Jane+B

= Life Identification through Characteristics and Procedures =

There are over 2 million types of plant and animals, so it is important that we can classify this life. We are able to classify the life through characteristics. Every type of life has these characteristics. The characteristics: These 8 characteristics help to determine life, and without them half of our beings would be undefined. Curiosity was sent to mars just last year. The rovers mission is to determine whet her or not there is/was/could be life on mars. At first there were only telescopes to look at the planets and try to determine, but now we have more advanced technology like rovers. However, with these rovers comes more intense yet accurate procedures to identifying life. One of the more commonly used procedures to determine if there is life on another planet is to take in some of the planets soil and mixing it with a drop of nutrient radioactive carbon atoms water. The outcome of this experiment would be that if the soil contained microbes, then the life forms would metabolize the nutrients and release radioactive carbon dioxide or methane gas. Another procedure for identifying life on another planet included heating certain soil samples to different temperatures, in conditions that would kill the photosynthetic microbes or rely on the photosynthetic microbes to survive. Back on earth there are still ways to single out if there is life on mars, such as by using Cluster Analysis. Cluster Analysis is an easier way to sort information telling if the info is false or true by grouping together similar data sets. When identifying life on another planet you have to come prepared with experiments such as the two I showed you, however you aren't finished after the experiments on Mars, you have to testify them again on earth to determine the final answer. = Mineral Identification = = = = = There are several ways to identify minerals. You can tell a mineral by its color. Luster, and texture. All of these observations can help identify minerals, some of the observations more accurate then others. Color is probably the first observation we preform just because it is easy to look at a rock but its hard when the rocks have different colors and there color can be purple or green. With the observation of texture, it is easier to tell the mineral if it is really smooth like talc but then can become more difficult when the rocks start all feeling rough. There are many more observations that can help to identify a mineral, but in order to be presence and speculate an accurate identity than you would use a more complex procedure. Some of the complex procedures include, identifying a mineral by running an acid test, seeing if it is magnetic, and streaking the unknown mineral on a porcelain plate. The streak procedure helps us categorize minerals when the color observations aren't enough. Some minerals have the same color and can't be identified, when this happens you can take a plate of porcelain and streak the mineral on it. Every mineral has a different streak so therefore you would get two different color streaks and would be able to identify the mineral from there on. The acid procedure works when comparing two minerals because if you put strong acid on minerals some of them will bubble and fizz. Then you will know that the fizzing mineral is in the group of fizzing minerals therefore eliminating some of its other competitors. All of the ways listed can help to identify your mineral. = =
 * 1) Every piece of life is made out of cells. Cells are the essential units of living things. No matter what type of life, they have to have cells, whether its plant cells, bacteria cells, or animal cells.
 * 2) All life needs material. No matter what, life has to take in some type of material. Us humans take in Oxygen, water and Minerals. In order to be a form of life you have to take something from the earth.
 * 3) Life has to be homeostatic. Homeostatic mean that the living thing stays the same no matter what environmental area they are in. For example humans still manage to keep the same high body temperature when they are in a cold place such as Alaska. Maintaining homeostasis requires a large amount of energy.
 * 4) Responding to stimuli is another important characteristic in determining life. Stimulus is anything that cause living things to react and response is any reaction to a stimulus. Together they make children scream when they hear loud noises and animals run away when they see/hear humans. There are two types of responses, positive and . Positive makes the life move toward the Stimulus and negative makes the subject move away from the stimulus.
 * 5) All life can reproduce. Reproduction is the process by which organisms produce offspring of their own kind. They are several different ways to life's reproduction. Two of these ways are Sexual reproduction and Asexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction is with two parents and Asexual reproduction is with one parent.
 * 6) Growth is another characteristic for life. Growth is the developing of life from a simpler form to a higher more complex form. The timeline of growth goes like this, Embryo--> newborn--> child--> child--> adolescent --> adult, however not all life grows at the same rate, or reaches the same size.
 * 7) All life must readapt. Readaption is life's modifications that make an organism suited to its way of life. Readaption takes evolution which is he process by which characteristics of species change through time.
 * 8) The last characteristic is respiration, life's way of gaining energy through food and then releasing that energy. Consumers are required to take in food in order to sustain life. Producers, can create there own food and example of a producer are trees.

