Lindsay+W

=The Search for Life on Mars= //by Lindsay W//

Galaxies started occurring shortly after the Big Bang creating our universe. It was formed ten billion years ago when it exploded out of nothing and was ridiculously hot. Within a fraction of a second, the universe went from being as small as an atomic nucleus to as big as the earth. It was moisture of radiant energy and exotic particles such as quarks, energy, and antiquarks. When the universe was a tenth of a second old, 3000 kelvin, protons and neutrons started forming and creating atoms which went on creating matter and anti-matter. This couldn't happen until the temperature reached 3000 kelvin because the heat would tear apart the atoms. The temperature then continued to rapidly drop. After 3 minutes, one fourth of the particles had combined creating helium. All of this was named the Big Bang. 2 billion years after the big bang, galaxies stared forming. Gravity caused clumps of matter to form/grow and get denser. They were centered around shells and strings in huge empty voids. Galaxies are also classed according to their shape- elliptical, spiral, or irregular. Our galaxy is a spiral galaxy and stared off as a huge sphere of gas. It formed when the universe was 3 billion years old. Galaxies used to be closer than they are now causing more collisions than there are today. Galaxies colliding head on created one bigger galaxy to be formed. This could happen to our galaxy one day.
 * //From Big Bang to Galaxies// Video Summaries **

**//The Milky Way Galaxy// Video Summaries**
The Milky Way Galaxy is very unique in its appearance. On a clear dark night, the Milky Way arches across the sky with light coming from a numerous amount of stars. There are dark patches seen within it which are clouds of opaque dust. There is also a flat disk of stars about of 100,000 light years across, and 1-2 thousand light years thick. Cutting across the middle of the disk is a thin layer of gas and dust. And in the center of the galaxy is a large flattened bulge that is twenty thousand light years across. The bulge has stars that are mostly red and orange old stars. At the heart of the bulge is the nucleus of the galaxy. It's expected to be a big black hole surrounded by black clouds and a disk of dust. The sun is located in the disk, about half way out of the galactic center. On the other side of the galactic center is a dwarf galaxy merging with the Milky Way. Star clusters and other stars are scattered in a spherical halo, stretching out 130,000 light years from the center of the galaxy. Then if you look down on the galaxy, there are 4 spiral arms coming out of the center bulge. They are seen because of the blue young stars and floating hydrogen gas. The arms are where matter is usually located. The galaxy spins constantly, but each star and cloud in spinning by itself, not as a whole. And the galaxy may be five times bigger than it appears. No one knows.

**//History of the Solar System// Video Summaries **
The sun formed when gravity pulled together gas and dust. The ball collapsed to a thin disk about four and a half billion years ago. In the disk, solids started coming together and growing into larger material. The particles accumulated into clumps, known as planetesimals. Outermost from the sun, icy planetesimals survived made of rock and metals. Some collided and blew up, and others interacted and made one. In the outer solar system, four immense masses formed creating Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. They grew their own disks and their own moons located in the disks. Their large mass pulled in and held onto a thick atmosphere of gas because of the amount of the gravitational pull. In the inner solar system, there were too many collisions for immense planets to form. But four diminutive ones did form: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Their surfaces were heated by continuous collisions. And inside, radio activity also produced heat. The metal from the planetesimals sank to the middle, creating the earth's core. And the lighter rock rose to the surface. Then their temperature lowered and everything hardened and turned permanent. The moon was created in a big collision between earth and another planet about the size of mars. The surface of the moon was crated from heavy collisions for about a million years consecutively. And that is how the Solar System came to be.

