River Clean Up Reflection

The river clean up was organized on National River Clean-up Day, and the site I visited was the one in San Jose near Westmont High School. A couple of students from my sixth period class was their including Shreya and Jayne. When I thought about a river clean up, I had imagined cleaning up an actual river full of trash, but at the site, most of the work we did was no where near the water.

I relate this to what my seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Chapman, said about the river near her house, and how on some days, she would find lawn chairs and old umbrellas and other misselanouc objects. I suppose I had thought this clean up would be similar to that, however, there was barely any water in the river. A lot of trash we picked up was plastic bottle pieces, as well as food wrappers. In the end, we had a stack of five half full trash-bags.

Pig Dissection 2k17

In this lab we asked the question, what organs that pigs have relate to human structures? The idea of dissections is to learn more about the animal being dissected, or to relate it to us and learn more about the structures that we possess. This pig was never born, it never got to eat mush out of a trough or frolic among the grass with its fellow piglets. It was dissected by Mr. Orre's biology class to learn more about the organ structures that we took notes on. My favorite part of the dissection would be the end of the dissection because I felt really bad for the pig. However, since that is not the answer I should tell my teacher, the second best part of the dissection would be the cutting of its mouth and peeling the mouth back because it was incredibly satisfying. This lab was a valuable experience because we got to see the same organs we possess in real life. It also helped visualize how every system in our bodies work.

Twenty-Time Project

I worked on this project with Ananya. When I learned that she was working with ADHD I wanted to join her because my family friend has been recently diagnosed with ADHD. The project itself was learning about the diagnosis of ADHD and how specialists could improve it. Our initial plan was to create an actual test to diagnose it properly, but after realizing the complexity of the process, we just decided to write up options on how to improve the actual diagnosis. We also planned on actually testing subject with and without ADHD, but because it was a subject that people often don't wish to disclose, we also were unable to do that. Based on what we have information wise, our next step would be educating people of the unreliability f current diagnosis and treatment, and other steps that can be taken to help people with this learning disorder. I also learned that children with ADHD often have smaller brains than children without, and also they have significantly more grey matter in their brains. They also have smaller frontal lobes which plays a part in impulse control as well as hyperactivity. If I had a chance to redo this project, I would actually create a test and test it on human subjects to see whether our analysis is valid or not. I learned that as a person however, since we finished the analysis decently soon, I took the free time in class to listen to music and just do background research instead of trying to do more real work to push our project forward. Our next step would be sharing what we have learned with others as well as trying to see if we can test it on subjects.                                                                                                                                                      

Unit 9 Reflection

This unit we focused on the defining characteristics of organisms, and the classification of these organisms. These organisms are divided by Kingdom, Domain, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. There are five kingdoms which are divided into a three domain system. Besides the basics, the most important thing we learned is how we evolved from the smallest of organisms to us. We watched a documentary called "Your Inner Fish" which depicted a man looking for a fossil evidence to prove that we evolved from fish. He was looking for one of the transitional fish/ tetra-pod organisms.


https://www.sciencenews.org/article/find-your-inner-fish-pbs-series-human-evolution

Some questions I have can not be answered at this moment. I want to know how dinosaurs looked like, not their structure- which can be defined by their fossil- but their exterior. I heard that some dinosaurs may have been covered in colorful feathers and bright scales which is very different from what I had known about dinosaurs being brown and green. I wonder why dinosaurs would have colorful feathers and what the purpose would serve. I also wonder how mammals managed to stay alive with all the dinosaurs ruling the earth. I would assume they went underground, but the fact that they were able to evolve into modern mammalia is incredible.


(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/cf/af/85/cfaf850a14e07b971c03c63a3273024c.jpg)

To help us learn in a different fashion about evolution, we did solitary projects on different organisms. I feel for my project I could have done far better. I was not as prepared as I could have been and it totally showed in my deliverance. Next time I definitely should review my information more before I present. I did the project a week back and did not look at it till I presented it and because of that I left out a ton of information and did not meet the time limit.

Geologic Timeline Reflection

Two major event in Earths history is the extinction of dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period, and the evolution of Eukaryotic cells two billion years ago. Another important event is the evolution of mankind during the Holocene epoch in the Cenozoic era. The reason the extinction of dinosaurs is critical is it not only shows the end of reptilian domination as well as the evolution of mammals. Even before the dinosaurs is the evolution of eukaryotic cells which became the dinosaurs and mammals that evolved into humans.

Earth's history mainly occurred during the Precambrian period and was just the development of the basic units of life like oxygen and unicellular cells. After the Precambrian period however is when the main evolution of mammals and all life occurred.

Just as humans we screwed up the atmosphere and caused the extinction of hundreds of organisms. We also have decimated the forests, polluted the ocean and continue to spew poisonous gas into the atmosphere.

It would be interesting to see how long the Holocene period will actually last. Based on the extinction of the dinosaurs and all other evidence of mass extinction, it is safe to assume we too will be decimated at a point. I wonder if we will just be fossils that future life forms find just as we find and try to explain the fossils of dinosaurs.