Galaxies (4/23 - 4/27)

https://goo.gl/T7C84U

Summary:

     Galaxies are a collections of billions of stars, dust, gas and planets that are held by the force of gravity. There are four known types of galaxies: spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies, peculiar galaxies and irregular galaxies. Spiral galaxies have arms that are curved in such a way that it makes a spiral shape. The Milky Way, the galaxy that we live in, is a spiral galaxy. Elliptical galaxies are more shaped like an ellipse or circle. These galaxies usually have a lack of gas and dust and contain older stars. Peculiar galaxies take the shape of the previous two galaxies but in a distorted form. This is due to galaxies colliding since they attracted each other with their gravity which influences the gravity of the now hybrid galaxy and therefore influences the way that the contents of the new galaxy are arranged. Finally, irregular galaxies are galaxies that have no identifiable shape. 

SP4 - Analyzing Data:

     This week I analyzed data when I studied about galaxies and their different forms. First, I studied the different types of galaxies. Once I accomplished that, I answered the question of which type of galaxy the Milky Way was. I stated that the Milky Way Galaxy was a spiral galaxy due to its spiral-like shape. Next, I drew a table to classify the different types of galaxy. To do this, I first searched up images of each galaxy. Then I pasted the images that I had gathered onto a table, each galaxy having their separate column. I proceeded to classify each galaxy and labeled them accordingly. The last step was to justify the labels that I put for each galaxy. This is how I analyzed data and applied them onto a table based on research that I did.  

Light (4/16 - 4/20)

https://goo.gl/BqBEHw

Summary:

     Light is an electromagnetic wave that comes in many forms. Visible light is a small portion of light that makes up color. There are other types of light, such as infrared light which creates light based on the heat of objects. Infrared light has longer wavelengths, therefore making it impossible to see by the naked eye. Light can be reflected, refracted, or transmitted. Reflection refers to when light bounces off an object without being completely absorbed. Refraction refers to when light goes through mediums of varying density, therefore changing direction (bending light). Finally, transmission refers to when light completely passes through an object, such as glass. 

SP4 - Analyzing Data:

     This week I analyzed data when investigating how the moon and its phases were influenced by light. Upon investigating it, I was given an animation to view in order to understand why the moon changes throughout each month. Through that animation, I found out that the moon changed phases due to its position relative to the sun and earth. For example, the new moon phase displays a completely dark moon due to the fact that the moon is between the earth and the sun, meaning that no light hits the side of the moon that faces the earth, creating a dark moon. To display this information, I sketched out each phase of the moon along with the lunar days (the duration of the phase) 

One Man Instrument Project Blog (4/9 - 4/13)

Summary:

     Sound is the vibration of molecules through a medium. When sound is produced in a medium, say air, the source vibrates the air molecules in what is known as a sound wave. The more molecules that are compacted together in the medium, the faster and more efficiently sound can travel without losing energy. Sound cannot travel in space however, as space has little to no matter which means that the sound wave cannot travel. The sound wave's energy is determined by the amplitude, which is half of the height of the entire wave. To determine the pitch of sound, you can look at frequency. Frequency is how often a wave length (the distance between each wavelength) passes through a line in one second. Tension is the tightness of the wave, or the space that the wave takes up in its journey. The tighter the wave, the less space it will take and the more thinner the wave motion will be. 

Backwards-Looking: 

     What problems did you encounter while you were working on this piece? How did you solve them? Some of the problems that I encountered when creating my instrument was finding a way how to make wind, percussion and string all in one instrument and have multiple notes for each part. I solved this issue by searching up ways to create make-shift instruments and just building off of other people's ideas. For example, the string instrument was inspired from the fact that people cut holes in their boxes and had strings over them. When doing just that, I found a way to create a string instrument such that there could be several different notes (since you can pull and adjust the tone of 4 strings). The next problem that I encountered was with the wind and percussion instruments (the bottles). When in the process of making them, they kept spilling out water when in storage, often ruining the tone/pitch of the instrument. To fix this, I improvised a way to make a cap stay on the bottle and easily come off.

Inwards-Looking:

     How do you feel about this piece of work? What parts of it do you particularly like? Dislike? Why? What did/do you enjoy about this piece or work? I believe that this was an insightful and rather fun project on sound. It helped me understand more about sound, the wave anatomy and how it functioned. The part that I liked most from this project was the creation of the instrument and some of the labs on sound, such as the tuning fork lab and the bottle lab which actually gave me inspiration for my percussion/wind. There weren't really any parts that I particularly disliked. If there was one thing that I were to dislike, it would be the wave anatomy/sound wave properties worksheets. Although they were insightful and taught me information about sound that I didn't know before, I don't feel like much of it actually applied to the creation of my instrument.

