AVID Article Reflection

The AVID weekly article "Reaching for the Stars" not only talks about the Astronomy departments in the U.S., but also the general idea of changing the lives of others. The students working in the astronomy departments and doing jobs that they could have forgone and made much more money, are changing our lives every day. With the help of them, we have been able to learn about distant galaxies and discover the possibility of life on other planets.

The Hubble Telescope is one of the most important aspects of scientific research of all time. There is nothing more advanced than such a machine orbiting earth with the ability to capture light images of planets and stars across the universe. Without a machine as influential to scientists throughout the world, we would have no idea what is out in space, and no way of finding out.

The last time I can remember changing the live of someone else was when I worked with the GHS soccer team at the Westchester Triathlon. The race benefits cancer research and is a huge donor to this cause. My team and I were at the bottom of a huge hill called "Claire's Climb" that is one of the greatest obstacles of the course. Claire's Climb was part of the biking section and it honestly seemed to go on forever. We stood to the side of the hills with cowbells cheering for over 2000 bike riders. All the riders were so thankful of people cheering them on I really felt like I was making each and every one of their days. The hill was truly a huge obstacle and with our help there was not one rider who did not make it. The last rider was far behind everyone else and we made a tunnel for her to ride through and cheered her all the way up the hill as we ran after her. I don't think I have ever seen someone smile so big. She was obviously having a difficult time and we made the time much easier for her.

Without the same numbers of science graduates in the U.S., we may fall behind in the field. We will not have the same effect on the world as we have now with the Hubble Telescope. If the second Hubble is revoked, we may never know what is out there, and average people would never be able to get pictures of our universe as we can now. This would be a huge dilemma for many learning astronomy.

1st Quarter Grade

This year has so far been going really well. Although there has been a lot going on, I feel I have adjusted from summer very quickly, which makes the work much easier. I really like using the blogs for homework and feel that I have been doing a good job of keeping up with the blog posts. One thing I feel I should work on for the next quarter is writing down what I have to study for regarding tests and quizzes, and also homework assignments. Finally, I will start taking better notes during class so I am better prepared for tests and quizzes.

E-Books in a School Setting

After reading the article titled, "Schools beware, the E-book band wagon", I have a much different view on e-books than before. Before reading, I thought e-books were the perfect way to integrate technology into our otherwise so print-dependent school studies. I now feel much differently. I especially agree with the points on how e-books may be extremely distracting. With Facebook and other websites that typically cause procrastination in students so accesible online, students would find it much harder to concentrate on the work necessary to get done. "Even dedicated e-readers like the Kindle are incorporating more bells and whistles that have the effect of drawing a reader's attention away from the words." This may or may not cause them to lose sleep and not do as well in school. I also agree with the point that, "People read in a variety of ways... sometimes they skim pages to get a quick sense of the story or argument. Sometimes they search for the particular passage. Sometimes they skip back and forth between two or more sections of a text, making comparisons. And sometimes they take notes or highlight passages as they read." It's obvious that there are many different reading styles and textbooks allow for all these different ways. With e-books, it would be much harder to skip through different parts or chapters. Also, according to researchers at The University of Washington, "a printed book provides many subtle cues about a book's structure and contents. We make a 'cognitive map' of a physical book as we read it: 'When we read, we unconsciously note the physical location of information within a text and its spatial relationship to our location in the text as a whole." With e-books there is no sense of a cognitive map and therefore locating information in the text takes much longer than in a printed textbook. Many students would become fed up with the disarray of information from an e-book and without any textbooks in a school, e-books would be the only choice. Despite all these setbacks, I definitely think e-books are important for education. Much of our world today is highly based on technology and to completely prevent the use of e-books would be preposterous. Instead, I think both e-books and printed books are necessary for a student's education. Students need to be prepared to learn both ways. Overall, printed books are extremely important tools for education, more so than e-books.

Density Lab Data

Data: Purple

Material	1	2	3	4
Mass (g)	15.22g	10.95 g	6.50 g	19. 39 g
Volume (ml)	8.5 ml	8 ml	4 ml	14 ml

Data: White

Material	1	2	3	4
Mass (g)	10.09 g	16.60 g	22.85 g	29.38 g
Volume (ml)	5 ml	8 ml	10 ml`	10 ml

Data: Red

Material	1	2	3	4
Mass (g)	5.37 g	9.16 g	15.96 g	12.58 g
Volume (ml)	5 ml	8 ml	17 ml	13 ml

Data Conclusion

The density of the white cylinders were 3.25g/mL.  The density of the red cylinders were .84g/mL, and the density of the purple cylinders were 1.3g/mL.  These types of results are probably a result from many errors that occurred during this lab. 

One error we made is that when we put the material in the graduated cylinder, water splashed out of the graduated cylinder which made our measurements of volume inaccurate.  We also lost track of and mixed up the materials: We weren’t sure which piece we measured first or which measurement of volume went with the mass because while one of us was finding the mass, another person was finding the volume of another material to speed up the process a little bit.  Our third error was that we did not keep the amount of water we used for water displacement constant.  Instead of placing each material in 30mL of water every time we measured volume, we would put the material in different amounts of water each time, causing much confusion and frustration when trying to find the volume.

            One way we can improve this lab is to measure the mass and volume of the material multiple times in order to get a precise reading.  Another way we can improve this lab is to use the same amount of water each time we use water displacement to measure the volume.  Lastly, we should not rush and measure one thing at a time in order to prevent mixing up the measurements.

We determined the volumes of the cylinders by the Water Displacement Method.

To find the density of the cylinders, it was necessary to find the mass on an electronic scale.

One mistake we made was using different amounts of water each time we filled up the graduated cylinder.

A second mistake was allowing water to splash out (as seen on the desk in the photo) when dropping the colored cylinders into the graduated cylinders.