Jan. 9 -13, 2012: Light: wave or particle?

Last week in our General Science class we studied about light. What I learned was that light

can be a wave at the same time be a particle we also studied about reflection and refraction

but to understand it better we had a group activity involving lasers, mirrors, a protractor and

pushpin the first thing we did in our activity was to get a bond paper and fold it crosswise.

Then we placed the protractor on the crease while the mirror is lying in front of the protractor

Then we turned off the lights and pointed the laser to the mirror. As the light from the laser

bounces back we’re suppose to measure in which degree on the protractor is the light

parallel to then after we get the degree we minus it by 90 and the difference that we’ll get is

called the “Angle of Incidence” we have to repeat the experiment three times but in some

cases we can’t see the laser’s ray that well so our teacher told us to sprinkle some powder

on the light of the laser as we sprinkled the powder we were all amazed because we can

clearly see the laser’s ray I noticed that this is what they do in one of those “spy” movies.

We had another experiment and our second experiment already involved pushpins. We also

had a short evaluation test about light and at the end of the test was a bonus question worth

ten points and the question was: “what is the meaning of L.A.S.E.R.? “  I smiled when I saw

the question because I know what laser means it means: Light Amplification by Stimulated

Emission of Radiation.  We also studied about Refraction  and other things about light. It’s

been a while since we saw Miss Montemayor because Miss Hannah was the one who’s been

teaching us everyone in our class wonders when she’ll come back but while miss

Montemayor is away I think Miss Hannah is doing a very good job in teaching us General

Science I especially like the activities that we do about our lessons it makes me understand

the lessons better. Thank you for teaching us.

Jan. 23 – 27, 2012: “ Ours is a Finite Earth”

Last week was the start of the fourth quarter as the quarter starts we changed our sitting

arrangements in our general science class we also changed our groupings .Our topic in

general science this quarter is all about ecology and how to protect our environment.

We started our lesson by discussing about the 7 principles of ecology.  I think that studying

about the principle of ecology helps in understanding how things are connected to one

another in nature and how we can take care of our mother earth besides just like the 7^th

principle states “ ours is a finite earth” meaning our resources are not infinite and if we don’t

take care of ecosystem  will soon suffer from thirst and hunger. I also learned that the reason

why there are so many pests and rodents in the city is because people destroyed their

natural habitat and because of this unbalanced in nature there are so many mosquitos and

other pests that cause diseases I learned that people are the ones who are actually

responsible why there is dengue I remember the time when my mother told me that there

were no such disease called dengue before but because of the unbalanced caused by

humans there are now.  It’s also quite interesting to learn that the nature has the ability to

heal itself take the famous “ Smoky Mountain “ for example before it was full of garbage

and it was a dumpsite but when they prohibited the dumping of garbage there 20 years

after it turned into a natural mountain I believe that our polluted surroundings today could

could also be cleansed by nature if only people would stop polluting. Our teacher told us that

in some countries they launch their garbage into space because there is no space left to

throw the garbage hearing that It makes me think that we they must’ve have a lot of garbage

for them to throw some of their garbage into space and maybe we would need to throw our

garbage in space to if we don’t stop polluting . Studying ecology isn’t only about the study

of how an organism interacts with its environment it’s also about how we can protect our

environment  and I believe that studying ecology would make us care about mother earth.

Jan.9-13,2012: Mean Median Mode 101

For the past weeks in research we’ve studied about the Measures of Central

Tendency which is the mean, median and the mode and how to get those in an

“Ungrouped frequency” distribution.  After that we studied getting the measures of

central tendency in a grouped frequency distribution . We first tackled the way to get

the mode in a grouped frequency distribution which is the easiest of them all.  All you

have to do is to find the “score” with the highest frequency just like the one that we

used to do in the ungrouped frequency distribution  then you subtract the low score 

from the high score and divide it by two.  After discussing the process to get the

mode from a grouped frequency distribution I was hoping that we’d discuss the way

to get the median next but instead our teacher discussed the way to get the mean

first. We all asked him why he’d discuss getting the mean first and he said that it was

because it’s easier to get the mean than the median in a grouped frequency 

distribution . and the formula in getting the mean in a grouped frequency distribution

was a bit complicated. After discussing the process in getting the mean in a grouped

frequency distribution  our teacher discuss the process in getting the median of a

grouped frequency distribution. When our teacher  started discussing I saw everyone

with a blank face.   It really was a bit complicated I can hear everyone saying : “I don’t

get it” , “ what’s that again ? “  I admit I don’t get it at first either but I soon got it as I

asked some of my classmates who gets it .  Even though our lessons are getting

tougher I must not give up because I know that all these are part of learning. Thank

you for teaching us.