Category Archives: Science 9

My environmental Interactions


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In our class, we were asked to do a blog post about an examination of our  interactions with the environment, with its positive and negative effects. Here is a list with all of them.


Wasting food:

In my house, we do not waste food, usually, if we dont finish it, we keep it on the fridge so that the next day we can finish it. For me, it only has 1 positive effect if we waste it, and is that if we waste food like fruits, like the banana peel, potatoes, vegetable remains, fruit, leaves, yogurts and expired juices, oil, coffee grounds and infusions, natural wood sawdust, ashes, newspaper clippings, roots and plants other than natural grass ….
Try to make a mixture of debris, if you add a good amount of, say natural grass, mix it with the above. If, on the other hand, it has contributed remnants of several products, it does not have to be removed. Once a week the upper layer should be removed, some tips are that you should plan wha you are going to eat. It can help as a compost for the grass. But you cant throw everything, its just some specific food, and not too often. But some consequences are that you are wasting money, time, and also you are generating more trash. The food produced and not ingested swallows a volume of water equivalent to the annual flow of the Volga River in Russia; Produce 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the planet’s atmosphere.

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Using lights:

At my house, we always shut the lights off when not in use. Also, all of our lights bulbs are energy conservating bulbs. I think that its an energy waste and we are also doing disruption of ecosystems. Its not only air and water around us that are polluted, even the lightaround us is polluted.

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Using plastic bags:

Plastic products are everywhere. We use them every day in our homes, schools, offices, and during our travels in between places. Our modern world has become so dependent on the convenience of mass-produced, readily available plastic products — like disposable bags, bottles, and cups  Usually, when we go shopping, I should be honest but with my family we use a lot of bags, and for us is normal, and we do not think about the consequences. And honestly the only one that remind us to bring reusable bags is my mom, and even if she tells us we always forget it.  And the problem is that plastic debris accumulates persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like PCBs and DDT at high concentrations. Many of these pollutants are known endocrine disruptors. Also, plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade – breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits.

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Automobile travel:

I always take the bus or walk to school every single day, and its really weird when my parents drive me to school. Also, we only have 1 car for our family, because we know the damage that it does  to the climate change, to the earth. The cars  are very useful & helpful to the human in the life , They can transport the people to important places such as the work , the hospitals & the schools , but they can also pollute & ruin the environment. The thing is that, nobody really cares about the consequences. The cars emit the greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxid which contribute to the global warming, and the cars cause two types of pollution discharged which are the exhaust emissions that include the dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide , oxides of nitrogen , hydrocarbons and particulates , and the evaporative emissions that are the vapours of fuel which are released into the atmosphere  without being burnt .

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We should pay more attention to the things we do, and try to think about its consequences to the spheres, to the earth. If we dont stop now, then when?

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Engineering Brightness-CBL

My experience

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First, I wanted to say that this project made me improve some skills that I did not know i had. For example, contacting people and getting feedback, contacting people that are in the Dominican Republic and working with them, or even contacting people from a company! I learned a lot about real science, and what we can do with that, and that if we want to accomplish our goals, we need to work hard and there’s a lot of different stages to complete. Now I see that we do not only learn science just because we have to, but to take life skills from what we learn.  And something really important that I learned was that failures are the stepping stones for success. Failures are part of our life and if we dont fail, we dont learn, and if you dont learn, you will never change.

My experience:

CBL – Engineering Brightness Proposal


One of the things that I did was contacting with Liter of Light.  Liter of Light is a global, grassroots movement committed to providing affordable, sustainable solar light to people with limited or no access to electricity. Through a network of partnerships around the world, Liter of Light volunteers teach marginalized communities how to use recycled plastic bottles and locally sourced materials to illuminate their homes, businesses and streets. Liter of Light has installed more than 350,000 bottle lights in more than 15 countries and taught green skills to empower grassroots entrepreneurs at every stop. When we contacted them, a sir called Nico helped us telling us some advises, they told us what their campaign is all about. They also sent us a manual with the instructions for doing a LED light with solar panels and plastic bottles. Here it is :

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Then, I started working on some fundraising, and so with my partner on a video with some interviews to people from the Dominican Republic, thats why we asked Eladio and Dennis for some footage, bute they didnt answer because they were on a break, so we are still waiting for that video.  But even like that, we still continued working on it. It was hard though, waiting for emails and answers, because when contacting with people from different country is difficult, they are not next to you to discuss better, but it was okay.

