Gabriel+L

__From Big Bang to Galaxies__
Before the universe got do huge, it was packed into a small area that was only about the size of atom. As the universe started to grow and expand, it acquired matter. It was very hot at first but with the growth of the universe it started to cool down. Protons and neutrons also formed. After a long time atoms also started to form. The matter later gathered to form galaxy's, which are collections of stars. Some galaxy's are made of a combination of more than one galaxy, witch collided together. The creation of galaxy's still continues today.

__**The Milky Way Galaxy**__
On a clear night the Milky Way arches across the sky. You see a big strand of light which is created by the stars in the galaxy. There are darker patches that you see which is created by dust. The whole galaxy is made up of gas, stars, pinkish clouds of hydrogen, and dust. When you look at the galaxy straight on you see a flat disk of stars and dust. But from the top it is really four spiraling arms of stars coming from a bulge in the center of the galaxy. If you go into the bulge there are old red and orange stars. At the center of the bulge there is a black whole which is the nucleolus of the bulge. The whole galaxy turns, however all the stars are in their own orbit. Although the arms temporarily collect matter, they are not permanent. While you see the four big spirals that make up the galaxy, there is also an invisible corona that is made up of stars, gas, and dust. Since we know this it is possible that the galaxy is bigger than it appears. There is gravity in the corona that pulls on the stars we see, yet nobody knows what it is.

__**Lives of The Stars**__
Stars form in clouds of dust and gas. Waves from exploding stars create cores. The core spins and creates energy and heats up. This then creates a star. It gets hot enough for nuclear reactions to start. It spins faster and the dusty gas that surrounded the star goes away. The star finally settles. Bigger stars change faster. Also, the mass of stars change the light that the star gives off and also the color. There are different colors that stars can be such as, orange, red, blue, (etc.) The stars core keeps it shinning. Over time it gets smaller, and blows up the star. Then the waves from the exploding stars recreates the process.

__The Sun__
The sun is a star. No different than any star, it is just closer to us. It is a ball of hot gas. 76% of its mass is hydrogen, and the rest is helium. The power house of the sun is in its core, the temperature in the core is 15,000,000 degrees with gas more dense than iron. Hydrogen nuclei and protons crash together to make helium. Every second 4,000,000 tons of hydrogen goes away to create the sun's energy. The energy is spread from the core and throughout the sun. The sun's surface bubbles up with gas on the top. Jets of gas shoot up from the sun's surface. Bigger clumps of gas can erupt from the sun as well. But the most powerful of these are called solar flares. They can shoot as far as the earth. These gases stream into the solar system. Then the magnetic fields of the earth send these by the poles and they hit the upper atmosphere and glow in the aurora. The sun also has magnetic fields that make it spin. It rotates ones a month. The magnetic fields loop around the sun as it turns and when it gets to the end this process starts again. This process takes 11 years.

__History of The Solar System__
The sun was created by clouds of gas and dust. There was a disc created around the sun. In the disc, solid material clumps were formed. Those that were icy survived. They started colliding and coming together. In the outer solar system Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were created. In the inner solar system there were to many collisions for larger planets to form. But eventually mercury, Venus, earth, and mars were created. The surface of the planets were heated by bombardment of the planet and also radioactivity. It is believed that the moon was created by a collision of the earth and another planet the size of mars. While most of the smaller solid clumps I talked about earlier were destroyed, a few got captured and became the moons of different planets. Those clumps become omits if the reach outer areas of the sun. also the rings that are around planets were created by groups of the small clumps that got even smaller.

=Rocket Stages Scratch Project=

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=Rocket History=

Rockets have come a long way. The innovation of new rockets have been remarkable and is why we have the ability to travel to space. A man named hero of Alexandria created the first device that proved that the flight of rockets was possible. It was a ball with two tubes on either side that was set on top of a water kettle with fire heating up the water. (like a stove) The water turned into steam and the steam went through the tubes on the ball and made the ball spin. You may be wondering, what does this have to do with rockets? Well, this is how rockets work. All that smoke and gas that comes out of the rocket propels the rocket up as the steam made the ball spin. So this was very important for the invention of the rocket. It is unclear of when the first true rocket was created. But the best guess is that is was the Chinese in the first century. They put a gunpowder mix into bamboo tubes and then through them into fires to make explosive decoration at festivals. They figured out that some did not explode and then they would be propelled by its own power from the fire and smoke. The Chinese started experimenting with this. They would put these bamboo explosives on arrows and shoot them off. This was the birth of the first true rocket. Rockets were then started to be created. New experiments were being tested and the rocket was advancing. Robert Goddard experimented with using liquid fuel which made the rocket go higher. The idea of having a parachute for the rockets recovery was also invented. That is why there are coned tips on the top of rockets today. Eventually people were sending satellites up to space by rockets. It was a huge step for the rocket and space industry. Rockets were a very important invention and it is the reason we have rockets, satellites, rovers, NASA (etc.) today.

