Friday, February 7, 2014

J.H. Cycles in Your Life

1. The cycle of life (obviously), The REM (insert band pun here) cycle (I sleep a LOT), The League of Legends release cycle. Theres nothing anyone can ever do to avoid the cycle of life, for it is what determines the lives and deaths of us all. The REM cycle controls my mind whilst I sleep, and on Wednesday alone I slept for over 15 hours, so you could say it affects my life a bit too much. The LoL release cycle is a sad reality that I have come to accept.

2. Photosynthesis is a cycle as much as any other cycle is a cycle. First, the chlorophyll takes in water, sunlight, air, and nutrients from the soil. Then, it converts said elements into glucose, sucrose, etc. The plant then stores the sugars in fruit, or consumes them as needed. The cycle repeats. Eventually, the fruit drops to the ground, dissolves into the soil (replenishing the nutrients), and the seeds contained in the fruit are planted. A new plant is grown, with its own chloroplast, etc. There, we see the beginning of ANOTHER cycle, the cycle of life as it relates to the world of flora.

3. Hah, Implying that this school has a decent enough education system to actually TEACH students. I suppose that we may have learned about the cycle of life and other similar topics of cyclical nature in an english class, although I cant think of anything recent. We've also probably talked about a cycle of some sort in one of Bill's classes, but bugger me if I can remember anything regarding cycles in class.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

J. H. "From where does the wood come"

1. All students present ideas that make a certain degree of sense, with the exception of student A, who believes that trees are made out of nothing but water. Student B believes that they may use sunlight to make their food, which they do (chlorophyll). Student C believes that the minerals in the soil might have helped. This is also true, and you might notice that trees grow faster and/or bigger in rich soil. Student D said that gasses might have helped as well, and, as science would have it, trees need Co2 to survive. While student A was semi-correct in believing that water was the defining substance trees are made of (cells are largely water), they are not the ONLY thing that trees need to flourish.

2. He had not taken into account that the minerals in the earth can be absorbed without actually actively consuming dirt, and I doubt anyone would fault him. His conclusion that somehow, trees were made of water was advanced scientifically for his age, and he was mostly correct. Plant cells are indeed mostly water, after all. Coupled with this lack of understanding is that his experiment was relatively flawed. He could have backed up/proved his experiments data by placing a tree in nothing but water... yet he didn't. That he lost soil could be an issue as well.