I feel like we didnt have a lot of time for testing some projects we had, like the designs for LED lights, and some fairs that we wanted to do at the school. But, we learned a lot about the Dominican Republic and about what we can do with all the things we learn in class.  This project was actually really fun and stressful at the same time, but I definitely loved it.  I think that I am going to still working on my goals, that I havent finished at all. For example, as I said before, test my designs. I think that the collaboration went pretty well! We did almost everything on our list, and if it wasnt because of time, I think that we would be done.

We aim to improve the quality of life of vulnerable families through the lighting. To meet this goal we have thought of working with LED lights, solar energy and fundraising.

Sources for images:

How do cells multiply?









Asexual Reproduction:


1. Parent individual


3.The star will regenerate the lost arm

4.Of the fragment a new star will appear (replica)


The process by which a living being generates another living being of the same species. A form of reproduction that occurs without the fusion of sexual cells. In other words, it generates offspring that is identical to a single parent. There is many different types of asexual reproduction, such as binary fission (throat bacteria), budding (hydra, sponge), fragmentation (sea star), vegetative reproduction (strawberry, potatoes), or spore formation (fungi, bacteria).

Binary Fission: single cell splits in identical copies.

Budding: where a new individual develops from some generative anatomical point of the parent organism.

Fragmentation: a piece of organism or cell breaks and the piece grows again like a clone of the parent.

Vegetative Reproduction: specific cells that develop to structures that forms a new plant like the parent.

Spore Formation: single cell that grows and changes to a different organism.


1.) Energy is not required to find a mate

2.) Large colonies are produced

3.) Many offspring are produced

4.) Diversity facilitates the adaptation of the species to environmental changes.

Disadvantages :

1.) Offspring are genetic clones susceptible to the same disease.

2.) Unfavourable conditions can wipe out entire colonies

3.) Some offspring that are close together compete for food and space

Sexual Reproduction :

 Sexual reproduction is when two parents produce offspring that have genetic characteristics from both of them. Sexual reproduction requires the intervention of two individuals (the parents), being of different sexes. The offspring produced as will be the result of the combination of the DNA of both parents and, will be different from them.  In this type of reproduction two haploid cells originated by meiosis, the gametes, that are united during the fertilization. Gametes are the ones that carry all the genetic information to each generation.


1.) It removes bad genes from the population.

2.) More genetic variation species.

3.) Able to produce more offspring because of mate.

Disadvantages :

1.) It requires two parents, a male and a female.

2.) It produces fewer offspring than asexual reproduction.

3.) It requires energy and time, slower reproduction rate.

Mitosis and Meiosis

There is two different process on which the cells divide from the chromosomes,  one is mitosis and the other is meiosis.

What is Meiosis?

Meiosis consists of two successive divisions, meiosis I and meiosis II, and its process is like PMAT, but twice. Is the basis for sexual reproduction. It requires two parents. Basically,meiosis is the production of gametes that contain half the number of chromosomes from a body cell. Each body cell has 46 chromosomes, where half come from the father and half from the mother. We call these cells HAPLOID. The difference from mitosis is that in Meiosis, it creates a variation on the species. As I said before, there is two phases o meiosis: meiosis I and meiosis II. Now I am going to explain the phases of meiosis I and meiosis II.

Meiosis I

images from :

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What is Mitosis?

Mitosis is the process that produces two identical daughter cells from one parent cell. Mitosis is used in asexual reproduction. Also Mitosis is one of the shortest phases of cell cycle, why? It only consists on prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase. And it is a duplication of a cell and all of its parts. It duplicates the DNA.

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What is the difference between Mitosis and Meiosis?

Mitosis is a method of cloning; from a progenitor cell we obtain two descendant cells with the same genetic information and equal to the genetic information of the progenitor cell. In meiosis, four daughter cells genetically different from each other, and different from the progenitor cell, are the basis of sexual reproduction.

