Maths - Graphs

Today for maths we had to collate our results from our questionnaires into a slide to show what we had discovered, here is my slideshow.

9NE art - Favourite pieces.

This term our 9NE art module we have been doing some piece of art. We have had three different assignments. Our first assignment was to start shading. We did this through drawing 3D shapes and then shading them depending on where we put the source of light. I have drawn a cube, pyramid, sphere and a cylinder and then shaded them to show the shadow. Mine looks like this:

Our second piece of art was practicing perspective and how to draw things so that they look realistic. I have drawn a few cylinders to show what dog food, baked beans, and spam looks like.

Our second to last piece of artwork was to make a helpful robot out of 3D shapes and make it so it is helping someone. This is the fridgebot-2000. It helps people by giving them food when they need it. People told me that it looks like karen from spongebob so I pu plankton in there to add to the fantasy. The fridgebot is walking down the street to find people who need food to give it to them. I have mostly included cubes in this drawing and a couple cylinders for the neck, arms, and legs. Also I have used some have spheres as feet/shoes

Thanks for looking at my art!!! 😃

Robotics and Programming

In my Robotics and Programming class, I am learning how to use my programming knowledge to design my Mars Lander.

DESIGN PROCESS

For the brainstorm section of the design process we put forward our design ideas that we had individually thought out and designed. Then we tested out the sphero and figured out how it worked and how we could incorporate it into our designs so it makes a Mars Lander. Once we finished testing out the sphero we went on a site called the Mars Lab. On this site there were three different landers that we could drive online. We had an online tutorial on how to make them move and how to pan their cameras. The first one was called the MAMMOTH. It had four hydraulic legs that stretched out quite far. It had a tiny camera that worked relatively well. This rover was probably one of my least favourite because it was so big and didn’t get over the rocks that well. It also didn’t have any renewable energy source or storage. This made it bad for the atmosphere on mars and couldn’t carry anything if you were controlling it from say a rocket. The second one we used was called the MAWSON. This was my favourite out of the three that we got to choose from. Instead of four wheels like the MAMMOTH it had six. Although the legs weren't hydraulic they had better grip and stability. The camera was bigger and clearer and was easier to control and it actually had some storage. My favourite thing about this lander was the solar panels that it had on its back. This meant that it had a renewable energy source and would be able to go for a longer time that the MAMMOTH. The third and final rover was called the CONTINUUM. This was the one that was in the middle for me. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it as much as I liked the MAWSON. It had a glass backing for storage this means that it could be shattered easily if say a dust storm swept up and took a few rocks with it. This rover had six wheels like the MAWSON but they were very stubborn and did not look like they would be moved easily without taking the whole thing apart. The camera was on a movable arm that could basically point in any direction and it also had a few pockets of storage. It had a source of energy like the MAMMOTH but the rest of it makes up for it being the second best. These helped me form ideas for my own rover that we have to make.

My design would be a mixture of all three of the rovers. It would have six wheels and they would be hydraulic. The tires on them would be thick and sturdy enough to go over big rocks and wouldn’t break. It would have a camera like the CONTINUUM so you can see everything. It would have storage like the MAWSON and CONTINUUM combined. It would have the energy source of the MAWSON because I would like it so it does not hurt the atmosphere of the planet mars. Then it could have some additional features. A grabber if you find something interesting that you would want to research or say a light so that you could see what you are researching.

Here is a video of my mars lander that I created on Tinkedcad and below that is the image of the one we made in real life out of LEGO.

MARS

Mars terrain is, dusty, rocky and quite like a desert. Mars rusty dust is because of the iron-rich materials in the small rock that litter the surface of mars. The cold thin atmosphere means that liquid water will not stay on the surface for a long time. Craters are aplenty on mars. This means a constant risk for the rovers of falling into them and them smashing. The red planet is also home to the biggest volcano and the biggest valley in our solar system. The mountain (Olympus Mons) is about 3 times the size of Mt Everest and the valley (Valles Marineris (named after the marineris probe that discovered it in 1971) goes 6 miles down. Also the gravity on mars is over half the force of earth's.

Our rovers should be sturdy enough to survive a medium sized fall, The wheels should be able to go over jagged rocks, and not get stuck in sand like materials. It should also have an engine that can get it up large hills and be able to go down sharp slopes. I think it should also contain some kind of secret thing that it can use like a drill or a grabber arm. It could even contain some sort of jetpack type thing so it can get over rocks and large boulders that it cannot drive over.

