Gabby+C

__**Working with Electronic Devices**__
== There are many different types of electronic devices. In those devices the circuits and electrical components can be set up to work in two different ways, analog and digital. In an analog device the electrical current increases and decreases smoothly. Most televisions, radios, VCRs, and clocks use analog components. Analog components take up more storage which is why some devices do not use analog mechanisms. In a digital device the signals move in a series of jumps or steps. CD player, computers and some other devices use digital components. It is possible to change analog mechanisms to digital a mechanism which is called digitization. In both of these mechanisms they use semiconductors to transfer electricity. Semiconductors conduct electricity when put under certain conditions. They are useful in electronic devices because how well they conduct electricity can be changed by adding impurities. There are different types of solid state components that are used in electronic devices. Diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits are all types of solid state components. Diodes are used for converting alternating currents into direct currents. Transistors are used for amplifying signals in an electric current. Integrated circuits have millions of transistors inside of them and are used for computers and other devices. There are many different types of electrical devices that can be classified into even more types; each type has its own way of working and they are all used for different things. == == This trimester our goal is to travel to mars and to try and discover life on mars.To get there we would need a rocket. This rocket would need to contain electronic devices. To power these devices we would need to use batteries that are aligned in a parallel circuit.So if one battery were to fail the rocket would still be powered by other batteries. We would also need more than one back up battery for the rocket.If we wanted to record any data from mars we would want to use analog because it records more information.Even though it takes up more storage it is still more accurate than digital.Mars is considerably far from earth and if we were to travel there we would need to think through how we would power it. == = **__Rocket History Around the World__** =  Throughout history many versions of rockets were created. Today rockets are well known and now we are trying to figure out how to reach other planets with humans. The first rocket-like devices documented were built in 100 B.C. This rocket was built by an inventor named Alexandria; this device was called Aeolipile that used steam as gas. It had a sphere at the top of the kettle filled with water that turned water into steam. When exactly the first rocket was built is unknown, but whenever it was built it helped to set a course for rocketry. Among the first rockets built were fireworks that failed to explode in the air and acted as a rocket. The Chinese filled bamboo tubes with chemicals like gunpowder then attached them to an arrow and launched them. The Chinese also used these in the war against the Mongols. Through the 13th, 14th, and 15th century the exploration of rockets spread. Roger Bacon improved forms of gunpowder rockets and increased the range of rockets. Another person who experimented in the use of rockets was Jean Froissart. He ended up with ideas that eventually led to the bazooka. The last person that I want to bring up from past rocketry is Joanes de Fontana of Italy. He designed a torpedo similar to a rocket that was used to attach ships in war. In the past many different people have experimented with different types of rockets. All of these ideas would help to shape the future of rocketry.  Since I have already talked about the past it is time to explore the modern works of rocketry. First there was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who came up the first ideas of space exploration in 1898. He said that the speed and range of a rocket were limited only the exhaust velocity of escaping gas. He was also called the father of modern rocketry for these ideas. Starting in the early 20th century, Robert H. Goddard did experiments with rockets because he wanted to go higher than light aired balloons could. With his sights set high his first experiments were with solid propellant rockets. Before long he came up with new ideas for liquid propellant rockets. These were unheard of at the time but he built one on march 16th, 1926. It was powered by oxygen and gasoline and helped set a coarse for rockets for many years to come. Goddard also developed the gyroscope machine, used for controlling rockets. Along with Tsiolkovsky, he was called the father of modern rocketry. The newest rocket after Goddard’s was the V2 rocket made by Verein fur Rauschiffarht. This was used in world war two and was a smaller rocket that was very dangerous. After this rocket was made the US and the Soviet Union started to advance their rocketry. Missiles like Redstone, Atlas, and Titan were soon launched into space. The first artificial satellite was launched by the Soviet Union called sputnik 1. Next they launched another satellite with a dog inside, the dog lasted seven days in the space craft as it traveled in earth’s orbit. This satellite was a sphere with four antennae. With the Soviet Union traveling further away from the earth the US finally launched a satellite into earth’s orbit in 1958, after this NASA was formed. This stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA soon led many astronauts to travel into earth’s orbit and to the moon. Soon satellite’s helped predicate weather and helped to communicate instantaneously. In the past many scientists experimented with rockets, most of these set a clear path for rockets today, which led us to travel to the moon and back. Today we are still setting a clear course for future rocketry which we hope will lead us to other planets and even other universes.

