Posted on No Comments on Neuron communication summary

Neuron communication summary

Neuron communication summary

Motor neuron

The function of the nucleus it to carry the DNA, while the cell body contains the genetic information, maintains the structure, and provides energy. The myelin sheath works to allow electrical impulses to transmit quickly and efficiently. The axon terminal releases the neurotransmitter when it is stimulated, caused by an electrical signal carried by the axon, and the axon bulb secretes the neurotransmitter. The node of Ranvier works to facilitate rapid conduction of the nerve impulses, while the axon carries electrical impulses and projects to the synapses. The dendrite works to transfer the received information to the soma of the neuron. All these different parts work to allow us to speak, move, swallow and more.

Neuron function:

How an action potential moves along the neuron fibre:

 An action potential moves along the neuron fibre through four main steps. It starts at resting position. This is when the sodium is on the outside of the axon, and the potassium is on the inside of the axon. At this time, the voltage is -70mV. Next depolarization occurs. This is when the sodium moves from the outside of the axon to the inside, and the voltage is +30mV. Next, potassium ions get pumped out and move to the outside of the membrane. At this time, repolarization occurs, and the voltage goes from +30mV back down to -70mV. Finally, the flow of depolarization occurs. This is when the potassium moves back to the outside of the axon and the sodium moves back in. The voltage remains -70mV. All these steps work together to create action potential that moves along the neuron fibre.
Synapse structure

The structure of the synapse is made up of two parts: The presynaptic membrane and the Postsynaptic membrane. The presynaptic membrane is attached to the axon bulb and is composed of the axon of the sending neuron which transmits messages from the cell body to the dendrites of other neurons. The synaptic vesicle which is used as storage and stimulus-dependent release of neurotransmitters and the axon terminal bulb is the “bulb” like structure that is the presynaptic membrane. Continuing, there is the synaptic gap in between the presynaptic membrane and the postsynaptic membrane where the neurotransmitters are. The job of the synaptic gap is to allow ions to flow from one cell to another one. Next, we get to the postsynaptic membrane, that is made up of the dendrite of receiving neuron, which works to allow a neuron to receive input from other cells. There are also the neurotransmitter receptors that through diffusion, allow the neurotransmitter to bind to the receptors on the postsynaptic membrane of the receiving neuron. When this happens the neurotransmitter message is received as excitatory (stimulates an actions potential on receiving neuron) or inhibitory (no action potential on the receiving neuron).

 

How a signal is sent from axon of sending neuron to dendrite of receiving neuron

Action potential begins in the first at neuron where goes to the axon bulb. From there, action potential allows the synaptic vesicles to move into the presynaptic membrane, where it will then move into the postsynaptic membrane through the synaptic gap. After that, it will move into the neurotransmitter receptors, where it will be either excitatory or inhibitory.

How the receiving neuron “determines” whether or not to send its own action potential

It “determines” whether or not to send its own action potential, depending on if the message is received as either excitatory (stimulates an actions potential on receiving neuron) or inhibitory (no action potential on the receiving neuron). This means that if the message is received as excitatory, the neuron “encourages” action potential, but if it is inhibitory no action potential will occur.

 

 

 

Posted on No Comments on Theme Park Project- Reflection

Theme Park Project- Reflection

Above you can see our brochure for the “Handmaid’s Hideout”. We came up with this name because a theme park isn’t somewhere where a Handmaid would be so it would have to be a hideout for them, as well as if they were there they couldn’t get hurt, so it would serve as a hideout. I focused on the character you would see in the park, for my portion of the project. I chose Offed, Serena Joy, Nick, and The Commander (although Nick isn’t in the brochure). I focused on writing how they would act, what they would wear, and what they would eat while at the park. Doing this portion of the project allowed me to use my critical and creative thinking all together. I had to be critical while I pulled the real facts out from the book. What I mean by facts is the real ways the characters acted and whom they were. I couldn’t just make that up, so it forced me to think critically about all the bits and pieces I had picked up from them during the book. I had to think creatively while putting the paragraphs together because I had to take these characters, from such a serious book, and imagine how they’d act in an amusement park. This caused me some problems because at first I couldn’t quit figure out how they would act or what they would say, or enjoy. But after using my creative thinking I was able to write up four paragraphs that I’m proud of. Something I would do differently next time is get clarification on the presentation. My group and I thought that all we had to present was a brochure, which turned out not to be the case after watching other groups present. I enjoyed this project and I thought it was a creative way to end this unit!

Posted on No Comments on Top 5 things I learnt in Pre-Calc 11

Top 5 things I learnt in Pre-Calc 11

Surprisingly, pre-calc 11 has went by pretty fast. Today, we just finished off our last unit test and are now going to take the upcoming week to study for our final. That being said, I have reflected on this semester and have compiled a list of what I think are the 5 most important things I learnt this semester, in order 1-5.

