One of the Activities I Did Over April Break

     So, I'm nearing the end of my April break, and I've decided to blog on one of the things I did over my fairly relaxed break.  Not once, but twice I went to the New England Aquarium with my friend Rory. The first time, we took the subway into Boston and walked to the Aquarium. To our dismay, the aquarium has a (somewhat bad) policy of not letting people under 18 into the aquarium with an adult. So we wandered around Boston and got lunch before heading home. A few days after that, we attempted again, this time with Rory's father walking us in and then leaving. We walked into his dad office and waited a few minutes while he accomplished things. As we were leaving, we were offered cake by one of the employees there. Even though we were headed of to get lunch, Rory and I consented and happily ate our cake. I was happy to eat cake.
From there we proceeded to a cafe across the street (where I had some delicious chowdah), and to the aquarium. We got our hands stamped, entered, and Rory's father left. First, we watched the penguins for a little bit. I took a whole bunch of photos, like the one above. I find it odd how how our attention was held by these little birds standing on rocks, not doing anything particularly interesting. After that, we went on to look at the smaller exhibits, like jellyfish and and other sea creatures. The tank was illuminated from below, lighting up the jellyfish in a neat way as they drifted around aimlessly. We then proceeded to the center of the aquarium and walked up and around the new central tank, watching the fish of very different shapes and colors swim around. Feeling a little hungry again, we walked into the aquarium cafe and got a snack, then reentered through the gift shop (proving that we could have gotten in on our first visit). Rory wanted to go to seal and sea lion training session, so walked over to the seal pool and watched as the seals waved at and high-five people. Both of us found this less interesting then we had hoped it would be. Rory had to leave, so we took the subway back. Both Rory and I had a good time at the aquarium.

MIT Spark Program

  Two weekends ago, I went to MIT for their Spark program. Spark is a series of classes taught over the weekend for middle school students. The classes cover all sorts of topics, form cupcake-making to computer programming. Most of the classes were well-taught and interesting, but none of them inspired me in any way. Here are the classes I took, along with any comments I had about them.

• Saturday:
• The Physics, Chemistry, and Biology of Food
• This class was okay. The teacher wandered of topic for 60% of the class, but the parts where I got to learn what the class was supposed to be about were compelling.
• Math, Games, and Puzzles
• This class was pretty good. The teacher talked about the prisoner's dilemma and how the most rational decision can be the wrong one. I enjoyed this class.
• #winning
• This class was not as good as I expected it to be, but it was still fun. The teacher had us play and think about one game, which I forget the name of. I had hoped it would have been more about analyzation of many things rather than just this one game.
• Sunday:
• Gender and Health
• This class talked about how the different genders of people are more likely to get different ailments.
• Circuits in Cells? An Intro to Synthetic Biology
• This was probably my least favorite class. The teacher was not really prepared, she talked too quietly and too fast, and she assumed that the class knew things the at least some of us (me included) didn't.
• Lunch
• The food was good. I had a burrito, a water, and a cookie.
• Dynamic Programming
• This class was the most challenging and thought-provoking. The teacher talked about how to create algorithms that worked for all sorts of related situations.
• The Psychology of Shopping
• This class was amusing. I learned about phycology traps that companies use, like getting you to buy a $30 cell phone case, and how to not be fooled. We didn't get as far as the teacher wanted to, though, because she asked for question a lot.

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.

1st Draft of Story for Science Class

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 seat belts,” 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.”

Homework and Classes Overview from the First Week of School

   My dad requested that I do a blog post with some information on my homework from the first week of school. I got homework in math, english, science, and social studies. Every day, I have two math classes, a science class, a social studies class, an english class, and a spanish class. I like all of my teachers,some more than others. Some of the classes have been interesting, although most of them were meh. I think the homework we have done has been okay. Overall, I still am rating my school as 6.5 out of 10.

     In math class, we have been working with pieces of the 6th grade textbook, supposedly to help remind us about last year. Because I am ahead of my grade, I don't feel like doing sixth-grade work is really helpful for me. Maybe it's helpful for some of the other kids, though. We have been watching some vi hart videos, which I've really enjoyed. I also learned how to use a protractor,  which is a skill I think is very useful.