Hubble Deep Field Academy

I have been learning about the Hubble telescope in space. To do that we have used something called the Hubble Deep Field Academy. It is a website that has a mini class about the Hubble Telescope. Astronomers asked things about how far away stars are, what different things in space are, classification of galaxy's, (etc.) there are anywhere from 50-100 billion objects in the large image. Three things in the large image were stars, spiral galaxy's, and irregular objects. Astronomers can estimate the distance of objects by using the size but more importantly the color of things. The color of galaxy's can tell you how big it is, and also how old it is. So the astronomers can look at the color of things and can determine the distance. This applies to stars as well. Astronomers can also estimate the number of galaxy's in the universe. The can use a picture of the sky and break it down into equal parts. They then count up one part of the picture and can estimate the number of the other equal parts.

I think that learning about the Hubble telescope has been pretty cool and I am glad I got the chance to. **Rocket Labeled**

= Mars Rover Drop =

In science class we designed a vehicle that could successfully land our rover (an egg) onto mars (the ground). For our vehicle we knew that we had to find a way to keep the egg safe. I fist thought that we could put the egg in a cup and attach a balloon to the cup to ease the cup down. So we poked 2 holes on either side of the cup. Then we looped a string through one hole, and one in the other, and tied them to the balloon. The cup was also lined with bubble wrap. We then tested it out and it went down a bit hard. We then tried adding a parachute to the top of the balloon. We took 4 pipe cleaners and taped them to the balloon. We then took a big plastic bag and taped the pipe cleaners to the bag. We had the bag cut open in advance to catch the wind and lower the impact of the fall. This was our final product.

I think that the parachute and the balloon was a good contribution to our vehicle. I also think that the bubble rap helped the egg not break with the impact of the landing. One thing that we could do differently is maybe keep the egg a bit more safe. As I said our egg was in a cup out in the open, so I believe that we could have put the egg in a bag our covered it to secure in more. But other than that our landing was successful as the egg did not break, and I think it was a fun experience.




 * Rocket Experiment**

The purpose of this experiment was to see if the mass affects the altitude of the rocket. I think that the greater the mass the higher it will go. This is because it will have more momentum.

We constructed the rocket out of a kit with the help of a few other materials. When the rocket was built, we then painted the rocket which added a bit more mass. We then measured the mass of all the rockets. After that, it was time to launch. We took a meter wheel and measured out 100 meters. When we were launching, two people with angle guns (at the 100 meter distance) followed the rocket with the angle gun as it shot up in the air. At the point of apogee, they measured the angle of the rocket.

When the launch was taking place, I noticed that at the stage of ignition it made a loud sizzling noise and created some smoke at lift off. As the rocket was coasting it spun a bit due to the wind but it was smooth for the most part. It then got to the point of apogee where it got to its highest point and ejected the parachute. Our parachute did not fully open so the recovery was a bit shaky. As the

This is a scatter plot that shows the comparison between mass and altitude. For us the data was a little un even. It looks to me like in the lower half of the masses, the rockets were in middle range of altitude. As you can see some rockets with higher masses went a little higher although there was one higher flight in the lower range of masses. To me the mass would affect the altitude of the rocket. Obviously of the mass is to high then it wont go to high. And if the mass is to low, the wind will blow the rocket around and again not make it go as high. How ever the placement of the fins could also affect the flight. If all the fins are not all in line then it will make the flight more shaky.

Over all the experiment went well. I am sure that the mass can the altitude of the rocket, but the results of the experiment did not personally provide the results necessary to say how the mass affects the altitude, and I cant clearly conclude that my hypothesis is true or false.

