Olivia+F

= The Search for Life on Mars =

From Big Bang to Galaxies
Our universe began a very long time ago; in fact it exploded out of nothing. This explosion was called the Big Bang. The universe started out as a dense mixture of radiant energy, quarks, and antiquarks. As the universe became larger the temperature fell. At a tenth of a milli-second protons were forming in the universe, as matter and antimatter were being formed as well. At one second the temperature had fallen to only 10 billion degrees. After three minutes protons and electrons had combined to make the helium nucleus. Much later after the helium nucleus was made electrons started to revolve around the helium nuclei, which stopped the atom from being torn apart by the heat. After helium was made hydrogen was made. So this made our universe a huge ball of gas that would later form the place we live in today.

The History of the Solar System
The sun like other stars formed when gravity pulled together gas. Solid materials started to collect in the disc that was around the newly formed sun. As time progressed the solid materials got bigger and bigger. While the sun is getting bigger, the outer solar system was being formed which included Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. This four planets grew discs of their own, where moons condensed. The inner solar system was also being formed, but the planets could not be as big because there was to many collisions. The four terrestrial planets (in the inner solar system) were Mars, Mercury, Earth, and Venus. These planets also condensed moons, for example our moon we know. Our moon was hit by floating particles which made the craters. Some of the planets would acquire their atmosphere from volcanic gas.

Lives of Stars
Stars form in cold black clouds of dust and particles in space, a wave from exploding stars can cause the clouds of dust to make cores or clumps. Each core gradually contracts as gravity pulls it together, as it contracts it rotates. Near the center the core collapses causing it to heat up. The cloud of dust surrounds the star that is made from the heat. Bigger stars can grow and change faster than smaller stars do. The big stars are forty times more massive than the sun and they shine a hundred times brighter than the sun. Stars of lower mass are dimmer and the temperature is lower. In a billion year s the sun will get bigger and bigger to where it will pulse every month, later it would get so big it would touch the Earth and then get smaller and smaller were it then releases a planetary gas circle. When it gets small it gets as small as earth, after it becomes a white dwarf star that slowly fads away.

The Milky way Galaxy
The Milky Way is an insider’s view of our galaxy, in the center of the milky way is a bulge which has four arms. The bulge is marked out by groups of young bluish stars and pinkish clouds of glowing hydrogen gas. If you were to go in the central bulge the stars are mainly yellow and orange, these are old stars. At the center of the bulge lies the nucleus of the galaxy is a black hole. While the whole galaxy is turning each star and gas cloud has its own orbit.

The Sun
The sun is one of the biggest stars; although it is closer it is very different from any star inside of it. Seventy-six percent of its mass is hydrogen but the rest is helium. During an eclipse the sun's outer most layer the corona streams out from the yellow visible disc. The "power house" of the sun is in the middle, where it is millions of degrees, many things collide in this center and the heat radiates throughout it.

= Hubble Deep Field Telescope = The Hubble Deep Field Telescope was used to take pictures of the universe and send them back to NASA. Some of the images that telescope took were not clear and astronomers had many questions about them. Some of there questions included how many objects are in the the HDF, how far away are the objects and how can the objects be classified and identified. Soon after they asked all these questions the estimated the amount of objects in the universe which was between fifty to one hundred billion. When I guessed how many objects in the universe I guessed 65,880,000,000 objects which was actually in the range of what astronomers thought. In the image that was shown on the website there was about three thousand. Some of the objects in the galaxy were classified as the spiral galaxies, circle, or irregular, some of the colors that were listed were blue, red, yellow, and white. The astronomers were also wondering how far away the objects were from Earth they found out this things by the light that was given out by the objects and also the size, only sometimes did the astronomers use size as a classification of distance. If you were to look at different galaxies they would all be different colors and shapes. The shape of the galaxy indicates how the gravity forced the dust, planets, and stars together, the way gravity pushed it could be classified as circle, oval, spiral, and irregular. The color of the galaxy indicates how old it is, as it gets older the color changes. Since there are so many objects in the universe the astronomers have a special way of counting them. They use a method called "representative sampling" where the sky is divided into sections of equal size and then all the objects are counted then multiplied by the number of sections the universe is divided into.

