Friday, June 29, 2012

Olivia's week at Chem Camp


Chemistry camp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this week [Monday through Friday] I went to chemistry camp. I had a lot, lot, lot of fun and met some people I hope to see again. I am kind of going to put everything in a list and pick my favorites from that day, and explain them.
          Monday was chromatography and color, [which was quite messy; we have pictures to prove it].Here is Monday’s list.
*   Rainbows in a tube
*   Marbled notes
*   The universal rainbow?
*   Chromatography [whatever could it mean?]
*   The case of the missing lunches……
Before I explain anything, I have to tell you of the case of the missing lunches…
        Ms. Mary had stayed inside while we, the students, and Ms. Peg explored. We found a tree house and a pond. It was almost lunch time when we came back in. we sat down at the tables and on the smart board it said: problem, your lunches have been stolen. Solution, and then it was blank. Our solutions were to A) interrogate ms.mary, B) look for clues, or C) have Spencer, Nathaniel, Patrick, and Tommy share their lunches with us. Guess which one we chose. A!!!!!!!!!!! JK. We chose b. sure enough, a clue was on the table. It read “if you can figure out the markers I will give you your lunches back.” Since we had done chromatography [color data] earlier in the morning, we ripped apart the note and soaked it in alcohol, isophl propel, and water. By careful comparison we found out that she [Mrs. Mary] had used a rose art blue, crayola brown, and a permanent black. This Monday story was really long so I’ll go to Tuesday.
          Under pressure, pushing down on me, pushin’ down on you, under pressure. Tuesday put us under a ton of pressure. Air pressure, that is.
·       Bottle rockets
·       The great balloon race
·       Shrink wrap the kid and take out the garbage!
·       Pressure in a station
·       Creature
·       The crushed can
·       The balloon in the bottle
I probably forgot some, but I want to talk about creature. Creature is a really fun game with three people to a team. One is the observer, one is the runner, and one is the builder. You have to build something with legos and whoever gets it the closest or exact wins. There is an object in a box and only the observer can look at it. The observer can stand at a certain area but they can’t go out of that space. The runner gets instruction from the observer about how to build it and the runner then takes the instructions to the builder, like the 6 dot green in the 3rd row is next to the white 8 dot, ECT. The runner is kind of like the messenger because they carry the instructions and any questions the builder [or the runner] may have.BTW, my team tied for second. Moving on, I’m now going to talk about shrink wrapping the kid. That reminds me of the golden rule of science: science never sucks. No, literally, air can’t suck. It can only push. So for shrink wrapping, there was a trash bag that you took off your shoes and sat in. you held the nozzle of a vacuum and held it so it didn’t touch the bag.  The pressure inside the bag was less than the outside because of the vacuum and the pressure outside pushed the trash bag in and enclosed you, like wearing a blanket or a snuggie. Real quick I’ll say about the great balloon race, which was where we strung a string across the room and came up with designs to make it [sorry ms.peg, the balloon] go all the way across the room. The simplest designs, one balloon blown up, worked the best, but let’s go on a whole ‘nother course.
Wednesday was a quiet, sit and observe day. It was kinda random, do whatever.
We:
ü Played with bottle rockets
ü Holes in a bottle
ü Alka-Seltzer
ü One floats, the other doesn’t
ü Which is faster?
ü Glow sticks
ü Drops on a penny
ü A bunch of stuff I can’t remember at all…..
Okay I went and grabbed my journal but all I have are the observation stations. So I will explain alka seltzer, holes in a bottle, and which is faster. I’m starting with holes in a bottle, which was where a plastic bottle   had a hole in it and you put your finger on the hole, filled up the bottle, screwed the cap on tight, and when you took your finger off the water wouldn’t come out. Which is faster was where you had to observe two mystery liquids [oil and water] and see which one the penny dropped faster in [it was water]. Last but not least alka-seltzer. We took warm and cold water and put alka-seltzer in it and the warm water made it bubble faster because heat makes molecules speed up. On to polymers!!!!!!
          Thursday was polymers. Polymers are long chains of carbon and hydrogen. We did:
v Ooblek
v Slime
v Clay heads
v Disappearing water?
v Water loc beads
v Diaper filling
v We also rotted our brains but watching TV.
Polymer means literally ‘many monomers’ I’ll be explaining ooblek, slime, and a mystery polymer. My favorite was the messy, messy oobleck. Oobleck is corn starch with water in it. If you work it and apply pressure it becomes hard but if it relaxes it turns into a liquid. It also stuck to your hands, I got some on my pants, and some people got it on their shirts even. ;). The slime was made of 0ne part water, one part glue, and a little borax solution. As you turn it and stir it it becomes a solid. Then you had to work it [the slime, sorry] like bread dough, as one way to put it. My mysterious polymer is…. Diaper powder? Diapers have a polymer inside the pad because polymers absorb liquids. That’s also what we used in the missing water experiment. She put diaper powder in one cup and water in another and switched the cups and poured the water in the cups and then poured it in the cup with the powder. The powder absorbed the water making it appear to have disappeared. Now to the last day, Friday.
          On Friday we did fire and ice, explosions and carbon dioxide. A quick lesson; fire = heat+energy. Fire creates h2o and co2, water and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is NOT flammable. In fact, we did quite a cool experiment with it. We did:
o   Fire in a bottle
o   Light saber
o   Mentos in pop
o   Dowse the candle with co2
o   Baking soda and vinegar
o   Air hockey
o   Dry ice in a indicator, a.k.a the mad scientist
o   Spark-l-ers
o   Tea bag rockets
o    Presentation
Air hockey and the mad scientist go together; along with baking soda+vinegar and dowse the candle with co2.but first I’ll start with the mad science. We put water in a cup and added the universal indicator, which showed if it was an acid [yellow/red], neutral, [green] or a base [blue/purple/ dark green] by changing colors. Water is a neutral so it turned green. We put in dry ice and fog came out, that was water condensation. It also turned the water from a neutral to an acid. How air hockey and this relate is because of the dry ice.ms. Peg told us to hit it around the table and what did it remind us of. We said air hockey and we were right because of the heat from the table it forms a layer of carbon dioxide and that was what it was floating on like air hockey. Before that, we put baking soda and vinegar in a bowl and that created carbon dioxide. Because carbon dioxide is denser than the air it stayed in the bowl and you could put it in a cup and pour it. It is NOT flammable so you can put a candle by it and it will blow out. So we tried to scoop up the carbon dioxide and pour it out on the candle and it went out!!!!!!!!!!!! We put mentos in coke too and we put it in on the table and the pin pulled out prematurely and we got coke on us.
          All in all chem Camp was very fun and I hope to do it next year. 

