When we first face timed Mrs. Nakabugo we talked about how they do not have much electricity in Uganda. Mr. Robinson showed us old videos of past students who tried to solve this problem by making special types flashlights that if you shake them they make light. To demonstrate our learning we made electricity from fruits to show what we learned about electricity and voltage. When we were talking about the environment with Mrs. Nakabugo she shared that when it rains the girls cannot go to school and that the water there isn’t always clean for drinking. With this information our class split into groups and demonstrated their learning by making carbon related products to help with climate change.
After asking Mrs. Nakabugo about climate change, our class had to come up with our own ideas of how we can stop climate change, for my ideas I focused mainly on deforestation and finding ways to stop using trees, some of my ideas include, planting more trees and flowers in newly built areas, build more apartment buildings instead of housing, find different ways to make fuel, reduce paper making, and build homes without wood. With all these ideas I selected one and made a prototype. The one I selected was making home structures without wood. Roughy 286,000 homes are being built in Canada and they are using a lot of trees to build these homes, my idea was to stop using wood as home structures and replace it with metal or concrete. These are the pictures of before and after building my model.
The first photo is the drawing of both models, the second is the concrete structure and the third is the metal structure. Out of both of these structures I suggest you use the concrete structure because it is more environmentally friendly even though it does emit carbon. I think concrete is better than metal because metal might be cheaper but we are cutting down forests to collect it.
This year I learned about Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science and Biology. During our Chemistry unit we learned how write formulas, organization of the periodic table and how to draw the elements electrons-protons-and neutrons. I really enjoyed this unit because I loved learning about how to read the periodic table and being able to identify elements and how to draw them. The photo on the left is the periodic table I used for every project it very helpful for this unit.
During our Physics we learned about electricity, how to read a Volt and Amp meter, resistor colours, and how to draw circuits, and calculating resistance. This unit was very hard for me especially reading a Volt and Amp meter, this took awhile to learn but out of this unit I really enjoyed drawing circuits, reading resistor colours and calculating resistance. On the left is a picture of my group reading the voltage of a carrot.
During our Earth Science unit I learned how carbon circles through our 4 spheres. I really enjoyed this unit because I love to learn more about the environment and why climate change is happening. On the left is a photo of the 4 spheres, how carbons goes the the 4 spheres and some abiotic and biotic examples.
In our Biology unit we learned about two types of reproduction, asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction. Out of the both I preferred learning about asexual reproduction because it was a lot easier to learn and remember the steps of meiosis. The photo on the left shows and strand of DNA that me and my partner made of marshmallows and liquorice .
Out of all of these units I preferred the periodic table, I liked learning about the periodic table because I found it easy to learn and I really liked writing formulas.
How would I be using these units in the future? The periodic table taught me about different elements and how some can be harmful to eat or inhale, so future me would know when I shouldn’t be eating or inhaling the mineral. What I learned from our electricity unit is that electricity can be harmful without a resistor, so in the future I would know to use a resistor if I ever wanted to experiment with voltage. Our climate change unit taught me how carbon is being trapped in the atmosphere and how carbon is almost everywhere and how it circles through our 4 spheres. Lastly our reproduction system showed me how living organisms could procreate in different ways, now I don’t have any questions about how sea stars can make copies of itself with just an arm.