Alec+P

The Search For Life On Mars by Alec P Science Video Summaries From Big Bang to Galaxies The big bang started when the universe got so much energy it grew. It went from an atom to the earth. The universe is rapidly cooling, and then protons and electrons are formed. Matter and antimatter get created, and then they create energy when they collide. Then after a little while, protons and neutrons made helium nuclei. Then after a lot of years, the temperature drops so that electrons orbit nuclei.About two hundred million years after the big bang, galaxies start to form. Matter comes together in clumps. The Milky Way Galaxy

History of the Solar System The planets were formed when the sun attracted a bunch of rock. These rocks are called planetessimals. These planetessimals collided and blew each other up, but eventually some collided slow enough that they combined. Eventually the four big planets came to be. Then the inner four planets came later.

History of the Rocket

The first invention that used rocket like ideas was the aeolipile, which used steam as power. But technically, the first rocket was invented by the Chinese and was used during the wars with the Mongols. It was not very effective. After this the Mongols spread this technology across the rest of the world. From there the Europeans made different improvements to it. At this point the idea of using the rocket for space travel was centuries away.

Then, in 1898 Konstantin Tsiolksky wrote about using rocketry for space travel using liquid propellants. Because of this he is called the father of modern astronautics. An American named Robert Goddard also researched this further in 1915. Then in World War 2, the Germans made a rocket called the V2. In the war these were used as weapons to bomb London and other cities. After World War 2 the U.S. and the Soviet Union began working on their space programs. The Soviets first sent up Sputnik, a satellite, then Laika, a dog. The rest is history.





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Exploration of Mars

Over the last 40 years there have been numerous space missions with the goal of exploring Mars. The first rockets sent up were the Mariner program, which were satellites that took pictures of the planet from space. The Soviets sent up probes of their own a few years after that. In the mid Seventies, the U.S. launched the Viking 1 and 2. These were two probes and two landers, and the pictures they sent back showed evidence of river plains that had dried up. In 1997, America sent up the Pathfinder, which was the first rover. In 2001 the Odyssey and Express were sent up with the purpose of finding volcanic activity or water on mars. The world has yet to send a man to mars.

Rocket Parts  Rocket Experiment

The purpose of this experiment was to see if the mass of the rocket effected the altitude of the flight. Everybody built their rockets the same, but we all painted differently, so the mass differed. When launched, it turned out that the heavier rockets tended to fly higher. This proved my hypothesis wrong.

Our rocket, which weighed 47.7 g, flew an estimated 70 meters in the air. It flew the third highest out of all the rockets. When the rocket hit apogee the parachute did not come out as well as it should have. When the rocket hit the ground there was no damage to the rocket.



Rocket Fin Experiment (6.5)

For the next experiment, we wanted to see if the number of fins effected the flight of the rocket. I thought that the more fins would help the rocket fly higher, but I was wrong. The results showed that the people that left their rockets the same had higher flights. The people with less fins had higher altitudes. The rocket that flew the highest only had 3.8 fins, yet the rockets with 10 fins did not fly high at all.

Our rocket few terrible. It weighed 57.7 g. We thought that with the extra weight it would fly higher. We were wrong. It flew a disappointing 7 meters. It flew third to last on altitude, so it was not the worst rocket.



History of Robotics The first robots were not actually real. These robots were myths, like the Greek god Hephaestus, and the Jewish golems. The first real robotic machine was the Cosmic Engine, a clock tower in China made in 1088. Al-Jazari was an Arab inventor that made many robots around the year 1200. The first main European to go into robotics was Leonardo Da Vinci. The big advance in robotics happened in the industrial revolution, with new inventors like Nikolai Tesla coming into the picture. The word robot was invented in 1928 by a Czech author named Karel Capek. The first real robot was made in 1927, it was a humanoid from America. Konrad Zuse made the first digital computer in 1941. The term artificial intelligence was made in 1956 at Dartmouth College. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce invented the integrated circuit in 1959, which revolutionized robotics. General Motors made the first industrial robot for their factories in 1961. in 1970, the Soviet Union launched a moon rover that was a robot to the moon. The first microprocessor was made a year later. In 1975, the first personal computer was made. Through these innovations robotics has changed the world.



Motor Functions

The way the motor worked, when we turned it to move left, the left wheel would not move as the wheel turning the robot. Instead, it was the right wheel that would turn it. This is true for everything that turns, even for humans. For point turns to the left, only the left wheel would move. For curve turns, both off the wheels move, but the right wheel moves more

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Geology on Mars There are many different ways that a scientist can identify which minerals are which on earth. One way is the acid test, where you put hydrochloric acid on the mineral to see if it bubbles or not. On certain minerals you can do a taste test. You could do a light reflection test. You could test if it is magnetic or not. You could see if it has a streak, which means if when rubbed the mineral leaves a mark, you could test the hardness, and finally you could look and see what the color and the luster was. The Curiosity robot can try to identify minerals using different methods. It has a laser that can scan the minerals that are on sides of cliffs. The laser can also be used in other ways, like reflecting the light to find out what it is. It can also use its arms to grab minerals and put them into the laboratory it has built inside it. All of this will be used to find out if mars has life or not.

Life There are eight characteristics of life on earth. All living things must be made out of cells, whether they are bacteria cells, animal cells, or plant cells. All living things need materials, for example, humans need water, food, and shelter. They must be homeostatic, which means they stay the same internally all the time. They have to respond to stimuli, which means that they react to the things around them. Living things have to reproduce. They also must grow. They have to adapt, which is like evolving. And finally, they must have respiration. Scientist have developed many ways to test for life on other planets, namely mars. They can send probes to do various tests. Some tests they do are putting nutrient filled water and radioactive carbon atoms to find out if it had a circadian rhythm, which is an internal clock found in all living creatures.