Chloë+C

=The Search for Life on Mars=

** From the Big Bang to Galaxies: **
Our universe began about 15 billion years ago in something called the big bang. The universe was small and hot, about the size of an atomic nucleus. It then began expanding in a fraction of a second and particles of matter were created. This also includes quarks, energy, and antiquarks. Then the temperature fell and protons and neutrons were created along with antiprotons or antimatter particles. This then goes back into an energy form. The energy formation over comes particle creation and Electrons, Positrons, and Muons are created along with energy. After about 3 minutes most of the protons and neutrons combined to make helium nuclei. This "soup" of radiation and particles goes on for a long time as the temperature continues to drop. When the temperature gets to 3,000 degrees the atoms are created without being torn apart by the heat. Ripples are the first sign of structure and these were first detected by the Kobe Satellite. The creation of galaxies didn’t happen till 2 billion years after the big bang. The act of gravity causes clumps to form. The galaxy we live in formed first as a gigantic ball of gas about 3 billion years after the big bang. Galaxies are classed by their shape such as elliptical, spiral, or irregular. When galaxies collide this causes them to merge into a larger galaxy.

**The Milky Way Galaxy**:
The Milky Way is the galaxy of our home planet Earth along with the moon and many other planets including the sun. The light from the Milky Way comes from multiple individual stars and the dark clouds are dust. There is a disk of stars surrounding our galaxy. This is about 100,000 light year across and 1,000-2,000 light years thick. This ring of stars is covered by another layer of gas and dust. In the middle there is a lump or bulge that is 20,000 light years across. On one side of the bulge (half way between it and the disk) is the sun. Then on the other side closer to the disk, a dwarf galaxy is forming with the Milky Way. In the center of the bulge lies the nucleus. Some think it is just a gigantic black hole. The sun takes 250 million years to go around once even though it is traveling at 250 kilometers per second.

** Lives of the Stars: **
Stars are formed within dark, cold clouds of dust and gas. An exploding star causes ripples to go through these clouds. This then creates clumps. Each core contracts as the laws of gravity pulls it together. The core begins to rotate and heats up and a small star forms while gas surrounds a new star. The heat creates nuclear reactions which causes the star to spin faster and gas to stream out from the poles. Then it settles down to a point when nothing much happens. The sun was born as a yellow star about 5 billion years ago and then in another 5 billion years from today, the sun will start to run out of hydrogen from its core. This then causes it to expand and change to a darker color, somewhat of a reddish shade. The sun will keep expanding to 100 times larger than it is today and will get much brighter. It will finally release a planetary nebula to show the white core which is now a dwarf star.

** The Sun: **
The sun is the largest star in our galaxy. The sun's power is in its core which is the hottest place within the sun. Four million tons of hydrogen vanishes to generate the sun's energy every second. Black sun spots appear on the surface when some parts of the sun are 1,000 degrees cooler than the rest of it. To release energy the sun releases solar flares which can go past the earth when released. The sun's magnetic cycle takes about 11 years to be completed. Sun spots only last a few weeks and they usual appear near the equator

** History of the Solar System: **
In the disk around the sun particles turned into clumps as the disk rotated. Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus were in the outer solar system, while Earth, Mercury, Mars, and Venus were in the inner solar system. The barrier between the two was a circle of stars that closed in the inner solar system and pushed out the outer solar system. Scientists think the moon was formed when Earth collided with another planet and sent the chuck into orbit. Other clumps that get close to the warm atmosphere of the sun are called commits. One of these was said to have hit earth about 65 million years ago and this knocked out multiple species including the dinosaurs.

The Hubble Deep Field Academy
I n the Orientation of the Hubble Deep Field Academy, their questions were much more scientific. For example one question was "How can the objects be classified and identified?" which seems more advanced than "Why are some of the stars fuzzy?". Then in Level 1 we talked about how many objects are in the universe around us. In the example image there are about 50 to 100 billion objects. After Level 1 came Level 2 which was about organizing objects by their characteristics. Three types of these objects were spiral, circle, and oval galaxies. Each galaxy was put into a column by its shape. Then in Level 3 we talked about the distance between objects. Astronomers can estimate distances by the light these objects emit and not just size alone. Finally, in Level 4, we talked about what characteristics can indicate in galaxies such as the color can indicate the age of the stars within it while shape can indicate the amount of debris and dust in a galaxy. The way these astronomers can estimate the number of galaxies in our universe is by using a method called "representative sampling". This method is used by dividing the sky into sections and the galaxies within them are counted. This is then multiplied by the number of galaxies to get your estimation.