USING JAVASCRIPT WITH SPHERO

JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. It was originally made by Brendon Eich at Netscape, which was one of the first internet companies which built a popular in the days of dial-up internet. It was originally named ‘Mocha’ by the founder of netscape, Marc Andreessen who is now one of Silicon Valley's most famous entrepreneurs. Nescapes started working with Sun Microsystems. Who developed Java, which is a popular language that powered apps on early computers and cell-phones. Both companies wanted to create a plugin so that existing java apps could run natively inside the increasingly popular web browser so they wouldn’t have to rebuild it. So Netscape creates a scripting language similar to the java syntax (Syntax is the rule set for how programs are constructed) so that these apps could still be used and all the Java programmers could adapt quickly without learning a completely new language.

The language was also very powerful. Before javascript. Most of the web paes were constructed entirely from HTML and CSS. This means they were quite bland. JavaScript allowed pages to be more colourful and dynamic, they made web pages able to have animations and use playback media. How to use JavaScript. JavaScript is a case sensitive program. This means that if you even have one capital letter where there isn't meant to be a capital letter, it could ruin the whole program and make it harder for you to do what you want to do. There are also different types of cases. Camel case, Pascal case, spinal case and snake case.

CODE COMBAT

Today we have been learning to use JavaScript on our computers via Code Combat. Code Combat is a free game to use and play on your computers that teaches you the basics of coding with different code languages, Python and JavaScript are two of the languages that you get to use It hasn't been super easy but still hasn't been super hard either.

Here is a video of some o the coding we had to do in code combat:

Graffiti - Art or Vandalism?

I feel graffiti is a good and bad thing. Graffiti makes things look good when it looks bland and boring. This can either make things look better or make things on that building look worse. If people don’t have permission to do Graffiti on a building they can be fined. If people tag the place that they are painting, people will inevitably get angry and I can see why people get irritated with it being on there building. It then takes money for the owners to remove it, money that wouldn’t need to be spent if someone didn’t destroy it with something that doesn’t look that great. People have reasons to hate Graffiti artists. In Leeds (which is a place in england) they have had to spend $250,000 - $500,000 on removing pieces of graffiti from the walls of buildings in the area. All added up that is a lot of money being spent on pieces of graffiti. That is a lot of money being spent on something that could be stopped. One example to prevent graffiti you could put motion sensor lights outside to scare the artists away. 

High quality art pieces are sometimes in the form of graffiti. They can either be really good or really bad. One of the most famous graffiti artists in the world is Banksy, his works of art are very political and show how he feels about the world at the moment. He has painted pictures about war and how technology is taking over the world. He feels that things need to change and this is how he expresses his feelings and emotions. Here in Greymouth we have an artist of our own. His graffiti name is Raja (I’m not going to mention his real name) and he does really cool art around the town. He has done murals, painted chromebooks for kids, and small pieces of art also. He does this to make Greymouth look better than it does. About two years ago he painted a massive crane on a building near the Grey river. Some people from the public think that it doesn’t look good, whereas others think that it looks really good. He has also done other things like a train near the hospital, some kiwifruit on one of those electrical boxes, and even some art for one of the local schools. 

The feeling about graffiti around the world is 50/50. I can understand both the sides of the debate, people don’t want their shops vandalised by pictures that don’t necessarily improve the business nor the look of the building. Whereas other people in the public think that graffiti is a good thing because it makes things look good and helps people to express their emotions. I feel that graffiti is neither art or vandalism because they are both at the same time. Most serious graffiti artists, who do major murals and paintings (like Raja), ask permission before doing there art. This ups the name for graffiti artists and helps them get a better following. In all honesty I feel that graffiti can be a good thing if you ask for permission and do it properly. When the people feel that it look how they want it, the artist gets payed and everyone is happy. My overall opinion is that graffiti can be a bad thing, but it can also convey a very powerful and political message.

We also made a presentation of some of New Zealand's graffiti artists, Here it is:

Social Studies - Identity

This term for social studies we have been looking at identity. We have done many activities based around who we are and where we come from. One of the things we had to do was an online treasure hunt about Greymouth.  We had to research information about Greymouth and find pictures of shops  around Greymouth. Some questions were when was the name of Mawhera changed to Greymouth. When did the first english people arrive in Greymouth. Put in three pictures of places that sell jewellery in Greymouth. Before this we were studying the census. The census is a quiz that happens every 5 years in New Zealand. It is made as a snapshot to record where New Zealand is at the moment with its population and their needs. Throughout the term we have studied subjects surrounding Ethnicity, Gender, Place of Birth and many other things. There are questions about your house and the things that your house has. Does your house have asbestos or is it clean? Do you have six people in your house or 3? Do you have 7 pets or do you have 0? A Lot of questions have to be answered and it takes about 20 minutes to answer all of them. This year the census was online. The previous years the census has been in letter form and if you couldn't complete it in letter form someone would come round to your house and help you answer the questions.

