Physics Project Reflection 1 -Sara Al Awam

I am currently making a a roller coaster/ Rube Goldberg project in science class, my group members are Sami, Lavinia and Janine. Our vision for our project is to have it galaxy themed, so stars and nebulas. We also want it to be part roller coaster and part Rube Goldberg. In the two classes we had  started of by planning our theme and roughly what we where gonna do, we then began to tape tubing to the wall and starting our spiral. Mrs Johnson then told us hat we cant directly tape the whole roller coaster to the wall, so we started over and used popsicle sticks to attach to the wall. the next class we decided to use toilet paper rolls cut into small pieces to hold our tubing on the wall.  Our first frustration we had was that we couldn't tape the tubes directly onto the walls so it would've been better to get a table spot. My hopes for next class is to have the the rollercoaster part finished and begin our Rube Goldberg.

 

Child soldiers day 4

Dear UNICEF

Hello my name is Sara Al Awam and I go to the American International School of Muscat in Oman. In my language arts class we are currently learning about child soldiers.  The topic of child soldiers seems to be an extremely conflicted subject, on one hand there is the view that points out that child soldiers are perpetrators, and the second view is that they are victims. Personally I think that child soldiers are victims because these youths are brainwashed, drugged and manipulated to do anything their commanders tell them to do. The good question is what happens to these kids after they have been picked up, are they immediately forgiven, are they punished? Is the correct way to handle these kids by giving them instant amnesty and risk them never learning their lesson.

Child soldiers are usually targeted for being easily manipulated (you probably already know that). Everything that they hold dear is usually destroyed in front of there eyes. These kids eventually get desensitized and distant from reality and common human morals. since kids as young as eight are targeted as child soldiers they have not yet reached the level of maturity to know if what they are doing is wrong. These children lose their family's and their siblings and are witness death and killing. Their homes and villages get torn to rubles. If you have nothing and no one a child is obviously going to go to the nearest available thing similar to a family. these children also lack basic supplies like food water and shelter so they have no choice but to participate in violence (story of child soldier we read about)s.

On the other hand these kids participate in the act of murder and violence. But are they responsible for their actions? or are the people who force them and manipulate them into war is it their fault? In my personal opinion the children should not be held responsible for their crimes and mistakes because children are easily manipulated and are forced to do something a normal child would never choose to do. I feel like these children should go to rehab but the people rehabilitating the children should emphasize the fact that what they did was wrong, but they should still tell the children that what they did the kids are not responsible for.

child soldiers day 3

Dear _______

Hello my name is Sara Al Awam and I go to the American International School of Muscat in Oman. In my language arts class we are currently learning about child soldiers. The subject of child soldiers seems to be an extremely conflicted subject, on one hand there is the view that points out that child soldiers are perpetrators, and the second view is that they are victims. Personally I think that child soldiers are victims because  these kids are brainwashed, drugged and manipulated to do anything their commanders tell them to do. The good question is what happens to these kids after they have been picked up, are they immediately forgiven, are they punished. my view on instant amnesty is that will these kids ever learn their lesson if they are forgiven? and if we punish them we don't really know if these kids deserve the punishment.

Child soldiers are usually targeted for being easily manipulated (you probably already know that). Everything that they hold dear is usually destroyed in front of there eyes. These kids eventually get desensitized and distant from reality and common human morals. since kids as young as eight are targeted as child soldiers they have not yet reached the level of maturity to know if what they are doing is wrong. These children lose their family's and their siblings and are witness death and killing. Their homes and villages get torn to rubles. If you have nothing and no one a child is obviously going to go to the nearest available thing similar to a family. these children also lack basic supplies like food water and shelter so they have no choice but to participate in violence.

On the other hand these kids participate in the act of murder and violence. But are they responsible for their actions? or are the people who force them and manipulate them into war is it their fault? In my personal opinion the children should not be held responsible for their crimes and mistakes because children are easily manipulated and are forced to do something a normal child would never choose to do. I feel like these children should go to rehab but the people rehabilitating the children should emphasize the fact that what they did was wrong, but they should still tell the children that what they did the kids are not responsible for.

Personally I think that the people who should be held responsible for the actions of these children are the people who got them into this in the first place, if it weren't for them these kids would live a normal life and have a family to influence them into making correct choices but without anyone these people influenced these children that makes them responsible to whatever wrong thing these kids do.

Child Soldiers Day 2

Child Soldiers on Trail in Guantanamo

In this article they talked about a former child soldier, Omar Khadir. I think that if Omar has not been exposed to the life of extremism and violence he wouldn't have become a murderer. What i noticed while reading the article is that Omar was proud to have killed a US Army Sgt and he also bragged about it. Omar clearly doesn't understand the value of human life and actively participated in violence and murder.