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The new rover curiosity was launched in the summer of 2009 landing on the red planet in 2010. This robot carries the tools and knowledge of all good geologists. Curiosity can drill into mars and collect the dust from the drilling that it can then pull into to its testing centers. It can also use a laser to shine at rocks and see how the rocks reflect the light. But before all of these procedures the Mars rover has to just move around on Mars avoiding al of the giant destructive rocks in its way. Curiosity's job is hard but hopefully its will gather enough information to tell whether or not life could be on mars. ====== = = = = = = = = = = == = = = = = = = = = = = Completing Robot Experiment 1 =

There are several movements required to completing this challege. You have to move forward, turn at the right (at 180 degrees) and continue straight, landing in the box. Turning a robot it probably the biggest challenge because you have to pin point the amount of degrees that you need to turn. This was probably our groups biggest challenge. Another problem was when you program and play then go and change again the first thing you did not want to change has slightly changed. media type="file" key="100_0124.AVI" width="300" height="300".

= Robotics History =

= = The start of robotics was in 320 BC when a Greek mathematician Archyratis made the first model airplane, a small bird that was propelled by steam. The next real robot was invited by Leonardo divinci he designed a mechanical robot that looked like a knight. These knight like robots were often created to amuse royalty back then. Another famous name in robot history, Jacques de Vaucanson is famous for his close step towards "moving anatomy". In 1738 he created "the duck" a life sized bird who flapped his wings, quacked, moved and even digested food. From then on robotic inventions were frequently being made such as dolls that draw, write and play music. In 1921 Karel Capek a Czech writer added a name to these machines. He chose robot because it came from the word "robta" meaning "compulsory labor". == = =  Modern day "compulsory labor" consists of major companies such as Lego, and Honda looking into robotics. These company's are not the only ones interested in robotics however, many doctors are trying to research and find out ways to look for cancer and diseases such as the concept of the "cyberknife", a robot that takes x-ray images to look for tumors and then delivers a pre planned dose of radiation if a tumor is found. Robotics are becoming more and more important in are lives and we must not ignore one of the main purposes for the robots, outer space exploration. Since we are studding search for life on mars it is very important that we have a robot rover for exploring on mars. Curiosity is our current robot rover heading for mars to complete just a little bit more of future robot history. = =

= = = Rocket Fin Experiment =

The purpose of our experiment was to see if the more fins the higher altitude or the less fins the higher altitude. It turned out that thee fins was the perfect amount of fins to get the highest flight and we had 6 fins so our did not go the highest but is came close to being the highest rocket because there rockets had ten fins. When we graphed our data we found out that the mass vs. altitude had no relationship because our data was all over the place. But when we made a graph comparing fins to altitude there was a clear inverse relationship on our graph because with more than 3 or 4 fins the rocket was proven to go not as high.

Our rocket had 6 fins. Its take off was good but it didn't fly completely straight and came down with an altitude of 38.4 meters. Our parachute did a little better this time but did not fully succeed. Because our parachute ejected but did not open causing an abrupt landing. Our rocket was in third place for highest altitude. The rockets with ten fins did not go very high at all. And the rockets with 4 fins wen the highest. So we were in the middle because we had 6 fins so we did ok. = Rocket Experiment = = = The start of our rocket experiment is that we took the rocket kit and put toghether our rock. The next step was to beautify our rocket by painting the rocket body, nose cone, and fins. We completed painting the banal banana so we weighed it so we could compare the data of our flight to the mass of our rocket to see if it was aligned. Next we put baby powder on our parachute to keep it dry. We put the parachute back into the rocket body along with some recovery wadding to prevent the parachute from getting burned in the explosion, a rocket engine, and an igniter. We were then ready for liftoff so we headed to the field and launched our rocket. The rocket had a straight lift off but unfortunately the parachute did not eject and it landed with a mediocre altitude. = = This experiment was successful. All 7 rockets launched and returned to us safely. However there were a few faults to our experiment. The first fault was that our parachute did not eject. This happened to another group also. Our parachute got a burnt hole in it but other than that it had a straight liftoff, and flew well until ejection.

