DWA Spring 2012

Meteors, Meteorites, and Meteoroids 

Authors note: This is my project on Meteors and there siblings. I am working on making my writing more specific and well described. I hope you enjoy it.

You could be sitting in your backyard looking up to the sky. You see the all of the stars shining brightly. Then out of the corner of your eye, you see something moving. You look more closely and notice that it is a Meteor. You are amazed at the hundreds of moving stars all around. Before you know it they all stop. You look around confused, wondering why they stopped. That is the beauty of a meteor shower.

There are three different types, or stages, of a meteor, all of which are very important. The first stage is a Meteoroid. This is a meteor that is currently in space or just eroded off of a comet or asteroid. These are very hard to see even with a telescope. There are millions of meteoroids flying around the universe waiting to be caught in a planets gravitational pull and be lead toward the next stage of it's life.

As a meteoroid falls through a planets atmosphere it becomes, it transitions in to the next stage, a meteor. During the fall to the ground, a meteor will become very hot and it will begin to burn up. When large amounts of meteors fall into the atmosphere, a meteor shower starts. During a meteor shower, meteors become very bright due to the large amount of heat. If a meteor can survive the heat and gets to the ground it become its last stage.

After a meteor hits the ground it becomes the final stage, a meteorite. When a meteorite hits the ground it is usually very small, this is because the heat it sustained still damaged the meteorite and burned layers of the meteorite off. You have more of a chance at winning the lottery than you do finding a meteorite in your yard and if you do find a meteor, it might be close to the size of a golf ball and could still way around 20 pounds!  

   

Seeing a meteor shower gives you the opportunity of seeing the most important stage of a meteor, it is the most common stage to see., the other two stages are a little harder. The life cycle of a meteor is a short one and is finished after it hits the ground. A meteor shower is an amazing opportunity to see something from space, something that many people will never be able to see, and that is the beauty of a meteor shower.   

Vex Robotics

 Authors Note: This is a piece on my Vex Robotics league that I was in for Fifth grade. I hope you enjoy it. 

 I was walking down to the computer lab, just like the announcement said. The first meeting for Vex Robotics is today. I just went to see if it would be any fun. I walked into the room expecting to see very few people. Instead, I was greeted by a bunch of my friends. They were already forming teams. My friend, Peter Alexander, grabbed my by the arm and pulled my over to his group. I saw two more of my friends, Mason and Alex. Our Team adult was Mr. Alexander, who was Peters dad. I had already called my mom to tell her that I was going to the meeting just to see if it was something i would want to do. Alex, Peter, Mason, and I were all talking about what we were going to do when the coach came in. He told all of us to sit down in our groups. After it had quieted down he said that we all have a lot of work to do.

The next day we were told what the competition was. There were two boards, one red, one blue , on ether side. In the middle was a ramp that lead to the other side.  There were white balls and a few gold balls. and on each side there was a jack, like the game of Jacks. The object of the game was to get as many points as possible by getting balls up on your side. The white balls were worth one point and the gold balls were worth five points. If your robot grabbed the jack and moved  it to the other side, it was worth fifty points. After the full instruction, we all were ready to build. That's when we found out that first we need to brainstorm our robot before we can build.

The next day was a Friday and we were finishing up our brainstorm. Our robot had a ramp on the front that could be lifted up and down to push the balls up onto our side. On the back there was a claw that could grab the jack if we needed to. We showed the coach our design and he gave us our bin and we started looking for the pieces. After we got most of the pieces we were given a box to keep all of our stuff in it.  Then it was time to go home.

On Monday we started building our robot. It took us the entire work time to get it done and when we were done we started to test it. we went into the gym and started moving it around. The controls on the remote were hard to get used to but we got it eventually. We were having so much fun that we lost track of time and it was time to go home. Before we all left we were told that there was a competition Saturday. We were so excited .

That Saturday was crazy. When i got there it took me five minutes to find my team. We started to make last minute modifications. That's when we found out we were in the first match. We were all freaking out, then our team was called up. Mason and Alex went up to be the team this time. It started, then it ended. It felt like no time had passed. Our team ended up winning. The next mach we were in wasn't up for about twenty minutes. Peter and I were going to be the two to control. I was scared and nervous. The time went by like nothing and it was already time to go up.  Peter and I went up and he asked if I was ready. I took a deep breath and said I was ready. Then thebell went off and it started. The robot seemed a lot harder to control. It was moving around like a raging bull. I drove it around and I was getting tons of balls up on our side. The ending bell rang and it was over.

After about three more games. we were in the finals. Our robot had some major damage but we had no time to prepare. We started competing and then the ramp arm froze up and wouldn't move . we ended up losing then and we came in fourth place. We were so happy a none of could believe how good we did. We all went home and realized that the Vex Robotics league was over and we were done. We all wish we could do it again but that was the last year we were all together.