CS50: Scratch Project

          Part of my plan for non-school learning this year is a Computer Science Intro MOOC (MOOC definition here) from Harvard. Basically, I watch videos of a professor, then complete projects. My father, uncle, and grandmother are taking the course as well. I am somewhat skeptical of my father and grandmother being able to keep up with me, due to their lack of programming experience and all the working that my dad does.
     Anyway, the first project I did was a simple program using Scratch (more Scratch info here). Due to my previous knowledge of Scratch, I went a little farther than perhaps required. My project is a
flip-and-match tile memory game. You can (and should!) play it here. I made this with help from Will,
one of the staff members at CSCL.
      This project took me about a week, and this is just the very first project. Based on this, I think that this course is going to take a ton of my time. Also, I have never done anything like this before, and this type of learning is harder than school or CSCL. The main reason for this is that it is that I can't ask questions. This can lead to confusion or misunderstanding. Additionally, it is odd for me not to actually know my teacher. I will keep informing anybody who cares about my projects relating to the CS50 course.
Until then,
Max

My Second First Day

     For the second time, yesterday was my first day at CSCL. All in all, I am feeling like the decision to leave again was probably a good one. Yesterday I learned possibly more than I would in school, and I had much more fun also. The day started out with me waiting for the public bus around 8:45. The bus was scheduled to come about then. When it did come, (8-ish minutes late) the bus driver proceeded to not notices me and drive right by. This was odd, especially because I was waving. I then ran as fast as I could to the next stop, and due to traffic I managed to arrive there before the bus did. Still panting, I boarded the bus.

     When I arrived at CSCL, I said hello and found that one of my friends from the public school was doing a test day there. We chatted as other people arrived, and then the staff members called for the morning meeting.We assembled, and announcements were made about the morning schedule. After the meeting, I talked with my friends for half of the morning, then attended the midmorning Intro to Biology class. During biology, we talked about evolution and natural selection while destroying misconceptions. After biology, I had lunch, then proceeded downstairs to work with a staff member on a programming project.The project is a memory game made with Scratch, a visual language, that I am doing for the Harvard online course that I am taking.This took most of the afternoon, and after working on this it was time to leave. my bother was going to be getting a ride there and then taking the bus home with me, so I waited for him to arrive. When he did, we took the bus home, finishing of my second first day at CSCL.

Max

Vacation in St. John

     

     Over my school's recent February break, my family and I went down to St. John and stayed at the house of my grandmother's friend Sally. My grandmother goes there every year during January and February, and we where meeting her there for the week. During the vacation, I spent a lot of time reading, snorkeling, and playing board and card games. I had a great time enjoying the warm temperatures and relaxing.

     To get to St. John, we had to do a lot of traveling, involving us waking up at 4:00 a.m. and arriving in St. John around 5:00. We took a flight to Charlotte, and another flight from there to St. Thomas. We then had to drive all the way across St. Thomas, take a ferry to St. John, and drive all the way back across St. John.

     Over our vacation, I snorkeled four or five times, and saw some amazing coral and small, colorful fish. I also saw a sea turtle and a few skates. My dad and I saw a school of over a hundred purple and black fish swim underneath us.  Unfortunately, some of the coral I saw was dead and not colorful, but the reefs were still very cool.

     While on St. John, I had the chance to try conch and johnnycakes, both of which I had never had before. I didn't really like the conch, but I think that was just due to sauce that was served on it. For anyone that doesn't know, johnnycakes are a type of bread that tasted like a donut, a bagel, and a pretzel combined. They can filled with many things, both sweet and savory. I liked the johnnycakes.

     The rest of the time I spent on St. John, which wasn't much, was filled with the playing of Go, Rummikub, and Magic: The Gathering, as well as reading books.

I will be starting again at CSCL tomorrow!

Max

Going Back

     After a whole lot of indecision, I have not completely happily decided to go back to CSCL. This decision was not made as easily as the one I made last year, due to that my experience in the public school's 7th grade was by far superior to my time in the 6th grade. I am still not totally content with this decision, and am suffering from "Fomo" (fear of missing out). Unlike last year, I am choosing between two good options, which is much harder than choosing between a good and a bad. I am thinking about going back to the public school in September, due to the all of my friends at CSCL will be leaving (if you didn't notice, my going back and forth between the two schools shows that I like both).

