Category Archives: Grade 10

Rube Goldberg — “Domin-Oh No! My Chips!”

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↑ A drawing of my Rube Goldberg machine (“Domin-Oh No! My Chips!)

EXPLANATION: (better explained in the photo)

A: Dominoes will fall and hit one another
B: The last domino will hit a marble and it will fall into the tube
C: The marble will fall onto a ramp and will roll down
D: The marble will fall into the left cup and the cup will go down*
E: The right cup will go up along with the ramp attached to the bottom of the cup
F: The ramp since it’s attached to the cup it will also go up with it**
G: The car on the ramp will go down the ramp as the ramp goes up and tilts downwards
H: The car will fall into the first cup and it is also attached to a ramp. Both of them will rotate to the right when the car falls into it***
I: There is another cup that has hole in the bottom with a chip inside. The bottom is blocked by the ramp so once it rotates the chip can go down the ramp and into the bowl. (!)

*The 2 cups are connected and held by a piece of string. The string will sit on a chopstick inserted into the backboard. So when one cup is heavier than the other, it will go down as the other one will go up.

**The ramp is carefully sitting balanced on a chopstick so since it’s only attached to a cup, when the cup goes up the ramp will follow

***The cup isn’t attached to the backboard but is being held by a chopstick inserted in the backboard. So when the car falls into it it will rotate right on the chopstick, and since the ramp is attached to the bottom of the cup, it will also rotate right.

 

ENERGY TRANSFERS:

A-B: kinetic → gravitational
B-C: gravitational → kinetic
C-D: kinetic → (mechanical) → gravitational
D & E: gravitational
G-H: kinetic → gravitational
I-!: kinetic → gravitational → kinetic

 

VIDEO OF MY MACHINE IN MOTION:

Making Babies! — Pam

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Here is Pam. Her name is just Pam, she doesn’t have a last name because our family doesn’t believe in the importance of last names, and we believe that Pam can chose her own last name when she grows up. Straight out of the womb, she developed a passion for sports, breaking gender boundries and becoming an icon at the early age of birth. But, she also loves the mall and we noticed that she was carrying a purse right after she entered her new life.

As you can tell by the portrait of Pam, obviously taken by a camera and not hand-drawn, she has a vast array of gorgeous qualities that make Pam, Pam-azing. She has a gorgeous round face that reminds her of her favorite fruit, watermelons. She has a cleft in her chin that she likes to keeps snacks in during her sporting events. Her skin is very dark brown which is quite confusing since her mother is Asian and her father is Caucasian, but who are we to argue with nature? She has curly hair, brown eyes, and my personal favorite quality of hers, very bushy eyebrows. I think she has this quality because she loves bushes. She has large eyes that compliment her glasses. She has almond shaped eyes that are horizontal, which is a common trait in our family. She has long eyelashes and thick lips. Sometimes she thinks her lips are too big since they get in the way of her football helmet. Did I mention her mouth is very long? She has a large nose. Isn’t that lovely? Maybe this is why she has allergies during the Spring. She has an ear pit that is the size of a marble, and no ear hairs. Sadly, she doesn’t have any freckles on her cheek, but luckily she has some lovely freckles scattered on her forehead. Doesn’t she sound beautiful? But it’s not what’s on the outside that matters, it’s that she inherited the big hearts that her parents have.

 

The coin flip relates to the probability of inheriting genetic conditions because it’s sort of like real life. We take both qualities that the parents have and use that genetic information to see which quality the baby has. It also relates to the probability since if one parent had a dominant quality, the baby would have it too, just like real life.

I think this isn’t the most accurate thing since we did not use the qualities that we have in real life to make our baby. I don’t think we use coins to depict what our baby will look like. But, like real life, we used our two (imaginary) qualities and used them to depict what our baby would look like. So, if we used our actual qualities, this might have been more accurate.

