Carbon Footprint

Summary: Almost anything that we do produces carbon emissions, but somethings more than others. Transportation of goods is one of the largest producers of carbon emissions in the world. Due to the excessive burning of fossil fuels, people need to watch how much the world is affected by what they order online. Your carbon footprint is how much carbon one produces when ordering an item online. The further the materials an item is made out of from its manufacturer that makes the item it means that more carbon is produced.

SP2: Developing and using models:
During class we made a model in the form of a map. We used the map to display how the materials in our product traveled over a period of time. We used the information that we gained from our map to calculate the various amounts of carbon emissions that the product produced while traveling to the manufacturer, then to the retailer, and finally to our team.

XCC: Energy and Matter:
The system of harvesting materials transporting them to make them into a product, is powered by fossil fuels and other forms of energy to transport goods. In the middle of the transportation process the fuel that is being burned is converting heat into energy, allowing to vehicle to move forward. This ultimately leads into the production of carbon emissions that harm the world, heating it up indefinitely.

Designer Species Project

Summary: When a particular type of animal is placed into an environment it changes not only based off of the the plants and structures of the ecosystem, but it also changes depending on what organisms are in the habitat as well. An animal that tries to avoid a predator that is fast would evolve to be much more sneaky that an animal that tries to avoid another animal that is incredibly fast. The reason today why rats are so fast and sneaky is that they evolved to avoid humans, as most of the time they would get killed by them. This is true across every organism, like how a loin would evolve to sneak up on its prey, as its prey is very fast.

Backward-Looking
In or out of school I have never done a kind of work that requires as much creativity as this one, where the only limitations you have is that it has to make sense, and it has to be based off of the environment it resides in.  With little limitations it allows the creativity to run wild, creating something that you can feel attached to like most other projects where you just follow the guidelines and your done.

Inward-Looking
The thing I like the most about this project is the fact that it is flowing with creativity and originality, showing how my mind works and not how it reacts to various tasks. The one thing I dislike about the project is that some of the reasons that our organism evolved to be the way that it is are kind of bad, most of our ideas were thought up before we chose our scenario, so we built our reasons around the environment and not the organism.

Outward-Looking
If I were to give this project a grade I would give it a B-, because there was a lack of thought involved with some parts of the project. Rather than choosing an scenario and then thinking up our organism around the environment, we made our organism first then chose the environment. We then came up with various reasons that the organism would evolve to be this way.

Forward-Looking
The one goal I would like to set for next time is:

rather than impeding the final outcome of the project by choosing what I want to do first, then looking at the scenario. I will look at the scenario first, then make decisions based off of the scenario rather than the basic task. Allowing me to be more efficient and have a better work ethic to make a better project, and enjoying it along the way.

How different environments impacts the evolution of an organism

Crituqe of the Theory of Evolution  By: Thomas Hunt Morgan

When looking at how drastically different animals are depending on where they originated, it comes to mind how the environment would impact the evolution of a specific organism. When organisms such as the rodent or cockroach evolve, they adapt very differently to where they are, such as how a cockroach from America would be much more resistant to various bug sprays as a cockroach from Africa. Also how a mouse from Russia would be much more adapted to the cold, rather than a mouse from Japan.

SP6: Constructing explanations and designing solutions
During class we were given the task of designing an organism around the basis on a planet, showing how the planet would affect the evolution of the organism. The planet we decided on was tropical, with the biggest threats to life was a carnivorous snake, and a plant on the ground that poisons an organism upon touch killing it. We designed around those two points by making an organism that flies and swims, it focuses mainly of speed, but if it were to get attacked its second line of defense is an electric shock that would be able to stun or kill a foe. It hunts primarily in the water for small fish.

XCC: Structure and Function
In various habitats, organisms have various functions that helps them hunt, and live long enough to reproduce. The structure of a mouse is based off of the country it lives in, like if a mouse were to live in a cold environment it would evolve to have a thicker coat of fur to keep itself warm. While a mouse in a warmer climate might evolve to be more fast than its cold counter part, focusing on stealing food, rather than scavenging as that would be the easiest way to support its source of food.  

Cladograms

Cladogram By: Alexi Kouprianov

Because of the Earth's long history, and that all living organisms are related, there was a need for a way to sort all or a section of the living species on earth showing how they are related. That's where the cladogram comes in, it's a way the biologists use to sort various species based on all of the traits that they have in common. The farther up a cladogram a species is, the more specific traits it has. If a fish is at the bottom of a cladogram, and a bird is a the top, that means they are not closely related and the bird has more specific traits than the fish.

SP2: Developing and using models
During class we were given a sheet of paper that had 5 different animals on it, we sorted the various traits that each organism had onto a table, we then used a venn diagrams to further sort what traits each organism shared. After that we organized the organisms into a cladogram based off of what traits the each organism shared.

XCC:
When looking at a cladogram, there are multiple patterns that you can see, the farther up the cladogram an animal is, the more traits it has. The lowe an organism is on a cladogram, the less specific traits the organism has in comparison to the other organisms on the cladogram. Depending on what is on the cladogram different organisms might be higher or lower on the cladogram.