= The Amazing Life of the Rocket =

The first object with rocket like components was called and aeolipile. Around 100 B.C. a Greek inventor named hero used steam as a propulsive gas, he mounted a sphere on top of a water kettle. A fire below the kettle made the water go to steam and the gas traveled through the pipes to the sphere, which causes it to rotate. When the first actual rocket was built that worked was unclear, stories or the early rocket happened in the first century A.D. The Chinese had a simple form of gunpowder made from saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal dust. During feastivals they had explosions which were made by the bamboo filled tubes with a mixture and tossed them into fires. The Chinese soon began experimenting with the -filled tubes, at some point they attached bamboo tubes to arrows and launched them with bows. They also found out that they could launch gunpowder tubes by themselves just by the power produced in the escaping gas.



The first real use of rockets was right around 1232, this was when the Chinese was in war with the Mongols. The Chinese would fire the flaming arrows at the Mongols which scared them of and made them very nervous about coming into China. Later on other people found that rockets could be launched faster and more accurate if they were on a pole. In 1898 a Russian schoolteacher proposed the idea of space exp loration by rocket. In 1903 he published a report that the used of liquid propellants for greater range. He said that the speed and range of a rocket were limited by the exhaust velocity. In the 20th century Robert H. Goddard did many experiments in rocketry. He did many experiments on making rockets with liquid fuel, when he began improving how far and fast his rockets went. Each time he would improve his rockets the would go farther and farther into the air. The rocketry spread all around the world, Germany made a V-2 rocket that could destroy a whole block of a city. Luckily for the French the rockets came out much to late to be used in WW2.

Once other countries had heard about the V-2 rocket they all wanted to have rockets of there own. In Russia they sent out the first satellite that orbited the earth. Of course this made America very nervous because if Russia could send a satellite out of the world than who knows what they could do with the other rockets. This made the US start NASA which is National Aeronautics and Space Administration. After this many rockets and satellites were sent out to go into the sky and space to explore space.

=Model Rocket Labeled Parts= Each group in the class had to make a rocket out of a kit that was given then depending on how well we made it and followed the directions was how far the rocket was going to fly. Our method was to put the rocket on the stand and then launch it to find how high it flew we used a angle gun. We were 100 meters away from were the launch was and then when the rocket was launched we pulled back the trigger and when the rocket let a puff of smoke we would let go of the trigger. This would measure the angle from the ground to the apogee. Our rocket was the fourth in our class as we flew 62.5 meters in the air. The highest in our class was 91.5.
 * The Amazing Rocket Experiment **

Our Rocket was dark and light purple and on the side of our rocket it said Panda Express on it. On the nose cone we made little green swiggles from the top to the bottom. If I could redo my rocket I would put more paint on it because it seemed that the more paint the higher it would go. Also I would make sure the rocket is completely connected the first time because the rockets that took longer to ignite did not fly as high. Our construction was very good though nothing fell off during the flight and nothing was damaged!

**Mars Rover Drop**

Our team had a mars rover drop vehicle that had two balloons on either side with a bag stuffed with a bunch of paper and pipe cleaners and bubble wrap in the bag. Inside the bag we had two cups taped together with bubble wrap on the inside which is where we put the egg. We designed it like this because we thought that it would keep the egg from breaking. The balloons on the sides was a really good part about it because the balanced each other out and kept the rover from breaking. When we actually did it, the rover hit the target perfectly! The next time I might add a parachute to make sure that it doesn't float away. Another thing I might improve on would be how much tape we put around the cup because I think we could have been safe with more because then I would have felt even more comfortable with dropping it but it still worked anyway.

=**Lego Mindstorms Robots**=

Each group got to program there own robot. We first started programming just on the robot which involved not very complex things like going forward five steps and turning left. When we got to the Lego Mindstorms programs on the computer thing got more complex. This involved things like curve turns, point turns, driving in a square and even an action replay. My favorite was the action replay which we had programmed the robot to have a button touched then we would move it then the button touched again then it would do the same thing that we made it do.

