This mod I learned the difference between physical and chemical reactions that occur during the making of food. Specifically from the butter and bread segment. During the butter segment a physical reaction occurred where when we put the heavy cream liquid and physically shook it for 20 minutes, the substance changed from a liquid to solid. When we made the bread a chemical reaction occurred. The color of the bread changed after being baked from a light beige color to a dark burnt brown color. Also yeast fermentation occurred while we were mixing the ingredients in order to make the dough. Yeast fermentation happens when we pour the living yeast powder in with the other ingredients, mix them together, then let the dough sit overnight next to natural sunlight. What the live yeast are doing is waking up from their slumber and then eating the sugars from the other ingredients and becoming happy yeast. This causes the bread to rise and double in size. Once the bread has rose then put in the oven and baked the color, the smell and the texture of the bread loaf has changed.

This stood out to me the most because I know that I’m going to use this in my future with baking or in future chemistry classes. Knowing the difference between physical and chemical reactions is very helpful by knowing that color change is a chemical reaction and the form wether its a liquid or a solid. Also with the other many reactions. This will help me be a solution seeker for when I am baking something and trying to figure how and why the color changed or why the form changed. It will also help me be an innovator by planing any future recipes and planning what the color or form will turn out to be.

 

This is the link to our bread and butter cooking show segment:

itshttps://youtu.be/x_U0URybSRg

 

 

My goals were to take better notes, study harder, and managing my time with homework and friends. In order to study I need to further enhance my note taking and take more diligent notes so I can be more prepared for assignments to come. To truly study harder I need to pay better attention in class so I can take extra notes to read over for upcoming quizzes or tests. Also I need to manage my time by making sure that I have fully completed my homework and I don’t have to do any extra studying for important tests. Then I’ll be able to go and have social time, but without any stress that I still have work to do.

 

This past mod I have bettered my note taking with having a separate notebook for each class and I made sure that I had notes taken everyday. It helped me study more accurately and helped better my study time by having the right material. I spent my time wisely with getting studying and homework done first before anything else. As soon as I got home from school sports I would sit at my desk and get my homework done and extra studying that I needed. I managed my time with school work and social time with getting the work done first and then going to have the necessary social time that didn’t interfere with my schedule or school work. My motivation has changed with how I spent my enrichment because I realized that my GTD time still isn’t enough for talking with teachers about questions that I have and getting work done. So I will start using my enrichment and community time to talk with teachers and leave my GTD free for working. 

In Biology class, our topic was on protein synthesis. For this activity we worked on transcribing and translating the genes of this little alien. We were given a sheet with its DNA sequences and the different results for each gene’s transcription and translation. For example, gene A is CAAGGATAT. You would first transcribe it into its mRNA form which is GUUCCUAUA. Then you translate each codon, three bases, and you get Val-pro-ileu. This results to my alien being hairless.

There was a total of 9 DNA sequences to figure out what the genes of my alien would be. In the end, he received these traits; hairless, fat, 8 legs, long nose, no antennae, red skin, 10 fingers, no tail and 4 eyes.  Once I got all the traits, I started to draw him out and made sure that he had all of them incorporated. Somewhere along the way I decided to make him a detective that is trying to find all the mutations that are causing trouble in the DNA world.

This activity relates to the real world by how people learn a language. First, you have to translate the phrase, “transcribe”. Then you have to find the meaning, “translate”. Then you have learned the word and it will be a part of you brain forever and it will help shape you way of speaking the language. Protein Synthesis is very important for the human body for it determines what you are going to look like and without it, we would look like a blob.

I have always had a passion for the other world that lives here with us, the ocean, but when I started to learn more and more about it, my passion grew stronger. Unfortunately, more so for helping it get better since it has been suffering from the terrible plastic plague. Each day I researched different questions to deepen my understanding on how badly infected the ocean is. I had to first learn the true statistics on how much plastic there is in the ocean and how much we can get out. The next day I researched ways to get the horrible idea of our beautiful oceans dying into peoples minds so that the cleaning up of the ocean would be a big group effort. The next day I started exploring different easy ways that people around the world could do that took minimal effort and that it would just come natural to the people. The following day I tried to figure out how much effort it would take to completely clean the entire ocean and unfortunately the results were not that reassuring, since most sites said that it would be impossible to clean the entire ocean due to the fact that we can’t even get people to stop throwing their trash into it. Although, when we can finally figure out how to get people to snap out of it, it will be possible to clear the ocean up and to keep it clean forever. The last day I experimented different things I could do because I believe that the littlest things count and if we can get everyone to start to pitching in and do the littlest things, than this world will be cleaner than it ever was before. I came up with some realistic and unrealistic answers such as getting people to actually start and do things and then also the entire ocean being cleaned up in one push of a button. Though truly, if people put their mind to it we will have one heck of a clean world. This topic has helped me learn more about what I may want to in my future occupation and this experience has helped me learn that when I start to engage myself into something that I am very passionate about, I will go all in, for it all comes from my heart.

