Is there life in space?

One of the questions that get asked most often when it comes to space is, 'Does life in space exist?' The thing is, that it is hard to believe that there is no life in space. Due to the fact that there are so many different planets in the galaxy alone, there has to be at least one or two other planets that support life like Earth does. Astronomers have only scratched the surface when it comes to exploring other planets in space.

The people who study different stars and look for different planets haven't even discovered a fraction of the stars that are in the universe. In 2016 scientist have discovered around 2000 of the billions of planets in the galaxy. But we're not just limited to the Milky Way, there are trillions of other galaxies in the universe, each one could possibly harbor a planet that is able to support life like our home, the Earth. The process of finding planets is also getting quicker as time goes on, any day could be the day when we find like in outer space.

There are a lot of requirements for a planet to be deemed habitable for life. One of the biggest requirements is that the planet needs to be big enough, so it has its own atmosphere. Another requirement is that the planet is in the habitable zone, meaning it isn't too close or far from the sun. The reason why this is, is because of water. If a planet with water is too close to the sun, all the water will evaporate away, and if the planet is too far from the sun, all of the water will freeze over. Even with requirements like these to be met for a planet to be habitable, space is so large that there must be other planets that can support life. It might take a while, but scientists will eventually find another planet that can support life.

Stars

Heliocentric solar system By: RuM

Summary: If one were to look up into the night sky, they would notice something, the stars. In the vastness of space, there are these big balls of fire that shine so brightly you can be can see them from trillions of miles away. The thing is these stars are doing something that most people wouldn't imagine when thinking about stars. That thing is nuclear fusion, this is when stars use a little bit of energy to fuse 4 hydrogen atoms, into one helium atom. This is why stars shine, because of all the energy being used to do this over and over again.

SP2: Developing and using models
Due to the fact that space is so big, we had to rely on models quite a bit to help us understand the importance of various things in space, such as stars. We made a small model of the solar system that was about 5 feet in length, which is much shorter than the millions of miles that our solar system covers. We used the paper to gauge the relative distance of all of the planets to each other, including the Sun and the Kuiper belt, which were both at the edge of the solar system.

XCC: Scale, Proportion, and Quantity

When talking about space, one has to acknowledge how vast it really is, the Earth may seem to be a big place for some, but just looking at our solar system, one can see how Earth is really just a speck in the entirety of space. The sun is one million times larger than the Earth, and it is no where near the biggest star in the galaxy. It takes light, the thing that can almost travel instantly 4 years to get to the nearest star to our solar system.

Seasons

Axial Tilt of Earth By: GregorDS

Summary: Throughout the year, seasons come and go, but depending on where a person lives, the time of the year seasons start and end changes. This is due to the tilt of the Earth causing different parts of the earth to get different amounts of sunlight. The Earth has a tilt of 23.5 degrees and depending on where the Earth is relative to the sun, each hemisphere might be in a different season than one another. If the Earth is tilted in a way that the northern hemisphere gets more sun, then it is spring or summer there, and vice-versa.

SP2: Developing and using models
We used various online models to represent how the Earth's tilt affects when and where each season occurs in a year. We also used physical models to help give us a better understanding on what season it is based off of how much sunlight is hitting each part of the Earth at a certain point in time. This also helped us better understand the relationship between sunlight, the poles and the equator.

XCC: Scale, Proportion, and Quantity
When looking at things on an astronomical scale can be quite weird, because things so large that can barely be described by our units of measurement can fit right in the palm of someones hand. This doesn't just go for physical objects, things like years can pass in a matter of seconds. There are also problems with scaling down things that are that big, because you have to get the scale factor just right so the model wont be incorrect.   

Digital vs. Analog | Writing Across Curriculums

Digital vs. Analog technology W.A.C

As technology continues to further evolve, we become able to do things that we weren’t able to before and enhance the experience of things like entertainment. Unlike analog graphing, digital graph will not only get better in the future, it is already better and easier to use than analog is. Digital technology is already easier to use than that of analog, not only is it less expensive, it’s also more widely available, and anyone can do it. Editing can fix all of the issues that people may have with digital technology and make the music sound better than it did before. Lastly, as time moves on the technology will continue to improve and get better, surpassing analog technology by even more than it does now. By far, digital technology is much easier to come across today than analog technology, not only that digital is much easier to use than analog is.

