Grade 11

Reflection for Iron Chef

River

For the Iron Chef project, we got the “secret ingredient”– cinnamon. At first, I thought it always matches the sweet dessert so I wanted to do a salty savory food to make our dish outstanding. I searched some recipes online, but then we found that we were lack of the ingredients to do most of the salty dishes, so we decided to do an easy, basic but interesting one– cinnamon waffle sticks. We all agree with this recipe because we like waffles and we got all the ingredients to do it. Time also influenced our decision, the waffles were quick to cook and also the dipping sauce was easy to make

We cooperated so well this time. Naomi and I made the waffles with eggs, milk, cinnamon, and flour; considering the color of the waffles, we put brown sugar in the butter to make it looks delicious. At the same time, Emily and Tyler made the maple cinnamon dipping sauce using cream, butter, and cinnamon.

At last, we finished just on time and we also plated the sticks in an interesting post. We considered all the elements that we should notice, including the temperature, the texture, the flavor, and the color. We also sprinkled the cinnamon on top of the dish make it look more pretty.

I enjoyed the ingredients preparing part and the cooking part this time because I found myself more helpful than before, I did learn a lot in food class unconsciously. I know how to use some basic machine like the waffle machines, the whisking machine the oven and I know a lot of names of the cookers such as the spatula, the leveler,(which we call “the best friend”) and the measuring cups and so on. I appreciate it so much for taking the food class this semester.

If I was to do this activity again, I would like to keep the waffles in the oven before we served, that way they could be warmer than the final product. That’s the only imperfect part during the whole lab due to the omit of time.

River Qi

Week17- Precalc11

River

This week we learned about Sine Law and Cosine Law. The formula of sine law is:

and the cosine law formula is:

I think the important part of Sine law for me is the ambiguous case. When you get the solution, there might be two angles: i.e.the solution angle and the reference angle of it. For example, it you get 60 degrees for the missing angle, then 120 can also be the missing angle– that means there’re 2 solutions for one question.

To know if there’s an ambiguous case, we need to add the solution and the other known angle together to see if they’re >180 degrees to distinguish if this angle exists.

I learned a lot this week, I hope I can get a good mark for the test and do my review for the final exam!

Rievr

week 16- Precalc 11

River

This week we learned more about triangles and the ratio (i.e. Sine, Cosine, Tangent) in the triangle.

For me, the hardest part is to solve problems using special triangles, because when the reference angle is a special angle– for example, 45, 60, etc.– there’s always 4 kinds of degrees for each special angle, you need to figure out which is belong to which and also need to know the sign of them (positive or negative).
And there’s another kind of questions made me feel hard to deal with, which is letting you determine the degree of some angle whose sin/cos/tan equals others.

For example, if sin 245= sin A, determine sin A.
There’re a few steps to solve this problem.
First, we need to draw an angle to know which quadrant this angle is in, 245 is in quadrant three, according to “All Students Take Calculus” rule, the tangent of this angle should be negative. So sin A is also negative.
Second, we need to know the reference angle of this angle, it’s 245-180=65, so now we know that the sin of an angle who has a reference angle 65 is negative, so the other angle is in quadrant4, which is 360-65=295. So a=295

I also learned some new words, such as rotation angles, quadrant, opposite, adjacent, hypotenuse, terminal arms, clockwise…… I found that math is really an interesting subject.

Foods 12 – Oct/Nov/Dec Lab Reflection

River

Reflection No.1: Buttermilk Biscuits & Country-Style Gravy

This month has passed very quickly, we made a lot of different food in different style, we even made Chinses food and I really appreciate the chance Mr.Brett gave us! However, my favorite one is the most delicious Buttermilk Biscuits & Country-Style Gravy!~ To be honest, that’s one of the best western food I’ve ever had!
I didn’t make the gravy because we made two different kinds of food by every two persons. We made the biscuit, here’s the recipe:

And here’s the mise-en-place:

I think we had a good time doing it, we all did our job very hard, We made it with the DIY cheese from the last class; then we put the gravy on them. The gravy didn’t smell good after we added the buttermilk, but our product looked so good and beyond the expectation! And it tasted really well.!~~~ I think the reasons we made it are all thanks to the cooperation!
Here’s the picture of the very final product:

Doesn’t it look cute? I love it! If I could do it again, I would change nothing. because it’s perfect!

Reflection No.2: Pasta

There’s another delicious food we made last month: we learned how to create fettuccine and cook the sauce.

I choose this dish because I like its flavor very much. I haven’t had too much pasta before, but I think it’s pretty authentic. Another important reason is that I really enjoyed the process. I still remember how to make the dough, it’s pretty easy to make, and I made two for our group, I did more job than any other time, I felt good about it.

We cooperated well while making the noodles, but the second time it was a little bit sticky, maybe that’s because I wasn’t strong enough to squish the dough ball when I made it. When we put the noodles into the pot, they stuck together in a few seconds. I came of a good idea to separate them: using the chopsticks. I kind of saved our noodles, hahaha.