#1: The factoring box.

For most people in the class, they probably have known how to do this since grade 10. But however, for some reason this concept never clicked for me. Meaning factoring always ended up taking me longer than most and required me to think extra hard trying to find other ways to do it. This year, in grade 11, this concept was re explained to me in class and it started making a lot of sense. The “box method” saves me a lot of time on tests and while just completing daily homework and I find it doesn’t take much thinking and now that i’ve gotten comfortable with the concept I find myself not even really thinking necessarily and just doing. Without learning the box method in the first unit, basically all the units following until trigonometry would have been very difficult as it required a lot of factoring.

 

#2: Rotational angles

This was a new concept for us this year, as last year in trigonometry we just did angles in quadrant one.  But this year as we started using all four quadrants we introduced this new concept and term “rotational angle”. Basically it is the angle that is symmetrical to the angle in quadrant one and will have the same reference angle, but we are measuring the angle it rotated from position one in quadrant 1 to quadrant 2,3,4. Depending on what quadrant it is in you would calculate it differently. For example in quadrant 2 you would do 180-refrence angle. I think that was important to learn because as we keep going in math (pre-calc 12), this will keep coming up but get harder so I think it was good that we started it this year and i ended up grasping the concept, although not right at first.

#3: Rational expressions

I found this unit to end up being my favourite unit we did. For me it was not overly challenging but I liked the attention to detail you had to have because, like most things in math one little mistake and the whole question would be done but I found especially in this unit. I chose it as one of my top 5 because it aloud me to continue to better my factoring skills and become much faster at them then I had been before, which will be beneficial for me as I continue on in math. I also just found it made a lot of sense for me, sometimes in math we do steps in a question where I don’t see why but everything in this unit just made sense.

#4: Rational expressions; inequalities

Unlike #3, this was not a concept that came easily to me, or even made sense at all. And that is why I added it in. These types of inequalities really challenged me. It required to stay in for a couple lunches and spend lots of time after school studying and trying to figure them out and master them. I am not sure if these will show up again in math, but that isn’t why I added it in my top 5. I added it in because they showed me things don’t always come easy but you can’t just give up. There was so many times I just wanted to stop and hope I figure it out on the test or go and eat lunch with my friends, but that would have been giving up and it showed me that with hard work and determination I can do it. And I hope to  carry that attitude and drive with me throughout the end of high school  and to post secondary.

#5: Graphing and finding the stretch.

This is a concept that took me a while to first figure out and as we go back to study for our final this concept just isn’t fully coming back to me. But I find this quite interesting how each number just has a spot in the equation. I know that with some more review it will come back to me. I found that just going back and reading my blog post on this topic already has started to help, because it is me explaining to me. Why I added it in was because I remember very clearly this was the last thing I needed to learn before the unit test and for some reason it wasn’t clicking, but I couldn’t just let it go as it was a very important part of the material I needed to know. So I took the time the specifically focus on this and getting a classmate to explain it to me as well as Ms. Burton and then I took that home and practiced for an hour or two and ended up getting it, even though it felt so impossible.

And those are my top 5 things I learnt this year in Pre-Calc 11, some for math reasons and some for more personal growth reasons. I really enjoyed this course and am excited to continue taking Pre-Calc 12!

 

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Pre-Calc 11- Week 16

This week in pre calc we started learning sine/cosine law. Learning these laws made trigonometry much easier and faster to do. The laws consist of different formulas made up to find either a missing side length or a missing angle in a triangle.

Sine law: For sine law to work you need to have an angle and the side length facing each other at least once, because without this you won’t have enough information to fill into the formula and will have too many unknowns, making it impossible. Another thing to be aware of is you need to check for the second triangle in quadrant II. How you do this is you take what the angle would be in quadrant II (180-__), and then add it up with your other angles. If it goes over 180 degrees you will reject the answer because we know that doesn’t make sense and can’t be possible.

Formula:

You don’t need to use all three options when solving for either the side length or the angle though, you need one fraction fully filled out as well as your fraction with your unknown.

Applied:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cosine Law:  Cosine law is a mesh of trig as well as the pythagorean theorem and you will see that when you look at it. Something to remember when using cosine law is when you’re solving for a side length, at the end, you need to square root your answer as well as b^2. Just like in pythagorean theorem your second last line of work needs to be square rooted because you can’t have what you’re solving for squared. When you’re solving for an angle using cosine law it is the equation to solve for a side length but rearranged algebraically. Something to note when solving for an angle is, when putting it into your calculator you need to put brackets on the top line of work as well as around the second line, just so your calculator doesn’t get confused and accidentally give you the wrong answer or an error.

