This week we had a very exciting and busy week of science. To start of, we worked on our roller coasters more, for the most part Rowan and I are done with our roller coaster, we just need to put together our google slides to convince the city commissioners that they want to build it. But, anyone in their right mind would never build that thing. Considering that it claims to have “state of the art” technology in duct tape seat belts. Just knowing that it is being held together by duct tape is a little unsettling. The most exciting thing that we did this week was going scuba diving at the civic center. First off though, we had to go to Scuba North to learn about how it works. I kind of forgot about some of the things that he told us about physics, but I do remember that you should never hold your breath. At the Civic Center, the girls went first. The tank wasn’t really heavy in the water due to the buoyancy. At first I had a bit of an issue, because I do not weigh a lot, and also the vest was a bit big, so whenever the tank shifted, I rolled over. I also found that when going deeper I had trouble with equalizing my ears. I was trying to plug my nose and blow, but for some reason it wasn’t working. But, it wasn’t too uncomfortable, so it was fine. On Thursday, we cleaned up the Peace Garden. There were lots of weeds and leaves all over, so we all had a pair of gloves and a rake. It was kind of difficult to pick up the leaves in the garden, because there were flowers everywhere that you didn’t want to step on. I took a lot of footwork to get through it. During the cleanup, we somehow got into a deep conversation about the movie Ratatouille, and from there, Lilo and Stitch. I am not sure how that came up, but it was pretty funny. I am thankful that we were able to experience scuba diving, and I am also very excited for all of the flowers to bloom in the Peace Garden, it’s going to be so pretty!

Three Questions

• How has time flown by so fast? I can’t believe that it’s already less than a month till graduation!
• Why did I have trouble equalizing my ears?
• Are the bends (in scuba diving) just painful, or could they actually be fatal?

This week we didn’t do too much in science class, due to our upcoming school performance. But, on Friday, the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade took a field trip to Interlochen to seen Pathfinder alumni’s Anne Van Maanen’s senior thesis. All of the art in the exhibit was so cool and interesting. I loved how the artists all took personal experiences from their own lives and used it to make art. For example: One artist who had been diagnosed with a chronic illness made art that expressed what their new life as a patient was like. Or another who was African American, made art that brought attention to the racism that still goes on today. Anne’s art, the art that we originally came to see gave us a glimpse of her past, and what it was like during the hard times of her parent’s divorce. I really enjoyed looking at her pieces, because some of the simplest little things, like a journal she had written in, gave you a bigger image of what it was like for her. An interesting piece of hers was the tower of cups, and what was really interesting was just hearing about why she did it, as well as how people would accidentally knock them down. It was really funny though, because one the other kids heard that they were meant to be knocked down, and that was part of the art, they were over there to knock it down in a jiffy. Overall, I really enjoyed visiting, and I found all of the artwork very interesting, the way that it all just made you think about it was so cool, and now I want to go back and visit again, just to look at more art.

Three Questions

• Is the most difficult genre of art to get into?(at Interlochen)
• What is a typical school day like at Interlochen, compared to a regular public high school?
• If you do attend Interlochen, do you have to pursue what you came there for in the future?

This week in science class we worked on filming for a movie we are doing about Joe’s lungs, inspired by the ones from Reader’s Digest. My group consists of Rose, Joe, Nik, and Zach. In the movie Joe is playing Joe, Rose is playing Joe’s wife, Nik is the waiter from Olive Garden, Zach is the voiceover for the lungs, and I am the doctor. The story line of our movie is that Joe is a big time smoker with anger issues, and Rose is his hard working, fed up wife. One day when Rose decides that she is not going cook they decide to go to Olive Garden. At Olive Garden Oscar (Nik) the clumsy waiter spills salad and water on Joe. Joe rages over this accident and attacks Oscar. Joe, after excessively exercising falls down and has an asthma attack. Alarmed, Oscar calls an ambulance and Joe is rushed to the hospital. After Joe gets out of the ER he goes for his follow up consultation appointment with his doctor who is me. While the doctor is trying to explain to Joe what he needs to change, Joe get’s fed up and uses the phrase “shut up” which Shane did not authorize, and that information will be included in the credits. Finally Joe has another anger management issue, rages again, and Rose dumps him. Joe then cries, pulls himself together, and decides to quit smoking. In the end Rose ends up marrying Oscar, and Joe moves out of his trailer into an apartment in New York and works at a family owned pizzeria.

So far we have only filmed the restaurant scene, the car scene where Rose is driving to Olive Garden, and a couple of the doctor’s office scenes, along with just talking scenes between Joe and Rose. For the most part Zach and I haven’t really done anything yet, but that’s okay because Nik is making us do scenes over and over again until they’re perfect, so at least it will look good. Nik is basically the director of the movie, he also goes to the extremes to get good angles for the videos. When we were filming the scene where Rose and Joe were walking up the stairs to the doctors office Nik stood on the outside of railing to get a better angle, and sure enough it ended up looking pretty good. I would say that our group gets along pretty well, except for when it comes to noises and distractions during filming. But other than that we have been progressing very nicely, and I think that the movie will turn out really funny as well as being somewhat educational.

