Photosynthesis and Respiration(Reflection)

This reflection is on the science topic Photosynthesis and Respiration. First of all, i will talk about what i learnt about photosynthesis and what i think about it. After learning about photsynthesis and doing a blog post on it, i understand how important it is to the human being race as well as to the plant that is using this process to make food for themselves and survive. When we breathe out carbon dioxide, it is the plants that take in the carbon dioxide and then give out oxygen. This prevents the atmosphere from losing all its oxygen. Moving on to Respiration. Respiration happens all the time in all living animals and plants. This process is where food is burn with oxygen and the energy that is released is used by the body for cell processes. Carbon dioxide is also given out while the food is being burned which is then expelled into the air. This carbon dioxide is then taken in by the plants during the day to be used for making food for themselves. i feel that this cycle is very important to us all because this is one of the cycle that sustains us in our lives. However, people are cutting down more and more trees which then result in less carbon dioxide being turned into oxygen.

Elements, Mixtures and Compounds(Reflection)

This reflection is on the science topic Elements,Mixtures and Compounds. Ater learning then doing a blog post on this topic i think that i have gain a better understanding of this topic. I understand the properties of each of the three as well as their differences. For example, an element is something that is only made up of on single type of atom, while a compound is two or more elements fused together through chemical reactions. the compounds also do not have the same properties as the elements that were used to make it. Furthurmore, i know that their are many different types of elements, mixtures and compounds all around everyday when we go about our daily activities. Water is an element, air is a mixtures of gases including oxygen which allows us to breathe. Steel is a compound as well. All these make up the things we have and use during our daily lives. After learning about this science topic, i have a better understanding of what is around me and what it actually is down to its atom.

Tissues(Reflection)

This is my reflection for the science topic: Tissues. Firstly, i think that learning about cells during my earlier blog post help me in this blog post about tissues because cells are the things that make up tissues. Learning about tissues also letme learn more about the different types of cells in our body which may or may not have different cell parts due to their different functions. I think that the topic on tissues is very important because this will enable to learn more about what is going on inside our human body which will then let us learn more about ourselves because we know what is inside us and how it let's us do our daily activities. For example, muscle tissues pull our bone in either a backward or forward direction which in turn let's us move our bodies to walk or perform and activity. Overall, i think that this topic is very interesting as well as useful in our daily lives and exams.

Know a cell inside out (Reflection)

After learning about plant and animal cells components as well as writing my post about it, i feel that i have learned a lot. I realized how my cells inside my body operate to keep me alive. Other things that i learnt include how each part of the cell plays a part inside the cell. For example, the cytoplasm helps to hold all the other parts of the cellin place so that they do not bump and bounce around all over the cell. Before learning about cells, i was always not sure what cytoplasm was for though i am not sure why but i can at least write a use for it when it comes to our test our exam so that i don't lose marks when i should not. After doing this post on cells i think that i have more knowledge about this topic which i think will benefit me a lot because not only is it a topic in science for our EOY exams, cells are a part of me and everyone else so it will benefit mein more ways than one.

Eco Surfboards! WOOOT!

Yesterday, i was reading the Discovery Magazine when I saw an article on a man who was making eco-friendly surfboards for people. Furthermore, these surfboards are supposedly better than the surfboards made with oil-based materials to cover the board.

How it all began
Gary Young first thought of making eco-friendly surfboards in the mid 1970's because there was an oil shortage and thus not many surfboards could be build. Gary Young then decided to replace the oil-based materials with more natural materials to counter this oil shortage problem. In 1976, he was the first known surfboard shaper to "make wood-veneer boards using a vacuum- bagging technique that laminated veneer over the deck of a board." He then patented his technique based on his principle compound curvature.

The modern eco-friendly surfboards of Gary Young
In the mid 1980's he changed his board material from ordinary wood to bamboo which he believed was more sturdy, more reliable as well as visually more appealing. After experimenting for more than a decade he released his first prototype called Hokua which was a big-wave surfboard for surfer star Robby Naish. This board had an outer layer of Koa veneer and its inner structures was layers of bamboo. the board proved that it was stronger than a normal board when Robby Naish rode the board on gigantic waves of Maui's vaunted Jaws.

While bamboo itself is weak and will degrade after multiple use, gary Young has a secret that strengthens the board. Gary uses bamboo veneer which is made up of tissue thin sheets pressed into one. Using this material uses less epoxy than glassfibre and is twice as strong. The reason why these boards are eco-friendly is because the bamboo veneer does not produces sawdust when cleaned or when in the sea. Furthermore when the bamboo decomposes after the board is no longer in use it decomposes into the ground instead of the usual glassfibre which takes many years to decompose.