     This year, I had teachers I liked, classmates I was friends with, no classmates I strongly disliked, academic peers, and some classes I enjoyed. I had none of those last year at the public school. The public school also has about 100 students in the 7th and 8th grades, whereas CSCL has 20 students total, with only 5-ish being anywhere near my age. This offers an important social aspect that I don't have at CSCL. For these reasons, the decision was not easy.

     CSCL does offer help when you need it but not when you don't, which is something that the public school had less of. I also have friends at CSCL that I won't easily be able to connect with in the future, whereas most of the people at the public school will be attending the public high school with me. There are things that I can learn at CSCL that I could not learn at the public school, but there are not nearly as many thing that I could learn at the public school that I couldn't learn at CSCL. Finally, CSCL lets me learn what I want, not something I'm not interested in. I will be starting at CSCL right after my winter break, and will likely start blogging on a more regular basis again.

Thanks for spending time reading this,
Max

Story set on the Moon

 Here is an assignment from a few weeks ago for science class. I went pretty far above the minimum word count. I don't have a title for it. Here it is:

Max Nadeau

12/3/13

Science 7

Otto Harson bounced up in his seatbelt as the buggy ran over a small stone. The year was 2067, and Otto was on his second Exploration and Discovery excursion. Sitting beside him was fellow astronaut Henry Lofenger, a more experienced driver and explorer. The reason the pair was on the lunar surface was to search for deposits of platinum group metals (which only come from meteors) and other possibly useful resources. They were cruising in the moon buggy across the barren wastelands of our Earth’s only moon. The car they were sitting in was state-of-the-art. It had insulation against the brutal heat from the outside, and the car was was made out of super-light material. It had the latest photosynthetic technology; enabling the CO2 they exhaled to be turned back into oxygen using only sunlight. “Can’t you slow down a bit?” Otto complained, “You’re going to flip the buggy over.”

“It’s fine,” Henry said offhandedly, “You worry too much.”

They continued, both a little tired from the flight in. The GPS was leading them to  a few sights that had been identified from Earth as possibly containing resources. They had just left one of the sights, in which the had scanned the ground and found nothing. The next one was close, only 20 minutes away or so.

They were both bored and tired, so Otto tried a joke.

“What was the astronaut’s favorite candy bar?” Otto asked.

“Huh?”

“A Milky Way.” Otto said, smiling a little.

They both laughed a little. Henry groaned.

“How did the spaceman stay attached during a spacewalk?” Henry asked back.

“How?”

“He tied on with a astro-knot!”

They both cracked up.

“When is the moon not hungry?” Otto said seriously.

“Uh… I don’t know.”

“When it’s full!”

Otto and Henry laughed hysterically. While he was laughing, Henry accidentally pressed the gas pedal. The car zoomed forward. Right as Henry regained focus, the car bumped off a rock, and jumped into a small crater, landing on its side.

“Are you okay?!?” Otto blurted, his heart beating rapidly.

“Yeah, I’m fine, thanks to these seatbelts,” Henry grumbled.

“What happened?” Otto asked

“I think I just hit a rock and we fell into this crater,” Henry answered, “We’ll be fine, though.” Otto looked around. Both the car and the photosynthesizing panels seemed to be intact. They tried rocking the car up, but could not. Henry reached behind him and opened up a little drawer. He pulled out a radio transmitter and tuned it to the ISS’s frequency.

“Come in, International Space Station, can you hear us?” Henry declared.

After a little pause, a response came back.

“Yes, we can hear you. This is the ISS. Who is speaking?”

“Otto Harson and Henry Lofenger, of the US Exploration Team. Could you transfer us to Sara Gornel?”

“One second, I’ll transfer you…”

“Sara Gornel speaking.”

“Hi Sara, it’s Henry. The mission isn’t going perfectly. Our car has flipped. Otto and I are both fine, but we’d like it if someone could come and pick us up, as we are far from our ship and I’m not sure if we have enough food and water, and I don’t think we could get it through our suits anyway.”

“That isn’t good. I would try to send someone, but we are on the other side of Earth, and dusk is coming soon. You could try … FZZTBZZT” The communications suddenly disappeared.

