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For my "What If" I chose to focus on what life in the United States would be like if Chief Justice Fred Vinson had not died of a heart attack during the Brown V. Board trial. To show life in the US during this time I chose to portray life through the diary of a public high school student from Atlanta Georgia. I envisioned that during this time period, segregation wouldn't be so much of an issue, but things such as jobs and public schools would remain segregated especially in the south. 

What I liked most about this project is how much "imagination" and creativity you have to put into it. For instance, there is no right answer to how you envision life to be like if a key event didn't occur. To see different people's perspectives on some of the same points of divergences is also very interesting. This project causes you to think outside of the box and realize how such small changes in different incidents can drastically change how life is now in the United States. Although this was the most intriguing part of the project, I also found this to be the most challenging as well. Essentially this project is asking us to find a point in history that would change present day life. It's very hard to grasp the concept of a world different than the one that we are so familiar with now. 

I found it interesting how something so unexpected can potentially change the course of history forever. For instance by keeping Justice Fred Vinson alive, the Brown V. Board case was lost. I chose to make this the outcome because while Vinson was still alive the jury was leaning more toward that direction. By making such a subtle change, schools in 2012 (in my opinion) would remain segregated. Of course there would be more cases, complaints, and protests on the topic but I feel like judges would constantly refer back to this trial, similar to how the used the Plessy V. Furgeson case. 

If I could do this project over I would find more ways to get my point of Divergence across, or to make it more clear within the project and not just in the reflection. Another thing I wanted to do was create a documentary of the teenage girl (Liz). However, time was an issue so I just took the potential script and turned it into a firsthand account diary. 

My point of divergence was having Hitler dying from injuries he sustained in WW1 instead of losing a testicle like he actually did. The way I went about made the world change and excluded many of the really important events of the 1930-1940s. With Hitler gone, the Nazi Party never gains much power but instead the former central power countries (Germany, Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) decide since they've lost so much as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, they should form a new empire with what they have. In doing this, the new empire is able to combine their remaining militaries and begin to take back the countries created from that said treaty. Eventually they conquer all of Europe and then the US. They were able to do this because the U.S. was in a state of turmoil because The Great Depression. Concerning America, any form of independence is lost once again, and America falls under another country's rule, much like the 1700's. A european influence is much more profound in present-day America. 

I really did enjoy this project but at the same it was very stressful for me at certain points. Finding and creating the sources was fairly easy but putting them all together into a coherent project was really difficult. I felt like I was always leaving out a portion of history that seem vital to my project. Although on the other hand, I got to explore the causes of WW1, something I didn't really know. I learned that the catalyst for WW1 was assassination of the prince of the Austria-Hungary Empire: Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian Slavic Nationalist Gavrilo Princip. His death caused the empire of Austria-Hungary to declared was on Serbia, sparking WW1. It certainly shows that an individual's actions can effect history greatly. He didn't suspect Austria-Hungary to start an all out war, he simply doing what he felt his people needed. With the central powers combined they had no problems taking out defenseless countries. 

I feel like this project could be really interesting if the scope of what 2011 would be like was a lot more global. I feel like if we didn't have to connect it back to America we can show how the entire world has been affected as well. If I were given the chance to re-do this project, I definitely would make my final product a lot more visual and interactive. I'd try to immerse the person looking at it into the history was created. 

For my 10 percent project I did research on SLINKYS! Cool stuff. 

My presentation is on physics in the performing arts. I wanted to do something that displays both the power of physics in the modern world, as well as a topic that I'm somewhat interested in.

I wanted to display to the class how one with interests that seem far from the world of physics incorporate physics into their daily lives.

Click below for the presentation!

Bailamos a "Waka Waka"! 

For my 10% project, I focused on the evolution of birds. I made a video with Alice showing what a future bird species may look like after evolving to a new environment, compared with species of the past and present. The background includes an exaggeration of a future city after global warming caused water levels to rise worldwide. Modern amenities are included in the video to illustrate the immense size of the animals in question when compared with present objects. I have pictures of past, present, and future birds on a Keynote that compliments my video (seen directly below).

