Mills Canyon Field Trip!

On April 29th, everyone from Mr. Olson's from every period that he teaches went to Mills Canyon to explore many different things. I liked how we were able to take a day to walk around a canyon with our friends and have a day to explore nature that is actually very close to our own city. The trip was very fun although I didn't like how it rained pretty hard the night before and thus, there was a ton of mud in some parts of the trail, but other than that, the whole trip was pretty fun and I hope that I get to experience this again another day.

View Mills Canyon Park Trail in a larger map

Mini Blog Project

Photo Credit: Andy Wu

May 4th, 2010

Today, I did an experiment that involved very simple things that everyone could do. The experiment involves a little bit of corn starch, water, and it shows what suspension is. It is basically something that can change from a liquid to a solid fairly quickly unless you do some specific things to it.

To do this experiment, you simply need 3 things.

Materials:

1. Corn starch
2. Water
3. A bowl

Science: Suspension is a heterogeneous mixture that can change states such as water to solid which is what happens exactly in the corn starch and water mixture.

The experiment was pretty fun but it was a little messy. The corn starch mixture was able to stay solid if i moved it around my fingers and it would harden on my hands. If I didn't move my fingers at all, it would just slip through my hands. When i washed my hands with water, everything was very easy to get off as it just slid off my hands.

IProposeWe Make Fake Snow

Links: How to make Instant Snow!
How to make Fake Snow!

Materials: Sodium Polyacrylate, Water, and a Beaker

Procedure:

1. Put Polyacrylate into a beaker.
2. Add water to the beaker.
3. Watch the snow come alive!

Safety Precautions:

• Don't eat the snow.
• Don't let the "snow" touch your eyes or mouth.
  

Scientific Principles:

• Conversion of Mass Theory can be used because if you start off with a specific amount of the polyacrylate polymer powder and add water, after the water evaporates, the powder should still weigh the same before water was added to it.

Pokemon

Yesterday, I finally got the game I wanted for my entire life. I finally got Pokemon Soul Silver. Not only did I get the game, I also got the Poke Walker. I can train my pokemon while walking so during track practice, i get to train my pokemon and myself. There's no downside to this. I was excited when the first Silver version came out but now that this re-make is out, it makes me love pokemon even more. Now I can be fast in track and a pokemon master.Gotta catch 'em all.

Golf

This week, we started to play Golf for PE and I don't think it is that fun. It was pretty fun while we were able to hit the golf balls in the gym, but when we had to play in the wet grass in the morning during 1st period, it is a problem. I had to bring an extra pair of socks everyday and it takes a little longer to change. For example, i was late this morning to 2nd period because i had to spend extra time to change socks and shoes. Besides that, it's really fun playing golf because I think that I can hit the golf balls pretty far. When the cones, or holes, get too close, I'm not as good because a lot of the grass is in the way.

Mills Track Meet

Yesterday, we had a track meet at Mills and it was our first home meet in 7 years. It was a meet against Carlmont. It was really weird because I was a distance runner and out of all the distance runners, i was the only one running the 400, 800, and 4x400 while everyone else were forced to run the 800, 1600, or 3200. The meet was pretty fun but i was a little disappointed at how we only left class at 2:00 because i thought that we needed much more time than that to set up the hurdles, polevaulting, and other things. Overall, the meet was very fun and I hope that I run faster in other events.

David Webb

David Webb went to our class this week to show us his vacuum. It wasn't a vacuum for cleaning things but it showed us pressure and how it can change different things at different pressures. I learned a lot of about pressure because we were able to visually see all the different things at higher levels of pressure. It was cool to see how the marshmallow started to expand and get bigger but after he released the pressure, the marshmallow shrunk and it was basically deflated and didn't have any of its air left. Brandon gave some of the marshmallow to me and it was very chewy so it wasn't like a regular marshmallow which made it kind of disgusting but it still tasted the same. Overall, the presentation was very good and i wish that he could present more things to us.