How do organisms grow:

Lets start with the basics, Mating is the process by which gametes arrive in the same place at the same time, there are 2 main types of fertilization: Internal, where the sperm and egg unite inside the body of parents. External, where sperm and egg unite outside body of parents. Some methods of fertilization are that there must be enough nutrients for the dividing embryo, and temperature must be warm enough so protients and enzymes still function properly during chemical reactions in developing embryos. Pollination is the transfer of pollen to a plant for fertilization, its transfered by bees, buterflies, moths. The embryo develops in the female part. Now we have embryonic development, and is when the embryo is formed and develops.It has 4 stages: cleavage, patterning, differentiation and growth.

Here is a briefly example of how organisms grows in butterflies.

living things grow and develop



Extra Info:

1.) How does the cell differ between plants and animals? In plants, a cell plate forms between the daughter cells.

2.) The cell needs to have enough nutrients, DNA must be replicated, and DNA should not be damaged to go through the cell cycle.

3.) The life of a cell is divide in 3 stages: interphase, mitosis, and cytokinesis.

4.) What is the difference between reproduction cloning and therapeutic cloning? Well, the purpose of reproduction cloning is to make a genetic duplicate of an existing organism or a dead organism. And the purpose of therapeutic cloning is to correct problems of health, like diabetes, Parkinsons disease, or spinal injuries.

5.) The purpose of DNA replication is to make an identical copy of DNA, and its process its like this. The DNA molecule unwinds, enzymes separate the DNA molecule, each side of the ladder is a template on which a new side forms, and finally, the new bases pair with the bases of the original DNA,

6.) Cancer cell growth has large abnormal nucleus, they move to new locations, and they are unspecialized.

7.) The cell cycle has 3 stages: interphase, mitosis and cytokinesis, and its just about division and duplication of the cell.

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After doing this post and doing this review, I think that it helped me understand better what we were doing and how interesting is mitosis, meiosis, asexual and sexual reproduction, how cells grow, and how it all connects! At the very beggining I was really confused, but now I do understand a lot more. I also think that it was really good watching all the videos and doing the activites with the posters, that helped me a lot to understand better.But I would like to learn a little bit more about how organisms grow, like, get more detailed information.






Mutation Story


Mutation Story
Hi, I’m Marfan. I’m the gene inside Annie’s body. Annie has always been very, very thin. Her ribs are larger than normal, she has problems with her spinal curvature and extremities considerably longer than the average and with equally long and thin fingers. Her face is narrow and long, and her chest that sinks or protrudes. Annie also has vision problems caused by a dislocated lens (ectopia lentis) in one or both eyes and defects in the large blood vessel that distributes blood from the heart to the rest of the body (the aorta). The aorta can weaken and stretch, which may lead to a bulge in the blood vessel wall (an aneurysm). Stretching of the aorta may cause the aortic valve to leak, which can lead to a sudden tearing of the layers in the aorta wall (aortic dissection). Aortic aneurysm and dissection can be life threatening. But I have something in particular: I do not affect Annie’s intelligence in any way and although their manifestations are somewhat atypical, I am one of the most common genetic syndromes. I am a strange connective tissue disease of the body that affects and causes various changes in bone structures, eyes, lungs and blood vessels, among other things, and it is not my intention to hurt Annie, but that is what I do, for that I was created. It was all caused by defects in a gene called fibrillin-1. This gene plays an important role as a fundamental pillar for the connective tissue in the body. The defect in the gene also causes excessive growth of the long bones of the body. People with this problem ( Annie ) have high stature and long legs and hands. I still do not know how the form of this exaggerated growth occurs. In most cases, I am passed down from parent to child (hereditary). However, up to 30% of patients do not have a family history, which is called “sporadic”, and this is the case Annie. In sporadic cases, it is believed that the syndrome is caused by a new genetic change.  Advances have been made in the early diagnosis and treatment of Marfan syndrome. It’s now possible for Annie who have Marfan syndrome to live longer and enjoy a good quality of life. Because Annie was properly diagnosed and treated, she may live an average lifespan.

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-What are the main symptoms of Marfan syndrome?
-What is the treatment that one should follow when having a certain syndrome?
-What are the main characteristics of a person with Marfan syndrome?
-How do you get Marfan syndromes?
-Affects this syndrome on the child’s learning?                                                                                                                                  -How long do you live if you have Marfan syndrome?


