Cosmic Chemistry Project
Overview
For the cosmic chemistry project, I was teamed up with the wonderful group members Izagani Aquino and Joey Walkup. We decided that a great idea for our project was to create parodies of songs that make them related to the life cycles of stars. As we were making parodied songs, we decided to make a parodied name, and took inspiration from David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, naming our band Jiggy Starlight and the Arachnids From Jupiter. We focused less on radioactive decay during the making of this, and more on the stars themselves and how they were born, lived, and died. Below is an attachment of our songs and their lyrics.
About the Project:
We chose to order the work we did by having a song for each part of a star's life cycle: the birth, life, and death. Starting with a parodied form of Hallelujah by Rufus Wainwright, Izagani and I sang about the forming of stars through the immense pressure of gravity between hydrogen molecules, known as fusion. We then went on to sing Imagine, a parody of Imagine by John Lennon talking about the workings of the stars and the different ways that they can die. Next was a Hey Supernova, a Hey There Delilah parody from the Plain White Tees, in which we sang more in depth about the deaths of stars and their two forms, supernova and black hole. Finally, I solo rapped Fuse Yourself, a parody of Lose Yourself by Eminem, going through the whole cycle from start to end of how the stars are formed and how they may end up dying, and how the different sizes of stars cause them to live different length lives. For researching this song specifically, I learned that the larger a star is, the more quickly it will be burned up, and therefore, it will die quicker.
Reflection:
Overall, I think everyone in our group, me included, did really well on this project and had a good time creating it. For my peaks, I believe that I did a really good job singing in front of everyone, because I am normally full of stage fright, and I did a good job researching the deaths of stars. Though I did have some pits as well which I would say would be the research on nuclear decay, because our project did not go over this at all, and the research on the birth of stars, because I was not fully clear on how the fusion causes the star to be born. Otherwise, I think I did a great job overall on this project.
Wat-er We Drinking - Operation Purification
Overview
For the Wat-er We Drinking project, my group mates were James Wreden and Chapin Williams. The main idea for this project was to make a safer or better drinking water, or to make a cheaper or more efficient way of getting drinking water. For our project, we chose to create a portable purification box with solar panels and a battery to be distributed among countries with no means of getting safe drinking water. The box would have a container that sits on a heat coil to boil water, and the solar panels and battery are used to charge and power the heat coil.
Full Explanation and Steps Of Use
For our boiling box to work correctly, the water must first be filtered to remove most of the particles from the water, so we decided to figure out an easy way to make a filter, that you could make with nearly no materials. This was so that in 3rd world countries where they may not have the supplies for a filter, they can make their own without any troubles. We decided that the most effective filter would be from top to bottom: pebbles, clean sand, activated carbon, and a filter layer of some sort of gauze or cloth to keep the pebbles, sand, and carbon from entering the water. We then created this filter in class and tested it on muddy pond water and, sure enough, the water came out much clearer than it went in. The next step was to boil the water to remove bacteria. We made a 3D model of our box on Tinkercad to get an idea of the shape, look, and dimensions, and after some research added in a 2 by 3 foot solar panel that had enough power to charge the box. As we didn't have the model of the box in class, we boiled the water in glass wear on a hot plate instead. Once we were done with this, we wanted to test how much bacteria was still in our water, compared to when we started, so we took three agar plates and put the water from before filtration, after filtration, and after boiling in each one. Sure enough, the plate after boiling proved to have a large margin less of bacteria than the other two plates. This proves that our filter and boil process does provide much cleaner, safer water than nothing. The steps for the use of our product are as listed below:
1. Find your filter materials(pebbles, sand, activated carbon, and gause/cloth)
-Note: an easy way to get activated carbon is to take the charcoal created from burning wood
2. Build your filter in top to bottom order of pebbles, sand, charcoal, and filter layer
3. Run the water through the filter into the boiling container.
4. Turn on the hot plate and place the container on the plate.
5. Once the water gets to a boil, wait one minute to give time for the bacteria to be killed off, and then turn off the hot plate.
6. Once the container has cooled down, you can drink the water
1. Find your filter materials(pebbles, sand, activated carbon, and gause/cloth)
-Note: an easy way to get activated carbon is to take the charcoal created from burning wood
2. Build your filter in top to bottom order of pebbles, sand, charcoal, and filter layer
3. Run the water through the filter into the boiling container.
4. Turn on the hot plate and place the container on the plate.
5. Once the water gets to a boil, wait one minute to give time for the bacteria to be killed off, and then turn off the hot plate.
6. Once the container has cooled down, you can drink the water
Reflection