Biology
The Climate Change Project
Project Description:
​Our goal for this project was to create something that depicted our understanding of climate change and global warming. We were allowed to create whatever we wanted so long as it showed our understanding of what climate change is. Our project had to fit into one or more of these categories. How do we know climate change is happening? What are the causes? What are the effects? and What are the solutions?
The slideshow below has some pictures of my final project; I worked on it with the help of two other classmates. Everything is painted, while the two signs are laser cut and then screwed to the wall.
Project Reflection:
What is climate change and how is it different from global warming?
- Climate change is when the temperature and precipitation in a certain region changes drastically over a small time span. For instance if we look at the polar caps they have begun to melt rather fast, not anywhere close to a normal speed for where the Earth is in its life. The cap should still be solid and not melting causing floods and arctic animals to struggle to survive. While global warming is the Earth as a plant heating up at an unnatural speed.
Why should we care about climate change, now when it’s been happening naturally since the earth began?
- Climate change is a very natural phenomena, though at the rate we're tracking its warming up too fast for evolution to keep up. This is why animals, and plants are struggling to survive; they are unable to adapt fast enough in order to compensate for the Earth's persistent warming. With the steady rate of our Earth's temperature and precipitation changing, soon no living things will be able to survive in the altered climate.
How does your project demonstrate your understanding of climate change?
- My project shows what the long term effect would be of warmer weather and less consistent precipitation with our snowpack. On the left side of the mural you can see a healthy environment with lots of snow evergreen trees and a high water level in the tower. While on the right there is gray snow on the peak of the mountain, and low water levels with dried up trees. My project depicts that if the rate of climate change in our town persists eventually our environment will look like the right side of our mural.
What was your largest area of growth during this project?
​ - In the past I’ve struggled in group projects to have everyone working on their parts and communicating throughout the whole project. However his project was completely opposite, I had an amazing group with partners that all worked well with me and each other. We were able to communicate throughout the whole project with our concerns, achievements and what we were working on next. We ended up trading out on being sick during the majority of the project and were still able to communicate on what needed to happen next and who can do what while still resting. This project was one of the least stressful group projects I’ve been in, it made me happy to be working in group that could be proud of their creation.
What was your greatest strength during this project?
​ - I feel that my greatest strength was communication with my group as well as creating beautiful work. As I said in the previous question I was able to text or talk with both my group mates to make a feasible plan for the day. Especially because we all cycled through being sick this was a huge advantage for us to complete the project on time and still have quality work. There wasn’t a day where I didn’t feel like I could express something to my group, and have them listen and work through it with me. I feel that this helped all of us to create something eye catching in a timely manor without major amounts of stress.
The Adolescents Project
Project Description:
Project Reflection:
​The first project we had in science this year was on adolescence, specifically the cognitive aspects. Our goal during the project was to understand what happens in the brain during adolescence often causing them to need certain things. The product everyone created was an info-graphic on the biological needs of adolescents. I believe that this project was important because we were studying what happens to adolescent brains when us students are adolescences.
In most projects there are ups and downs throughout the duration of the project. I had some challenges when working on the info graphics themselves, mainly because I had no idea were to start the design process. I already knew that I was going to do my final on sleep deprivation because I've struggled with it for quite some time now. I wasn't sure what statistics I wanted to have on the info-graphic so I just started to research and the rest was able to come after knowing some statistics.
Including the downs to projects there are the ups and successes. Throughout the project I feel that my greatest success was finishing the info-graphic early and still feeling proud of my work. We did a class critique were I received absolutely no feedback to change anything and refine my work. I asked Tina if she would check it to see if I was missing anything but all she said was to define "REM" under effects of sleep deprivation.
It was nice to feel confident in my work and to not worry about the stress of trying to finish before the deadline.
If I was to redo the project I'm not sure what I'd do differently. This is because I'm happy with the final result and am not sure what I could do to further refine the product. If I did have to change anything it would be the colors of the bar graph. I would change them to the last statistic from the dark brown to a medium colored gray. I chose not to change it though because I wanted the that one to stand out more than the others because its the smallest.