Velocity

Authors note: Quinn, Nate and I have made this Vuvox for our project on velocity. We are working on getting the launch videos on our blogs. I hope you enjoy.

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.    

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Physics

Authors note: In this project I started off working on a bunch of different types of sciences, but Mr. Johnson helped me narrow down my research so I get a lot more in-depth research. My goal for this piece was to be a lot more in-depth.

When most people think of science they think of old people In white lab coats, mixing random chemicals together, but science is much more.  Physics is a very important form of science, without it we wouldn't understand gravity or how a lot of other things work.

The first known model of Planetary motion was given by Kepler in the early 17th century which Proposed that the planets follow elliptical orbits, with the sun at one focus of the ellipse.

Galileo also made use of experiments to validate physical theories, a key element of the scientific method. In 1687, Isaac Newton Published the Principia Mathematica detailing two comprehensive and successful physical theories, Newton's Laws of Motion, Which led to classical Mechanics; and Newton's laws of Gravitation, which describes the fundamental force of gravity.

The beginning of the 20th century brought the start of a revolution in physics. The long-held theories of Newton were shown not to be correct in all circumstances. Beginning in 1900, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and others developed quantum theories to explain various anomalous experimental results, by introducing discrete energy levels. Not only did quantum mechanics show that the laws of motion did not hold on small scales, but even more disturbingly, the theory of general relativity, proposed by Einstein in 1915, showed that the fixed background of space time, on which both Newtonian mechanics and special relativity depended, could not exist.

 In 1925, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger formulated quantum mechanics, which explained the preceding quantum theories. The observation by Edwin Hubble in 1929 that the speed at which galaxies recede positively correlates with their distance, led to the understanding that the universe is expanding, and the formulation of the Big Bang theory by Georges Lemaître.

Without Physics, Life would be a lot more simple. We wouldn't know half of the laws of science that we know today. Other than Physics there are many other types of science that can help us understand a lot more. Physics is not alone. 

Ghostly Alpaca

Authors Note: This is a Writing piece using a series of words that were given to us in a Literature group meeting last week. It may not make perfect sense but it was fun. The words that were given are highlighted. 

She was biking down a street in New York. She was largely interested in Ghostly appearances. She figured that New York would be a great place to find some haunted houses. She got back to her apartment and walked into the kitchen. She saw that she had a missed phone call and a voice mail.

"Hi, this is Britney I heard that you were a good place to go for haunted things, I need you to come over to this address on Saturday, March 5th. Thank you, Rosalie."

Rosalie looked at the calendar and it was the 4th. She heard a very loud noise come from behind her. She spun around and saw that it was just her platypus, Rose.  Rosalie started laughing, how could she get scared by her adorable pet platypus? She figured she needed some sleep. She walked up the stairs and fell on to here bed and fell asleep.

The next morning she got dressed in to a tank top and some shorts, it's supposed to be warm today. She sat down in a chair at her table after she poured herself a bowl of Cookie Crisp cereal. She turned on the T.V. to see SpongeBob on talking about Krabby patties. She turned off the T.V. and walked outside to get her bike. She got on and was off the address on the phone call. The sun was a bright orange and looked awesome. It took some time and wrong turns to find the house. The first thing she saw was a large, fluffy, alpaca standing in the front yard. Rosalie walked up to the door and rang the bell. Britney opened the door and invited her in.  Britney told her that she had been hearing weird noises at night. Rosalie asked if she could spend the night and Britney agreed.

Later that night, it started storming, not light and quiet, but loud and heavy. There was a lot of lightning and the rain was making a waterfall of the roof. Then, there was a loud banging noise inside the house. Rosalie quickly got up and ran into the kitchen where Britney was. Britney said that it was just the hammer she got for Hanukah, not the weird noises. Then outside there was a moaning, a very loud eerie noise. Rosalie ran to the window and saw the alpaca outside moaning. Britney said that was the noise. Rosalie told Britney what the noise was and was thanked for her help. Rosalie said her goodbyes and got back on her bike to go home. "Another mystery solved" Rosalie thought to here self as she rode through the woods back home.