I think that these eco-friendly surfboards are a very good thing because they are promoting saving the Earth as well as saving Earth resources.

Alcohol

Alcohol has been used to comfort people who were sick, to preserve food for later use as well as a form of currency during the middle ages that was used to pay of any debts people might have had with ale. Some regarded it as a drink of evil while others claimed it was a gift from God.

History
While we are unsure as to when alcohol was first discovered, we can be sure that people probably discovered this new and important beverage not long after abandoning their hunter style way of life and moving on to farming to sustain themselves. The mostly like explanation to how people long ago discovered alcohol is that when they stored grapes inside containers to keep them to eat next time, the grapes fermented and produced alcohol. After this, alcohol would have spread quickly as most people would have seen the potential market for these types of goods. The earliest artifacts that have been found that are related to drinking alcohol is 12000 year old stone beer mugs that people used to drink alcohol from.

Alcohol's bad effects
Some bad effects of Alcohol may be mild while oothers may be rather serious. I will give some examples now.

1.There is a greater chance to get lung infections
2.high blood pressure
3. Enlargement of the heart
4.Brain injury as well as hullucinations and confusion
5.There are also chances of contracting liver cancer.

The good things about Alcohol
While abusing alcohol may be seriously detrimental to your health, complete abstinence from alcohol does not improve your health either. Studies have shown that if people take alcohol every once in a while they have better health and greater longevity than people who do not drink alcohol and definitely more than people who abuse it. Furthermore, in history when people did not have proper analgesic for people in pain they gave them alcohol to drink to blur their mind a bit to diminish their pain slightly. In the middle ages alcohol was absolutely essential as the people's staple crop was grain-based thus they rarely took any meat resulting in many of the people being malnourished. That is why people then took alcohol to boost their energy a little bit.

Strangely, your perspective and expectations of what you are drinking influences your body and your mind more than what you are actually drinking. For examples, if you give someone a cup of alcohol but you tell him that his drink does not contain any alcohol there usually will be no effect to his mind when he drinks. This also works the other way round where if you lie and tell a person that he is drinking alcohol when actually he is not, he usually would become louder and less inhibited. Thus it is not really what you are drinking but what matters more is what you think you are drinking that will affect you more.

I hope you have learnt some interesting facts in this blog post.

Digestion

This post will be about digestion, what is in our digestive system and how our food is broken down.

First of all,i will explain what is the function of the body parts inside our digestive system.

1. Mouth
Our mouth produces saliva to help break our food down into smaller pieces with the help of our teeth. When the food has been chewed throughly enough or when the person eating swallows, our tongue curls backwards and rolls our food into a ball and pushes in down into our gullet.

2. Gullet
Our Gullet is a very long muscle which contracts and relaxes to push our food through to our stomach. The process of pushing the food down is that part in front of the food ball relaxes and the area behind the food ball contracts and pushes the food ball down the gullet where it eventually ends up in the sotmach.

3. Stomach
The stomach produces acid which breaks down the food particles into simple substance where the small intestine can absorb the substance for our body to use. Some food particlesmay not be broken down completely however.

4. The small intestine
When the broken down food reaches the small intestine most are absorbed into our bloodstream. The leftovers of what we have eaten will then go to the large intestine.

5. The large intestine
The large intestine is responsible of taking our waste products and food leftovers and sucking up all the water and mineral salts inside it so as to not waste any thing that would help our body.

6. Anus
The anus expels the waste products, hopefully into a toilet bowl.

This is our digestion and how it works. After reading this i hope you have learnt how our body digests the food we eat.

Photosynthesis and Respiration

In this blog post i will be talking about phtosynthesis and respiration.

Photosynthesis is the process where plants make food. The plants first take in Carbon Dioxide, water and sunlight before being able to photosynthesis and make food for themselves. The end product after photosynthesis is oxygen and glucose. If it were not for this process which exchanges the carbon dioxide we breathe out with oxygen we would most likely have died out a long time ago. The excess sugar is also turned into starch for further use later on when the plant needs it. We can perform an iodine test on a plant leaf to check for the presence of starch.

Now, we will be moving on to Respiration. Respiration is a life process for both plants and animals. This process occurs all the time be it at night or during the day. This process uses up oxygen and food and gives out carbon dioxide, glucose and waste products. Since this process occurs day and night, at night plants will still respire but will not photosynthesis thus plants should not be put in a small room during the night.