The History of Rockets and the Results
The first device before the rocket to have the ability of flight was called an aeolipile. Hero of Alexandria (A Greek inventor) used steam as gas to power this device. He took a sphere with two L-shaped pipes and put it over a kettle of water that was suspended above a flame. The steam from the kettle caused gas to be released through the two makes and made the sphere rotate. After this came the Chinese in the first century A.D. . They took bamboo tubes and filled them with gunpowder and then tossed them into fires to create explosions during celebrations. At one point they attached arrows to these tubes so they could be shot by bows. The Chinese then discovered that the tubes could propel themselves through the chemical reaction that made gas. The first actual reported date was in 1232. The Chinese repelled the Mongol invaders by shooting these tubes of gunpowder at them. They used a stick to launch these rockets off of so they had a way to be guided instead of flying off somewhere. The Mongols produced rockets of their own and through out the 13th and 15th centuries, multiple rocket experiments were conducted. The two most common uses for rockets at this time was fireworks and warfare.

A Russian schoolteacher by the name of Konstatin Tisolkovsky proposed the idea of space exploration using rockets in 1898. He thought that we should use liquid propellants to reach a larger range. He was then called "The Father of Astronautics" for his ideas and vision in astronomy and rocketry. The first successful launch was on March 16, 1926. A man by the name of Robert H. Goddard created the first gasoline propelled rocket and started a revolution in rocketry. As he kept experimenting, the rockets got bigger and flew higher, gyroscope system for flight control was created, and a parachute system was installed for a safer landing.

In World War II, The V-2 rocket was created by the Germans to take out whole city blocks. After the war, when the V-2 was captured, both the U.S and Soviet Union realized the potential rocketry had during warfare. Multiple missile ideas were created and through them the U.S. created their space program. People were stunned when the Soviet Union but An Earth-orbiting satellite into the solar system on October 4, 1957. This satellite called Sputnik I started the space race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. . The U.S. launched their own satellite called the Explorer I on January 31, 1958. The U.S. created NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Satellites let scientists get a better look at the universe around us. Rockets created a way to get these satellites into orbit.





Rocket Flight and Results
The purpose of this experiment was that we wanted to see if the mass of the rocket affected the rocket's maximum altitude. First we placed the rocket on the launch pad and hooked it up to all of the wires. My group stood back and tested to see if the electricity was flowing. While we did this, two people walked 100 meters away with angle guns to see how high our rockets flew. An angle gun is a gun that has a sort of scope on it. You aim it at the rocket and push down the trigger. When the parachute releases at apogee, you release the tripper and an angle is shown on the side of the gun. They measured the 100 meters using the trundle wheel. Every click the trundle wheel makes is one meter. Then when everything was set up it was time for lift off. After we pressed the two buttons the rocket shot into the air with a trail of smoke behind it. The same thing happened for each rocket. The highest altitude that was reached was 91.6 meters even though the rocket had an average mass (45.9 grams). The lowest was 14.9 meters and this rocket had a mass of 47 grams. This mass was just a few grams over the max altitude rocket.



My group's rocket flew 62.5 meters high and weighed 44.9 grams. Our rocket flew pretty high but wasn't the highest. We did one or two coats of paint on our rocket. If we had known that the amount of paint we put on our rocket would affect the result we probably wouldn't have painted it so much. Also when we were constructing the rocket we didn't have any problems but I wish we would have had thinner glue then that would have probably affected the mass as well. Everything we did to the rocket affected the mass. I think we could have improved it by being aware of what we were putting on it and how much.

How We Protected Our Egg
My group started out by saying how will we protect the egg and slow down impact. The first thing we thought about was air bags. Air bags protect people in cars so why couldn't they protect our egg. We realized if we took the Ziploc bag and sealed it up with air then it could function perfectly well. Then we thought about padding for the egg because we realize the impact on the cement would be pretty hard. First we put bubble wrap along the outside of the cup we were putting it in. Then we put rolled up pipe cleaners and a few extra pieces of bubble wrap on the inside bottom of the cup. We then attached the first cup to a second cup using the string so that it was like a capsule when you closed it. What we realized wasn't going to work well was using a paper parachute to slow down impact. The paper could easily rip or not work at all. We decided against the parachute idea and blew up two balloons instead. We placed one at each end of the cup to slow down impact evenly. I don't think we would make any modifications unless we were allowed more materials. In that case I think we would add more balloons for an even softer landing and more bubble wrap.