Formula:

Applied:

These two new laws that we have learnt, in my opinion has made trig this year much easier and make much more sense for me. It’s just a matter of labeling everything properly, which if you weren’t sure how, you label the side length across from the angle the same thing. So if angle A was facing a side length it would now become side a. It’s more a thing of punching it into your calculator properly.

Posted on No Comments on Week 15- Pre Calc 11

Week 15- Pre Calc 11

This week in pre calc 11 we reviewed trigonometry and started on our new parts of it. This week we focused on finding angles in ALL quadrants and not just one quadrant, meaning we have more than just one answer, where as before when we would only find the angle in the one quadrant we would just have one angle.

We also learnt a new acronym that will help us know if the ratio is going to be positive or negative in what quadrant. The acronym is “All Students Take Calculus”.  This makes solving questions a little faster, because now when solving for theta we have more than just one answer, so it is useful to know if it is going to be positive or negative and will save you some time.

Here is the acronym “All Students Take Calculus” in the quadrants. What it is showing you is that in quadrant one all ratios are going to be positive. So no matter what ratio or numbers you use the answer will always be positive. In quadrant two all sine ratios will be positive but everything else will be negative. In quadrant three all tan ratios will be positive while the rest are negative. And in quadrant four all cosine ratios will be positive.  This acronym is good to know because if you for example find an angle in quadrant three that’s tangent and it’s negative well then you know you did something wrong and can go review what you did.

Those were the big things we learnt this week. Some simple things but will make trigonometry much easier if you know how to do them.

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Pre-Calc- Week 9

This week in Pre-Calc 11, we continued with our analyzing quadratic equations unit. We learnt how to take each equation and write it in standard form, because the way they gave us the equation isn’t helpful to graph it but putting it into standard form makes it possible to graph it.

Example:

Step 1: The first thing we have to do, is make the x by itself, for it to be possible to complete the square. How we are going to do that is take the greatest common factor out of the first two numbers, a way to remember which numbers you take it out of, is if it has a x. In this case I am going to pull out a 2 and that leaves me with x^2 and 4x inside my bracket and we can see the -4 wasn’t effected and stays outside of the bracket.

Step 2: The second step is to find our zero pair we need to add into our equation. How you do that is take the number in front of x, divide it by 2 and then square whatever number you get. That can seem like a lot of work but in this case, you have 4. Divide that by 2 and you get 2, 2 squared is 4. And then you have to add in a zero pair, meaning you need to add +4, -4 into the brackets.

Step 3: Now I need to get my -4 out of the bracket. But to do that I need to multiply it with the 2 out front of my bracket. And the combine my -4 with the -8 I will get when 2 multiplies with the -4 from inside of the bracket.

Step 4: Our final step is to fix our bracket. You’re going to go back to the number you got when you divided it by 2 and put that into your bracket. In this case when I divided 4 by 2 I got 2, so that is the number I am putting back into my bracket and everything in this bracket is positive therefor it’s going to be +2, but if the number was negative you would put -2. It depends what is in the brackets you’re starting with.

Once you get your equation into this form it is ready to graph. In my opinion the most important step is when you’re adding in your zero pair and that is where I would go back and double check you did it correct because if not it will mess up your whole equation. But that is it! All you need to do now is identify the clues I talked about in my last blog post and graph this.

Posted on No Comments on Math Blog Post- Week 7

Math Blog Post- Week 7

This week in Math 10 we did our Functions & Relations unit. In this unit we quickly covered a few different topics but in this blog post I will focus on functions. I will explain what a function is and how to identify one in any type of graph or table.

What is a function? A function is when none of the input numbers are the same unless they share the same output number. So what’s the difference between a function and a relation? A relation is the relationship between the input and output numbers and a function is just one output for each input. A relation is a vast term, while a function is more specific.

In this example with the coordinates, I can identify that the relationship between these numbers is a function. There is no one way to identify if it is a function. You just need to go through all the input numbers and make sure they all have their own unique output.

In this example using a table of values I can see this is a function because same thing with the coordinates, all in the input numbers have their own individual output numbers. I find a table of values makes it easier to identify because they go down in a row.

In this table of values I can see that one is an input twice. Because they share the same output this is a function. If the 5 were any other number except for 5 this would just be a relation.

If you are given a graph like this the first step is to write down all the coordinates and then identify if it is a function or not.

Now that I have written out all the coordinates I can see this graph represents a function.

Functions are very easy to identify once you understand what one is. Something that confused me when first learning about function was that if an input number is put in twice it is still a function as long as the output is the same. To easily identify is it as a function write it out in way that works best for you. If it is given to you in the form of coordinates write it out as a table of values if that would help you!