These life processes are very important to our life here on Earth because if we could not respire and were not able to survive humankind would not survive very long at all. However, if plants were not there to help us exchange some of our carbon dioxide for oxygen for us to breathe again, our time here on Earth would not have been very long.

I hope that after reading about photosynthesis and respiration, you have learnt something new which will benefit you.

Science Ace term 3- Oil Spills

This is my science ace that i did this term, and i want to post it up here to show.

Oil Spills
First of all, i am going to tell you what are oil spills. An oil spill is a spillage of crude oil or petroleum in the sea. The cause of these spillages are usually oil rigs in the sea that have reptured or damaged oil tankers that leak oil in the water.

You may ask, why are oil spills so important? They are important because they can greatly disrupted the lives of the fish and animals depending on the sea for food and shelter. For example, if a bird lands on oil covered water, the bird will get coated in oil and may even ingest some oil. This is very serious and may result in the bird dying as the feathers lose their ability to insulate themselves and could freeze to death at high alltitudes. Furthurmore, if birds or marine animals ingest the oil, they will not be able to digestion properly and will also have kidney failure

Luckily, we have measures to clear oil away from the sea even though some may not be very effective. When oil reaches a shore, the government in that area will set up boomers around the body of water to prevent the oil from escaping. Skimmers are then used to clear away the oil. However this method cannot clear away much oil. On the open sea, bioremediation is used more often as it only speeds up nature's process of breaking down the oil and thus does not harm the environment as much as the other methods of clearing oil.

Some of the biggest oil spills in history are:
1. The Persian Gulf War: 4million barrels of oil were spilt
2. The Exxon Valdex: 1mil gallons of oil were spilt
3. The Monongahela River spill: 1million gallons of oil were spilt.

Some measures the government have taken include:
1.inspecting oil rigs to check for any ruptures or cracks that may leak oil into the sea.
2.Impose laws to regulate oil spills.
3.Tankers must have a double hull when delivering oil so as to prevent oil from leaking out.
4. The US enacted the Oil Pollution Act of 1990

Things we could do to lessen the amount of oil used is to use public transportation, put a container another the car engine to catch any oil andwalk or use a bicycle.
We have come to the end of the Science Ace, i hoped you enjoyed it.

Elements, Mixtures and Compounds

In this blog post i will be talking about Elements,Mixtures and Compounds.

First of all, i am going to be explaining what is an element then giving some examples.

An element is the building block of compounds, mixtures, suspensions. It is basically is a chemical substance that is only made up of one element and cannot be broken down further. Someof our elements, from atomic number 1 to 83 excluding number 43 and 61 have stable isotopes. However, numbers 83 and above are unstable and are not found in nature and is either man-made or made in other events. There are many different types of elements in our world, some of the more common ones as hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. There are less common ones such as element ununseptium will is atomic number 117. Here is an element song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFIvXVMbII0

Now, i will talking about compounds. A compound is a chemical substance that has been formed by two or more elements through chemical reaction. A compound cannot be separated through physical means such as fractional distillation and can only be separated through chemical means. Some examples of compounds are water.

Lastly, i will be talking about mixtures. A mixture is two or more elements that have been combined through physical means. Thus the elements inside the mixture can also be separated through physical means. Furthermore, if the elements were not chemically combined, they would still retain their original properties. Air is an example of a mixture.

I hope you have enjoyed this information about Elements, Compounds and Mixtures.

Tissues

Tissues


What are tissues? tissues are the organization of cells that have grouped together to perform a specific function.

Firstly i am going to tell you the different type of plant and animal tissues. There are all together seven different types of tissues.
1. Muscle tissue
2. Nervous tissue
3. connective tissue
4. Epithelial tissue
5. vascular tissue
6. epidermis tissue
7. ground tissue

Now, i will explain the function and importance of each tissue to either the animal body or the plant.

1.Connective tissue
The connective tissue is a fibrous tissue and is made up of non-living material. The connective tissue holds other tissue to form for example organs. Furthermore, these tissues have the ability to stretch

2.Muscle tissue
The muscle tissue is there to produce force and cause motion which thus enables us to move. There are three different types of muscle tissue in our body. They are cardiac muscle which is found in our heart, smooth muscle which is found in the inner lining of our organs and lastly skeletal muscle which enable movement.

3.Nervous tissue
This tissue forms our brain and spinal cord and enables our brain to transmit electrical signals to the other parts of the body.