Thank you for reading.

NZL - Kumara Trip

Yesterday (Monday April 9th) all of year nine went to Kumara. Kumara is a small little town that you pass through on the way to Christchurch. It is situated approximately 24 km away from Greymouth. We went there to do a few activities that are about the history of Kumara. Kumara was originally a gold mining town that people from all over the world came to get gold from. Especially the Irish, about half to population of Ireland came over to New Zealand because they wanted to get some gold. Another thing is that at that time in Ireland there was a famine. All the potatoes were going black so that they could not be eaten.

Activities
We arrived at the Kumara hall at about 9:30 and got straight into the activities. There are four activities we had to complete throughout the day. The first one we had to do was a walk to Londonderry rock which is a few minutes outside of Kumara. We had to do a ten minute bushwalk to get there. Londonderry rock is a massive rock that fell down a cliffside in the 1800s. It was named Londonderry rock because one of the miners that was working on the cliffside came from Londonderry which is a place in Ireland.

The second activity we had to do was a dramatization in the old historic swimming baths just outside of Kumara. We had a look around and made groups to do a small play that was based off of a poem. We chose a poem called "Blackjack Joe" It was about a man called Mike Mccool who had to beat up this mean old guy that was terrorising and harming irish folk in the town. We did a pretty good interpretation of it and I'm pretty sure we one. Others did a poem about the grey river and a story about the Banshee. The Banshee is an Irish tale that is about a woman that would wail really loud to warn others that death was coming. After that activity we had lunch.

The third activity was behind the Hall on a small, damp, paddock. This activity consisted of three smaller activities we had to complete. The first activity we did was called river crossing. We split into three teams and had to make it from one set of cones to another set of cones which was about 20 metres away. We had 6 little rubber/plastic pads and a plank of wood. There were 8 people in our team and we came last. We still got a lolly though so it was okay.

The fourth and final activity was a history activity. A man dressed as Richard seddon came into the hall and talked to us for a while. Then we had to split into teams of about 3 or 4 and got handed a piece of paper with some questions on them. We then had to go to the place in Kumara where the info panels are and read them to answer the questions. that we had been given on the piece of paper. It was quite fun and we got to hold Mr Seddons gold piece that was on his waistcoat. Apparently gold is 17 times heavier than water! After that activity we went back to school and then we all went home.

I had a relatively good time and it wasn't as terrible and as i thought it was going to be.

English - My Hero

For English we have had to write a S.E.X.Y paragraph about someone we admire. I did mine, You should read about him below.

My hero is someone called Desmond Doss. He was a medic in WW2 and saved over 70 people on the battlefield. Desmond Doss was a conscientious objector, this meant that he would not touch a gun. Doss was a medic in WW2 and whenever he heard a call on the battlefield he would risk his own life to help others.

When he joined the Army, Desmond assumed that his classification as a conscientious objector would not require him to carry a weapon. He wanted to be an Army combat medic. As luck would have it, he was assigned to an infantry rifle company. His abnegation to carry a gun caused some amounts of trouble amongst his fellow soldiers. They viewed him with hatred and thought of him as a liability. One man said to him “Doss, as soon as we get into combat, I’ll make sure you don't come back alive”. His commanding officers wanted to get rid of him. The didn’t see the need for a soldier who doesn’t handle a gun. Doss was intimidated, scolded, got assigned extra tough duties and declared mentally unfit for the army. They even tried to court martial him for refusing a direct order, to carry a gun. Until one day on Hacksaw Ridge where Doss saved 75 people from death, there whole perspective on Doss changed.

Doss did this all without killing anybody or touching a gun. Before being discharged from the army in 1946 Doss developed Tuberculosis. He would spend most of his time in the hospital. As the illness progressed his left lung had to be removed as well as five ribs. For the rest of his life he survived on one lung, until that too failed. At the age of 87 he passed away. He is buried in the National Cemetery, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

I find Desmond a hero because he risked his life to save multiple other people when he was under fire. He is also a hero because he stood by his principles and did not do anything to condone violence. His beliefs in god made up for any physical attributes that the other soldiers had over him. He believe that god would not let him die so he did what was necessary to save as many people as possible. He believed that saving another person's life was more important that saving his own. He risked everything to save those 75 men from their deaths, he saved a man when he was 25 ft away from enemy lines. He thought that violence was not an ok thing to do. So he didn’t partake in it. He was a very very religious man and he followed the ten commandments to the T.

