Camryn+R

= The search for life on Mars =

From big bang to galaxies
The universe was created when the big bang occurred. In a very short period of time the earth was p acked into a space smaller then an atoms nucleolus. Within a fraction of a second particles of matter were created. Then protons and neutrons started to form from radiation. The temperature on the earth continues to drop dramatically. For 300,000 years the earth continues to grow and produce more atoms and molecules. About 2,000,000,000 years after the big bang galaxies begin to form.

History of the solar system
Stars are made from gravity pulling together an assortment of gas and dust. A disk that was outside of the star gathered solid material from space. In the outer solar system 4 large matters were formed they were Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Jupiter. Moons were soon formed that orbited around the matter. Soon after, Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury were also formed. Radiation inside of the matter caused heat to be generated. The moon is thought to have been formed by a break off of matter from earth and another planet. Oxygen was soon produced on earth by plants breaking down carbon dioxide.

Lives of the stars
Stars are formed in cold dark clouds of dust in the galaxy. Exploding stars cause waves, other things also causes waves in the galaxy. This causes the stars to form clumps. The clumps contract as gravity pulls all of the clumps together. In the center of the star the contractions get faster and faster. The star starts to shrink as it starts spinning faster. The bigger the star the faster its formed, smaller stars take more time to form. The biggest stars are blueish/ white, smaller stars vary colors such as orange or red. The biggest stars are 20 times bigger then the sun and 100,000 times brighter. Eventually the sun will get dimer and cooler and become the size of a dwarf star.

The milky way galaxy
On dark nights you can often see the milky way. The light is caused from huge number of stars in the galaxy. The dark parts of the milky way are just dust in space. Imagine the milky was a flat disk of disk of stars formed on a horizontal line. A thinner layer of gas and dust is inside the flat disk of stars. In the center of the milky way you would see a large clump of white and in the center is the nucleus which is thought to be a black hole surrounded with dark clouds of gas. If you look at the milky way from the top a million light years away you would see 4 large spirals from the clump of white in the center. Each star has its own orbit and gravity is pulling on all the stars. The dark matter has not been found yet though.

The sun
The sun is a hot ball of gas, commonly known as a star. In a eclipse the suns temperature rises to million degrees in the corona. In the core of the sun the temperature is 15,000,000 degrees. Every second 4,000,000 tons of hydrogen vanish on the sun in order to generate the suns energy. Large jets of incandescent gas (called spicules) go up on the surface of the sun. The most intense flares of the spicules are called solar flares. The sun has its own magnetic field which is 5 times stronger then that of the earths. The sun only spins once a month, and the magnetic field gets more and more wound up when it spins. After a few years the number of sun spots, reaches a peak. Then the activity starts to wind down until it starts the cycle again.

This wiki entry is going to talk about the Hubble Space telescope and what astronomers have been able to learn about the universe with this telescope. We have been learning with a website called Hubble Deep Field Academy which teaches us all about the types of things they have to do to figure out the galaxy. Many questions arise when the astronomers are using the telescope. Here are some examples of what the astronomers would ask: how far away are these objects, what objects are appearing in the telescope, and what can we learn about the galaxies in the telescope. Then on the website we got to estimate how many objects were in a image shown from the telescope. My lab partners and i estimated about 150 objects in the. The astronomers and i got rather different answers because of how our estimates were very different. Another thing we got to experience on the website was to classify object in pictures taken from the telescope. We were told to put them in groups of blue, white,yellow, or red and also other groups with the shape of the object and they were irregular, spiral, oval, circle, or a small circle. The three objects the astronomers and i agreed on were 26,16, and 23. The way astronomers estimate destiances of objects in space is how much light they emit and how big they are. Size doesnt alwaus factor how close or how far the object is because a galaxy could be small but close and another one could be big and farther away. The color and shape of a galaxy indicate whether the galaxy is full of gas and dust or stars and worlds. Astronomers estimate that number of galaxies by "representative sampling" which you divide the sky into sections and the galazies in the sections are counted, then multiplied by the number of sections in the sky.
 * The Hubble Deep Field Academy**

