Isiah+H

=__ The Search for Life on Mars __= = From Big Bang to Galaxies =

====The universe started out as a tiny compact spot the was trillions of degrees. In an event many refer to as the Big Bang, the universe began expanding and matter particles began to form. In the span of a second it has cooled to 10 billion degrees electrons and other radiant particles form. As it expanded it began to cool off, allowing more matter particles and finally atoms to form without the heat tearing it apart. After many years of relative dormancy, merely continuing to expand the universe births its first structure, in the form of ripples in the radiation, or microwaves. When there was uneven distribution of matter, gravity pulls clumps together, forming galaxies and galaxy clusters. Our galaxy formed as a big glob of gas, on the universes 3 billionth birthday. Shortly after, star clusters began to form in our galaxy. ====

= History of the Universe =

====Four and a half billion years ago the gravity pulled together dust and interstellar gas forming another star, now known by humans as the sun. Like any star, it was a disc that surrounded a protosun. Inside the disc portion of the sun particles began to form and accumulate into clumps a few kilometers long called planetesimals. Some planetesimals collided to become the giant planets; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Then the four terrestrial planets formed, Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. In the latter mentioned planets, the heat forced the hot metal to the inside of the rock that was forming on the outside. The remaining planetesimals either settled in the asteroid belt or became moons. ==== = = = Lives of Stars =

====Stars form in cold dark puffs of gases and dust. The attributes of a star are caused by its mass, including heat. The largest will always be the hottest and the hottest stars are blue -white and are about forty time the mass of the sun. The hottest stars are bright light blues, various bright whites (cream/ivory or white/eggshell), and the duller colors, especially dull red, are the weakest. ==== = = = The Milky Way Galaxy = ====At night you can see the Milky Way arches across the sky, a bright rainbow of stars. It has four spirals and extending off of a white clumpish center. In the middle of this clumpish center, lies a nucleus. It is thought to be a black whole surrounded by puffs and clouds of gas. Each star has an orbital path that it follows and each a gravitational pull. ==== = The Sun =

====The sun is the star that our solar system depends on. But it is merely a star, and an average sized one at that, and like all stars it�s a merely a clump of unbelievably hot gas. Within the sun, hydrogen nucleus protons collide and combine to become helium nuclei. This process causes four million tons of hydrogen to disappear each second, giving the sun its insane heat and energy. The core/center of sun is around fifteen million degrees. Despite the fact that Sun's magnetic field is five times stronger than the Earth's, its magnetic field manages to pull particles from the Sun to the North and South Poles. ====

__Hubble Acadademy__ ===I've been learning about the Hubble Telescope's pictures using an online program called Hubble Academy. One of the astronomers questions was "how many objects are in the Hubble picture" the answer 3000 objects. There are many kinds of objects in the picture, there were Irregular Galaxies, Spiral Galaxies, stars, and Elliptical Galaxies. he shape of a galaxy is how they are classified and color of tells us how old, and how hot a star is so that is how we could tell what was in the photo. I also learned that astronomers estimate the number of objects in the picture using the sample method. Its where the divide the picture into sections and count the amount in one section, then they multiply that number by the number by the number of sections. Then they figure out how many of those pictures it would take to capture the entire Universe and whatever that number is, you multiply it by the number of pictures to capture the Universe.===



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= Rocket History =

The first Rocket ever was brought about by Hero in 100 B.C. He boiled water and directed the steam through metal pipes, in such a way that it moved the hollow spherical ball at the base of these short pipes.(See picture 2 at the bottom of page for an explanation through imagery.)

In the early 1200's, the Chinese took Hero's rocket in a different direction and filled bamboo sticks with gun powder and threw them into fire creating a firework like explosion, and used these for celebration. Chinas military turned these celebratory rockets into 'weapons of destruction' (they really ended up working as 'weapons of scare', because they really didn't do anything but scare the heck out of the Mongols) by attaching a stick the bottom of the rocket and shooting it out of a tube so it would stay on a relatively straight path.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a Russian school teacher who in 1898 had the idea to use rockets to explore space. He realized powder was too heavy and that liquid would work better and published a report on this.

The American Robert H. Goddard was the first person to successfully create a rocket power by liquids being converted to gas, he thought of how balloons floated using gas giving him the idea of gaseous fuel.

After rocketry was used in the Word Wars and new versions of rockets were innovated it finally led to first successful space rocket made by the Soviet Union with the rocket ship Sputnik I. (See picture one for a picture of Sputnik I)

Picture 1: Sputnik I

Picture 2: Hero's Invention/Hero Engine

= Rocket Labeling =

Hypothesis of Whether the Mass of the Rocket Affects its Flight:
I think that the mass of the rocket may slightly affect its flight, but not substantially, because the data portraying the different masses is too erratic. I think the amount and placement of glue, as well as the placement of the fins will play a bigger part in the max altitude than the mass.