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= Our Rocket experiment =

The rocket started on the launch pad. Once it was ignited it flew up in a fairly straight path. The path was a little curved because of the wind. It reached its highest point in about a second. Once it reached its highest point the rocket fell towards the ground a little before the parachute shot out. Once the parachute was deployed the wind carried it to the ground. It went towards the ground rather fast.

 The purpose of this experiment was the find out if the mass of the rocket affects how high the rocket goes. There could be no relation between the height of the rocket and the mass of the rocket. While there could be a relation between the height and the mass, the mass could increase the height of the rocket. Another way the mass could affect the height of the rocket is that the rocket's height could decrease the more the mass. I said that the more the mass, the lower the rocket will go because of gravity and the rockets inertia. By launching these rockets we found the answer to our question. The question was the whole purpose of the experiment; it was to conclude if the height of the rocket is affected by the mass. The experiment was preformed by first building the rockets. Once they were built we took them outside and set one rocket on the launch pad. Then we took a trundle wheel and we measured 100 meters away from the launch point. At the place 100 meter away from the launch point, two people stood there with an angle gun. Then at the launch point we put on safety goggles for safety. At the launch point we hooked up the igniter to two wires. The wires were also connected to a black box with a key and a button. We hooked the rocket to the wires while the key was out of the black box. Once it was hooked up we plugged the key in; then we pressed the button and pushed the key down to ignite the rocket. Once the rocket was ignited released a cloud of smoke and shot up in the air. Once the rocket reached its highest point the people with the angle gun pointed the gun towards the rocket and released the button on the angle gun. This gun will tell us how high the rocket will go. Once all 8 rockets were safely to the ground we used trigonometry to find out how high the rocket went. By finding out how high the rockets went using trigonometry we concluded that the mass of the rockets effect how high the rockets went. The rockets with less paint had a lower mass while the rockets with more paint had a higher mass. Since the rockets with a higher mass had more inertia and gravity effects it more, the rockets didn't launch as high. This proves my hypothesis true. My hypothesis was that the more mass the rocket has the lower its apogee would be.

= The Importance of Astronomy in the Search for life on mars = How would you like to live in a world where we knew nothing about how we came to be? If we didn't explore further than our own planet than we would have never learned all that we knew today. By learning what is out there we can figure out how it formed and how it will end.

To read more about astronomy, click on this link: More about astronomy

=History of Robotics = == =Robots are not a new thing. In fact the first robots dated back to 60 AD. Two of the first robot were created by Alexandria, the Greek engineer hero. He named these texts Pneumatica and Automata. These were the first documented robots that were capable of automatic movement. Today though, rob = =ots have dramatically changed. Even some robots can be mistaken for a human. From a science fiction book called “Liar!” by Isaac Asimov, the word robotics was mistakably taken. The people that are most fascinated by self-motivating machines are science fiction authors. Overall robots date back more than a thousand years ago and they awe everyone for their distinct automatic movement. = == = = =There are many different robots that have been created all the way from 200BC until today. How people make the robots have automated movement can vary. If you go back to about 270BC you would see organs and water clocks with movable figures. As you can tell, how these robots move is not like anything you probably have ever heard of. Now going forward to 1818 you start to see more science fiction robots. Many books were written at that time that included implausible robots could act like real humans. The word robot comes from a play called “Rossum’s Universal Robots” by Karel Capek. In 1948 William Grey made robots using simple electronics that could imitate human behavior. The first assisted manufacturing was established at the Servomechanisms Lab at MIT. Named Unimate, this was the first industrial robot that was used in a General Motors Automobile factory. This was formed in 1961. The smartest robot though, designed to gather knowledge of subject experts was named DENDRAL; created in 1965. In fact in 1970, a robot named Shakey was the first mobile robot to be controlled by another artificial intelligence. This robot was made by SRI International. To sum it up, robots are made to do all sorts of things. From the start of robots, until now robots have advanced in high tech instruments that can even replicate what we do. =