This is a picture of the Hubble Space Telescope

A rocket-like device called Aeolipile was invented in 100 B.C by a Greek inventor named Hero of Alexandria. Aeolipile was made when the Greek inventor climbed onto a sphere on top of a water kettle. There was a fire below the kettle which then turned the water into steam. The steam traveled through pipes into the sphere. Two L-shaped on either side of the sphere let steam escape, when the steam escaped it gave a thrust to the sphere which caused it to rotate. The date at which the first rockets were really used was 1232. This was during the same time the Chinese and Mongolians were at war with each other. The Chinese held of the Mongolians with "arrows of flying fire". These were signs of the first solid-pro pellant rocket. On one side of the rocket there was a capped tube with gunpowder inside of it, the other side of the tube was open and the tube was attached to the end of a large stick. When the end of the tube with the gunpowder on the side was ignited it created gas and smoke which caused a thrust on the rocket. Following when the Chinese used it against them, the Mongolians began producing "arrows of flying fire" also.
 * Rocket History**



=** Rocket Mechanics **=



=Rocket Experiment=
 * The purpose of this experiment was to see how well our homemade rockets would fly and to see how high we can get them to go. We first built the rocket with the help of Mr. Himburg and got to decorate it the way we wanted. Once we got the fins and launch lug in the right place we were then able to start working on the inside of the rocket. We then put the motor, motor mount, recovery wadding, recovery system in the rocket body tube. After all this was finished we finally put the nose cone on, then we were ready to fly. When we went out to fly the rockets we used angle guns which were used 100 meters from the launch site. The rocket was then shot off and the altitude was found out using trigonometry with the information from the angle gun. My rocket had a mass of 45.9 g, and the altitude was found out to be 57.7 m.**




 * When my rocket first took off it seemed shaky at first but then stabilized further up. It had a safe parachute ejection and made it safe to the ground. I think since i had a couple coats of paint on my rocket it made it heavier and harder to get into the air. Another reason it did not go as high as it could have was because i had to put more glue than originally needed because pieces of my rocket kept coming off. I think if i had put together my rocket better i think it definitively would have helped my rocket fly higher.**

=**Mars rover drop vehicle**=

The design of our vehicle was rather simple and included all the necessities needed to arrive safely on the ground. We first wrapped the egg in bubble rap and placed it inside a cup. Then another cup with bubble rap on the bottom of it was placed under the other cup. This would take some of the shock away and create a cushion under the egg. Then we attached wire to the sides of the two cups and then created a sort of parachute using paper and paper towels. Then last we added two balloons on either side of the wire to cushion the fall. This design worked rather well but if i could do it again i would probably just rap all of the bubble rap around the egg because it seemed it would've worked like that too.

=Programming Robots=

You can program a motor to move a robot wit h the simple 5 step program on your actual robot or you can download software on your computer that is used for more complicated programming. The one I used was called Lego Mindstorms NXT programming which we had downloaded on our computers. You can program the motor to move in different directions for how many wheel turns and how much time. Some challenges you might face when programming is it’s hard to get exact measurements for how far you want the robot to drive or turn, and it makes the driving a whole lot harder . A sensor is a device that you can put on your robot (in this case) a nd it detects the physical movements going on outside of the robot. The different types of sensors are light, sound, touch, and ultrasonic. An example of how a sensor can help a robot is if a robot is using a touch sensor and it gets close to a wall and has to stop, reverse, or turn, the touch sensor helps with this.





=**Geology on Mars**=

There are many different ways minerals can be identified. A simple way to identify different minerals is by tasting them because each mineral tastes different. Streak method is also used to identify different minerals. Different minerals make different colored streaks on the streak plate. The hardness method can also be used where you use a glass plate, iron nail, and copper penny and determine the hardness of the mineral with the Mohs scale of hardness. This works because minerals have different scales of hardness and can help you find the correct mineral your trying to identify. Acid can also be poured on the mineral to see if it is a carbonate compound. Light refraction is another way to identify the mineral. You can see how translucent the mineral is or how it makes objects look and compare it to other minerals. The last test could be seeing if the mineral is magnetic or not. You place a strong magnet next to the mineral and test if its attracted or not which can help you identify the mineral. I hope this helps you identify some minerals!



The NASA rover (Curiosity) is able to perform geology experiments on Mars by shooting a laser at a rock and the light reflects back and the rover can determine what the chemical composition is. Another way it can perform geology experiments is by drilling a hole into the surface of the rock and then take the dust and test its mineral composition. Some of the dust though, is saved for a biological life test. These tests are what Curiosity uses to perform geology experiments on Mars!