=Lego Mindstorms Programming=

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 * This past week in science class, we have been working with Lego mind storms programming. This is a program which enables you to put different programs on robots to make them do different things. The wheels on the robot are attached to a motor but the motor is spun by gears inside the robot. The wheels can also move in different ways in order to make the robot go backwards or turn. Obviously if you wanted to go forwards the wheels would spin forward. If you wanted to go backwards the wheels would spin backwards. For things like terms there are a few possibilities. For instance in a point turn (depending on what way you want to turn) one wheel will completely stop and then the other wheel will go which makes the robot turn its self in place. But for more of a curving turn (when the robot is turning while still moving) one of the wheels will go slower and the other wheel will go faster which makes the robot still move. But since one wheel is going slower the robot will turn with the greater power of the other wheel. A challenge with using the motors is that you have to program how many rotations and the amount of turn that you want the robot to make. **=====

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 * We **** also attached sensors to the robot to make it do different things. A sensor is something that takes one form of energy and converts it to another. Here are some examples of some of the sensors we used. There was a sound sensor which was able to stop or go another direction when it heard a loud sound. There was also a sensor that could control the distance of your robot. We set up a few boards in the hallway and programmed the robot so that when it got to a board it detected the board and then it would turn the other way and keep going. The sensors helped the robot do different things. **=====

**I really enjoyed working with the robots. It was fun and I would like to do it again.**


=Rocks and Minerals=

This past week in science class we have been identifying different types of minerals. We have learned many ways to do so. There's one way where you do something called a streak. You get a sheet of porcelain and then you rub the mineral across the porcelain. The color it leaves behind, which is the streak, can be helpful in identifying the type of mineral. Another way is by its luster. You can tell what kind of mineral something is by the way it reflects light. Another thing that is helpful with identifying minerals is to test if they are magnetic. You can do acid tests to see what is in a mineral. You also can scratch the mineral with another object or vice versa to see what the hardness of the mineral is compared to the other objects. We performed some of these in class for practice.

There is a rover on Mars called curiosity and it is looking to see if there's any signs of life on Mars. What it can do is drill a hole into the ground and the powders that come back up from the ground go back inside of the robot and are analyzed to see if there are any signs of organic things or minerals. Also, the rover has a laser attached to it and the laser shoots at rock on Mars and analyzes the light that reflects off of the rock. These are some ways that we are trying to find life on Mars, although we are not sure if there is yet.

= Characteristics Of Life =

Have you ever wondered why you are considered alive? No? Perfect, this should be helpful. There are 8 things that you must encounter throughout your life time to be alive. The first one is that you have to be made of cells. These are fundamental units of living things. There are different types of cells though, there are animal, plant, and bacteria cells that all have many parts. The next one needed is materials. All living things need water, minerals, and air. Living things take these necessities from the environment. The third thing is that living things need to be homeostatic. Internally, living things stay about the same, despite environmental changes. Living things expend a great deal of energy to maintain homeostasis. The fourth thing is living things have to respond to stimuli. Stimulus is anything that causes living things to react. There are 2 different types of responses that living things can have to stimuli, positive and negative. If a living thing reacts positively to a stimulus, it moves towards the stimulus. If it reacts negatively, it moves away from the stimulus. Next, they must reproduce. Reproducing is the process by which organisms produce offspring of their own kind. Plants and animals reproduce in a few ways, Sexual and Asexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction is with two parents and asexual reproduction is with one parent. The next thing is living things need to grow. All living things develop from a lower simpler form to a higher more complex form. Not all things grow at the same rate or reach the same size. Next is that all living things have the ability to adapt. This is the modification to make an organism suited to its own way of life. Linked to this is something called evolution. Evolution is the process by which characteristics of species change through time. Lastly, is respiration. Respiration is releasing energy stored in the chemical bonds of sugars.

There are many ways that scientist are trying to detect life on other planets. We have things like Curiosity which is a rover on the planet Mars searching for evidence of life. It is digging in the soil to find any sorts of life there. It is also scanning rocky walls on Mars. There is also a project that is going on with large satellite dishes that detect radio waves. These waves are being analyzed to see if there are signs of life. For example, if the radio wave pattern was a pattern not expected to occur naturally, then it could be a sign of an intelligent creature creating the radio waves. There is also a mission being organized for people to go to Mars in 2023. Some people think that this is going to be one of the best way to find new life outside our planet. These are some things that we are trying to do to find life and there are many others and others to come in the future.