“Whoa!” said Otto, “What happened?”

“I think that was the Earth getting between us and them.”

Otto turned to Henry.

“Also, why is dusk a problem?” he asked.

“The only reason we’re breathing right now is that our car is using our CO2 and the sun’s light to photosynthesize oxygen for us. We get about two weeks of sunlight followed by two weeks of darkness, If there is no sun…”

“Then there’s no oxygen,” Otto finished solemnly.

For a little bit, the only sound was the panels humming.

“What now?” Otto asked.

“Now we do everything we can to survive.”

There was enough space in the back of the car for them to sit on the wall of the car and talk. The space in the back also doubled as an airlock so they could put on their spacesuits and go outside. The first thing they did was inventory anything of use. They had enough food and water to last them a few days, communications systems, and not much else. Then they went out side the car (in the space suits) and tried everything to right the buggy. They could lift it a little bit off the ground, but couldn’t get it vertical again. They walked to the top of the crater and looked around, seeing nothing but a tan, rocky wasteland. A little while off they could see a pile of something. When they walked over to it, they saw that it looked like pieces from sort sort of spacecraft. Some of the pieces had writing in what looked like Chinese. While they were looked through it, Otto suddenly had an idea.

“Wait!” he blurted enthusiastically, “You see that lander leg over there, and that big fuel canister right there! We could use them as a lever and fulcrum!”

“Hmm,” murmured Henry, thinking, “You’re right. I bet with the decreased gravity we could. Here, you carry the lander leg and I’ll carry the canister and we’ll see if we can do it.”

When they got back, they put the container on the ground and shoved one end of the leg under the car while one of them held it up. Then Otto went over to the other side of the pole while Henry prepared to help lift the car.

“Ready, set, push!” barked Henry.

The car leaned, and wobbled, and Otto and Henry pushed as hard as they could. Finally, thanks to the decreased gravity, Thunk!  the car landed back on its wheels.

“Whoo!” Otto hooted, “Yeah! We did it!”

“Yup,” said Henry, acting as if he rescued himself from sure death every day.

They got back in the car. Henry started it up and they cruised right back to their ship.

As they were going, Otto took out the transmitter and spoke, “ISS, ISS. You will be pleased to know that Otto Harson and Henry Lofenger have returned from our trip to the Moon completely alive and uninjured.”

Colony on the Moon: Work for School

  Recently in science, we did a large group project about building a colony on the moon, and the problems this would require solving. My section that I was assigned was the health of moon colony in habitants. Here it is:

Max N

January 26, 2014

7 Stephano

Without oxygen, a human cannot survive for more than twenty minutes. This makes supplying oxygen to a moon colony a challenge that must be solved. That being said, this is not as hard as it seems. With heat and electricity, oxygen can be extracted from moon rock fairly easily. One could mine the rocks once the colony is running or use the rocks already mined while excavating space for the underground colony. A ventilation system could be installed to constantly move the air around the colony, so inhabitants could have oxygen and plants being grown could have the CO2 that residents make. This would provide the air that the people and the plants need.

Of the three major problems (food, water, and air), water is probably the most challenging. Assuming there is ice buried at the poles of the moon, a colony near the poles could just have to do a little mining and get the water they need. This water could also be used for a hydroponic farm, so there wouldn’t have to be tons of dirt shipped to the moon. If there isn’t water on the moon, hydrogen could be shipped from Earth and combined with oxygen made from the moon rock. Alternatively, if the colony is being built in a future where mining asteroids for water is common, a ship traveling from an asteroid to the moon wouldn’t have to fight against the Earth’s gravity like a ship from Earth would. This would supply the needed water for the inhabitants and the crops to drink.

Finally, people need to be fed. To start off, some amount of food could be shipped to the moon, but farms are necessary. The problem with growing plants is that usually one needs soil, a lot of it. Dirt, like anything else, is expensive to ship, and moon dirt is not fertile enough to grow plants. A solution to this is hydroponic farming. All plants need is water, pebbles to grow roots through, and nutrients (often dissolved in the water). This really work best if there is ice buried at the poles, but hydrogen is lighter, and therefore easier to ship, than dirt. Hydroponic farms would solve the farming issue, using little supplies and feeding moon colony residents.