Luke Book review


07-Ghost
The book I`m currently writing about is called Seven Ghost. It follows the life of Teito, a slave child taken from a kingdom called Raggs, who was sold into military service. On the final days of his being in the Academy, he hears an officer named Ayanami talking about how he killed Teito`s “father”. Afterwards, Teito attacks Ayanami, is thrown into jail, and then escapes into District 7, the kingdom`s “Zone of God”.
After Teito escapes, he is found by three bishops, Frau (a total delinquent and perv) Castor (who makes moving dolls????) and Labrador, who take him to their church and care for him. Teito learns soon after that his friend who helped him escape, Mikage, is now in District 7. When Teito finds him, the whole church (especially the nuns (who, for some reason, are more teenaged and obsessed with anything they find cute, including Teito)) helps care for Mikage.
Soon after, it is revealed that Mikage only has half of a soul, and then during a mass, Mikage attacks Teito. Then, a reaper looking guy comes in, who Teito remembers as Zehel, a ghost who fought Verloren (basically this world`s Satan).
Unfortunately, that`s where the story kinda ended.
I personally enjoyed this manga because the story is a mix of fantasy and sci-fi (that means futuristic stuff) which was cool while at the same time not clashing. I also find the byplay between Frau and all the non-delinquent bishops to be quite funny (Castor-san always ticks Frau off) as well as the fact that all the nuns kept rejecting him, although he didn`t stop hitting on them.
I was also able to connect with the protagonist, mostly due to our similar views on faith. In the story, God hasn`t done anything to help Teito, and his life was almost misery outside of anything he could do. For me, I`ve never felt God help me in any sort of way, and I haven`t had much reason to trust he would do something for me currently.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Luke's article response


Congress gives thanks, rights wartime injustices

(This was far overdue. Stupid politicians.)

