A building technique that makes the tower stronger is by using triangles to support the weight of the marshmallow and the whole tower. Another building technique is to use tapes and strings to support and strengthen the tower.

Yes, the placing of the marshmallows did affect the strength of the tower. It made the tower weaker, as the weight of the marshmallow is on the very top. It increases the pressure and pressures the tower. When the marshmallow was not placed correctly and in the middle, the weight of the marshmallow starts to topple to one side of the tower. When this happens, gravity would pull the marshmallow down and it would make the structure topple too.

I could build a stronger tower with more of the spaghettis because it would help make the supporting pills much more stronger and bigger in diameter. With more spaghettis, it can be used to support the sides of the tower to prevent it from falling. Alternative materials that could be better may be straws. Straws are larger in diameter than the spaghettis and they are much more sturdy when compared.

The size of the base do alter the strength of the tower. With a larger base, there would be more support for the tower to stand still. With a smaller base, there would be a smaller amount of support for the tower to stand still.

I think we worked well together as a group. We didn’t assume different roles. We just worked together and started to discuss ways to make the tower work. We included everyone and helped throughout the process. I felt that all groups worked like this because I heard talking and communication in the different groups. People were discussing about how the tower can be stronger and how the tower would hold the marshmallow.

The hardest part of this project was to make the actual instrument, which in my case is the mbira or thumb piano. I found it hard because it took way longer than I thought it would. It took me more than three days to make the instrument, mostly, because I had to paint each sound box and had to change the position of the metal strips. The different sizes of sound boxes were my independent variable. The position of the metal strips would affect the notes it was going to play and I had to make 5 distinct notes. The easiest part of this project was researching about the instrument and how it makes sounds. I actually found the researching quite fun and interesting.

Something that really helped me to build the instrument was watching videos of other people building it. I learned a lot of things from those videos. I learned the general ideas, the procedures of making the instrument and how to make notes. In the videos, they tell you kind of the background information of the instrument and also how it makes sounds. I didn’t really write down my plan to build the instrument, but I did know what to do and I had a list of things in mind. I felt that I took a bit long at building my instrument because I took three days to do that. I used recycled materials that I could find at home. I think the hardest part of building the instrument was the metal strips. The metal strips was made from bobby pins. When I tried to bend the bobby pins, it often broke in half and I had to restart with another one. Also, I had to experiment with the length and position of the bobby pins to make different notes and sounds.

I felt that my instrument turned out better than I expected it to be. My instrument did play 5 different distinct sounds and it did play a song. I tried to make the instrument as pretty as I could by painting it. I think the painting turned out okay. I think my instrument can withstand a long while of playing, since it didn’t fall apart from the time I made it, experimented on it and presented it to the class. However, I’m not sure if the amplitude of the instrument was loud enough. I did ask some of my friends if they had heard it when I presented, they said yes.

The mbira is a percussion instrument, but I don’t play any percussion instrument, except playing xylophones at school. I built the mbira (thumb piano) because I found the instrument very interesting. I first saw this instrument when I went to a museum in Taipei and they were selling mbiras. I found it satisfying and really cool to play. When I was given this assignment, I was going to build a xylophone with my friend, but later we decided to make our own instrument. I was thinking about which instrument to make and I thought of the materials I had at home. I knew I had a lot of bobby pins and other materials that are needed to build the instrument. Therefore, I decided that this instrument was suitable for because I already had the materials. When I started building my instrument, I thought it was going to be really hard with the metal strips because I need to experiment with the position for a long time. It turned out to be true because it really did take a long time and had a level of difficulty.

The learner profiles that I used when writing this essay was being knowledgeable and being a communicator. This is because I used what I learned and communicated those information to other people in the essay. A part of my essay was: “Solar energy uses the sun’s radiation. The sun is an energy source that is very powerful. The sun’s energy can be obtained by solar panels. One hour of the Sun’s energy can give one year of electricity globally (Greenmatch.co.uk, 2018). The sun has an amount of 5 billion years of hydrogen fuel (CSIRO, 2018), meaning that people on earth still has 5 billion years of energy from the sun to use.”