=First Rocket = The development of rockets developed exceedingly as time moved forward. They started out as a rocket-like machine called an aeolipile in 1232. It used steam as propulsive gas, and was powered by a form of gunpowder, consisting of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal dust. They soon realized that the gunpowder could launch itself from the power from a forceful escape of gas. A Russian teacher named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had the idea of using liquid propellants to get higher and possibly into space. The new idea for the rocket involved fuel and oxygen tanks, turbines, and combustion chambers. Then a parachute was added for the recovery landing of the rocket. The combination of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal dust made up the first rocket. =Rocket Uses = The rockets were used for many different purposes. In the early years they were used as decorations in religious celebrations, made from packing a mixture into bamboo tubes and throwing them into fires. They were then used by the Chinese as a defense strategy, nicknamed the “arrows of flying fire”, during the Mongol invasion, and were also used in battle overseas for setting other ships on fire. Finally in 1898 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had the idea of using rockets for space exploration. Then in 1957 the first rocket was launched into space with a dog onboard. Rockets went from being used as decorations, to their current use of space discovery.

Rocket Stages

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Mars Exploration Summary The exploration of Mars has been going on for more than a hundred years now, starting in the 1600s. Hoping to get humans on Mars, it started off in 1995 when a probe flyby was launched. It brought back accurate and new information about the planet. After that, orbiters, landers, and rovers were all able to be successfully launched to Mars continuing the knowledge growth about Mars. In 2006 there were 6 victorious missions, 5 in 2007, 6 in 2008, 5 in 2009 and 2010, and 4 in 2011 and 2012 so far. The most recent launch was in April of 2012. It landed on the surface of Mars and is sending back signals to Earth. As Mars continues revealing itself to humans, we encounter many of the mysteries that remain on the big red planet.

Rocket Parts



Does Mass affect Altitude? <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 14pt;">I think the mass of the altitude did affect the rocket because as the mass increased the apogee the rocket reached increased with an acceptation of the rocket that was 43.9 grams. I think this rocket was an outlier or the height was measured wrong. On the scatter graph there is diagonal line starting in the lower left corner and moving its way up to the upper right corner.

<span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 20pt;">Rocket Flight <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 14pt;">Our rocket was launched off the launch pad straight up into the air spinning in a spiral pattern. It continued to fly in a vertical position and went 86.9 meters in the air. It went higher than we thought it would but we did expect it to fly high. There was a poof of smoke and the parachute came out like planned and opened correctly. The recovery went well and it landed safely. I think it was good that we had many layers of paint on ours because it gave it extra mass that contributed to it’s height.

<span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 20pt;">Rocket Experiment <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 14pt;">The purpose of this experiment was to see if the mass of a rocket effects how high the rocket flies. After conducting this experiment I think the more mass a rocket has the higher it will fly. This experiment consists of making a rocket in class and painting it. We also added baby powder to the parachute to keep it dry and not stick together. Next we found the distance of 100 meters away from the launch pad. This was important because we had to find the angle that you would look at it, or the theta, to determine how high it flew by using angle guns. Then we launched it off the launch pad into the air. My hypothesis was correct because I hypothesized that the greater mass of the rocket would help it fly higher and it did.



=<span style="color: #bf0dbf; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 210%;">Rocket with Different Fins Analysis =

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The purpose of this experiment was to determine if a different fin design would make the rocket fly higher. After conducting this experiment, I think the more fins paced on the rocket, the lower it will fly. This was proved when the rocket with 4 fins flew 86.9 meters, but the rocket with 10 fins flew 7 meters. I think this is because the fins directed the rocket in different and awkward directions making it fly everywhere. Also there was a lot of extra mass on the rocket holding it back from its full potential.



<span style="color: #bf0dbf; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 210%;">Rocket with 4 Fins Analysis

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Our rocket had 4 fins on it to give it extra weight to get more inertia, but not too many to keep it from flying high. Our thoughts were proven correct when our rocket flew the highest out of all 7 rockets. Our rocket was launched up, spinning in a spiral pattern, but when reaching it's apogee, there was a parachute problem. The top blew off but the parachute didn't come out making the recovery system, a fail. That was our only maul-function during this launch.

