the DNA. A copy of 3 letter instructions from DNA is also called the DNA triplets.

So as I said earlier, the “relative” of the DNA, which is the RNA makes a mirror image of one gene from the DNA, but what is RNA’s other function or job in the cell? one of the RNA’s function includes is protein synthesis, wherein mRNA molecules direct the assembly of proteins on ribosomes. This process uses messenger mRNA molecules to deliver amino acids to the ribosome, where RNA ribosomes forms protein. The protein is formed when the ribosomes reads each codon ‘or the triplets on the mRNA’  so only a specific amino acid can be added to the growth of the protein molecule.

So in this activity, which is the DNA bracelet activity, we built a bracelet to model how the genetic code is used to build protein. So, we picked a word and the word represents the protein while each letter represents the amino acids. In each letter, it has a set of 3-letter code or rather, the codons, so the fruit loops represents the codons. In this activity, I used the word “Giotto” it represents:

G – GGG

I – AAT

T – ACT

T – ACT

O – AAT

G – green; A – orange; C – pink; T – purple.

3 greens; 8 oranges; 2 pinks; 5 purples.

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(Read from the green near the red string and read it clockwise)

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Edible DNA Blog

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• What is DNA?

  • Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions or information for the development and function of living things.

 

• Structure of the DNA

  • The structure of the DNA is a double helix. Imagine a ladder and imagine it twisted. It almost looks like it.

 

• Explain what the following parts of the model represents.

  • Licorice: The two strands of the DNA and some of its part represents the phosphate.
  • Marshmallows: It represents the 4 base elements which is present in the DNA which are:
    • Pink marshmallow: Cytosine
    • Yellow marshmallow: Adenine
    • Orange marshmallow: Thymine
    • Green marshmallow: Guanine
  • Toothpicks: The excess toothpick part which went through the licorice represents the sugar that’s present in the DNA and the toothpick part inside the model represents the nitrogen which is present in all of the 4 bases.

 

• Did this activity helped me understand DNA structure? Explain why or why not.

  • It helped me understand the structure of DNA almost completely, the bases pattern, etc. because this activity made me understand how the DNA looks like by making us build an example model of the DNA structure. However, there is a flaw in this structure since the sugar should completely dominate the two strands of the DNA.

 

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Expanding Universe

In this activity, the balloon represents the universe and the dots represents the galaxies. The dot near the neck of the balloon, that’s called “M” is the Milky Way (our galaxy) and the point A-E is the neighbouring galaxies near the Milky Way.

In the 5 galaxies (dots), point E is the one that moved away the farthest from point M and point D is the one that moved away the farthest from point M.

And as we know, this activity is called the “expanding universe” which means this activity is like a model of how the universe is expanding. The scientists have discovered that the universe expands because the galaxies are pulling away from each other.

As I have said earlier, the balloon represents the universe, but there are some things that the balloon did not represent the universe, from what I know, the galaxies pulls away from each other at the same rate and when we did the activity, it did not.

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Science 9 Project Upgrade

HYDROGEN

*Note: I changed my Science 9 project because I didn’t like what I did in my previous work.*

 

Research Log:

 

 

Source: http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Inorganic_Chemistry/Descriptive_Chemistry/Main_Group_Reactions/Compounds/Hydrides

Date Found: November 07, 2015

Biases / How Interesting / Other Comments: None / Not Interesting / Good source overall. Has good examples and explanations about Hydrides.

 

Source: https://www.wyzant.com/resources/lessons/science/chemistry/bonds

Date Found: November 07, 2015

Biases / How Interesting / Other comments: None / Not Interesting / A bit disappointing. Doesn’t give a good explanation about bonds, compounds/hydrides.

Source: http://www.livescience.com/28466-hydrogen.html

Date Found: October 26, 2015

Biases / How Interesting / Other Comments: None / It was interesting because there are many facts about hydrogen I don’t know / Good source overall. Has a bit of history and facts.

Source: http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/1/hydrogen

Date Found: October 26, 2015

Biases / How Interesting / Other Comments: None / Interesting because of the videos of hydrogen reacting to other elements / A good site overall. Has facts, uses, history, and trends about hydrogen.

Source: http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele001.html

Date Found: October 26, 2015

Biases / How Interesting / Other Comments: None / Not Interesting / A bit disappointing. It only has a few information about hydrogen.

Source: http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/h.html

Date Found: November 07, 2015

Biases / How Interesting / Other Comments: About the name’s origin, it was different than the other source. / Not Interesting / A bit disappointing. It only has a very few information about hydrogen.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen

Date Found: November 07, 2015

Biases / How Interesting / Other Comments: None / Because it has many information about Hydrogen, it interests me. / A very good site. It has many information about hydrogen.

 

 

 

 

 

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Something I’m interested in

astronomy-mix-5760x1080I love Astronomy. It’s really interesting learning about it. Like, there’s planets, stars, constellations, and black holes!

It’s really fun learning about space and galaxies. You can learn a different bunch of stuffs there. There’s still also probably a lot of things that’s still undiscovered. Plus, there’s still the search for the extraterrestrial life thing which is so unreal.

One of the reasons why I like astronomy is because it’s beautiful, like the stars/nebulae/supernovae, etc.

Also, as we know, astronomy intersects with mythology like the planets name came from the Greek gods such as Zeus, Hermes, etc.

Plus, it’s really easy to appreciate astronomy, like I said, the space is mysterious, interesting, beautiful so learning it would be easy, fun, and enjoyable. It can also be a help to other people like peoples whose in the sea, others navigate through the stars, like the star Polaris. The space also have theories such as the big bang theory which is really interesting.

(For the news about the space stuff click here)

(Why must you study about astronomy click here)