I got all the information from the following sites

CBL – Engineering Brightness Proposal



Two weeks ago, we had a Skype chat with Eladio, Dennis, and their students Eduardo and Paulo in the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo. We learned about light poverty and their living conditions.

Last week, we also had a Skype chat with Ian Fogarty and his class, from New Brunswick. They helped us a lot by answering some questions we had about the lights that they made. They taught us more about what materials to use and which ones not to. They clarified our questions and ideas.

Some of the information that we got from the first Skype chat was: 1/3 of the population in tne Dominican Republic has access to electricity, the communities have 3-4 hours of access to electricity . Private schools use technology as much as we do, but in Public Schools they only use books, no electricity, and sometimes ,  you can see a teacher with one computer in the class, but it’s an old one, it doesn’t really work, what makes education for the kids even worst. Then, with the students from New Brunswick, we learned what materials to use and what not to, and specific information for our projects, like where to buy all our materials, what do we need, what is better, etc.

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So, with my partner ,  We were thinking about working with solar power, because it’s safer and easier to charge the light, we also thought that it’s really interesting and trying new stuff. We are now connecting with a company called Liter of Light to get some ideas, advices.



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here’s their link :

Here’s also a screenshot from our message sent to Eladio and Dennis. We have asked them a few of questions about their ideas, and ours, and we have talked about our foundraising video.

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We are also going to do a fundraising to raise some money, and for the fundraising we are going to be doing a video with some interviews to people from the DominicanRepublic .  We are now thinking about designs for LED lights.

Help us. Help them.


image’s link:


Currents from the kitchen

Current Electricity


The strawberries will generate the most amount of voltage because they are acidic.

More acidic fruit= more hydrogen ions = more charge carriers.


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Our dependent variable was the voltage, how much voltage the fruit will produce.

Our independent variable was the fruits, where we used apples, kiwis, grapes, strawberries.

Our controlled variables were same size, and weight, same type of nails and wires, the environment

After we checked the final results, we saw that the kiwi produced the most amount of voltage, and I was really impressed by this. We then saw that the strawberries gave a negative number, but it was because every time you change the wires, the signs do. We then forgot that we didn’t had the same size for each fruit, what might have done some changes to the results. Because the fruits didn’t had the necessary energy to make the bulb light up, we weren’t able to make the bulb light up, to find out if electrons were flowing we just checked the voltage meter. Also, to make this work we had to do a series circuit. We think that to improve the experiment we should use the same size and weight for the fruits. We could use this for our everyday life, how? Well, you can make an emergency battery, just make sure you have a lot of fruits to do it.


The kiwi created the most amount of voltage. We didn’t tried the lemon, but I wish we could because it seemed to be the best in the class.

This is how it works

I did some research about the topic, and the fruits batteries work because the acid in the fruit acts as the electrolyte but the energy itself comes from the difference in potential between the two electrodes. The Zinc is oxidized inside the fruit|vegetable, exchanging some of its electrons in order to reach a lower state, releasing electrons which pair up with the hydrogens ions to form hydrogen gas. The electrons will then flow through the wires towards the copper plate, giving it a small negative charge, which in turn, attracts the positively charged hydrogen ions. The most noticeable effect is that the hydrogen bubbles will be produced around the copper rather than around the zinc, which tends to be saturated with positively charged zinc ions. The lemon merely provides an environment where this can happen, but they are not used up in this process.

I got some information from this sites



SSEP Reflection

Define: In our groups, we wanted to know what would be the effect of bacteria in microgravity, and if it would be the same as the one on earth.
We did some research to some groups that have participated before in the SSEP, then we did a review of them and got some new ideas, we learned about how the process would go, and what we had to do.
Then we did some brainstorms in our groups to know what biological, chemical or physical system we would like to explore with gravity seemly turned off for a period of time, as a means of assessing the role of gravity in that system. We thought that bacteria would be a great system to explore and learn.
Design and Deliver
We searched through a lot of websites to know more about the topic and to learn more about bacteria, we also tried to contact a specialist in bacteria, but we couldn’t contact him, so we did some experiments with bacteria from the sink, the phone, the table and the floor. Then we wrote our proposal to submit to the SSEP committee.
We think that maybe we could have used more time to do the proposal and examine what we wrote. And maybe we could have done contact with previous groups that have participated in the SSEP before.