Robots From the Beg inning- <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 17pt;"> <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 17pt;">In ancient China, there was a book written in the 3rd Century BC. The book contained knowledge about a counter between King Mu of Zhou and a mechanical engineer. The engineer proudly presented the king a human, size and shaped, figure of his mechanical handiwork. Also categorized in early robotics are water clocks. This was the start of robotics. Current Robots- <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 17pt;">Modern concepts started forming around the Industrial Revolution because of the complex machines created. After the 1920s, the modern robot had been developed where it was possible to anticipate human sized robots. The first uses of modern robots were in factories. They were machines that were able to manufacture tasks which helped getting more things done with none-to-fewer people. Then digitally controlled robots were built in the 1960s. Robot Challenges In Mindstorms, different programs can be installed to make your robot move forward, backward, a point turn, a curved turn, sideways, spin, and other things. On our robot, our major challenge making the robot turn the correct way. This was hard to figure out because on the course, the robot had to turn different ways to make it to the finish line.

media type="file" key="lwf_robot.AVI" width="300" height="300" <span style="color: #0000ff; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%; text-align: left;">Mineral and Rock Identification on Earth <span style="color: #bf0dbf; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 140%;">Geologists on Earth have many different tests to narrow down the identification of rocks and minerals. They can preform a scratch test. In this test, the unknown mineral or rock is scratched on a white and black <span style="color: #bf0dbf; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 140%; text-align: left;">streak plate. Each mineral and rock has a consistent color that appears when rubbed on the plates. Another test that can be done is an Acid Test. This will test to see if the mineral or rock is a carbonate compound. This is done by pouring hydrochloric acid onto the mineral or rock. If it bubbles, there it is a carbonate compound because the carbon is being evaporated. If there are no bubbles, it is not a carbonate compound. A third test is a hardness test. You rub a mineral or rock on another mineral or rock that you know the hardness of using Mohs Scale. If a scratch is made, the mineral or rock is harder than the other mineral or rock. You can to this to find a range of the hardness. Other tests you can preform are a magnetism test, taste test, and a light refraction test. Hopefully by the end of preforming all of these tests, you will find out your unknown mineral or rock.

<span style="color: #0000ff; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%; text-align: left;">Curiosity Robot Geology

<span style="color: #bf0dbf; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 140%; text-align: left;"> The video, "Geology that Curiosity will be performing" is all about how Curiosity is living on mars. It shows examples of how it has a laser that shoots the laser and look at the light that reflects back to determine the chemical composition, drills holes in rocks and collects the powder, and how it caries a whole laboratory with it. The main goal of Curiosity is to determine if there were ever life on mars. This video explains how that goal is being accomplished. Characteristics of Life

<span style="color: #800080; display: block; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; text-align: left;">To be considered living, or alive, you need to have 8 certain characteristics. One of them is to be made on cells. This means that you have cells living in your body that help you. The second one is that you need materials; meaning that there are certain materials essential to life. For humans, those materials are food, later, and sun. The third is to be homeostatic. This means that you stay the same on the inside. The fourth thing is being able to respond to stimuli. Whether it's putting more cloths on or getting a blanket when it's cold, or screaming when Mr. Himburg yells really loud. Both reactions is responding to stimuli. Another is that you can reproduce; meaning you are able to make more of your kind whether its sexual or asexual. The sixth thing is that you need to be able to grow. All living things develop into a higher form throughout a life time. The seventh characteristic you need to be considered living is that you need to adapt. Humans are adapted to our way of life by having opposable thumbs and being warm blooded. Our bodies adapted to that to make living in our environment possible. The eighth thing necessary to life is respiration. This means that you are able to break food into energy to move and live. By composing all these characteristics, you are considered living.

Searching for Life on Other Planets <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">When the space rovers, Viking 1 and 2 went into space, they carried three ways to test for life on mars. One test was called Labeled Release. It worked by scooping up a bit of Martian soil and mixing it with a drop of water containing nutrients and radioactive carbon atoms. The thought process behind it was that if the soil contained microbes, the life-forms would mobilize the nutrients and release either carbon dioxide or methane gas. This could be measured by a radiation detector on the probe. Another test is called clustering analysis, but the LR test is most commonly used and most helpful. Therefore it is the main way scientists can look for life on other planets.