Outwards-Looking:

     Did you do your work the way other people did theirs? In what ways did you do it differently? In what ways was your work or process similar? When beginning the creation of my instrument, I didn't really know what to do for any of the three instrument types we were supposed to incorporate into one instrument. That is until I saw other people's string instruments. Some people made their string instruments with a hole in a box with strings above it, so when the strings were struck, the hole in the box would amplify the sound. I decided to make my instrument this way, not knowing which direction that I would take it. When working on it, figured out that I could make the string instrument more versatile with the notes that it played by allowing the user of the instrument to stretch and adjust each of the four strings as much as possible. So in a way, I had a similar work process to my classmates, though I branched out midway. In addition to that, I noticed that a few groups used bottles to make their wind/percussion instruments.

Forwards-Looking:

     What would you change if you had a chance to do this piece over again? If I were to re-create my instrument, I would probably spend more time working on the overall appearance of it. I feel like some of the projects that I work on could have been better if I had spent more time working on the appearance rather on information/functionality that the piece contained. I would have also spent more time trying to figure out how to make the instrument easier to play. The percussion aspect of my instrument was hard to play since the bottles were crammed in together, making the amplification of sound and the vibrations of the waves minimal. In addition to that, you couldn't play the string part of the instrument at the same time. You could only use one of the four instruments at a time.

Sound Waves (3/19 - 3/23)

https://goo.gl/UBjJ8T

Summary: 

     Waves are moving curve-like motions created from vibrations. There are two types of waves: mechanical waves and electromagnetic waves. Mechanical waves require a medium of matter to travel in, such as air, water or gas. These types of waves cannot occur in space due to the fact that space is a vacuum and contains little to no matter. Electromagnetic waves, however bypass this limitation and do not require a medium to pass through. Light waves, for example, can travel through space, air and water. Besides the wave types that exist, there is also an anatomy to each type of wave. A wavelength is the distance between each crest or trough (top wave or bottom wave). Frequency is the amount of times that wavelengths travel through a certain point in one second and is measured in Hertz (Hz). Amplitude is half the height of an entire wave, or half the distance between a crest to trough. The higher the amplitude, the more energy that a wave stores. Dampness is the energy output from a wave. The damper the wave, the less energy is stored inside of it as it moves. Finally, tension is the tightness of the wave. The more tense it is, the tighter the wave and the less it can move vertically. 

SP3 - Carrying out Investigations:

     This week I carried out investigations in order to understand the anatomy and parts of the wave and how they all come together to make distinct waves. During the lab, my team and I had a rope which resembled a wave. The first part of the lab was understanding how frequency works. In order to make the rope more 'frequent' when we made a wave with it, we figured that we had to make faster hand movements. From that, we concluded that frequency can be controlled based on the movement/vibration speed of the wave. The next part was amplitude. We saw that it wasn't necessarily based on the speed of the hand movement, but was based on the length of the hand movement,, so we we concluded that amplitude was based on the energy carried by the wave. Along with the process that helped us understand the material that we were given, we created annotated diagrams to further elaborate and explain our thinking of how each function of a wave worked. 

Vibrations (3/12 - 3/16)

https://goo.gl/xmRVgi

Summary: 

    A vibration is when an object moves back and forth in a fast and short manner. Vibrations are the source of sound that we hear. When an object vibrates, it moves the molecules in the medium that it is in, usually gas, water or solid. Those molecules push each other, causing a sort of domino effect, causing the medium to vibrate for a brief moment. For example, if you took a tuning fork and struck it, it would vibrate. Upon putting it next to your ear, you would hear a lingering sound from the vibration, due to the fact that the vibration is causing the air molecules around it to push each other, carrying sound which is eventually processed by your ear. Taking the same tuning fork, if you were to strike it again and place it in a cup of water, the water would vibrate, causing some droplets to spew out of the cup. Finally, if you were to put the vibrating tuning fork next to a solid, the solid would vibrate, but only for a short moment as the tuning fork would slow its vibration to a halt once contact is made between the two objects. 

SP3 - Carrying Out Investigations:

     This week I participated in an investigation with the people at my table to answer how sound worked. In order to accomplish this, we were given two tuning forks of different pitch, a cup, a ping pong ball and two pencils. Our first task was to hit the tuning fork with the pencil and observe the sound that it made. We noticed that the harder the hit, the louder the sound, though the pitch remained the same for each tuning fork. Then, we hit the tuning fork once more and placed it next to a ping pong ball that was attached to string. When the ball made contact with the fork, it swung backwards as a pendulum would. From that, we could conclude that vibrations affected its surroundings. To support that idea, we filled the cup that we were given with water, struck the tuning fork, and put it inside the cup of water. We saw that the water spewed out of the cup and elaborated on our conclusion, saying how when an object vibrates, the objects around the object move and push each other, creating sound. Furthermore, the harder the strike, the faster the vibration, which translated into louder and longer lasting sound.

Intro to Sound (3/5 - 3/9)

https://goo.gl/fXUokg

Summary:

     Sound is the vibration of air around a certain medium such as gas, liquid, solid, etc. When a sound is produced, it pushes the air forwards, creating something similar to the domino effect. Besides air, sound can also move in other mediums such as liquids or solids. It can actually move faster in these environments due to the fact that liquids and gases are more dense and can easily be pushed by sound. Think about it, which set of dominoes would be easier to knock over? Ones that are spread apart or ones that are more tightly compacted together? Sound can be observed through the ears of many organisms. Sound waves go through ears and are then compressed due to the tight space. The vibrations then hit the ear drum, where the sound is then processed by the brain. Hearing sound is important due to the fact that it allows for communication and awareness of surroundings.