While analog technology has been around for ages, since man has started to make music, in the short time that it has existed digital technology has already become much more available and easy to use than analog technology is. Rather than having a confusing instruction manual like analog technology does, digital technology has easy to navigate, use, and understand help pages that anyone can use if their confused. So learning how to use digital technology won't be an issue if the company uses digital. Not only that, but the ability to find a piece of analog technology today is much harder than the ability to find a piece of digital technology, and much less expensive as well so almost anyone can find and buy all the necessary equipment, so money wont be as much of an issue as it was before. Through the power of editing we can put in all of the subtleties that may have been missed in the recording and sampling of music being played, holding it to a higher sound quality and precision that analog technology has.

With advanced editing tools that are widely available and easy to use, digital sound can have all of the subtle parts of the music that may have been missed during sampling, meaning that digital technology can have the same level of sound quality as digital has. Using separate recordings, and control over the level of volume a noise has, editors can put in all of the subtle pieces of music that may be present throughout the piece, is it’s skipped over during sampling, meaning that digital can have the same level of music integrity that analog has. Not only that but editing is a much faster and less scary process than before, because there is an undo button if something is accidentally deleted, it doesn’t have to be recorded again, which would cost the company time and money. Meaning that our company would be saving money if we switched to digital. Digital technology has a lot of great points about it, does analog technology have any kind of advantage over digital technology in this debate?

While digital has a large amount of upper hands on analog, it gets beat out in one aspect of sound, and that is all of the smaller harder to notice sounds in music, which are subtle noises that make the song all that much more enjoyable than if they weren’t there. When people use digital technology, it doesn’t convert the entire song onto the computer, only parts at a sampling rate, which can leave out parts of the song that would make it much more enjoyable than it was before. While songs made using analog technology always picks up the entire song, so when digital technology is used all of the subtle yet really enjoyable parts of the song are left out, which can lose a lot of money for the company producing the technology and music for people to enjoy. Even though lots of enjoyable parts of the song are left in the initial recording, they can still be recorded and added in later via editing, which means people can enjoy all of the parts of the song as if they were listening to it on a vinyl record.

As time passes on digital technology will continue to keep improving and it will keep getting better and better, meaning that not only will it become even more accessible to people, it will also have a lot more uses than it would today. Every day, people around the world are working to make more and better technology, meaning that technology has almost a 100% chance of being improved in one way shape or form, this includes music technology meaning that digital technology will continue to surpass analog technology every day. The technology used for making music can be improved in lots of different ways, like the sampling rate may continue to increase meaning that people will eventually be able to hear all of the subtleties in the music from the initial recording, which reduces the amount of work that needs to be done. There are lots of ways that digital technology is superior to analog technology, and there are lots of areas that digital technology will be better than analog technology in the future.

Not only is digital technology better than analog technology right now, it will also continue to be better than analog technology in the future. Meaning that it will continue to improve and get better for anyone to use. Digital technology is much easier to use than analog technology with all of the guides and help pages, it’s also much more available these days as compared to analog technology. Almost all of the problems that digital technology and recording has can be fixed by recording more audio and editing the audio that was already there before. As time moves on digital technology will continue to improve and get even better than before, continuing to surpass analog technology. As you can see digital technology is far superior than analog technology, and while both have their good sides, digital beats out analog in almost every way shape or form, meaning that digital is the overall better option than analog.

Electromagnetic spectrum

EM spectrumvised By: Philip Ronan, Gringer

Summary: The electromagnetic spectrum is where all light in the universe falls into, things like radio waves, and gamma rays are some examples of what falls on the spectrum. Even though we can't see most of the light on the electromagnetic spectrum, we have found ways to measure it, both analog and digital, so that we can visualize it to better study all of the different types of light. Only one part of the spectrum can be seen by the human eye, this is called the visible spectrum, which includes all of the colors of the rainbow, and is its own spectrum.

SP4: Analyzing and interpreting data
We took a look at a single graph that was incredibly smooth, and had to plot out ten points that all fell on whole numbers, we then repeated the process but we had to plot out 20 points and they could be whole or fall on half numbers. We observed that as the more points were added to the graph, it not only got smoother, but it also got more accurate to the original graph that we were basing it off of, which shows how accurate results can be given by human hand. 

XCC: Patterns
On the electromagnetic spectrum you can see that the shorter the wavelengths get not only do the waves get warmer and warmer, the frequency also increases. The smaller the frequency is the warmer the color it is represented by is, with one noticeable change of color right where the visible spectrum is, this also correlates to the warmer the wave is at its max power, than the cooler the color its represented by on the spectrum. Meaning that the smallest thing on the spectrum, gamma rays, would have a very light purple representing its frequency and a temperature of about 10,000,000 K.