The purpose of this experiment was to see if the rocket flew higher with more or less mass. The results were that the more mass the higher the altitude. All of our rockets were the same before we painted because we all had the same kit and built it the same way. But when we painted the rocket some people painted more paint then others. Lindsay and Margaret's had three covers of paint and big blobs splattered on the side so threes was heavier then most of the other rockets. Also we baby powdered our rockets so we could have gained mass adding some baby powder. So since some were heavier than other some flew higher than others. = = My hypothesis: = = I believe that the rocket is mediocre so it will lead to a higher more accurate flight. Because when your rockets to heavy its heard to launch it but its good at breaking the wind and with small rockets it is easier to get picked up by the wind so a little bit of both will cause it to go the furthest! I was being very optimistic when I took the hypothesis and didn't want our rocket to loose but it was one of the lightest and it happened to be that the heavier the rocker the higher the altitude. So my hypothesis unfortunately was false. == = The Banal Banana = = The Exploration of Mars! =

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The exploration of mars has existed for hundreds of years. The first act of exploration was the invention of the telescope. Next in the 20th century space probes were launched into outer space and gave us a lot of feedback about the planet. In 1965 a fly by provided more accurate information telling us atmospheric pressure, temperature, and that Mars had no magnetic field, basically that it would be very hard for life to survive on mars. All around the world people have been interested in the exploration of mars. Many orbiters, rovers, and landers have been sent to mars. All to collect more information about the red planet answering questions, figuring out the current conditions to lead up to human exploration of Mars. Mars will be forever explored and our knowledge of this red planet will grow and grow but now we just have to wait for the next piece of knowledge of mars to be sent to us from the new and improved rover. This rover curiosity was launched into mars on November 26 2011 and will be arriving on the Martian planet to give us not only information, pictures and observations, but experiment data! =====

= Rocket Stages = media type="custom" key="13888214"

= All About Rockets = // By Jane B //

Rockets show off the technology of the past and present. An aeolipile was an essential device to rocket flight it used a water kettle to create steam that came out of two pipes and caused the sphere to rotate. We don't know exactly when the first rocket was invented but ewe suspect the first ones were accidents. The first accidents were from the Chinese putting the newly created gun powder into bamboo tubes and tossing them into fires to explode during religious festivals. And by accident the tubes instead of exploding shot up out of the fire propelled by the gases and sparks. After that the Chinese started experimenting with the gun powdered tubes by shooting them with arrows but then they realized that the rockets could propel themselves into the air by them selves. When the chinesre and Mongols were at war they first used true rockets calling them, "Arrows of flying Fire". They were what we call now solid-propellant rocket which is a tube, that’s capped at one end, and filled of gunpowder. The uncapped side was for attaching the rocket to a long stick. When lighted the rocket shot off the stick just using the stick as a guidance system for the rocket. After the battle the Mongols caught on and created rockets of their own and may have been responsible for how the Europe might have gotten the idea of the rocket. = =  The first idea of space exploration was from a Russian schoolteacher, Konstanti Tsiolkovsky in 1898. He proposed many other ideas and got the name of the father of astronautics. An American in the early twentieth century he proposed the idea that a rocket could be propelled better by liquid fuel. It was very hard to make a liquid fuel rocket but Goddard achieved the first successful flight with a liquid propellant. The flight was unimpressive to people of our time but he founded a whole new era in rocket flight. The liquid propellant rockets continued for many years becoming bigger and flying higher. For many other inventions of Goddard's such as inventing a parachute system he has been called the father of modern rocketry. In the early 20th century all around the world rocket societies were created. One rocket called the V-2 wads used for war because it had great thrust and could devastate whole city blocks. When Germany lost the war their idea of the left over V-2 components were being used by the allies and may rocket scientists former German rocket scientists came to the US, soviet Union and were impressed with Goddard's progress. The ballistic missiles used for warfare became the starting point of the us space program. In 1957 the world was shocked to hear that the first satellite had been launched by the Soviets and that it orbited the earth. Next a dog was launched in a satellite carrying a dog named Laika on board. After the first Satellite the US followed up by launching Explorer I by the Army. In the October of 1958 the Us created a space program, NASA or national Aeronautics and Space Administration. Astronauts and machines were being launched into space and robot spacecraft was traveling to the other planets. With space opening to exploration and spacecraft the demand for rockets became great. From gunpowder bamboo tubes or "arrows of flying fire" to massive space launching machines rockets have grown up with human kind and allowed the exploration of the universe.

