Now that this project is complete, how do you feel about it? What things stand out?
The biggest thing that I noticed about this project will have to be that at first this whole section was the biggest drag ever to me. I knew nothing about rocket science and I had zero interest in learning about it. I just didn't care for it and I dreaded this and rolled my eyes so much when Andrew said the word "Mandatory" when talking about making a rocket. And i did, up until the part where we actually created it, physically. It was a lot of fun working with my group and helping make it and design it and everything. What, if any, science or technological things did you learn from doing this project? What is necessary to understand to build a successful rocket? What you need to know about building a successful rocket is how to build it and how it works. Yes we did that alone but i am certain that if we got a little bit more assistance from Andrew we could have done a lot better with understanding everything and being comfortable with our knowledge. And that's really the technological things that I learned from this project. How to build a rocket and generally how it works. What, if any, meta-cognitive knowledge did you gain? (what did you learn about yourself as a learner - work habits, work ethic, tendencies, etc.) From this project I learned a little bit about myself. Even though some of the things are just what you should already know you don't really realize till you go through some things. For example I learned that if and when I really apply myself I can enjoy my time and gain something out of whatever it is I'm doing. So what I can do for my future assignments in any class is simply apply myself from day one. Even pretending or acting like I'm interested when I'm not will help. That whole fake it 'till you make it thing actually works. And you end up genuinely caring till you make it... unless you just get the grade you want and that's your what of making it then that works too I guess. How did you collaborate with others in this project? (Who did you work with? What did you contribute? How did you operate as a group or unit?) For this project I worked with Lupe and Kobe. At first Nick was in our group but then Andrew said that he was at a much more advanced level than us so he had to go with people that were more to his ranking. In the beginning i mentioned in my blog posts that I didn't do too well in the project and didn't really contribute. Its hard to say that though because we weren't really doing anything then but I could have helped and been more on top of my blog posts. But as soon as we started to create the rocket I helped out a lot more and it was really fun. The work was spread pretty evenly i want to say. But i might have gotten too into in and do things a little more myself. If you could do this project again, would you do anything differently? What advice would you give to the next class of rocketeers? What I would do differently is apply myself and contribute from day ONE of the project because that's what I regret the most. Not helping as much as I could from day one. To the next rocketeers I would suggest that haha. And say, "Hey i know this seems super boring and a drag to some of you, I thought that too. But its actually super fun when youre not doing math. You get to build a rocket from scratch and then design however you want and launch that baby!! Thats sweet" and they'd be like hmm alright. And forget everything I said because it still seems lame to them :-/ Based on your responses above, what advice or suggestions would you give to Andrew to help him design a better rocket project? The only thing that I could really suggest was for Andrew to make himself more available and open to and with us. Pretty much everyday I wanted to ask or clarify something with him and I would be afraid to because I didn't want to seem stupid or he was busy with the same students he always is busy with.I don't think that I'm alone when I say that I wasn't very comfortable asking for help or advice from Andrew because of that. Also maybe teaching us more abut the background of this project? Why is this important and why should we know this. Stuff like that.
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What Happened:
Todays chemistry class was a very productive and FUN one. We added a straw for our launch lug and i made my group let me paint a coat of glitter because I LOVE glitter!We didn't wait till the glitter was completely dry since it was just glitter, so then we didn't the launch test. Lupe tied the knot on the fishing wire and I spun it around. It was fun. Results: I designed the colors on our rocket. My favorite color is yellow so i painted the body yellow and painted the fins orange, blue, green and pink. Each fin a different color. Of course, there was glitter all around it! :-) We have the parachute all ready and folded inside and a white unpainted PVC cap as out nose cone. Collaboration: My team only consists of me and Kobe and Lupe and its super fun. ITs also wonderful to me how productive we are! What Next: The Rocket Launch. What happened
We finally finished most of our rocket today. All wwe have left to do is the paint and making it pretty and the straw launch lug. I was really upset because i'm extremely clumsy and I broke our fins 3 times in one day :-( but i fixed it and i'm going to make it look fantastic and beautiful! Results Our rocket is small to me. But i've never built a rocket before and everybody's seems ti be bigger than ours :-/. But maybe it being small and cute makes it CUTE. I want to paint it pink and yellow and green and blue with excessive glitter and cute drawings maybe. Collaboration I've been fighting a lot with my mom and my family so i've been super out of it and all my teachers are noticing. But i'm starting to participate more and it helps take my mind off things and its really fun. What Happened:
We finally finished the body of the rocket today. Lupe wrapped the papaer on and i glued on the modge podge/ watered down wood glue. Kobe seems to be worried that we wont have time to finish on time but i think we will. All we have left to do is the fins and it'll be simple. We already have our PVC nose cone so that set. Results: Our rocket is 12 inches long and BROWN. I dont like brown. Im hoping tomorrow ill also have time to paint it. Maybe add some glitter....? Hopefully my team is up for it. Collaboration: Lupe and Kobe glued the strips on, aI put the modge podge on the last strip of paper. Nick isnt with us anymore and thats sad but he still helps us so that makes me happy. What Next: Fins and decoration!!! What Happened:
Today was extremely frustrating because we had to re-do our body, apparently there were air bubbles :-(. Results: I can tell that ,y partners are extremely worried and stressed. But i still think we have plenty of time so I think we'll be good. Im not that worried. Collaboration: Still Kobe and Lupe! What Next: Hopefully our body is up to standards and we have to cut out the fins and voila! Purpose:
I decided to participate in this guided experiment because the points seemed extra appealing. I promised myself that I would be more involved the next sections because I thought i wasn't getting much put of the previous experiments , then I wanted. But besides that I was super intrigued by the phrase "making rocks". LIke we really get to make our own rocks? I think rocks are pretty and enjoyable to look at so I decided there would be no harm. Information: The information that I needed to understand before we began this experiment might have been how electrons worked, what they were constantly trying to achieve. You will have needed to know The general idea and organization of the Periodic Table, Experience: Today we merged classes with Brian Delgados afternoon class and launched our motors with them since they had also made motors. When our turn was up I was a little nervous but I was ready. For some reason ours had a burst or explosion type of thing and then it started to burn slowly, but not too slowly. I was really happy that our motor worked the way it was supposed to. Especially because it was the first motor I had ever made.
I read that when using sugar potassium nitrate as fuel there will be a whole lot of smoke. Ad even though I was expecting it, there was a lot more than I anticipated. The smoke was completely white, but that could be changed to any color you wanted. What didn't seem too normal was when our motor had a wide spark coming out of it where the smoke came out from. But I learned that that was because er used a core burner instead of an end burner. If we had used an end burner that spark would have looked significantly different and slightly thinner. Like i said earlier I was super happy with my group and I's result. This project made me extremely nervous because I know absolutely nothing about motors and rockets. It was really helpful that Lupe and Nick had experience with them and were able to help me out with things I didn't understand because I really wanted to try and apply myself and it was going to be very difficult with a thing I knew absolutely nothing about. I am sooo grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Lup and Nick because they're really nice and they know exactly what to do when me and Kobe did not! Working with everybody in my group was really nice because I enjoy all of theirs company and I am comfortable with them all. I can really appreciate how Nick really enjoys this and is excited to help everybody with this. It was really nice and super convenient to have him to help! Today, Andrew decided that today would be a good day for a guided activity. Not everybody needed to participate, but if you wanted to you had the freedom to do so. The reason I chose to participate was that the points in store sounded really appealing, but I was also interested because I thought I could be more engaged in this class and it would help me if I did.
First off, Andrew explained what a chemical reaction was. A chemical reaction is where a change in matter occurs where the atoms in one or more substances combine separate or rearranging to form new things. And these combustion reactions actually power things all over the world, that these things somehow make the energy we need. He explained that molecules are made with the combination of elements/atoms. But, these combine when the amount of both make a full shell of electrons. He showed us a diagram in where there was the nucleus, which was the ball, and energy levels, which were these rings around the nucleus, and then could be a combo of more than two electrons which where dots on the energy levels. He showed us an example, water, and told us why it is written as H2O. I realized this was because oxygen has 6 electrons and needed two more to complete the outer shell, so we needed two more atoms of hydrogen where each of these atoms has 1 electron, so that would complete the shell. As for the experiment itself, we bunched up magnesium strings and put it in vials of citric acid mixed with water. Once we did that, we found that the vial created heat and at the same time, the balloon that we put on top of the vial started filling up. And it is because the magnesium made a chemical reaction with the citric acid and made it create an oxygen, and that heat was the activation energy that released the gas and filled the balloon. Im really glad that i decided. We will be making motors in this class, so I feel learning about chemical reactions and things like this will definitely be useful because chemical reactions also occur during the motor. I felt the way Andrew explained the terms went really well, I found it relatively easy to take notes along the way. I also found it enjoyable how we got to actually take part in the experiment, instead of just having the teachers do the experiment. Overall, while I originally only did the activity to potentially get 50 points, I found it very enjoyable and informative. |