Category: Classes

All populations have a limit

“All populations have a limit” means that a population can’t continue to grow to infinity. This is because of space, food, housing, money, and everything else that it takes to keep a population healthy and strong.

On the bottom of the graph above, there are numbers which indicate time. It started at 500 BCE to 2025 CE.  On the other side it has numbers of how many people there are in the world. If it continues to increase at the same rate, then there would be too many people and not enough room, which means that there would not be enough food, jobs, housing or money.

If this was a shark population, then the sharks would starve to death. In the experiment we did, if sharks didn’t eat enough minnows, then they would become extinct. Well guess what, that is the same thing that could happen to humans: we will not survive much longer if the population is still going to keep on growing. We have to have a plan.

One idea that might work is that we only allow one kid per family, or we just keep it how it is now and hope for the best. Whatever we do, we will have to figure it out soon. Or else future generations will all die.

Math blog post

I felt really strong with finding the area of a triangle. My process of finding the area of a triangle is I make the triangle into a square and then I multiply the base x height and split the number in half and then that is your answer. I felt confident with this because right when Robin explained it, I got it right away and that felt good. I had a lot of practice with this, so IPhoto on 4-4-16 at 5.03 PM felt great about my work.

My music piece

This piece is going to be performed by 30 people. I have only used a few instruments so far. I have used the Bassoon, Trumpet, French Horn, Trombone, Cello, Bass, Clarinet and the Violin, but I can’t wait to use the percussion. It was still really hard to compose because it is a lot more instruments then we used on the first piece. As you can see there is still a lot of blank instruments that I have not filled out yet in my piece. That is because I am still working on it. It was really fun but it was also really hard to figure out how all the instruments work together. I worked really hard on it and I hope you enjoy my work in progress.

Shark Tank Simulation

We did an experiment in science where we went outside and played a simulation. It was a game where there were one shark and four minnows and the rest of the class were seaweed. To survive, the shark has to eat two minnows, and to reproduce, it has to eat  four minnows. The minnows have to eat one seaweed to survive and two seaweed to reproduce.

The first trial was really bad because we had no strategy. The shark died in the first round, same with one minnow. Then two of the three minnows ate way too much. They ate 9 seaweed each, which meant there were a lot more minnows then seaweed. Which meant that in a few rounds, the seaweed would be gone, which meant the minnows have nothing to eat which meant they go extinct.

The top image below shows the line graph of the bad run.

Then we figured out a strategy where the shark only ate 2 minnows and the minnows only ate 2 seaweed. We kept on doing that and we did really well. We ended with over 90 seaweed and 2 sharks and 8 minnows. We could do that forever and have over 1000 of each thing.

The bottom image below shows the line graph of the good run.

This teaches us that it is important to for each species to have enough to eat, and have a good balance between the numbers of them. That way, the cycle can just keep going without one of the species going extinct.

 

 

3rd Quarter Reflection on Book Partnership

Photo 2016-02-25 12.58.23 PMMy partner and I read Holes. Our partnership was really good because nobody read ahead so we got to talk about the same ideas in the book.  We were both really chatty which helps because we could share with each other our thoughts about the book that the other person might not have thought about. I’m proud that I have been on top of doing my homework and reading. I am also proud that I finished and understood two challenging books. One challenge for me was understanding some of the words and phrases in the book. One example is the word neutralizes. I didn’t know what it means, but now I know that it means “to make something neutral.” When I came across one of these words, I asked my partner if he knew what it meant, or my mom if I was home. If my partner does not know, then I ask Heather, my teacher, or any teacher that’s there.  That was the best book ever!

Cyber Security

When I was talking about cyber security with my parents, I thought that Apple did the right thing of not giving the FBI the key to get into any phone they want. If they could do that, then they could charge people to get access to their phone back. So the FBI would be rich. Then they could ask all the other phone companies to give them access to all the phones and charge people for access back. Also, this new idea is invading people’s privacy. So that means that they could not have private conversations. They could have a bad day and say something that only one person should know. I think the FBI is asking for too much. However, I think the FBI should be able to ask Apple if they can get into this person’s phone because of a specific reason, but I don’t think that the FBI should be able to do it themselves; they should have an Apple person do it for them.

Gun violence

I talked with my mom about gun violence and this is what I came up with. One idea is that I think that if there were no guns then the police would not have to have guns. Then it will be a gun free place. The only problem is that there are other weapons too, but they are not as dangerous as guns.

Another idea is that I think it should be very very hard almost impossible to get a gun. You should need to have special permission from the government to get a gun. You should have to take a test just like you have to take a test to get your driver’s license.

Another idea is that I think we should be able to track down stolen or missing guns. I watched President Obama give a speech recently about gun violence. He said, “If we can track down missing iPhones or iPads then why can’t we do that with a gun.”

Also I think we should be able to have better technology so that you can not shoot a gun at people. Guns can be only used for animals and targets. Police should have special guns that can shoot at people.

Math Post

 I am proud of the work I put into this quiz. I spent a lot of time on it. I got most of the problems right. I was challenged by the top one on the second paper. It was hard because it was asking me a problem that was not clear. Also the solution was a lot of writing. If I got one number wrong it would mess up the whole answer. If I had more time, I think a quicker way of doing the problem would be using prime factorization. I have improved on prime factorization. I am proud of my improvement in math. I got a two on clarity for my first quiz, and now I got a three. So that is great. Something that I still need to work on is my common factors and multiples. Instead of adding numbers together over and over again, now I can use factors. I think with a little more practice I can be awesome at math.Photo on 2015-12-07 at 18.03 #2 Photo on 2015-12-07 at 18.03

Math

I am proud of this work because it was challenging but I persevered through it. What I was challenged by was the first problem. It was find an equation that equals 30,00 to 40,00  and we only had 6 numbers to choose from. It was really hard.
Photo on 11-4-15 at 9.44 AMPhoto on 11-4-15 at 9.43 AM #3Photo on 11-4-15 at 9.43 AM #4Photo on 11-4-15 at 9.43 AM #2

Human Computer

This is how the computer works the users – peripherals – Bios – cpu – hard drive – ram-ram- hard drive – cpu – – bios  -peripherals – users. My roles that I had was the ram and the user the user shout out the things we needed to do. The ram organized the pages.