Interim Science Reflection

In my interim report it was very clear Mr. Lammers and I had very similar opinions for what I had done. I like what he has rated me which gives me space to improve on my science skills but I don't have to start at rock bottom and work my way up. I feel I may have given myself a little to much credit for my perseverance and problem solving though because usually I let my peers do the main job while I  watch them do the work. I agree with my assigned work because I haven't always been on top of things when it comes to late work because for me when it is late it is always very late. I think my collaboration should have been a little higher though because I have been trying to collaborate more with my peers to have a greater outcome of everyones work instead f one person leading the whole group. I don't think the writing and presentation should have been as high because I think that my invisible speed project presentation wasn't very good and my Jet Car Report wasn't very informative. I have improved defiantly since the beginning of the year but there is more to go through and I feel like I have gotten off on a good start.

roller coaster reflection

The roller coaster project was really fun but it was always hard to make them work with pure consistency because the marble never liked to stay on the track. We redesigned multiple times  always making the coaster bigger and better after our failures. We all had to collaborate with one another to fix things like when the marble would almost always come off the track. While we were just building the roller coaster we were learning about the power of motion, acceleration, and force. Our failure always seemed to be the little things that got us and they weren't always fixable which made us have to redesign our whole coaster to fit the small needs of the mistake. When we were collaborating it always made us think about how the forces of gravity and other aspects of motion were affecting the marble. Overall it was a good group project where we could have fun and learn at the same time.

SCAVID Reflection

     SCRAVID is the system my class uses when we read a book. It is an anagram for summarize, connect, reread, ask, visualize, infer, and decide. When I was reading the book Enders game I used most of these strategies but the ones I most constantly used where asking, inferring, and deciding about what characters had been doing. It helped me to record my questions a lot so I could talk abut them in class the next day when we would discuss the chapter we had read. I wouldn't always ask questions but I never did lots of variation. What we would have to do to remember the question etc. we would write it down on a sticky note which would later be brought out in class. I tended to read the whole chapter first then go back over the pages and find out what hadn't already been said ahead so I wouldn't be wasting my notes.

     Asking, inferring, and deciding were my three most used reading skills because they always helped clarify things that didn't always make sense. Like in inferring and deciding I would right down what I thought was true and then share it in class to see if it was correct or if there was anything I had missed. In enders game I often asked what Bonzo's motive was because it was a little unclear. I don’t think there was ever even a single chapter without a question in it and usually they were good questions that some of my peers couldn’t answer. Most of my questions were about the militaries use of Ender and how they would make him do it. One that I think everybody automatically uses is rereading and I use it a lot but I never really could write it down or talk about it but that was what I would do before I thought about writing my thought down as a question. Really all these skills I used were mainly based around the questioning skill but they all helped me through the process of reading this book.

     I hope to use these skills in the future to not only get the answer to my question but also to understand it from a different point of view. I think these skills will help not only with literature but also in life and business. They will be most important in my high school years ahead and this year in language arts and social studies to improve my vocabulary.

Gregorio reflection

At first in class when we read the short story Gregorio I didn't quite get everything because I hadn't studied the vocabulary very much yet but I understood the basic outline of the story through what I already knew. I soon better understood it as we talked about it in class and through homework which made me look over the story again to see what was being said. Through the homework and the presentations it helped me learn some new vocab and when to use it too. To study for the final retelling each night I would pull out my flashcards every half hour or so and present out loud to the wall and when I began my other homework I would simultaneously criticize myself. I was ok with the new vocab that was given to us but I would have liked some more mind preparing work but I also don't think I studied it enough. But in the end I felt ok with my work but it wasn't near as good as it could have been and I would have liked to have just focused more in class and been more involved

spirit doors

The spirit doors were dominated by the congo advisory. My door was willy the wild pumkinhead and it won us the most original award. It brought my advisory out of the pits and into glory while controlling the other doors spirit with fear.

exploratory

Mr. Peisners exploratory is the bets ever. we always work as a team which has continued on what I learned at the camp retreat. We are always limited to a few touches per turn and it always turns out to be a lot of fun.

Vocabulary Reflection What Worked/What Didn't

In class after the quiz we had on some recent vocabulary we have been studying. After Ms. Pyeatt handed out our graded paper she asked us all to get out a piece of paper and list things that worked and things that didn't work. When everyone was done personally reflecting she asked us all to discuss the several main topics, mostly what worked. Later on I realized this process was to help us all see what could potentially help us if we already didn't do that. I found that flashcards were very helpful but also the process of righting them down too. Whenever I am studying I try to write things down or at least type them. Next time I would like to practice my flashcards both ways though that is alway helpful too. I never really had any trouble learning these words or taking the quiz but the one thing I did not master was a long term memory of these words which will make it difficult throughout the year since we will rarely come back up on some older words.