Musical Instrument Project

 

Image Link

Summary: Various different types of waves can affect the world in different ways. Like how sound waves can make things audible to the human ear, or how seismic waves can make the ground shake greatly. Even though you can't see them, this applies to electromagnetic waves as well, like how a UV ray can cause a person to get a sunburn, or how X-rays allow us to see inside of our own bodies. Almost, if not all waves can effect the world or the things on it in various ways.


Backward-Looking
In school I personally learned about sounds and waves beforehand, but did not know as much on the topic as I would have liked, meaning that I learned a lot about the topic by working on the project. Specifically things like: the different ways to measure the wavelength and amplitude of different kinds of waves. I gained a lot of knowledge by working on the project.

Inward-Looking
The thing I like the most about this project is the fact that it is flowing with creativity, showing how my team and I can take a task as simple as creating an instrument and making something incredible out of it. The one thing I dislike about the project is that some of the decorations on the instrument itself are lack luster, specifically the 'ears' on the side of the instrument look really bad and poorly done.

Outward-Looking
If I were to give this project a grade I would give it a A, because the project can play any note at a variety of pitches, and not to mention it doesn't take any real skill to play, along with its uniqueness. We made and incredibly interesting design for our instrument, and decided to go with a design that was simple but also really cool. While some parts of the instrument don't look that good, it mostly does as all of the other pieces of the instrument are cool references.

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

When designing a unique solution to a problem, and my team and I hit a roadblock, than rather than doing a small and boring fix, we make it so that the solution fits into the project really well. I say that this is my goal because in our project we came to the roadblock of the sound not being very audible. So we came up with a quick fix to our problem, which was cutting holes in the side. I wish we came up with a greater solution next time.

Sound

Audio Database By: Aarkentechnologies 

Summary: Sound is a mechanical wave that allows us to hear various noises. Sound is a longitudinal wave meaning instead of going up and down, it compresses, and decompresses. Sound is also a type of energy, meaning that it can be used to manipulate matter, different sounds exist because of the fact that they manipulate the air around it. The frequency of the wave is directly related to the pitch of the sound, meaning that the louder the sound, the larger the frequency.

SP5: Using mathematics and computational thinking
We had to use various different types of math to find out about different properties of a wave. We had to do various measurements on things like the distances between two troughs, and the distance from a trough to the top of the wave. We used these measurements to figure out things about the wave, like its frequency, its wavelength, and the amplitude of the waves we measured.

Energy and Matter
Sound relates to energy and matter, because sound itself is a form of energy, you can use sound and the vibrations that it creates to manipulate matter. Matter is also related to sound because it is a mechanical wave, meaning that it cannot exist without matter, because it has to travel through matter to exist, specifically travelling through matter in the form of vibrations.

Waves

2 fixas By: Felipe Tomazoni

Summary: A wave is how various things in the universe move, it's the type of form that something takes. There are two basic types of wave: Electromagnetic, and Mechanical, with the main difference between them being how Mechanical waves need a medium, or matter to move, however an Electromagnetic wave can move through nothingness, also known as vacuum. Then there are two more sub types of waves, Transverse, and Longitudinal waves, which have to do with how the wave moves. A transversal wave goes up and down in humps and troughs, while a longitudinal wave compresses at different parts.

SP3: Planning and carrying out investigations
In order to figure out how sound moves and reacts to different states of matter, we did a lab that involved hitting tuning forks against a table and touching it to different things to see how the items would react. During the investigation, we found that the vibrating tuning fork would make water jump, and when a ball on a string would touch it, the ball would bounce away, no matter how softly we touched it with the vibrating fork.

XCC: Energy and Matter

Lots of different forms of energy travel as waves, such as sound energy, which travels as a longitudinal wave. Matter is needed for the existence of mechanical waves, which need a matter as a medium that they can pass through. Sound is a prime example of this as it can only travel through matter and cannot exist in a vacuum, and it is a type of energy, meaning that energy and matter are incredibly important to the existence of waves. 

What effect can very loud music have on your hearing?

Anatomy of the Human Ear By: Dan Pickard

When loud noises enter your ear they are quite violent vibrations entering your ear, which can cause a variety of problems. When entering your eardrum, the violent vibrations of sound can cause your eardrum to shake so violently that it can rip or break, which can be as bad to cause a person to go deaf. If the violent noise makes it to the cochlea, it can cause the hair cells on the inside to shake violently, which can cause the tips to break off, which means they will constantly be emitting electric pulses to your brain confusing it on whether you're supposed to be hearing something or not, making a ringing noise in your ear, which can last from 1 day to the rest of your life. While some loud noises are okay, others will cause damage to your ear that may be permanent and life hindering.