Programming Robots  Motors on a robot can be very useful and fairly easy to program. On the Lego Mindstorms program I can add gears to my page that can control the motors on the robot. Such as in the picture the green "gear " when clicked a series of controls appear at the bottom of the screen. This is where you can decide what the gear should do. You can make it move in different directions, front, back, left, right. On a gear you can only make it do one of these things. You can't make the robot go forward and then backwards with one gear. In the picture of the program there are separate gears for moving forward, left, right, and back. There is way more to the gears than just moving a certain direction. These gears can also be controlled on how far you turn if you want to turn. When deciding how far your robot should turn you can set it in different ways, such as rotations or degrees. A rotation is a set number of degrees that the robot turns. So you can make it go one rotation or 5 rotations. With degrees you can type in 90 degrees and the robot will turn 90 degrees. When moving a direction though you can set how long it moves too. You can make the motors move the robot unlimited forward, back, left, or right. You can also move the robot back for a set number of seconds or centimeters. Each gear has the option of doing all of these things and can be set in an multitude of ways. Sometimes though if the robot you have will turn 180 degrees when you tell it to move 90 degrees then you have to compensate for that. This can get really frustrating sometimes when you are trying to get it to turn for a certain amount of time and it takes 20 tries to get it because the robot moves twice as far as you tell it to. Working with the motors is fun though and the more you try the better you understand what you need to do to get your robot to do what you want it to do.

With the robots you can make it move different ways and stop with a sensor. There are four sensors, the light sensor, touch sensor, ultrasonic sensor, and the sound sensor. I will start by talking about the light sensor. This sensor can move the robot any way or stop it by detecting light. If the light is a certain darkness then you can type in what the darkness is on the scale that is given on the test pad. You can determine what you want the light sensor to do for the robot by using a light sensor gear. The one in the picture is a sound sensor. The light sensor button would look exactly like that except instead of a microphone it would have a picture of a light bulb. This light sensor can be attached to the robot using different parts and a wire so you can do what you want the robot to do hands free. The touch sensor has a button on it that when pushed can make the robot do different things. To make the robot do the different things you can use the touch sensor button which can be set to make the robot move any way you want when you push the button. Next is the ultrasonic sensor. This sensor can detect an object or sound waves by sending out an echo that bounces off a wave or object telling the robot if something is there. The robot can be programmed to move or stop when it senses something. Such as if you are moving your robot forward than the sensor can make the robot stop before it can hit something. Last is the sound sensor. This sensor detects sound and when programmed to move or stop it can move or stop when sound is detected. If you needed your robot to move forward when it heard a noise then you could do so by using the sound sensor. All of these four sensors are fairly complicated to use. By using this sensors to move our robot we can reduce the number of gears we need too, saving me a lot of work.

= = =**What is life and how do you detect it?** =

When you think of a living thing what do you think of? A human maybe or your pet dog, well a living thing has many characteristics. One thing would be that all living things grow. You grow and so do plants and other animals. Living things can reproduce too. That is how all living things got here, by some animal reproducing and making another living thing. There are certain things that all living things need, like water and nutrients. A rock doesn’t grow, reproduce, take in nutrients, or need water so a rock is not a living thing. If you did not eat then you wouldn’t be able to have the energy to function your body. Some characteristics of a living thing are not visible by the naked eye, like that all living things are made of cells. Living things adapt too, to the environment around them. Back to the example with the rock, the rock can’t adapt to its surroundings. A plant such as a cactus though adapted over time to its surroundings of the desert where there is little water. It seems pretty easy to define what is living and what is nonliving but in some cases scientists still cannot classify objects as to if they are living or not.



Detecting life is not always as easy as it seems. On Earth we have machines that can detect life. The really is if we can use the same technology to find life on other planets like mars. The machines on Earth can detect even minute amounts of life. They rely on chemistry and for example can find the presence of DNA or RNA. We are very far from finding the right technology to use to find life on other planets. We don’t necessarily have to find life on other planets though. On earth there are 2 million known species. It is estimated that there are 8 million species. These machines also are not very common and in many cases aren’t the best way to find life. If we want to find life on mars then we need to look for methane. Methane is almost always produce by biological processes and is easily destroyed by light. If we did find methane than we could be almost certain that some type of life form that exists on mars. In terms of finding the methane we have already made technology to help us. The technology has proven helpful already by examining the effects of global warming. Maybe one day we will find life on mars. 