Wearable Arts Review

WEARABLE ARTS REVIEW

How we made it...

Our costume was inspired by the festival Chinese New Year. Since the traditional creatures of Chinese New Year are the dragon and lion we decided to make a traditional dragon I think it turned out okay. Our Costume is constructed of a lot of cardboard and newspaper. The head was made out of chicken wire moulded around a bowl which then had a lot of newspaper which we moulded to make the eye sockets and a little bit of the dragon's nose. We made both of the jaws out of cardboard and newspaper and the teeth are made out of cardboard also. We then paper mached the teeth to the jaw so it looked like it had gums. We then got newspaper and made bumps on the nose so it wasn't too flat and unrealistic. After that we cut toilet rolls on an angle to make the nose. We then got used crepe paper and dangled it from the chin of the bottom jaw. We painted the head red and the jaws red. We made the cheek bits out of coloured paper and glitter glue. The tail is made out of a PVC pipe that has been bent. We then put wire through the pipe so there is something for the sheet to hang onto, We have had some ups and downs one of ups for example was when we finished the bottom jaw. We were a little bit distressed when we had to remake the top jaw. For the second time.

The Festival...

Chinese New Year is traditionally celebrated on the 23rd day of the 12th lunar moon of the chinese calendar, I know, it's a long name. The festival goes for 23 days ending on the 15th day of the next year on the chinese new year. People normally clean their house to welcome the spring festival, They put up red posters with poetic verses on the front of their doors. They also put chinese new year posters on their walls and hang red lanterns up around their house. Many people also visit their families at the time of the Festival. At the evening of the festival eve many people set off fireworks to send off any bad luck and bring forth good luck. Children often receive “luck” money. Many people wear new clothes and send New Year cards to each other. Various activities such as beating drums and striking gongs as well as dragon and lion dances are all part of the Festival

What Went Wrong...

Throughout making the costume we had many ups and downs. In this paragraph I'm talking about the downs. When the glue gun broke when we were half way through making it, when the tail kept consistently falling off on the dress rehearsal and the night and when I couldn't go down stairs.

What Went Right...

What made Ella and I really relieved was when we finally put the whole thing together on the dress rehearsal. That made Ella and I really, really happy. I really liked when I first tried on the head and it fit, it was also really comfortable.

What We Would Change...

I think that we should have started way earlier so we didn't have to rush to get everything done and maybe made the head a little bit more balanced. We also would have painted the sheet a little bit more detailed and maybe add a little bit more of a recycled effect.

Here is our wearable arts booklet and some photos

WEARABLE ARTS BOOKLET

Writing T2

For the last couple of weeks we have been doing wrting about body parts me and my buddy chose the pancreas here is my report about the pancreas

The Pancreas is a long flattened gland located deep in our stomachs and it is six inches long. Because the Pancreas isn't seen in our everyday lives most people don't know much about this part of the body as say the heart or the brain, but the pancreas is a vital part of our digestive system and a critical controller of our blood sugar levels. 

There are 4 parts of the Pancreas. The Head, Neck, Body and The Tail. The head of the pancreas is the largest part of the organ. The head is found on the right side of the abdomen nestled in the curve of the duodenum. The Neck is a small section of the organ between the head and the body. The Body is the middle part of the pancreas between the Tail and the neck. The Superior mesenteric artery and veins run behind this part of the pancreas. The thin tip at the end of the pancreas is called the tail the tail is placed next to the body as you can see in the diagram. The tail is in close proximity to the spleen. 

The Pancreas regulates your body’s blood sugar levels. If your pancreas is faulty you could become diabetic. What is Diabetes? To answer that you need to understand the role of insulin in your body. When you eat, your body turns food into sugars and glucose. At that point your pancreas is supposed to release insulin. Insulin serves as a “key” to open your cells, allow glucose to enter and give you energy. But with diabetes this system does not work. There are two types of diabetes type ii and type i. Type one diabetes is the most severe. This type of diabetes is also called insulin-dependant diabetes. This type of diabetes doesn't open your cells to allow the glucose to enter this means the glucose builds up in the blood. If left untreated this can harm your eyes, kidneys, heart and could lead to a coma and death. This is why some people carry insulin pens. When needed those diabetic people use the pens to put insulin inside their body. This insulin opens the cells and puts the gathered up glucose in your body so you don't get harmed. Another one of the general jobs the pancreas does is putting different chemical messengers called hormones into your blood.

In conclusion the Pancreas is a very important organ in our body. It regulates our blood sugars to stop us from getting diabetes and produces enzymes to help us with our indigestion. It is an allround important part of our body and without it, we wouldn't be able to survive.