Analytic memo (Hope for Uganda Child Soldiers)

• At the age of 14 he was abducted 
• cutting off the lips ears and noses of innocent civilians to scare people
• he escaped by jumping in a fast flowing river
• both of his brothers had been abducted 

outline 

introduction

paragraph one 

why they are victims 
reason 1 
brainwashing and drugs

paragraph two 

reason 2 
all family lost 

paragraph three

reason 3
no other options 

conclusion 

Child Soldiers Day 1

                

I think that child soldiers are victims because children are vulnerable to manipulation and can easily be tricked by lies. child soldiers in my opinions are not perpetrators because they are not old enough to make the right decision and may not have enough life experience to do the right thing, children are known to be easily tricked into thinking what they are doing is okay but a child should not be a soldier but instead they should be going to school and enjoying their childhood instead of fighting in a war and risking their precious fragile lives. Children may not know right from wrong if they haven't spent their time learning. They may become numb to acts of murder this may distance them from society and have an impact in their future social development.

Armed & Underage

these children should not be held responsible for their actions because many of them do not have a choice or a say in what they do. in the article they talked about the children being easily manipulated and fearless which is proof that these people brainwash the children to such an extent that they no longer feel proper human emotions or morals.

Perpetrators

Innocent lives where lost
Some of them volunteer
menace to society
may seek revenge
participated in violent acts
inflicted pain on others


Victims 

They where threatened
Some where sold by their parents
Kids are easy to manipulate
No other options
No other family
Brainwashing
They are just looking for safety
To meet basic needs
Forced addiction
Lack of education 

Project X Blog Post #5

Maram and I worked very hard to create a slideshow that didn't have many words but lots of pictures so our audience wouldn't get bored. We also turned in our coloring book to the middle school library finally. In the end I am very happy with what this project taught us in working with other people and persevering when things got difficult like when I didn't have an Ipad pro but as a team we found a way out and we succeeded in our project. I think that success doesn't matter unless you learned something in the journey to success. The key things I learned where to always plan ahead but if you hit a roadblock there is always a way to solve a problem and if there is not a way to solve the problem their is no shame in failure as long as you learn from your mistakes.

Project X blog post #5

We are nearing the end of our project even though we still have plenty of things on our list of things to finish. We need to finish putting all of our images on the Ipad. That step takes a lot of time because the images that we put in our Ipads need to be trace over and they are our complete and final drafts so they have to be absolutely perfect. Our website is finished and all we need is to add the images in the end and that will be done and last week we finished all of our final sketches and they are ready to be put in the Ipad. I hope that our book ends well and that people will be able to benefit from our pages.

Project X blog post #4

We are doing great we have finished the format of our website and we will soon add all of the pages to the website as soon as we finish editing our drafts and digitizing them. I was working on making the pages more detailed while my partner made the website it worked perfectly since my partner likes to use the computers to make websites and I like to draw. As soon as she finished with the web site she started helping me with the drafts since we are a bit behind schedule. But overall I think we are doing great.

TEAM X Status Report #4

We already finished our final lander and today was the day of our drop. We were feeling confident in the beginning of the class and we had already started to put our lander back together for the final time ,to make sure that all the strings where in the correct place. We went out to the stairs and my teammates said that I should be the one to drop our egg, so I went up and got ready to drop ours. The time came to drop our egg and it survived. The lander bounced slightly but the straws absorbed the shock. We were very worried of the lander accidentally tipping to the side because we had one section of the straws where the edge was sort of out and it was too late for us to fix it. Then we dropped it from the rotunda and also survives the second drop, but it was far from the target but luckily it survived. In conclusion our project has been a great success and a lot of fun, we also learned a lot about the engineering process.

     

Project X Blog Post #3

We have been doing great so far and we are going on a good pace but we still have quite a few thing to finish until we are completely done with this project. We have completed the portfolio part of our website and the we are almost done with the front page of the website. We already completed our introduction and our drafts for the drawings and in the next couple weeks we are going to finish digitizing our drafts in the next week. After that we are going to publish our website and make a copy for the library. I think that our project is going smoothly so far.

TEAM X Status Report #3

The hardest part of this project was the decision on the parachute because we decided to start with a parachute that is joined at the center from all four corners and that did not get enough air resistance so then we decided to try a parachute connected on two sides but that was not good enough to so in the end we went with a four cornered parachute. My predictions for my our lander is that it will survive the two drops but i am a bit nervous about the rooftop drop.

TEAM X Status Report - Day 2

Our lander has a parachute at the top and a structure made of straws, that is adjustable to the size of the egg and is held together by strings, because string are cheaper that tape in our project. Our lander has a lot to do with air resistance because of our parachute. Our parachute has a large enough surface area to create some air resistance to slow down our egg so that there will be less shock from the landing impact. What has gone well in our project is the cost of our supplies, we monitor closely what we were buying to make sure we do not go higher the budget and really use our supplies to their full capacity, but we have been going through some trouble with our data collecting. We have not yet collected all of our data and we hope to be able to finish it as soon as possible. We have learned a lot from our testing specifically that the way air enters your parachute matters a lot, in the beginning we were planning on going with a more closed parachute design and through further testing we found out that an open design works far better for greater air resistance.