 Wednesday, former African-American Marines obtained the highest civilian honors possible, the Congressional Gold Medal. I say it`s about time. The marines at the ceremony, now in their 80`s to 90`s, were treated like crap in the 1940`s, and the only reason they got the medals now was because the army and government felt bad. I think they should`ve gotten a lot more. The officers who trained them treated them like crap, they were not initially allowed to fight because the main head thought they were “unfit to fight”, and they didn`t get any honors for years because of segregation! What a load of bull-crap! They went through the exact same thing as the white soldiers, and they didn`t get anything. In fact, there were 19,000 African-Americans who were in the training camps and war. Only about a fifth of them still live. It`s like, “What the heck. Why did it take so long, that`s not even fair.” But, even though they aren`t getting a lot of honors, it`s still a very happy time for those men, who are finally being realized for their service.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

part 4-olivia review


Big? Or small?
The pasta debate
I was reading the news and I discovered a article on food. Nothing else was intresting so I read it. It was debating bigger noodles or smaller noodles. The article started out with the statement that you find larger noodles in soups and pasta salads, but smaller noodles dont over whelm anything else because instead of getting a bite of just noodle, the minis allow you to taste the other flavors by getting a noodle and salad or what ever you put in the pasta salad. It also listed some recipes for isreali couscous with watermelon, watercress and feta,and orzo and broccoli salad. Some types of pasta are orzo, couscous, and orecchiette. Also you can find mini version of penne and farfelle, fusilli and gemelli

Friday, June 22, 2012

part three-Luke newspaper


This week I`m writing about Tigers baseball. (If only because I was bored by the politics.) Justin Verlander of the D-Tigers is planning to go to the All-Star game. The rotation is allowing him plenty of rest, with his final start before the break to be July 4th, the final game on the 8th.
                Personally, I think he isn`t that great, mostly because he doesn`t do as well whenever I actually watch a baseball game (am I picking up Bumpa`s evil luck? Brrr…..) and I don`t really know the extent of the other player`s abilities. Besides that, I also don`t know if each team has to put in a minimum of one player for the game or if it`s by popular demand, anyway.
                Apparently he is the defender of the Cy Young award (oooohhhh…) most valuable player in MLB (aahhhhh…) and also is tied for quality starts in games with 12 (Wooooow!!). He also has been picked six times before (Obviously popular) and has an overwhelming majority of fans in Texas. (???)
                I don`t see how this all makes sense, but it seems that Verlander will be picked. So, for all of you baseball junkies in your Tiger`s dens and facial war paint, or Tiger`s beer in your man/Tigers/fan-cave, if -you love Verlander, now`s your chance to see him in an All-Star game once again.

part two-Luke's review


HACKING HARVARD

A report by Luke Melville

                First off, let me get this straight. Max, Eric, and Schwarz are NOT pranksters. They are bona fide Hackers. A hacker is a person or group who does things to show that something is flawed or to punish someone evil. (Like their social studies teacher).
                Eric is the good guy, the main ethical point, the man who can. Max is the idea guy, almost constantly coming up with Ideas that would work perfect if it went exactly to plan. Schwarz is the super-genius who has vintage playboys, worships math (bleh.) and is completely and utterly afraid of live women. (In the beginning, the other two have to clean his room of female underwear, and Schwarz is totally terrified of each. (especially a “slinky black lace” bra)).
                So, the three are hackers. Soon, Max makes a bet with other people called the “Bums” for around… $25,000. They challenge if Max`s group can get a totally sleazy, lazy, mean, jerky moron named Clay Porter into Harvard. Max takes the bet, and the game is on. Throughout the book, the three hackers struggle with doing the job while following their (Surprisingly) strict code of conduct, attempting to earn those twenty-five grand while not getting caught.
                Later in the story, another element appears. A Harvard possibility named Lex. Eric begins to fall for her, only until the guys find out that she was a spy working for the Bums to get into Harvard the whole time. After her secret is out, she ends up helping the guys win the bet. Afterwards, it is revealed that she was the one telling the story, and she never got into Harvard, but it was probably for the better.

Time for the summer writing project!

Here's our (my) ambitious writing plan:
Mondays-a science experiment with a write up
Thursdays-reading and responding to the news
Friday-book review

The week was a little busy, so it's all getting posted today.
Part one-Olivia's book review

The false prince
Written by: Jenifer A. Nielson.
 report by Olivia Melville.
The false prince is a story about a group of orphans in the kingdom of carthya. The story is from the view point of sage a orpan. Or is he some one else?The king, queen , and heir to the throne have been poisoned and are dead, and have been so for a while. The youngest son, jaron, may or may not be alive. He was scheduled to go to a school upon a boat but after they set sail the pirates of avenia, their neighboring land, attacked the ship and jarons body was never found.. now, we meet the orphans latamer, tobias, roden, and sage. They were picked up at various orphanages by a mysterious elusive mr.conner, a noble man of the court. Conner has a plan; one the orphans must play an illusion, and speak naught but lies and treachery. The orphans who are not chosen to play the role will die. The one who is must be the false prince.