3rd Blog Post

This week, I wasn't able to update the blog on time, but I have been making progress one at a time. I learned that not everything was great in the past. All the trees may have lived about 20 years ago, but so did natural calamities and occurrences in the world. Because of that, not everything was perfect, but was more natural than now. I still feel that I'm different from others, but the big thing that affects my process is that I don't have great "talent" or efficient ways to spend my time. I might do something unnecessary, or be very inefficient with my time. Lately, I have been thinking about what format I should really decide on for the final project. The TED talk coming up, I can't really afford to make a portfolio with google slides. Many other options are out considering the amount of photos I can insert without making it harder upon myself. I feel that I should slow down and see what I can make out of the little options I have left. When applying what I learned to other things is that not everything is perfect, since most options I thought would be suitable has a hidden flaw that I stumbled upon midway through the project.

Porifera and Sponges

After watching and taking notes about Invertebrates, I have learned a lot about these abundant animals, especially about the animals in the group, Phylum Porifera. This group includes the topic of this post, sponges, and many others that are multicellular organisms with pores and channels that allow water to enter inside, and be filter by the cells inside them. Sponges are like a clumped group of cells that work together to filter the water that passes through it. They do not have organs or any systems to deal with anything else. All this organism has is a filtering system that draws unfortunate prey into them, where the cells could digest them overtime. In a video that was related to the vodcast, a scientist demostrated the function of sponges and corals by putting dye near the base, and eventually, the sponge/coral was spewing out the dye from their opening. The vodcast talked about the kingdom this group is also in, the Animalia Kingdom, and that the group was also known to be sessile metazoans, which mean they are multicelled immobile organisms. These types reside in the ocean, near the floor where they could eat the plankton that flowed into the organism with the water. Like corals, this organism have formed symbiosis relationships with other organisms in order to protect each other and survive better. Unlike corals though, they are able to adapt to certain situations, for example, there are carnivorous sponges that use thread inside them to capture prey.

Geologic Timeline Individual Final Reflection

Previous Post related to this

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