Geologic Timeline Individual Final Reflection

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I finally finished the project, and even have a photo of our final product!

Unit 8 Reflection

This unit that we had completed talked about evolution, and how it affects the population, as well as the whole planet Earth itself. Evolution comes in many forms, such as artificial selection or natural selection. Other things or events can also speed up evolution, such as a bottleneck event, where a selected amount of species survive. Overtime, evolution helps species adapt to the constantly changing environment, and allow even the least competent a chance to survive, or repopulate themselves. Evolution can even have things here and there that would create an entirely new type of species. Evolution also had effects on Earth, and brought it to what it is now. Without it, no life could possibly exist on the hot molten Earth that was still forming for 4.6 billion years. It was after that, which allowed living things to survive on Earth. No life could possibly change without evolution, even a world where everything was the same would crumple under one single mistake.

There is not a lot of questions that I have about this unit, but the main ones that I would like to talk about are these: are most events regarding evolution random, or are these all a part of a certain cycle?

While we were studying this unit, we had done a survey about our conflict style. When I took it, I had discovered that I had a passive and assertive style. This means that I am the type that would let other people "win" and also the type that would assess the situation and find the best solution for both sides. What I could work on would be to not be lazy, and not let others take credit over my work, or do most of the work.

Bird Beak Lab
Hunger Games Lab

Geologic Timeline Individual Reflection

From completing a project, which I did not get to see the final product of yet, I had found many interesting things about the timeline of our Earth's history.

One major thing that I learned was about the extinctions in Earth's history. One such was the
Permian - Triassic Extinction, known as the biggest extinction to happen on Earth. Another was the Cretaceous - Paleocene Extinction, especially known as how the Dinosaurs went extinct. Each and every one happens to be at the end of one era, and at the beginning of another era. What follows these extinctions are new species dominating the other species and rising up, only to later die down.

The other major event that I was very interested into was the making of the Earth. No matter how many times you see this, it never seems to disappoint me when I view the vast scale of the beginning of Earth. Compared to how we humans had shaped Earth, it took so long just to build Earth together.

The timeline was not as shocking as I thought it would be, considering the scale. The most influential events in human history is less or somewhere close to 1% of the Earth's timeline scale.

For humans, the impact we had on the Earth is tremendous. In less than 1 inch in the Earth's timeline, we had made incredible impacts to the Earth, and many others.

20 Time: Looking for photos in the State parks!

From the past 2 weeks of working on this project, I have encountered unexpected twists and turns, but learned a lot about my topic. From what I found, most of these state parks that I had searched up were once closed down due to budget costs, but later revived due to public pleas. I have also found myself to be the type that is somewhat patient, since I had to wait and look up some things that were being sent while I was doing the project. There were many setbacks, which included the tools I was using to make the presentation. I was forced to switch to a different set of tools, in order to continue my project, and transfer my work before it was lost. My next steps are to get the rest of the slides working, and find more pictures to add to the slide. Based on what I have learned, Nature was not considered high in the past, but now, many people are working to save what is left.

Thanks for keeping check!

Hunger Games Final Analysis

1. We demonstrated competition between animals by trying to collect the most cork/food, and stimulated natural selection, where those with the best traits suited in the environments live, and the losers die.

2. The phenotype best in the lab was the knucklers, because they had the highest population, compared to the other species, meaning they were very successful in capturing food

3. Yes, the Population evolved, since the pinchers, which most people thought would do the best, were beaten by the knucklers, who had the higher population.

4. The placement of the food, where you were standing, having a good physical ability, a unique tool and what type you could reincarnate are random, while the amount you could get, the alleles in the gene pool, and what percentage would die ( since the more food needed to survive, the lower the population ) are not that random

5. If the food was bigger, then knucklers would be out of the picture, and stumpies may have a chance at survival, but if the food was smaller, then the knucklers would have a bigger advantage over the pinchers, making them the most likely to survive and reproduce. In nature, this can easily show natural selection when an event occurs that gives a species a chance to dominate.

6.  If there was no incomplete dominance, then there would be no way to revive species that may have died out, like the stumpies or the knucklers. The gene pool would be vastly different if there were no incomplete dominance.

7. In natural selection, only the population with the best traits in the current environment survive and reproduce. This is part of Evolution, where species undergo constant change in order to adapt to the environment.

8. Some people used their hoods in order to carry the food, or were faster than most people. This in reality would not affect the allele frequency, since the trait, if not a gene trait, would not be passed down to others. If it was, then the offsprings would get the traits and many other traits. In nature, this allows species to adapt to environments better, increasing evolution

9. The species that is most likely to reproduce and become the highest population is going to evolve. Natural selection affects the genotype only. Only the genes get passed down

Bird Beak Lab Conclusion

Hypothesis:

1. Individuals with better traits leave more offspring

The tweezers beak birds, whose beak was easy to control, and could easily grab food, had collected more food than the others, as a result, had more offspring. Because of the beak's ability, it dominated the competition, which resulted in more offspring for that type of bird.

2. Populations begin to look more like the winners

The tweezers beak birds were able to produce more offspring than the others. As a result, the others had fewer offspring than the tweezers beak due to the shortage of food, and the tweezers beak were more common in the population due to this.

In the lab, we were trying to discover "if natural selection occurs in a population, how do changes in selective pressures affect the evolution of that species?" The hypothesis that I wrote in response to this was "if there are changes in the environment, then other species have a chance to have more offspring, and dominate the competition". We found that the more drastic the change is in the environment, such as disease, or famine, the higher the chances of a new trait rising up to deal with the new environment, affecting the evolution of the species. This is most likely caused due to natural selection, where the most effective trait that is best in the current environment.

Some errors that I believe that might have happened would be placement of the food. Some of the food is either closer to the edge than in the middle of the table, or clumped together in piles. I believe this might have affected the advantage of a species to be dominant over others. Another would be the rounding system when counting the food. This system had often worked out more for those in need of offspring to continue the game. Overall, most mistakes could usually be shown as random changes that affect the competition, but a change to improve the experiment would be having people that can use their "beaks" properly can even out how the competition goes. Another change that I believe would help is having more types of food that some beaks cannot eat, so that there could be a sort of balance.

The purpose of doing this experiment is to explore natural selection, and how the species best suited in the current environment reproduces the most. This is a review of evolution in previous vodcasts, with a demonstration of natural selection, where nature decides the traits needed in the environment, compared to artificial selection, where humans manually select the traits they want from a species. This can be applied to everyday environments, where evolution is constantly changing species to adapt to the ever-changing, non-linear Earth. For example, wolves became dogs over many long years, since there were more benefits to being tame and kind to humans, than wild and hostile to them.

The Past versus the Present

20 Time is a small project done by one or more individuals to promote creativity with a fifth of your work, school or free time. The scale of this project can vary, from a small change to a lasting impact on the world.

Back when there were no computers, cars and electronics, the world was vastly different than what you see now. What happened to the clean lake, rivers, forests and living beings in the past that disappeared today in such a short time? I decided to do a project that is a photo journal that compares nature now, to before. I wanted to explore outside and examine the world through this project. By doing so, I can tell what happened to place just by looking at what was changed today. I plan to make a portfolio, with pictures from back then, picture from now, and my own personal pictures as well. By making a presentation, while also taking pictures, I can finish this project as long as I get more pictures to take and find. I want to show the world what we have done to make the past to what is now.