Red Bull Stratos

Lately on class we have been studying the affect of velocity, mass, and momentum on objects to help us understand how real motion works. Our teacher, Mr. Lammers found an interesting article on a man who plans to jump out of a helium balloon about 23 miles above New Mexico's surface all the way up in the Stratosphere hence the name "Red Bull Stratos".  Sadly the launch that was supposed to be today was postponed until a later date due to high winds making it unsafe for a correct launch off. Still I was quite shocked by the fact of a man jumping out of a balloon that high up. Lots of questions came to mind so I went to the website all about it and discovered that he would be jumping out in something kind of like a space suit but it is designed to protect a human body from extreme velocity. In fact the whole question is to figure out if the human body can survive it and what reaction it will have to all those extremes. This was just a way to let us see a big picture of how velocity works instead of Mr. Lammers just relying on us to understand all of this by walking away and towards a velocity/motion detector to automatically calculate all these things. This is something that is real and really cool and I think everyone should look into it before and afterwards too. Tomorrow they will be showing the launch live and hopefully the touchdown too.

Jet Car Report

Balloon Jet Car Report

Baylis Mitchell

    The balloon jet car project overall was a success throughout the class and helped everyone figure out how motion works by seeing what is needed to make something go. It was nice to be able to use other peers work as a reference point to maybe help the design progress. The ability retry and redesign gave the ability to prototype multiple to rethink failure which would eventually lead to success.

Farthest Distance

5.03

    I got a B on this project because my car would only go so far and this was the grade I got for the distance since it is what Mr. Lammers set. I got about an average distance in the grading line but I feel that I could have had mastery in the distance if I had taken a little more time working on each individual car. Actually, although I should have spent more time working on them the final design did work the best but the car would have gone farther if it had been improved. I think I got a B because there were times when I was goofing off and could have been working and everything would have been better if I had thought harder.

  A perfect Jet Car in a certain opinion is one with perfect axles which would send the car  speeding straight across the room. The car would have incredible acceleration for a speed challenge and would make it launch into the air over a jump. But, it would need to be able to carry a lot and still go far to complete the weight challenge. This way it would be able to create an unbeatable record in all the challenges and it would ace them all completely. The final key element to make it a perfect would require it to have the ability to eternally repeat this process without any struggle at all.

    Speed and distance were the top 2 components of this projects, speed was required because a good push to get the axles moving so it would roll several feet without the power of the balloon and distance was needed for a good grade. To get good speed new balloons were constantly required to get that final push and very smooth axles and together half the distance would just be rolling with an empty balloon. But if the empty balloon landed on a wheel that would instantly stop it so placement of the balloon was also an important factor.

    On my best run my car started out strong and the balloon did most of the pushing and it worked out well but once the balloon ran out of air the axles got caught in the roll of tape  and that stopped it. One of my main focuses had been to get really smooth axles but I could never quite get it to work. When I got my best run I resorted to one of my original plans which was to have two air exhausts and other people had already been doing that and it seemed to make it go much farther than one exhaust. I think this made it go  farther because it was blowing air against the floor in a larger area and more all at once which resulted in an overall increase in speed and distance.

    Two problems faced in the prototyping process were having the balloon deflate and jam up in the wheels and the second was getting the car to go straight. To fix the balloon problem I tried to create barriers between the wheels and balloon but that didn’t work so I put the balloon as far away from the wheels as I could so that completely eliminated the problem. Getting the car to go straight was really just trial and error but to make sure that they wouldn’t wobble and turn was to make sure they were as straight as possible while they were on there tightly.

    A reality that I may have faced as a real life car designer would have been getting good mileage. The air in the balloon relates to the gas in the tank but the engine and the straws are what get the mileage. It depended on the design of how many miles per gallon the car will get and how much push the air provides to propel the car.

                                        Jet Car Effort Chart

    After completing this project it taught me about perseverance because I had to prototype
over and over again until I made the right one and I had to persevere through failure. It taught me a new way to persevere instead of persevering through one object I would move on past the failed object and make a new one which was a form of perseverance I wasn’t too familiar with. Something that gave a good motive to persevere was to not just get a good grade but to succeed at something which I had not yet done that.

    I plan to work harder, set higher goals, and perform better overall on the upcoming projects this year and hope to raise my grades a little higher hopefully up into the A range. I’m going to strive to focus harder in class by not talking as much or wondering off onto something totally random. I might do more after school work if i’m struggling in class and will reach out to others for help if I am struggling after that. More finesse might help because I felt like I was rushing through prototyping a little too much. I never gave myself time to step and take a look at what is going on and what should I do to improve my work. I think the next project will go fantastically if I follow everything I just said.