     In science, we've had some pretty cool homework. In class, we've done two experiments. In one, we put a plank of wood half on a table, half off, half on. We then laid down ten (all the way unfolded) pieces of newspaper on top of the table. When my teacher donned a thick glove and whacked the wood very hard, the wood broke instead of launching the paper.  The other experiment we did involved my teacher filling a cup with water, putting a piece of paper on top of it, and then flipping the cup upside-down. The paper does no fall. For both experiments, we were instructed to write why it happened, as well as later (after variations of the experiment were done) to write, based on more facts, why we think it happened. I think this homework was very good.

     In English, we've have written a persuasive letter over a few days. We read an anti-television persuasive essay in a textbook, and have either written a letter to the author of the article (saying that he's wrong) or a letter to the CEO of NBC (saying that he's wrong). I think that this assignment was interesting, and I definitely liked it more than the standard reflecting on some aspect of some character in some boring book we were forced to read essay. Although I don't love writing in general, I am hoping that the writing we do in this class will be more compelling than that of previous years.

     In social studies, we have been doing some homework which I assume has been to warm us up for the work we'll be doing all year. I've done some text-marking, I've done some connections homework, I've done some writing what pieces of text mean. So far, we've pretty much covered the basics. No prediction on how social studies will be. It being one of the few subjects we didn't have at CSCL, I'm hoping it will be good.

     Spanish is one of the few classes where I'm with a different group of people. There  are 30 kids, which is a bit chaotic. I really like my spanish teacher, and I like a larger percent of the kids in the class. I also like learning spanish. Also, we don't get much homework, which is definitely a plus. Spanish is a class I look forward to.

My class still has a few friends, a few really irritating kids, and mostly people I don't connect with. Still okay in general. I mostly like my teachers. My classes are okay.

Hopeful for the best,
Max

Blience Tuesday #2: Trees

    This is number two in the Blience Tuesday series. This post will be about trees. I will be splitting it up into three parts: pollen allergies, why they change color in the fall, and where they get nutrients. In part one, I will explain why the body dislikes pollen. I part two, I will explain chemically why the leaves grow more colorful in the fall. Finally I will explain where trees get the nutrients that they need to grow.

     First of all, pollen. Pollen is a cell made by the plant to let it reproduce. Some types of pollen are carried by insects, such as the pollen of the sunflower or orchid, where as other species of plant have the wind carry their pollen like a pine tree or oak. I a human inhales pollen, the body recognizes it as an unknown cell, and tries to try to get rid of it, and keep any more of it away by making you sneeze, making more mucus, and making your eyes itchy.

     Second, and my favorite of these three, is color-changing leaves. Before I get into why they change, I want to explain why they are green in the first place. There is a chemical called chlorophyll that colors the leaves green. Chlorophyll is present in the leaves because it is helpful in photosynthesis. In late summer, the tree begins to gradually block of the leaves, blocking the chlorophyll supply. There are chemicals called carotenoids presentin the leaves the entire year, but are usually masked by the green. Once the green is gone, these chemicals dye the leaves orange-yellow. There are more chemicals, called anthocyanins, which are produced in late summer and dyes the leaves red-purple. These two chemicals result in beautiful trees in the fall.

     Lastly, nutrients. Now many people have heard of photosynthesis, and probably know that it involves leaves geting energy from the sunlight. What I did not know about photosynthesis until I researched this is that the carbon dioxide that plants absorb from the air and the water that they absorb from the ground via their roots is also a part of this process. The water helps turn the light energy from the sun into chemical energy, which then turns the CO2 into sugars, feeding the plant. I think this process is amazing, and find it very interesting.

Thanks for reading!

Bibliography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergic_rhinitis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_leaf_color
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis

Blience Tuesday #1: Solstices, Equinoxes, and Eclipses

     This is the first post of a weekly series called Blience Tuesday! Blience being a portmanteau of blog and science, and Tuesday being the day of the week on which Blience Tuesday happens. This post is the first in the series. In this post, I will explain what an solstice is, what an equinox is, and what an eclipse is.

