Innovation review

2) Personal responsibility skill:

The evidence I have that demonstrates that I can persevere with challenging tasks is when we were building the circuit for our invention.  The challenging part was which type of circuit we were going to decide to build and how we can make one function turn off while another function is still on.  I think my group did a good job dealing with that challenge since it was more interactive.

The evidence for Implement, monitor and adjust a plan & assess the results was from the leadership.  I think I could think quickly by creating a short PowerPoint for our presentation and shortly after I assessed how the presentation went with our group.

The evidence for take ownership of my goals, learning & behaviour was from my leadership.  I think I was stressed often about this project and it reflected onto my partners from time to time.  I am happy of what I accomplished, but my ability to adapt and work with others still needs adjusting.

3) In my opinion, my groups collaboration could’ve been a lot more better.  Most of the time my partners were unable to complete an assigned task on time leading to one person rushing to complete it.  Our critical thinking could’ve been way better, expanding and creating more ideas and problems would’ve helped.  Putting in more effort into the presentation like being more enthusiastic and speaking to the audience and not the screen would’ve amped up the presentation.  The highlight of our collaboration was I think when we constructed the circuit.  It seemed that everyone was trying to help and solve problems.  I think the reasoning for this is that the problem was visual and physical so that was an advantage.

4) I liked the fact that we had almost complete freedom to create whatever we wanted.  There was no limit and I would love to have more projects like this.  The one thing I would change is the group aspect.  Most of the time when there’s four people in a group at least one person doesn’t complete the assigned tasks and that leads to frustration, so I would have made it an individual project.  I learned to be very patient because everyone learns at a different pace and to choose your group wisely with people you think that you can work well with.

DNA model

  1. How are chromosomes, DNA, and genes related to each other?

They are related together because they all are found in one place which is DNA.  Chromosomes are found in strands of DNA and Genes are found on segments of chromosomes.

  1. The licorice represented the sugar/phosphate backbone.  The toothpicks represented the bonds between bases and backbone.  The green marshmallow represented guanine, the yellow one represented adenine, the pink one represented cytosine and the orange represented thymine.

 

  1. This lab helped me understand which bases match together and it gave me a better understanding of how DNA works and how it’s related to chromosomes and genes.

 

 

Microscope lab reflection


1a) plant cells under a microscope look very transparent.  There’s not much to see since the membrane of the onion was very thin.  We did however see scale-like patterns in the background that had hints of light purple.

The cell structures I see are chloroplasts, cell membrane, cytoplasm and the cell wall.

1b) Animal cells have tiny shards floating around everywhere.  Some are attached together.  The background is clear but has little grey dots everywhere.

The cell structures I see are cytoplasm, the nucleus and the cell membrane.

  1. In my opinion, the way I can mostly tell plant and animal cells apart is what’s behind the cell structures. I found that animal cells don’t have much of a background than plant cells.  Plant cells have a scaly background and animal cells do not.  Another way I can tell them apart is how they are formed.  Plant cells have a square like shape and animal cells have a circular shape.
  2. We use methylene blue on an animal cell because for this occasion the cells were transparent meaning that id we put it under a microscope we wouldn’t see anything since its clear. By adding pigment to the cells, it allows us to clearly see all the different types of cells.

We do not use it on plant cells because plant cells normally have colour so we can automatically see the cell structures without adding colour.

  1. I learned more about microscopes and how to properly focus objects using dials. I learned that it is very hard to see and observe animal and plant cells when looking for cell structures. Finally, I learned that you must first dye animal cells blue to see all the cells.

Questions:

Can we put more items under the microscope next time?

Do we always need to use methylene blue on animal cells?

Can we observe cells that move in real time under the microscope?

How does methylene blue work?

Curious:

What happens when we put a piece of fur underneath the scope?

What will we see if we put a piece of dust, food and clothing underneath?

 

Innovation project four D’s

Science project: refrigerator that tells you EVERYTHING about each product

A fridge that tells you the nutritional statistics, recipes, when something has expired, give you recipes etc. all controlled by a smartphone like device attached to the fridge.

Define: The problem is that a lot of people throw away used and sometimes unused food products because they either forget about it, leave it at the back of their fridge or it was expired.  Another problem is that people are unaware about the nutritional facts of the product and don’t know if it’s really heathy for them.  These problems can be solved by creating a “smart” fridge that tells you when something is expired, it can tell you the nutritional facts just by scanning it, and it could tell you recipes you could make using that product.  This device will look like an iPhone for a fridge and it will use electricity from a rechargeable ion battery.

Discover: this problem has been addressed previously by Samsung.  They named their fridge “the Family Hub fridge”.  It has an enormous screen on the front side of the fridge that has many features.  It has 3 built in cameras, reminders, clocks, music etc. its basically a smart phone on a fridge.  You can access everything on an app.  The one downfall is that it can’t provide any information about the products in the fridge itself.  There’s no way of telling if a product has expired and there’s no nutritional guide to help you make the right decisions. They focused so much on the entertainment part that they forgot all about of what a fridge is.

Dream:  

–          We can create a scanning system to keep track of every food product and when it’s expired or about to expire.

–          Make a fridge that’s specially designed so you can see every single food product so you don’t forget about it.

–          Create an app that allows you to see your fridge when you’re shopping.

Deliver: for the actual device, itself it will use a series circuit.  Since mostly every smart device has a power switch, it would make sense to use a series circuit since the device will run depending on if it’s on or off.  Also, it will have an Ion battery so it will need to be charged, in that case a series circuit is good since we need a power source(charger) to power the device from one circuit.  The electricity would mostly flow when the device is being charged through the battery.  We could also make a built-in battery that runs through the fridge to power the device.

Science 9 – Static electricity : what have i learned

3 most important things I’ve learned:

  1. A nucleus is made out of two particles called protons which are positive and neutrons which are negative.  I think this is important because it’s always good to know the basics of electricity so that you can use it in the future to help with labs, conclusions etc.
  2. An object that has negative charges repels from an object that contains negative charges if touched.  An object that has negative charges will attract to an object that has positive charges.  it’s important to know what charges attract or repel because you might question why an object attracts to another object so you will need this info to help.
  3. Induction is when you do not touch an object to charge a negative object and conduction is when you charge a neutral object by touching it to a charged object.  this is important because I always thought why a magnet moved when another magnet got close to it.  Now that I know this, I can always say that it’s induction.  therefore, it’s a useful life tool.

I found that the most helpful lab was the one online on Phet.  I found that the way they explained negative and positive charges helped me a lot to understand how the charges attract and travel through objects.  I also found it helpful because I’m a more of a visual learner so it was much easier to understand.