Roller Coaster Project

Summary: In physics there are various parts that allow the universe to function the way it is supposed to. Energy, which is how everything in the universe is powered, allowing for things like movement. There is force, which uses energy to push or pull an object into various different positions. Then there is motion, which is when both energy and force are put together to allow an object to change positions.

Backward-Looking
In or out of school I have never done a kind of work that needs as much knowledge as this one, where the only limitations are the requisites and your budget, and it has to be fully functional .  With little limitations it allows the creativity to run wild, creating something that you can feel attached to unlike most other projects where you just follow the guidelines and your done, with the only drawback being, the crazier the project, the harder the calculations.

Inward-Looking
The thing I like the most about this project is the fact that it is flowing with creativity, showing how my mind works and calculates, and not how it reacts to various tasks. The one thing I dislike about the project is that some of the theme behind our roller coaster is kind of bad, most of our ideas were thought up before we chose our theme, so we built our the around the roller coaster and not the other way around.

Outward-Looking
If I were to give this project a grade I would give it a A-, because there was a lack of thought involved with some parts of the project. Rather than making an interesting roller coaster we decided that we would go with a much, much simpler design than what was necessary . 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 a simpler design, then an interesting one. I will look at my capabilities  first, then make decisions based off of that, rather than basic abilities. Allowing me to be more efficient and have a better work ethic to make a better project, and enjoying it along the way.

Law of the Conservation of Energy

Summary: The law of the conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.. Similar to the law of the conservation of mass, it states that energy can only be transformed. Meaning that when a ball rolls down a hill, the potential energy of the ball isn't destroyed, and then replaced with newly made kinetic energy, but rather the potential energy is transforming into kinetic energy, but some of the energy is transferred to the air, meaning that the ball would not land in a completely proportionate place to how much potential energy it had.

SP2: Developing and using models:
We made small models of roller coasters in class to demonstrate Newton's laws of motion, and other points where parts of physics come into play, such as where on the roller coaster is the kinetic energy the lowest, or where is it the highest. It also allowed us to demonstrate various relationships, like the steepness of a hill to the acceleration, or the friction and the velocity.

XCC: Energy and Matter
The law of the conservation of energy shows how energy cannot be created or destroyed, creating the backbone for a system that doesn't rely of creating or destroying energy, but rather transforming it. Because energy is transformed rather than created or destroyed, it opens up a lot of options on how we can use energy to help us in everyday life. Like turning the mechanical energy of a motor into kinetic energy from the revolutions of a car's wheel.

Energy

Summary: Energy is how we measure the work that has to be placed on an object to do various things, such as move, or heat something up. There are many different types of energy, one of which is kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is the energy of motion, meaning when something is moving, the type of energy used is kinetic. But before kinetic energy can be put into use, it will be stored as potential energy, which is the energy something could possibly have in its position. Due to the law of the conservation of energy, it cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.

SP4: Analyzing and interpreting data

This week in class we took a look a various different graphs, of how things like acceleration and energy change over time in specific situations. Like how the kinetic energy of a ball would stay the same until it started to slow down. after we put the data on the graphs, we came to the conclusion that the kinetic energy was being converted into another type of energy. We also saw that at the begging of the situation the potential energy was high, but got lower and lower as the ball moved, it was the exact inverse of the kinetic energy, meaning that it was being transformed into kinetic energy.

 

XCC:Energy and Matter

Due to the law of the conservation of energy, it cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed, meaning that if a ball started on the top of a ramp and rolled down, then the potential energy that the ball had on the top of the ramp was being transformed. Because the rolling the ball would be considered a form of movement, the potential energy of the ball is being turned into kinetic energy. This is true when converting all types of energy into one another.

 

Forces

Forces 2 carts connected by string By: Guy Vandegrift

Summary: A force is a push or a pull, on an object that makes it move in various different ways. Forces are one of the main parts of Isaac Newton's three laws of motion, which include the law of inertia, F=MA, and for every action there is an equal or opposite reaction. The law of inertia is that if something is in motion, it will want to stay in motion, and if something is at rest it will want to stay at rest. F=MA, is a law that says the more mass something has the larger the force must be. Newton's third law states that if an action occurs there are two reactions, one that is equal, and one is opposite.

SP4: Analyzing and interpreting data
While studying how forces work and interact with each other, we used models on an online service, while we were studying the online service we used the data that we got to make various inferences on how force can effect a single object. We put the data that we gathered into a small graph showing the forces and how far movement was.