Summary:
I'll start by summarizing the flight of the highest flying rocket in 3rd period Himburg's flight... Max's and my rocket's flight. Our rocket flew relatively straight up and fell about 15 yards from us from us. Its angle was 46.5 degrees. It spun a little and fell on its side. The parachute didn't open all that well so it landed a bit hard.

A few purposes of this experiment were to learn about the basic functions of rockets, a simplified version of the mechanical assembly of rockets, and to have some fun learning about angles and trigonometry. But the main purpose of the experiment was to find out if the mass of rocket affected its flight. It seems that my hypothesis (see above) was correct that the mass of the rocket wouldn't significantly impact its flight in comparison to the others, especially when the masses of all the rockets were so close. To build the rocket, we used directions from a kit.

Then comes the math of the flight. First, we took a Trundle Wheel and counted on each click the Trundle Wheel made, until we got to one hundred and that was how away from the rocket the two angle measuring people stood. Each click meant the Trundle Wheel had gone 1 meter, so the angle people stood 100 meters away. Then, using angle guns, the people who were measuring would point the gun at the rocket and when it was at its apogie or highest altitude, the parachute came out they would release the trigger they had been holding down and that would tell them the angle of the apogee of the altitude. Now for the trigonometry. The equation "100(tan of the angle) told us that because our rockets angle 46.5 degrees (at its apogee) that its apogee in meters was 105.4 meters.



This is a graph of data portraying mass vs. max altitude from 3rd period Himburg Science class, and as you can see, the highest altitude (mine), was around the middle in mass, maybe a little bit on the lighter end of the masses, but clearly it was the mass that effected its altitude. Even though the lighter ones did tend to go the highest, when you look at the rockets, the heavier ones also had bad glue placement and some took some damage and needed repairs prior to the flight. So overall I stand by my hypothesis.

= = =__** Mars Rover Drop **__= For Ross, Joe, and my Rover vehicle we had our egg in a cup that had bubble rap all around the inner perimeter of the cup, and that cup was inside and bubble rapped cup. We had 4 support beams (built by Yours Truly) on the bottom with that it would land on them and they would act as legs. To try to provide a safe, floating drop we had two balloons attached to a parachute/plastic bag which was attached to a string that is attached to the cups. Though the rover landed harder than we expected, it landed safely on the silver mat and the bubble rap kept the egg safe and sound. If we had chance to do it over than we would probably have given the parachute more of an opening so that more air could get under it. =__** Mindstorm Programming: **__= My partner Max and I programmed a Lego Robot/Tribot using Mindstorm Programming. We did tutorials that built us up to 'challenges' where we had to sort of come up with our own programming in accordance to the challenge Tribot to test our ability to program without directions. The Tribot two motors and 2 wheels so to go forward, the side wheels rotate forward the amount of times set on the NXT Programming software on our computers, to make a 'point turn', one of the wheels locks up while the other wheel rotates, and to make a normal turn while moving forward, the wheel that corresponds with the direction you want to turn (right or left) doesn't move, while the other wheel rotates.

Most of the sensors on the Mindstorms robot are not attached to start you have to put them on when you need them. I'll list these in accordance to relation their proceeding listing as well as a bit of randomness. Firstly is the sound sensor that detects sound using vibrational waves called decibels. Logically placed as the second listing is the ultrasonic sensor that detects distance using a similar process as the sound sensor. It detects vibrations and properties of its surroundings, vibrations and properties that the human sensory devices cannot detect Quite randomly placed in my listing is the light sensor that detects light and colors just in the same way our eyes do. The touch sensor is fairly straight forward; it detects an object when contact is made between the Tribot and the object.

This is the Robot my partener and I used and it has the Ultra Sonic Sensor (the one that looks like an old timey microphone) on its left 'arm'. These are all of the sensors that are useable on the Mindstorms Tribot that we used.

=__ Minerals Identification __=

rock/mineral.
=__ Characteristics of Life __= To be living, a species must have, be, or be able to do, all of the following 8 things. They must be made of cells, which are the fundamental units of living things. They must need materials, meaning water, minerals, air; they must take what they need from the environment. They must be homeostatic, meaning internally they stay relatively the same despite environmental changes. They must respond to stimuli, meaning they must have positive and negative responses, like if I hit someone, they would respond negatively by maybe yelling "OW!" or crying, or if someone gets a massage they might react positively by relaxing and taking a deep expressive breath. They must reproduce, either Sexual, which means to parents, or Asexual which mean there is only one parent, and they are essentially cloning themselves so any different or bad qualities the one parent will have "clone" will have those qualities as well. They must grow, they must start out as a less complicated being and get more complicated with time. They must have adapted, meaning they must have modified themselves to suit their way of life. They must have a respiration system, which would be the system that releases energy stored in the bonds of sugar.