4.Epithelial tissue
The Epithelial tissue forms our skin, as well as the inner lining of the reproductive tract, our airways and the inner lining of our digestive tract. Epithelial tissue may also be specialized to perform secretion and absorption.

5.Vascular tissue
The vascular tissue is the primary tissue of the xylem and phloem.

6.Epidermis tissue
This tissue forms the outer surface of the leaves as well as the body of a young plant.

7.Ground tissue
Ground tissue is the tissue than makes nutrients for the plant to use by photosynthesis as well as storing any excess nutrients as starch.

That is it for my science project i hope you learned more about tissue and found it interesting as well.

Know a cell inside out

Now i am going to show you one picture of an animal cell and a plant cell.

I will explain to you the parts of both cells and will label which are unique to each different type of cell.

1. Cell wall ( Plant cell)
A cell is to prevent the cell from absorbing too much water and bursting. The cell wall is also there to make the plant rigid.

2. Cell Membrane
The cell membrance acts as a filter for what substances should or should not enter the cell.

3. Vacuole
In a plant cell the vaculo contains the waste of the cell, getting rid of harmful materials in the cell then exporting all of these out of the cell.

4. Cytoplasm
Cytoplasm holds all the organelles inside the cell in a fatty jelly like substance.

5. nucleus
The nucleus is the cell's control center and holds almost all of the cell DNA. The nucleus makes the chromosones of the cell.

6. Chloroplasts (Plant cell)
Allows the plant cell to absorb sunlight and perform the process photosynthesis which makes food for the plant.

These are the main parts of either a plant cell or an animal cell. I hope you have benefitted from this blog post about main cell parts. There will be a reflection in the next blog post.

Trip to the Science Centre with friends (Reflection)

When i went to the science centre yesterday, I think i have learnt that science does not always have to be boring or predictable like in school. For example in school it is usually worksheets and sutdying to learn. However, after visiting the science centre i feel that the way to allow students to more easily remember there work is to make it more interesting and allow it to appeal to a student. If the student finds his studies interesting, it does not take much effort to become engrossed and that will allow him to remember his work much better than the usual worksheets.

I think that for example, if we were shown a video on cells like maybe a person has a serious diesease in the video and we go inside his body and then we are told the function of the cells or body parts that help to combat the diesease and allow the man to get well. I feel that this is far more entertaining and interesting allowing to think about studies in a postive light instead of always thinking that school is boring.

This reflection does not really focus on the exhibits in the science centre but is really more based on how science should be present and taught to us so that the maximum amount of knowledge can be garnered from what is taught.

Termly Reflection term 3

This term I managed to achieve A1 for science but just barely though and i believe that this shows that i still need to sutdy more for my End of year exams to get a A1. Overally my results were not that good either. However i am at least happy that i improved by 0.83 and i hope that i can improve more before the year ends. For the last few weeks i am trying to study more instead of reading my books but i am still setting aside some time for reading.

From my term 3 results i feel that i need to go over my term 1 and 3 work, however i need to really study and remember the work in term 2 for that was where i did badly at in the year. If i can remember my work in Term 2 then i quite confident i can get an A1 for science.

Trip to science center with friends

Last Sunday, i went to the science center with Justin Sim and Glenn. I even learnt some new things fromthis trip even though i have been here before during primary school.

Some of the new exhibits showed me some things about science that i did not know before. The tips were not in our syllables closer to just extra things about science. Other exhibits were in our LSS work however, the information was present in a different and more interesting way.

For exmaple at the exhibit of climate change. The first thing people who go to that section learn about climate change is about events that have influenced or still influencing climate change. This is present in a far more interesting way as the science centre makes you think that you are in a research station at the Artic and where they show you about the event influencing climate change. There were other climate change stations but i shall not go through all of them and instead will show you some other parts of the science centre.

There was a limited time exhibit called "Wildlife of Gondwana" which was both enjoyable and interesting partly because i have never heard of Gondwana, the Super Continent. The exhibit showed us fossils thathad been recovered from this continent and theere was even a timeline which showed me major events that took place from when Gondwana existed which was 3.8mbillion years ago to present time.

I will now tell you of the exhibit in the cscience centre which i liked the most and that was I-Space. Basically I-Space is to show people Infocomm Technology in a fun and unique way. Even though this is my favourite exhibit it is rather hard to describe it as it was more about technology that we may possess 100 to 200 years from now thus i still am slightly confused.

Overall, the science centre trip was very exciting as there were some new exhibits for us to see. I hope that you will go to the science centre too to visit these exhibits. Because i have written a moderate amount here,i will write my reflection about this in the next post.