One of the programs that we used needed a sensor's. The first sensor that we needed to use was the sound sensor. The first thing we did to use it was clap in front of it and it would move forward because it wasn't a loud sound. When we screamed into it moved backwards because it was a louder sound. Another sensor we used was the Ultraviolet sensor which detects and sees objects. The best part of the ultraviolet sensor is that we could make a course for it to go through with obstacles and it could complete it. The third sensor that we used was the light sensor which was used to detect dark from light. It can read the light intensity in the room and measure the light intensity of colored surfaces. We a had course that it had to complete; it had to follow a line that was black.





=Identifying Minerals=

Minerals can be identified in many different ways, and some of the ways we used during our labs were the same that geologists use today. One of the ways we used in our lab was looking at the mineral through a magnifying glass and looking at the color and the way that the mineral the same through out. The second way was by looking at the luster of the mineral and trying to classify the mineral by the luster. We looked at how the light reflected off of the mineral and comparing it to other minerals. My favorite besides the tasting was the hardness test. The hardness test is when we rubbed different objects on the mineral and if the mineral scratched the object the mineral was harder than it. If the object scratched the mineral the object was harder. Say the hardness of the object was 4 and the mineral scratched it that would mean that the mineral had a hardness bigger than 4. Another way that you could classify minerals is by streaking. Streaking is when you take a mineral and rub it across a plate and depending on the color of the streak is the classification of the mineral. Another way is classifying the mineral is if it is magnetic. It is as simple as if the magnet attracts to the mineral it is magnetic. One of the tests we did was we took a mineral that was close to translucent and put it over a book and depending on the mineral was how the mineral altered the text. Now for my favorite the tasting, we tasted two minerals Calcite and Haltite. As Haltite tasted very salty, Calcite tasted like chalk and it was quite disgusting. The last way we could classify minerals was the Hydrochloric Acid test. All we did for this test was put Hydrochloric acid on different minerals and if they bubbled then they were carbonate compounds.



Geologists are also sending rovers to Mars that can do these tests to see if there is or was ever life on Mars. One of the tests that the rover does is drill into a rock then once it gets far enough in it can start to collect the dirt and do a test inside of it. Rovers even use compasses, rock hammers, hand lens and they could even do a simple acid test to see what the rocks are made of. Inside the robot there is a full laboratory inside of it were it can observe these things. The rover will even have a laser that will be able to shot rocks that may be up higher and see what is on the inside.




 * Living Things in the Universe **

To be a living thing you have to have certain characteristics and some include being made of cells, being able to grow, reproduce, adapt and many others. To be living you have to exhibit characteristics of a living thing. These things are being made of cells, needs materials, being homeostatic, responding to stimuli, being able to reproduce, grow and adapt, respiration. To be made of cells it means to have cells inside of you because they are the fundamental units of living things. Needing materials means that you need water, minerals and air. Living things take what they need from the environment. To be homeostatic means internally living things stay about the same despite the environmental changes. Most living things expend a lot of energy to maintain homeostatic. The next thing you need to be living is being able to respond to stimuli; a stimulus is anything that causes living things to react and a response is the reaction to the stimulus. There are two reactions to the stimulus a positive and a negative response. When something has a positive response to the stimulus they move towards it, but when the response is negative they move away from the stimulus. Also another thing you have to do to be living is reproduce. This is the process by which organisms produce offspring of their own kind. There are two types of reproduction sexual reproduction (two parents) and asexual reproduction (one parent). To be living you also have to grow, all things develop from a lower or simpler to a higher or more complex form. Just like for humans you start as an embryo then a newborn then a child then an adolescent and then you finally reach the last stage adult. You also adapt as a living thing. Adapted means modifications that make an organism suited to its way of life. The last thing that living things have to have is respiration, this is releasing energy stored in the chemical bonds of sugar.

Many years ago NASA sent two space probes up to Mars to see if there was life there. The probes could do three tests on Mars. The first test was where the probe would pick up soil and mix it with a drop of water with nutrients and radioactive carbon atoms. If there were microbes in the soil they would metabolize the nutrients and release either radioactive carbon dioxide or methane gas which could be measured by a radiation detector on the probe. Unfortunately the soil test was not backed up by they other two experiments, both of which came out negative for life so the space agency was dismissed the possibility.