Warplanes of The Luftwaffe - Scrapped Project

Kevin Rentz and I started a project back in December and have been working since then and we recently discovered that we won't have enough time to finish this project before the end of the year. Even if we started in September we wouldn't be done until half-way through next year. We decided to scrap this project. We are still going to do a project on The Luftwaffe, but not so much on the planes.

For those who don't know, the Luftwaffe was and is the German Air force. Our project was focused on the old Luftwaffe. We were going to research almost all of the planes from that era. I am still working on researching my planes, while Kevin is still writing about his first Plane company. That is why we can't finish it by the end of this year.

We are bummed out that all of the research we did was a waste, but we plan to use some of it in our Project on the history of The Luftwaffe. We are scheduled to start working on the new project next week.       

Moon

Authors Note: This is one of my Stream of Consciousness pieces This one was my first and I really like it. I hope you do too.

I was sitting there an the open night laying down on the grass in my back yard to look up in the sky. I was just looking at the moon. It was a perfect full moon and it was shining so brightly, it was amazing. I started to look around the moon and I saw billions upon billions of stars staring back at me.  I sat there thinking about how many places that we will never see;  that I will never see. I looked at my watch it was almost midnight it wont be as beautiful as this of another month so I had to savor this moment until the very end. I started to focus more on the stars and started seeing some of the constellations. They were clear as can be I couldn't believe it, it was so amazing. I sat there staring and thinking until it was time for breakfast in the morning but even then I couldn't believe how much beauty there is in space. 

The Rubik's Cube

by Buddy

Authors Note: This is a Project I have been working on for a while and its about the Rubik's Cube. I hope you like it!

The Rubik's cube is full of mysteries, millions of ways to sort the colors and, believe it or not, millions of ways to solve each color sort. The Rubik's cube has been a very popular puzzle ever since it was first made. It was made by a man named Ernõ Rubik in 1974. People host Worldwide speed solving contests and the fastest time in the world is 5.66 seconds. 

Ernõ made all of the Rubik's products such as: The pocket cube, Rubik's cube, Rubik's magic, Rubik's magic: Masters Edition, Rubik's 360, and the Rubik's Snake. The Pocket cube is a 2x2x2 cube, witch means it has 4 squares  per side, it the smallest Rubik's cube ever made. The original Rubik's cube is the 3x3x3 cube, it has 9 squares per side. Its the original Rubik's cube. The Rubik's magic 4x4x4 cube, it has 16 squares per side. The Rubik's Magic: Masters Edition is the 5x5x5 cube, it has 25 squares per side. Rubik's 360 is not a cube at all, it is a sphere with three layers and to solve you must get each ball that is in the middle layer to the right color slot in the third layer of the sphere. The Rubik's Snake is more of a fun type of puzzle. You can bend it at any part where small triangles connect and make make random shapes. To solve it you need to get into a ball shape. Ernõ only made the Rubik's products nothing else. There are many other Rubik's-like products, but none are as famous as the original Rubik's Cube.

Solving a Rubik's cube is easier than you think. A Rubik's cube can be sorted in to about Forty-three quintillion ways and they are all solvable. It usually takes less than 60 turns to solve a Rubik's cube. People who participate in would wide speed solving contests know the tricks to solving a Rubik's cube, that's what makes the world record possible. Most of the people that are in Speed Solving Contests solve it in around 7-8 seconds. There are different types of solving contests one of the craziest ones is solving a Rubik's Cube underwater in one breath, but this one is not held very often.

Rubik's Cubes are a lot easier to complete that most people think, all you need to know is a Rubik's cube solving Method and your good to go! Rubik's cubes can be hard if you don't know what you are doing, but if you get too caught up in it you could be sitting there for hours. Most people don't like Rubik's cubes for that exact reason, it takes a lot of patience.