= The Search for Life on Mars = //by Jane b//

All Because of a "Big Bang"
Our universe began 15 billion years ago and has been transforming into our universe that we have today ever since the big bang. The "big bang" is when are universe exploded out of nothingness into a very small hot ball packed into a space smaller then then an atomic nucleolus. Our universe is said to have gone from being the size of an attom to the size of our earth extremely fast. It was a mixture of quarks antiquarks, and energy. In ten milliseconds neutrons and protons are formed. The temperature drops to ten billion degrees and the universe is dominated by electricalparticles and radiant energy. From the time 3 minutes to 300,00 years little happens. When the temperature reached 300 degrees kelvin electrons start orbiting the nucleus. The koby satellite found the first structure of the universe as tiny ripples uniform radiation.2 billion years after the structure galaxies are forms. Our earth is not to far behind, being started at 3 billion years after as a big sphere of gas. From a sphere of gas to what we live on is a pretty miraculous transformation but just a small fraction of the transformation our universe took.

A Milky Way Galaxy
If your lucky, on a dark clear night, one might be able to see the milky way curve across the sky, a patchy band of light. The light is from the stars in the milky. The dark patches are clouds of dust. A human from our galaxy is able to watch our galaxy. The galaxy is made up of a flat disk of stars, then a thin layer of gas and dust in the middle of the disk and in the middle there a central bulge. The sun is in the disk about half way to the galactic center and on the opposite side a dwarf galaxy is merging into the milky way. Stars clusters are scattered beside the flat disk reaching out 130,000 light years. Looking down on the galaxy you will see 4 spiral arms made up of young blue stars and clouds of pink of hydrogen gas. In the central bulge the stars are mainly red and orange which represent old stars. In the heart of the bulge lies the nucleus probably a massive black whole. The galaxy is turning but not all together all the stars are turning separately. Matter builds up on the spiral arms. The way the galaxy rotates tells us that there is a invisible corona surrounding the galaxy that is quite huge and contains a lot of matter. It is possible the galaxy may be 5 times bigger than it appears.

History of the Solar System
The sun was like most stars and formed when gravity pulled together a cloud of dust and gas. The ball collapsed to a disk about 4 in a half billion years ago. In the disk material started to become larger and larger particles. The particles then become clumps known as planetesimals. Icy planetesimals further away from the sun survived. In the warmer region the planetesimals were made of rock and metal. Over time planetesimals collided and became bigger pieces of matter. In the outer solar system 4 large pieces of mater formed. These became the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn Uranus and Neptune. They grew disks where moons condensed. Each of the giant planets gravitational pull attracted and held onto a thick atmosphere of gas from the surrounding nebula. It was hard for planets to form because of all the collisions but eventually 4 planets emerged, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars these were the terrestrial planets. The moon was probably created by a planet colliding into the earth. For a million years the moon was crated with heavy bombardments. Most of the planetesimals had collided and been destroyed or had been ejected into the remote solar system. Or settled into the asteroid belt. Only a few planetesimals were captured to be the moons of the planets. Icy planetesimals became comets when they reached the heat of the sun. Rings probably come from comets and stray planetesimals being ripped apart by gravity when they got too close to their planet. In the early solar system it was more likely for rocks to crash into the earths surface. The dinosaurs were affected by these rocks for 65 billion years ago a 15 kilometer object crashed into the earth making them go extinct.