SP2: Developing and Using Models:

     This week I started modeling instruments in order to understand how sound works. For the project, we were to build an instrument that had percussion, string and wind. During the week, we mainly focused on how wind works. In order to do so, we did a sound lab that focused on how sound differed based on the volume in a glass bottle and the different inputs of sound. My group and I discovered that higher pitches were produced by blowing into a full bottle while the opposite was shown to occur from hitting it. Subsequently, we learned that this was the case since when blowing into a bottle, the water allowed for less travel for the sound waves, making a higher pitch and the more water in a bottle, the slower the vibration upon hitting it. I applied this knowledge onto how wind works by changing the method of making the wind. To make the wind instrument component, I considered using a different type of material and perhaps varying volumes of liquids within. 

Is Listening to Music While Studying Beneficial? - WAC

     If you are reading this, you most likely listen to music while you study. If so, might I ask you, if you will, why you do so? Is it to drown out noise and focus only on the music that you choose, or is it the fact that it can incite certain moods that motivate you to work further?  Today, listening to music while doing work in general is common among students today. But there has been a long lasting debate on whether it is actually beneficial or not.  Students who listen to music themselves enjoy doing so due to the fact that it can drown out the far worse and distracting background noises of their classroom environment while studies shown by the University of Wales prove that listening to music can impair short term memory. So is listening to music while studying harmful? The short answer is, it depends. Instrumental music can improve mood, awareness and memory while lyrical music can be quite the distraction and impair short term memory.

     A study that shows that instrumental music can be beneficial is one conducted by the University of Dayton. According to the study abstract, researchers aimed to "assess the effects of fast-tempo music on cognitive performance." To do so, they observed 56 male and female students and studied their performance on linguistics and spacial processing tasks. With that, the students were accompanied with Mozart music in the background as they worked. According to the study abstract, "Background music increased the speed of spatial processing and the accuracy of linguistic processing. The findings suggest that background music can have predictable effects on cognitive performance." This means that instrumental music displays possible benefits to those who listen to it while they study. However, despite instrumental music in the background proving to be useful when studying, the same cannot be said for lyrical music, or music with vocals.

     Music with vocals, or any acoustical variation have been proven to be a major distraction when studying. The University of Wales conducted a research that showed that listening to vocal music impairs short term memory. To prove this, they gathered participants and gave them a set of letters to memorize. They then tested them under a few noise conditions: quiet, music that they enjoyed, music that they disliked, a voice repeating the number three, and a voice saying random single digit numbers. The study found that the participants' mood and impression towards the music that they listened to was an irrelevant factor towards their performance. If there was sound that had vocals, say the music or the voice saying random single digit numbers, the participants would fail to memorize the order of the letters they were given. Lead researcher Nick Perham concluded in the study's press release that "The poorer performance of music and changing-state sounds are due to the acoustical variation within those environments within those environment." This proves that listening to any music with vocal or acoustic variation can actually be a distraction rather than a benefit.

     An argument brought up by the article Why You Shouldn't Listen to Music While Studying by Sara Briggs uses the study conducted by the University of Wales to further show why listening to music while studying is harmful. The article cites a study conducted by Stanford University which observed people listening to 18th century music. From the study, researchers were able to conclude that "music engages the areas of the brain involved with paying attention, making predictions, and updating the event in memory." While that is true, the use of the fact to support the article's core argument is invalid. Because instrumental music focuses the brain onto the music, it can drown out a far worse distraction- that being the classroom environment. Classrooms are normally noisy and talkative, and as proven by the University of Wales, can be a distraction and impair short term memory. What instrumental music can do is make the brain's focus on something else rather than the classroom noise. This is perhaps associated to the reason why students listen to music while studying in the first place. In the article Music in the Classroom: Distraction or Study Tool? by Shelby Archuleta, one student stated that, "Music definitely has an effect on the way you think and act... But I think it does help me concentrate because then I can drown out the other [students]" This proves that instrumental music can be beneficial in removing vocal noises.

    So does listening to music enhance cognitive performance? In summary, it depends on the type of music that you listen to. In search to find the answer to this question, the University of Dayton found that listening to instrumental music from the 18th century improves both the speed and accuracy of linguistics and spacial processing, which may imply a potential benefit for music. On the other hand, the University of Wales concluded that listening to music could actually be quite harmful, but only tested for vocal and acoustic variation, which may imply that there may be different effects in regards to listening to instrumentals and listening to vocals. Listening to music while studying is a common thing to do among students. Many say that it's fun to do so, while others say that it can mute the distraction of the environment that they work in. Either way, listening to instrumental music can drown out such noise and make you focus on the work that must be accomplished. But in the end, it depends on whether you are distracted easily or not.