Before:

I remember when ever I traveled to Arizona, my mothers hometown, we would always go to my aunts house and she wasn’t my full aunt we weren’t related by blood but I loved her dearly and one thing I absolutely loved about her was her attention to detail when cooking. We would always every night go to the grocery store and get every single food item there was and we would come home and make such grand meals. I would always set the plates and make everything artistic and she would always call me by nickname and say, “Sugarplum you are so creative you are going to do wonders when you grow up.” And I always try to live up to those words and I always think of her when I’m coming up with new wacky ideas that would always wow my family. I remember that she always let me do everything that I wanted to do and I love her for that.

After:

        Down in the dry deserts of Phoenix, Arizona is what I like to call my second home. My mother was originally from there and therefore, I must have family living there. It has been awhile since I have been in the dust, but I vividly remember my amazing aunt, Aunty Pat. She is a 75 year old lady who is extremely fit and ready for anything. Her curly blond locks of hair and and her beautiful jewelry which always popped out to me were some of the things that I was always excited to see when I visited her. She lives in a little bungalow that I constantly wished I lived in and it had everything. Her sweet little home had a petite patio full of plants, and she had and indoor green room filled to the brim with even more greenery. Her little neighborhood had an awesome pool and hot tub that we never used since the pool was already a hot tub in that dreadful 100° weather. But besides all that, my favorite room in her wee home by far was her kitchen. Every single night my Aunty Pat and I lived in her tiny kitchen loaded with food. Aunty Pat’s favorite thing to do was grocery shopping and she had a lavish amount of food. We would always cook these extravagant meals for dinner I adored learning all the ins and outs of cooking with her. I was her little sous chef and at that time, I didn’t want to be anything else. Now, I was younger then so she would always deal with the serious cooking such as; cutting, boiling, actual cooking, but sometimes when I felt extremely over confident, she believed in me and would let me try some things. Not all, but some. And I loved her for that, when she truly believed in me and saw something in me, she would always let me do the things that I wanted even knowing that it could turn out horribly. I was her Sugarplum Fairy and nobody else’s. After all the hard work of cooking was done, she left the rest of the work to me. Setting the table. I had an entire routine: FIRST the table cloth, silverware, plates, napkins, and drinks; THEN the decorating of the dishes of food, I loved to use my creative mind and come up with a new design for each and every platter. LASTLY, the final set. After the hours of work, our meal was done and the whole family would sit down and thank us for our labor, but in the end, I always look back at those moments in the kitchen with my Aunty Pat and I know that those moments shall never ever leave my heart for she has made me the woman I am today.

 The gummy bear lab was an experiment with gummy bears and soaking them in different types of water. We left them into three cups of different water; distilled water cup, salt water cup, and an empty cup. We were testing how hypertonic, hypotonic and isotonic. We left them in the cups over night to record their increase of growth or decrease of growth. In conclusion, the purpose of our gummy bear lab was to see how isotonic, hypertonic, and hypotonic works.

ChildArt Magazine is a magazine founded and owned by Dr. Ashfaq Ishaq. This magazine has been publishing new issues since 1998. It is more for young teens, 10-14, but others enjoy it as well. It’s an incredible international magazine and they go in depth on some great topics such as, Transformative Experiences, Preserving Creativity and many more. The magazine goes over some topics that you would think most teens wouldn’t be interested in, but ChildArt magazine really grabs you and makes you want to learn and think about the world around you. The issues consist of articles about projects going on around the world, Q and A’s, many images of authors and their projects, and activities that students can interact with and learn by doing things and not just reading. The magazine at the least gets 100,000 reads an issue. The magazine recently started publishing online issues, which has help make it even more popular.

The October-December issue is all about VR/AR and Deep Learning and it has partnered up for the first time with school, Mount Vernon Presbyterian School. Dr. Ashfaq Ishaq was looking for someone to be the guest editor of the magazine and he found a grade 9 teacher and Mount Vernon VR/AR Director, Mrs. Marie Graham. He wanted her to guest edit the magazine, but she didn’t stop there. Instead of just her guest editing it, she had the amazing idea of having her class of of 11 students also be in the guest editorial team of the magazine. Dr. Ishaq was a little hesitant at first, but then followed along and ended up loving the idea. When she told her class about this amazing idea, we were all extremely excited to get started and publish this magazine for kids are age to see all around the world.

I was blessed to be in Mrs. Graham’s class and to be given this once in a lifetime opportunity. At the beginning of the project we had to learn a very important lesson before getting into the madness of writing and editing an international magazine. We read examples of great emails written by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and we read and studied their tone, their vocabulary and we all learned how to create great emails. Mrs. Graham decided that the class should have a friendly competition on who can make the best email and be the first to send it to Dr. Ishaq himself. Once we all turned them in, she read them all carefully and picked mine to be the first email sent to Dr. Ishaq and from then on, I was named the chief of emailing for the magazine. Being apart of the editing team for ChildArt Magazine has been amazing and I cannot wait for it to be published.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton