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?