Because there’s no mise-en-place for this dish, so I only have the picture of our final product:

I think my group did a really good job. We cooperated pretty well. The Canadian students made the sauce because there are a lot of words on the recipes, the other international student and I made the dough because that was easier. And when we created the noodles, Zack helped us because he’s the strongest person in the group. Those all happened very naturally, I think we have some tacit understandings between us.

If I could do this lab again, I think I would probably try my best to make the egg stay in the well of the flour more perfectly, and try to learn how to do the sauce by my own.

week15-Precalc11

River

This week for precalc11 we learned how to solve rational equations and use them to deal with some problems in reality. There’re a lot of different kinds of problems, such as problems involving distance, time and speed; problems involving work; and those others involving proportions…… For me, this is the part that I found challenging because there’re so many different items in every single question that I don’t know which items should I use to build the equations. For example, this time you should use speed, but the other time you should use the working hours. It’s also hard for me to understand the meanings of those questions, so I may take more time than others on this kind of questions.

Here’s a question that I got wrong on our book: The average speed of an airplane is 10 times that of a car. It takes the aorplane 18 h less thanthe car to travel 1000km. Determind the average speeds of the aorplane and the car.

I assumed the average speed of car as x, so the speed of airplane is 10x, so the equation is: 1000/x-18=1000/10x. The common denominator is 10x, I forgot to cancel the denominator, so I got x=1/18. That’s a silly mistake on calculating, but I always do it…… After asking for help, I got the right answer finally.

I hope I can get good result fo this chapter test. To do that, I must be careful with my calculating.

Week14-Precalc11

River

this week we learned chapter7: how to simplify, multiply and divide, add and substruct rational expressions. I learned it when I was in China so it was not hard for me to understand. All I need to do was to review and to memorize the math languages.
For example,

To solve this question, first, we need to find the lowest common denominator, which is 9x; then multiply 3 to both the top and bottom of the first equation. So it becomes:

We can add the tops together after this step, so we get:

Problem solved.
If the answer is reducible, we must finish the reducing step too.

Week13-Precalc11

River

This week for Precalc11 we learned how to graph reciprocal functions of linear or quadratic functions. For instance, if there’s a function like this: f(x) = 2x + 5, the reciprocal would be f(x) = frac{1}{2x + 5}.
The graph of this new function has two parts, it’s called “Hyperbola” :

Also, we learned how to graph the reciprocal form for the quadratic functions, there’re three types of quadratic ones, and the types depend on how many roots they have.
And there’re many new words for this chapter, for example, asymptote, hyperbola, critical points, and invariant points……
It’s a relatively hard chapter for me but I think I’ve solved all my problems in class already. All I need to do now is to review the accurate methods of doing different kinds of problems.

Week12- Precalc11

River

It’s been a very busy but full week. We finished our chapter5, had a test and started to learn chapter8. We learned how to draw an absolute value function and how to solve the absolute value equations graphically and algebraically.
I want to remind myself of something that needs to be paid attention in about chapter5. I always confused myself when solving inequalities, do I need to sketch the whole graph or just draw the number line when solving the problems? But now I think I understand, when it only has one variable, for example, x, I can just use the number line; when it has both x and y, I should graph the function first, that way I can know the scale visually to solve it. I think that’s all I need to let myself notice for this unit.
Then for chapter8, we should solve the absolute value equation by separating it into two equations to get 1/2/3/4 solutions (every equation has a different amount of solutions from each other, depending on when two lines or parabolas bump into each other.)
For instance, x+8= the absolute value of4x+6, so we can regard it as” x+8=4x+6″ and “x+8=-(4x+6)”.Then we solve these two equations and we get that x=2/3 orx=-14/5.

Week11-Precalc11

River

This week we mainly learned how to solve quadratic, linear inequalities and quadratic systems of equations by graphing. Graphing plays an important role in solving equations and inequalities, especially in quadratic ones.
For the linear and quadratic inequalities, we need to graph the boundary line or parabola first, then test some points in different scales to find the solutions.
To solve the systems, we only need to graph every equation on the graphing paper and find the crossing point of them. Those points are the solutions of the systems.
I need to remember that x belongs to real numbers. I always forgot about adding it in the end.

Week10-Precalc11

River

This week we had two tests and two classes. About the tests, I think I need to know how to use the calculator better because I was not allowed to use it in China, I made a lot of mistakes with it. Also, I’m not good at calculating myself at all, that’s my weakness and I need to improve it.

We also learned 5.1 Solving Quadratic Inequalities in One Variable. To learn this, we must be very familiar with the graphics of the quadratic function, that would help us to think of the solutions of the inequalities.
For example, the inequality X^22x-8>0 is related to the quadratic function X^22x-8=0,
then we can draw the graph and find its two zeros, which are x=-4 and x=2,
we need to look at the part of the graph which is above zero,
then we finally are able to find the solution through this graph, which is x<-4 and x>2.

Next week I need to keep working on my weakness and learn new things as well.