     First of all, a basic explanation. The Earth's axis is tilted. The Earth's axis is pointed the in the same direction all the time, so some depending on the Earth's position relative to the sun, the one hemisphere will be closer to the sun than the other. The hemisphere that is closer, even by such a marginal amount, is warmer, and has summer. The video (from here) shows this. When it is warmer in the northern hemisphere, it is colder in the southern one.
   
     Now, an explanation of solstices. The solstice is when one hemisphere is closest to the sun. In other words, the time when the difference between the seasons in each hemisphere is the greatest. That is why the the solstices happen in the middle of winter and the center of summer. The solstice is shown in the above video at the point where the Earth is farthest to the left of farthest to the right.

     Next up, equinoxes. While the solstice is the time when the seasons in the south and the north are as different as they get, the equinox is when the are the closest to each other. When the sunlight that hits he Earth hits perpendicular to the direction  of the axis, the axis is not really changing anything, and therefore the seasons in the south and the north are similar. During the equinox in the spring, the other hemisphere has autumn weather, and vice versa. In the video above the equinoxes happen when the Earth is directly behind the sun and directly in front of it.

     Finally, eclipses. There are two types of eclipses, lunar and solar. A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth is between the sun and the moon, casting a shadow onto the moon, and darkening it. Lunar eclipses happen twice a year or more. A solar eclipse happens when the moon goes in front of the sun, so from a certain place on Earth, the sun is blocked from sight. A solar eclipse happens twice to five times a year.

Thanks for reading!

Circuitry and Soldering

     

     One activity that I enjoy doing at CSCL is building and soldering circuitry  From kits, I have made two little devices. One of them functions as a remote to turn off a television, the other one plays the game Simon. (Simon is a memory game where the player copies an continually growing sequence of randomly picked colors.) For both, I had to add little pieces to a circuit board, then attach them in. To solder them, I   use a hot soldering iron to melt solder onto the connection between the board to the little piece I'm attaching. Solder is an alloy with a low melting point, so the soldering iron doesn't melt the circuitry itself. On one of the devices I made, I had to solder over 40 connections!

Computer Hardware

     Yesterday, I learned  about computer hardware and how each piece help make the computer function. We are going to build a computer from pieces bought off the internet, which made this topic  relevant to activities at CSCL. The parts that we are going to buy (also the parts I learned about) are the computer's case, motherboard, hard drive, memory, optical drive, GPU, and monitor. If I get som

1.  The computer's case house all of the inside components, to protect them and make the whole thing look pretty. The case usually has a built-in fan, which helps keep the electronics from overheating.

2. The motherboard is a circuit board inside the case which connects the other components together. The motherboard houses the CPU, Central Processing unit, which does the calculations for the computer.

3. The hard drive stores all of the data on the computer, using physical disks coated with a magnetic material. The hard drive is why files are not deleted when a computer is off or the files are not being used.

4. Memory stores information that is currently being accessed. This means that it keeps track of the tabs open in your browser, or what email you are looking at in your email. It copies the info from the hard drive, and deletes the information when you stop accessing it.

5. The optical drive is the part of the computer that DVDs and CDs can be loaded into. The computer scans the disks for the information stored on them with a laser.

6. The GPU, or Graphics Processing Unit, is a special chip that translates the data in the computer to images on the monitor.

7. The monitor is the screen of the computer, the part where the computer's user sees all the images that the GPU sends to to it.

By the way, I have been told how to  comment non-anonymously, and you can find out how in  that entry. Thanks for reading!

Egg Drop

     Today at CSCL, I did an egg drop contest. This involved wrapping a raw egg in cushiony materials, and dropping it off something fairly high. We will be putting a package with a camera into near-space, and then parachuting it back down to Earth. This contest was to create a prototype for the camera box. My egg-dropping container was comprised of a couple squishy materials. My team, two other kids and me, had a foam cube with a hole drilled down the center. We broadened the hole so the egg could fit in it, then covered the egg with more foam. We duct taped the foam on, sealing the egg in the foam. Then, we covered the entire thing with bubble wrap, which we duct taped down. Finally, we attached a clothespin to the top, so it would attach to the parachute. All three team's eggs survived the fall, so we were left without data. Thanks for reading this entry!