XCC Energy and Matter:
When force is applied to a piece of matter, a certain amount of energy must be exerted. The more amount of energy that is put behind a force, there will be a larger amount of newtons in the force. Depending on the mass of the object and the acceleration it is at, the more or less energy a person would have to more or less energy into the force.

Self-Driving Cars, are they the Future?

MWilkinson1004
Mrs. Garcia
Science 8B
01/11/19

Self Driving Cars, are they the Future?

Technology has been advancing rapidly for the past century, with the invention of the first computer to rockets going to the moon, what is next on the agenda for humanity to invent? The next step is self driving cars, a piece of technology that allows transportation without the error of human judgement and various impediments of sight. It allows people to multitask on the road, which could overall improved attitude, and efficiency in the workplace. Self-Driving cars have a lot of benefits to them,  how do all of the features in the cars work, and how are they made?

Human errors are the main cause for car crashes, 1.25 million people die from car crashes every year, with the average driver getting in an accident about every 500,000 miles. Self-driving cars could eliminate human error from the equation, limiting the amount of crashes that happen every year. In the article How Driver less Cars Will Work by Jamie Page Deaton & Kristen Hall-Geisler for How Stuff Works it was said that “Google has had a fleet of driver less cars since 2009, and they've driven over a half a million miles (804,672 kilometers) without a crash.”  Meaning that the cars that google made have driven for a longer distance without getting into a crash, than a human would have. Human Error is usually within the calculations they have to make when driving, because computers are great at  making calculations quickly, it makes them much less likely to get into a car crash than a human would be. Self-driving cars not only make it so that the road is safer for those who can drive, but also for those who cannot.

People who have trouble reacting to different situations and people who never learned how to drive, can use self-driving cars to be able to get to places faster than before, furthermore people who don’t have good eyesight, and various other disabilities can get to the places they need to without having get behind the wheel. When people use self driving cars, they are not looking at the road themselves, that’s the cars job, and the car’s sensors is not impeded by things like a disability or environment condition like when it is night time. In the article PUNY HUMANS STILL SEE THE WORLD BETTER THAN SELF-DRIVING CARS by Aarian Marshall said that “Vehicle-to-vehicle communications could help autonomous vehicles do even better. Technologies like dedicated short-range radio or 5G cellular networks (that one's on the way) could help networks of cars talk about what’s happening on the road.” which means that people who have trouble communicating to others, which is harder on the road, don’t have to do that making the drive safer. Even if it will help people with disabilities, the technology is not perfect, and human eyesight is still better than most driver less cars that are on the road at this point in time.

The technology is used to help driver less cars drive is not perfect in any way shape or form, human eyesight is much more reliable at this point in time for people to drive on the road. While driver less cars are not affected by impairments like the darkness of night, they cannot see various signs and other specific details and react to them, they also have to get the timing perfect when driving so when on a busy crossroads, a person in a self driving car will be waiting for a while. In the article Puny Humans Still See The World Better Than Self-Driving Cars by Aarian Marshall it was said “Indeed, competent drivers are still better than rolling computers in key areas. This is partly because of the limitations of these cars' sensors.” While the technology is not able to keep up with the eyes of competent drivers, they will able able to soon. The technology used to make self-driving cars is still relatively new. Meaning that in the future self-driving cars will be able to keep of with human drivers.

One of the most important things that people will be able to get out of self-driving cars, is that they won’t have to pay attention to the road, meaning they could divert their attention to things like work, or relaxation. In the article Pros and Cons of a Driver less Future by Tony Borroz, the author made a statement: “While being taken from here to there in a driver less car, you can do anything you want. Eat, sleep, work, chat with relatives – commute time is no longer downtime.” When people have more time to relax before work, it allows them to feel more energized, and have better work ethic. Students and younger children that need a lot more sleep can get more, which improves their health. How does the case for self-driving cars stand, even with all of the current opposition to the idea of them ruling the streets instead of humans.

Self-driving cars would be great in the future from now, there are many pros to not having to drive yourself anywhere, while also not having to pay every single time you go to a place. Not only do self driving cars remove the possibility of crashes through human error, they also allow people who have disabilities to get to various places without help from other people. Some people say that human eyes are better than the sensors of the self-driving car, but that is only right now; in the future self-driving cars will have the capability to see better than a well-trained driver. It will also improve the mood of people who drive a lot because they won’t have to be focusing on the road, and on the wheel. Self-driving cars will improve exponentially in the future, just how long will it be before they take the road instead of human drivers?