3 Questions

• Will people end up getting anything out of our movie, or will they just think it’s funny?
• How did we come up with such an interesting story line?
• How does Joe quit smoking so easily?

This week in science we were preparing for the science expo, doing things such as making last minute changes or fixes to our hovercrafts. My group had only two people in it because Nik was gone. The last time we had blown up our hovercraft it was fine, but for some reason,  when we were blowing up our hovercraft there was a big hole in the duct tape. Thankfully we still had leftover duct tape so it was an easy fix. During the science expo we graded the 6th and 7th graders’ projects. I did not particularly enjoy grading because I felt bad having to give some kids points off, one because I just felt bad, and two because you just really don’t know the backstory,behind the issue in the project. Such as, they could have not tried really hard and thrown the project together the night before, or they could have gotten it done in time and done their best, but their best didn’t meet the grading template because they forgot something. Let’s just say that it is really hard critiquing kids and I have a newfound respect for teachers.

After grading the 8th grade class started giving rides on the hovercrafts. At first the rides were a little rough as we were learning where we needed to turn of the vacuum or how to turn around. But once we figured that out we were good to go. The only technical difficulties that Stella and I had was that our crate that kids sat on came off once, and our button on the bottom popped off entirely, along with a few crashes. I must say that it was very tiring pushing hovercrafts back and forth. At first it was really fun, but as the night progressed it felt like the rides would never end! Overall all though, I had a great time, and it is sad that the next time I come to the science expo I will be an alumna.

Three Questions

• How do teachers do such a good job at grading fairly?
• Why do I have an issue with posting blogs late?
• Is there a special secret that the teachers do not share with us about properly grading others?

This week in science we dissected hearts and lungs! Sadly though, four kids in our class missed it due to sickness. But on the brights side, that left us with six kids in our class which split perfectly into two groups, the girls and the boys. The heart wasn’t really gross to look at in my opinion, it was bloody, but it wasn’t disgusting. There were however some dried up bits and some really big blood clots in the heart, but I must say, it was kind of fun to dig the clots out of the inside of the heart. Sorry, this post is taking an unusually disgusting turn. (Feel free to skip ahead the hovercraft part if you are squeamish.) My favorite part about the dissection was cutting open everything just to see what was inside, we did dissect the same exact thing in 5th grade, but I vaguely remember any of that, so this was a nice refresher. Cutting open the heart was the coolest part because we could kind of see all of the valves, although the heart was already kind of cut in half, we think that was because the pig was killed from being stabbed in the heart. The trachea was also really cool because it was like a squishy but hard tube, and it was also really satisfying to cut it open. The lungs were really cool when we pumped them up because the girl’s groups inflated really nicely until Joe stabbed a hole in it. But the boy’s group’s lungs were really gross looking, they looked like what lungs are depicted as with smokers. It wasn’t as exciting cutting the lungs open though, because the lungs were kind of like a sponge, nothing too exciting.

Thankfully for all of my squeamish viewers we also  built hovercrafts. Stella and Nik were in my group for building hovercrafts. Shane gave us all of the supplies we needed, but no instructions, and it was a bit annoying at first when trying to figure them out, but finally we got it. Our supplies included a string, a roll of duct tape, a big wooden circle, a plastic table cloth, a bolt including the nut, and a coffee can lid. In the beginning I think that we all had really wished that we had payed closer attention to last year’s eighth graders’s hovercrafts.But, nonetheless we all managed to get through it. For some of the items it was obvious what to do with them, such as the plastic and the wood circle, we all knew that the plastic was to be duct taped to the board because it would blow up to make the thing well, hover. Thankfully we all knew to poke holes in the bottom of the plastic too, all of ours did end up bursting because there were not enough holes, but at least we even poked holes. The things that we did not know how to use was the string, the coffee can lid, the nut, and the bolt. The string ended up being for measuring plastic because there was a hole in the center of the wooden circle, so we held one side of the string in the center, and with the other end we attached a marker to trace the diameter around our circle. The coffee can lid and the bolt were the biggest struggle for us, Shane did give us a hint but none of us understood it. Then we discovered that the bolt was to plug the little whole in the center, and the lid was to gather up the center of the plastic. All of the groups managed to complete the hovercrafts, but we have yet to test them out and attach chairs, but I am really excited for next week to try them out!

Three Questions

Why are we so cruel to animals when slaughtering them?

Is there a better way to slaughter animals other than stabbing their hearts or slitting their throats?