We spent most of our time working on our rough drafts for the coloring book we worked really hard to try and crate out of the box funny ideas and to tell you the truth it was not easy to come up with new ideas. After we finished with that we made a calendar to organized what we would do and when we would do things. We decided that we are gonna make our pages digital using my mothers large iPad and apple pen. And we also started to make our website using Wix, we got as far as the front page and started the image section. When we are done with those steps we are planning on making a copy for the library. And in the end we are going to post all of the pages on our website for our viewers to print out and complete. Hopefully it will work out

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Project X Blog Post #2

We spent most of our time working on our rough drafts for the coloring book we worked really hard to try and crate out of the box funny ideas and to tell you the truth it was not easy to come up with new ideas. After we finished with that we made a calendar to organized what we would do and when we would do things. We decided that we are gonna make our pages digital using my mothers large iPad and apple pen. And we also started to make our website using Wix, we got as far as the front page and started the image section. When we are done with those steps we are planning on making a copy for the library. And in the end we are going to post all of the pages on our website for our viewers to print out and complete. Hopefully it will work out

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Team X Blog Post #1

I am doing an egg drop project with Kaylin and Lavinia and we have a bunch of great ideas for our project. The main ideas are to have a medium sized parachute and a sort of container for our egg to not move around, then we are planning on putting downward facing straws to absorb the shock from our land. We have already accomplished our sketch for the lander and we got some of our supplies that we already started putting together to try and experiment what would work the best on how to stick things on other things.

I think one of the biggest challenges that we will face is finance because most of the supplies cost a lot and we need a really good design which at a reasonable spending. I am a little bit nervous for our egg containment contraption because I am afraid it might not be sturdy enough to absorb the shock and save the egg but I think we will eventually find a way make it strong enough.

Project X

This year I saw that there was an unfamiliar class in my scheduled Media Literacy. I had no idea what this class was and I never heard of it in my whole life so I went in the class not knowing what to expect and in my head I imagined that it would be some kind of class that did some kind of reading or something like that but it was very different. So my teacher Mr Mongardi started talking about the class but not exactly saying what we are actually doing, almost like a surprise. And the class came to a point where he asked us to write some brainstorm ideas of some projects that we would like to do so we did exactly that, though I admit some of the ideas were kinda silly but some others were quite good. And I wasn't exactly sure why we were writing down ideas then Mr Mongardi said that we are gonna do a project and think of something that could benefit our society in a way.

The One And Only Ivan

Today we listened to The One And Only Ivan. This is a story about a gorilla and his perspectives. What stands out to me so far is how he seems optimistic but deep down he has the sadness and feeling of not being equal to the humans. That to me makes the story like a tresure hunt to notice the little things that he said that make clues for the readers to notice.

Komodo Dragon (Varanus komodoensis)

The Komodo dragon is a giant dinosaur like lizard that is native to the Komodo islands of Indonesia. I chose the Komodo dragon because of its unusual characteristics and behaviors. what attracted my attention was the way it hunted its prey. There are a lot of questions i have about this animal mainly where it originates from and is it a social or pack animal or not.

photo credit: DJUNA

Eating our plate tectonics model

In the plate tectonics activity we used a candy bar as our model for tectonic plates because the inside contents was like the molten rock underneath the thin layer of crust on the surface of the earth. In the end we got to eat the candy bar which was great. The project was fun because it looked just like tectonic plate but also looked like a delicious candy bar which made us excited to finish the project. It was also fun because we didn't have to right to much it was more of like a fun educational activity.

The top layer of the Mars bar was the earth's crust and the thick gooey inside was the mantel the caramel was perfect because it was gooey and resembled molten rock.The Mars bar was a perfect representation of the crust and the mantel but not the other layers underneath. What I would expect to see when two plates pull apart is a valley or crater that goes down deep almost like if you cut your skin it's like the middle of the cut. A boundary is a convergent or divergent form of tectonic movement.

When I stretched the two parts away it started to brake of. That type of boundary is called a divergent boundary it is when two tectonic plates move opposite direction to each other.

When I pushed two pieces of the candy bar together they stuck to each other but what I think would happen in real life is that they fight for space creating tension thus when one gives up it creates an earthquake.

The questions I still have about this topic is-

• That how did they find the exact location of the shape of a tectonic plate?
• Is their a way of predicting large scale earthquakes?
• And how?
• How deep is the earths crust approximately and how did they find out?

Rhastafari

Rhastafari is a Jamaican religion that I made an I movie about I started off with choosing a belief system that I was curious about so I could learn something new. then I went to citelighter.com and gathered notes and facts. The next thing I had to do was plan out the script. after I did the script I made sure I could read it clearly and easily after I got done with that I prepared my I movie and got to work with gathering my images and sighting them properly otherwise my grade would be low. I then organized the photos and recorded my voice in sections so I had time to think. after that I made final touches to the I movie and exported it to Google drive.