Two things that I’m most proud of in my essay is the structure of it and the information that I included in the essay. Before I wrote the essay, I kind of laid out the layout of my essay. This helped me a lot when I was writing the essay. The information summary document also helped me when writing the essay because it helped me keep track of all the information and notes that I want to include. It helped me know which information would be best to be included in the essay. A part of my essay in which I used the information summary document to help me: “Solar energy can be used in different aspects, such as: making electricity and heating (Greenmatch.co.uk, 2018). During the day time, the sun would come out and the solar panels would collect the light energy. The inverters of the solar energy system would transform the light energy into electrical energy. The electrical energy powers almost everything in the house. In the solar energy systems, the light energy would also be converted into thermal energy and helps heat the water in the house. Through the solar energy system, there wouldn’t be any greenhouse gas emitted to the air and wouldn’t cause the harm to the environment.”

Next time I write an essay I will try to have a stronger argument and use more vocabularies. I felt that my arguments could be stronger.I could improve this by adding more evidence or graphs that would support my argument. In my essay, I didn’t think that it had a lot of vocabularies. I could improve this by searching for more words that would help me communicate my ideas in a more advanced way. A part of my argument from the essay was: “Solar energy is a secure energy source (Shahan, 2018). The energy source comes from the sun and no one can buy the sun or destroy it, promising it to be a secure source of energy. With the use of fossil fuels, energy security is dropping. As the global population increases, the demand of energy also increase. People or countries can buy fossil fuels, resulting in conflict. If a country is larger, the people there would want to buy more fossil fuels with a greater amount of money. This makes the poorer countries in lack of energy source because they don’t have enough money to buy the fossil fuels (Globalissues.org, 2018). The demanding of fossil fuels makes people to find more oil, gas or coal, making global warming even more severe.”

The statement: “All forms of energy are related; using any energy resource has both positive and negative consequences” is true. All energy forms are related because plants makes light energy into chemical, then the chemical energy that we take in becomes kinetic energy and the kinetic energy would allow us to do other things. The energy is always going somewhere. Using any energy source can have both positive and negative consequences. In my research paper, I talked about both the positive and negative consequences of solar energy. I wrote: “Solar energy is a great solution to global warming because it is a renewable energy source (Greenmatch.co.uk, 2018), a secure energy source (Shahan, 2018), can be used for different things (Greenmatch.co.uk, 2018) and saves money for the society. However, there are some negatives about solar energy. Solar energy depends greatly on the weather (Greenmatch.co.uk, 2018), needs a large, open space (Aster, 2018) and it indirectly contributes to the pollution (Greenmatch.co.uk, 2018).”

Before we started, I didn’t know a lot about work, but I did know about machines. I learned about simple machines before. I know about levers, pulleys, wheels and axles, screws, wedges and inclined planes. I learned a lot more about what work actually is science and how I can find it for different simple machines.

I felt that an improvement on the Inclined Plane Lab report is to have a better results analyzation. I felt that the results didn’t really meet the criterion rubric. During the results analyzation, there was scientific reasoning used, but there weren’t all correct. To improve, I would have to add more correct scientific reasoning to the results section.

I would like to study more about different simple machines in this unit because I find other simple machines interesting and I want to know more about them. Just by studying one simple machine, I could get better at knowing that specific simple machine, but then I wouldn’t really have knowledge about other simple machines. Different simple machines has different ways to calculate work, and without studying the few basic ones, I didn’t really know how to calculate or find the work of the machines.

The next unit is on energy and this unit relates to the next unit in multiple ways. Energy is being capable of doing work. When work is done from one object to another, energy is transferred. The units of energy and work are the same, which is joules (J). To calculate energy in general, the formula would include the weight or force of something measured in Newtons times the height or length of something measured in joules. When Newtons and joules multiply, the resulting unit would be in joules. Therefore, the unit of both energy and work is joules.