How can I feel so bad for animals but still have fun cutting up their organs?(by the way I still do have fun with it)

This week in science, we had TEST! I did not think that I would get through it, because I was very confused about neurons, and I might not have studied the night before, due to my busy schedule. Thankfully, we were able to look through our notes right before the test. Most of the test was about what part of the brain does what, following a funny story based off of one of Shane’s mom’s experiences. The hardest part for me was to draw out a neuron with the cell body, dendrites, axon, and the axon terminal, along with explaining how it worked. Another thing that was on our test was to write a paragraph about our thoughts on the statement “you are your brain.” I think that the statement is technically true because we get our personalities from what we have learned from our parents or from past experiences. Our brains also tell us what to do such as if it is a good idea or not. Of course, not everyone has the same thoughts which makes us unique. I am most thankful that there was nothing on the test about ears or eyes because I would not have remembered that from my classmates presentation. I probably would have remembered something about the eye because I was in that group, but I definitely would not have remembered anything about the ear, and I still don’t. I probably should still learn that for the future though.

After I survived the test, we were allowed to play around with cool tech stuff. Ellie, Stella, and I tried using the 3D pen that extrudes plastic, so you can draw in the air. At first we kind of just made junk. But then we discovered that there were templates, except the templates looked like they would take a lot of plastic to make, and we all wanted a turn, so even if we had plenty of plastic, it would still take a while. So for a little while we just made scribbles, then I got bored and decided to speed draw on a template. I decided to try making a catapult. The catapult ended up looking really sloppy, but I managed to put it together after about 5 attempts because I made the mistake of trying to use a hot glue gun instead of the pen, because people were getting impatient and I didn’t want to hold them up. Sadly though, the hot glue gun kept melting my thing so I had to resort back to the 3D pen. In the end, I ended up with a small, messy, but functional catapult that could catapult tiny paper balls, but only if they were the right size. I am pretty proud of my work considering that I managed to not clog the pen or adhere anything to the table.

Three Questions

Would my catapult have been able to catapult things other than paper balls if I had put more time into making it?

Why would people invent something and call it a chocolate “3D” pen, when it technically doesn’t draw 3D? Besides, a piping bag can do the same thing, plus it’s cheaper.

Why do we hunt Pangolins for their supposed “healing properties” when it has been proved that they do nothing?

Made with Storyboard That

This week in science, I finished my postcards that I was working on about the digestive system and my project on fecal transplants. Now, the digestive system is pretty self explanatory, I had a postcard for every organ, so I had the mouth, the esophagus, the stomach, the small intestine, the large intestine, the colon, and then the rectum. I also had to do some of  the helpers such as, the pancreas, the liver, and the gall bladder. That project took most of my time. Also, I have a small confession to make, I am a HUGE procrastinator! So I might of crammed in my whole fecal transplant project in one night(hopefully Shane is not reading this). But, I did get it done. If you do not like to talk about bodily functions or things that have to do with excretion, you may want to stop here, but if not, just keep going!

Fecal Transplants! Fecal transplants is a cure for a bacteria call C. difficile colitis. C. difficile colitis is a bacteria that attacks the colon. If you look up images of an infected colon(which I don’t recommend) you will see disgusting sores all over the walls. Now, you may or may not have known this, but anything that ends with “itis” means inflammation, so it makes sense that C. difficile colitis would cause inflammation in the colon. Anyways, back to the main topic, this terrible bacteria causes fever, diarrhea, and pain in the gut. Also, it can be fatal. It also makes sense that diarrhea is involved, because if your gut isn’t working right, that probably means it isn’t doing it’s job right either. When this bad bacteria takes over, your colon is almost bare of good bacterias. So, a solution? POOP, or antibiotics, but poop is more interesting. Surprisingly, poop contains lots of good bacteria, so this transplant restores the “good stuff” in your gut.  So, first a donor must be found. I’m not sure how difficult it is to find a donor, but I can’t imagine that it is that hard, considering they are just collecting something that is already being excreted. The donor’s blood and poop is carefully screened for parasites, disorders, and diseases. Next, once they have the feces, they blend it with saline. Once blended, it is strained. After the process of liquifying it, it is sometimes frozen before use. When needed the liquified feces is thawed and transplanted through a nasogastric tube or a colonoscope. An interesting fact about fecal transplants though is that they are not yet approved by the FDA, but they are on their way! Normally, unless the the case of colitis is really bad, it is treated with antibiotics, considering that it is a bacteria. Now the only piece of advice that I have for all of you is this, remember to wash your hands after the bathroom, because that is how this bacteria is passed. Lot’s of people can carry this disease but they never get sick, but of course, this is not the same for everyone. People who are infected can spread the bacteria through food and other things if they do not wash their hands after the bathroom. I hope you enjoyed learning about this wonderfully gross yet cool cure for C. difficile colitis!( I couldn’t find any good images that were too disgusting to look at)

(for kicks and giggles)

3 Questions

• Wouldn’t freezing the fecal mixture kill the bacteria in it?
• Why are the feces blended with saline?
• Why do we excrete healthy bacteria that we need in our gut?