Lego Mindstorm NXT: Marvelous Motors and Supper Sensors
The definition of a sensor is a device that takes the natural energies and turns it into electrical energy. We used touch, sound, ultrasonic, and light sensors for our robots. The sound sensor has something that looks like a drum within it. This "drum" detects vibrations and sends it to the motor to be used. The touch sensor has a spring within it that when caught too close to an object, it sends a sign to the motor to do the command set for it. Then the ultrasonic sensor has two smaller "drums" within it to detect higher frequencies. Finally the light sensor detects the light after its been brightened by the red light it emits. All of these sensors all send their information to the motor to be used as commands.

A motor is a device that takes the electricity from a sensor and uses it to create a reaction or movement of some sort. The motor we use for our robots do many different things. The motors make the robot turn, roll forward, roll backward, sense things, and even ride around in circles. Inside of the motor are multiple gears that help use the electricity to make the robot do things. There is also a rotation sensor or Tachometer that keeps track of how far the robot is moving by the number of times the wheels rotate.







Geology on Mars with the Help of Curiosity
A geologist on Earth can identify a mineral in a few ways besides using chemicals. They can use color, luster, hardness, streak, magnetism, light refraction and taste to identify them. Hardness is tested by the minerals ability to scratch or alter other objects. Streak is when you have a piece of white or black porcelain and u rub the mineral across it creating a color. Luster and color are almost the same but luster mostly has to do with how the light shines on the mineral. Magnetism is whether the mineral will stick to the magnet or not. The rover on Mars will use all of these to identify the minerals on Mars.

First the rover will drill a hole in the mineral. The powder that will come out of the whole will then be processed inside the rover. Also the rover will be able to shoot a laser at the rock/mineral and it will send back information about it. From the powder and the laser beam It will go through all of the ways to test a mineral and see if there ever was or will be life on Mars.





Living Things and Can they be Found on Other Planets
All living things have the same things in common in one way or another. They are that the object is made of cells, it needs materials, it's homeostatic, can respond to stimuli, can reproduce, can grow, can adapt, and is able to achieve respiration. The first thing a living thing has to be is made up of cells. Cells are the fundamental units of living things. Cells contain many parts (organelles) and there are Animal Calls, Plant Cells, and Bacteria Cells. The Second thing is the living thing needs materials. It needs water, minerals, and air and the living thing can take what it needs from the environment. The third thing is a living thing is homeostatic. Homeostatic means internally living things stay about the same despite the environmental changes. Living things use a great deal of energy to maintain homeostatic. Then the fourth thing is the living thing can respond to stimuli. A stimulus is anything that causes living things to react and a response is the reaction to a stimulus. The fifth thing is that a living thing can reproduce. Reproduction is the process by which organisms produce offspring of their own kind. There are two main ways plants and animals can reproduce. They are sexual reproduction (two parents) and asexual reproduction (one parent). Then the sixth and seventh things are that the living thing can grow and adapt. All things develop from a lower or simpler to a higher more complex form when they grow. Not all things grow at the same rate or reach the same size. Then adaptation is modifications that make an organism suited to its way of life. Evolution goes along with adaptation and evolution is the process by which characteristics of species change through time. The last thing a living thing has to be able to do is respiration. Respiration is the releasing of energy stored in the chemical bonds of sugars (food).

To test to see if there could be living things on a planet they can do many tests and experiments. One is called the LR (Labeled Release) Experiment. In the LR Experiment scientists, with the use of a rover, can scoop up a bit of Martian soil and mix it with a drop of water that contained nutrients and radioactive carbon atoms. Other ways scientists can see if there are living things include taking the Mars soil and putting them in different temperatures or keeping it in a dark room for a few months maybe. These last few experiments are controlled experiments. When tested by the scientists after getting the dust from the Viking, the controlled experiments were negative while the others were positive.