 

I think prejudices are something that was created long ago, when the world was only used to one type of person. I like to think that everyone’s traits are great, but since the question asks about what traits I think my child has that are desirable, I think all of her traits are. I think people create these prejudices because they are used to seeing what they think is ‘normal’ and what they are used to, and once they see something that is so called ‘weird’ they start to react differently. Luckily, it’s 2018 and our society is starting to praise people who are different, which is 100% different 100 years ago. And it should be like this, since the qualities that people have are what they are born with, and they can’t change them.

Float Your Boat – Experiment (Science 10)

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Our goal in Science 10, was to build a boat made out of just aluminum foil, toothpicks, tape, and marshmallows and see how many pennies our boats could hold in water. Our (Me, Sara, Clare and Aden) boat (named Bo-at) carried an impressive (but not the best) amount of 80 pennies.

We decided to build the opposite of a boat, and think scientifically. We thought that if a boat had more surface area, then the boat will hold more pennies because there is more room for them to be placed. Like I said, our boat could carry 80 pennies because we had a large surface area and small walls to make it stronger. The winning boat (Sally) was in the shape of a bowl, and we thought that it held the most because of its strong foundation to prevent it from sinking. The other boats had some crazy designs too, but all had obvious flaws.

In the end, we found out that boats that are deeper and have higher walls that are thicker help the boat stay afloat with pennies. Our hypothesis was kind of supported, since we predicted that a larger surface area would carry more pennies (which was true) but our lack of thick walls made the boat sink. We were thinking too much about the surface area, that we totally forgot about all the other components of a boat. Next time, we could definitely try to make the boat thicker on the bottom and on the sides.

 

Photo of “Bo-at”: 

What literature has taught me about the effects of racism

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Racism has had a tremendous effect on humanity. It has been around for decades, and it effects everyone. African-Americans, Jewish people, First Nations, almost everyone. But, there are also many people who either fight back, or let their battles win. First of all, in the graphic novel ‘Sugar Falls’, Betsy, a five-year-old girl, gets taken from her family to go to residential school. Right from the get-go, you can already see an impactful moment, and it happened to millions of people across the country. Boys and girls being pulled from their families to go to an unknown place, without having time to prepare or to say ‘goodbye’. Secondly, Betsy was taken into the school where she was bathed and rubbed vigorously, and was shamed by the nuns. While the nuns were washing her, Betsy felt instant shame. She realized that they weren’t trying to clean off dirt, but her skin color. With all the name calling and abuse, Betsy had already felt depressed and broken down. She felt like she wasn’t good enough. Thirdly, abuse in residential schools can scar someone for life. The verbal, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse could affect how someone grows up. For Betsy, she witnessed some of her good friends be hit, kicked, shamed, and also die. These actions left a permanent image in her brain that she will never be able to forget. But, it isn’t all that bad. Residential school can also impact someone in a positive way, like Betsy. She was a fighter. She never let the nuns win, and take her culture away from her. The harder they kicked her, the harder she worked. The more they yelled at her, the more stronger she became. During residential school, Betsy chose who she wanted to be, persevered and set her mind to it, and years later, she never let go of that. She saw how important keeping her culture alive was, and took time to help others learn her native language. In the end it’s not about the abuse that impacts someone. It’s how someone deals with it, and uses it to become a better and stronger person. 

 

Si Lo Écoutait

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Voici mes enregistrements de français avec les deux règles de si. (Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais EduBlogs ne me permettait pas d’insérer des fichiers audio avec mon téléphone, je devais donc les convertir en fichiers vidéo, les envoyer par e-mail à mon ordinateur et les convertir en fichiers audio afin de pouvoir les insérer depuis mon ordinateur. Les nouveaux fichiers audio sont beaucoup plus gros que l’original, donc je ne sais pas quand cela va télécharger. J’espère que c’est OK.)

Règle de si – #1: C’est à propos de mes parents qui me téléphonent à propos du vol de notre maison, et mon chat était le seul témoin.

Règle de si – #2: C’est à propos de comment je voyagerais dans le temps, pour me sauver d’un accident qui m’empêcherait de nager. (Je parle aussi du passé tout en utilisant le futur simple, donc c’est un peu confus)