Since the world is gradually warning, I determined that future bird species would be larger than current ones. I came to this conclusion because birds in the tropics (like macaws), tend to be larger than birds native to cooler regions (like robins).

The Alice video is shown below the slides.

This is my project on Physics used in Forensic Science. 

The following presentation is based on the 8 major biomes of the world and 8 specific animals who adapted to each biome. 

Here is my 10 % Project. You can locate the video of my project on Youtube at:

bit.ly/KFlInH

Hope you enjoy! :)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2243045/Bridges.key

Dream Presentation Notes

Slide 1:

Title

Slide 2:

Ask Class Questions,

Has anyone in this room ever dreamed?

What do you think is happening when you are dreaming?

Have you ever woken up and not remembered your dream?

Slide 3:

Define dreams and basic science

As I'm sure you know, people dream while they're sleeping. But the kind of dream you have depends on what stage of sleep you are in. There are 4 sleep stages, divided into two categories, Rapid Eye Movement and Non-rapid Eye Movement. 

NREM has three sub divisions, Stage N1, Stage N2, and Stage N3. Stage N1 is the lightest stage and occurs when you are just barely unconscious. This is when you may twitch and have dream-like hallucinations. In Stage N2 all conscious of the external world vanishes. In many adults this stage takes up a majority of sleeping time. Stage N3 is when sleep becomes deep and harder to interrupt. Though dreams sometimes occur in these stages, dreams from the REM stage are most likely to be remembered. 

REM sleep accounts for approximately 25% of sleeping time. In this stage, sleep paralysis occurs. Sleep paralysis is needed in this stage because this is when the vivid and memorable dreams occur. 

In one study it was shown that different types of dreams were shown in different sleep stages. People were monitored while sleeping and woken up in different  stages of sleep. When people were woken up from Stage N2 or 3 and given a paper that required them to fill in blanks in sentences, people tended to write words with a positive connotation. When people were awoken in the middle of REM, the words they wrote had a negative connotation. 

Slide 4:

Sleep Paralysis

In REM sleep, you have the most vivd dreams, and to protect your body, your brain causes you to go into a state of paralysis. This natural occurrence only becomes a problem when you wake up while your body is still paralyzed. Sleep paralysis can also be to blame for "alien abductions" due to an acute sense of danger and hallucinations that occur in sleep paralysis. 

Sleep Walking

Sleep walking often occurs during slow wave sleep (stage N3 or N4). Though while sleep walking your eyes are open, you are completely unconscious. Usually sleep walking does not cause any major problems but it can be quite dangerous. People sleepwalking have been known to cook, drive, violent behavior, and in the more extreme cases, homicide. 

Nightmares

Nightmares, in a very basic sense are just dreams with a negative tone. They are dreams that cause fear and sometimes cause people to wake violently. Nightmares sometimes occur due to physical problem, such as an uncomfortable sleeping position, having a fever, or even stress and anxiety.

Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreams are dream in which the person known they're dreaming but does not wake up. Though sometime people just find themselves in lucid dreams with no preparation, there are many techniques to force a lucid dream. People try to have lucid dreams because it allows the dreamer to do anything they want. It is not quite understood why all dreams are not lucid. 

Slide 5:

Cultural Significance

Common Dreams

There are many dreams that thousands of people have claimed to have, such as teeth falling out, being naked, being chased, fling dreams, falling dreams, and dreams where you are taking a test. 

Dream Interpretation

Though these are not hard facts but for centuries many cultures have used to dreams to forecast the future or give insight about something going on in the person's life currently. Teeth dreams are often associated with anxiety about one's physical appearance. Being spontaneously naked in public while dreaming has been known to mean that you feel vulnerable, shameful, or that you are hiding something that you fear being revealed. There are millions of experiences and objects that can be present in a dream and they can all be interpretted differently. 

Citations:

Hoss, Robert J.. "Science of Dreaming." Dreamscience. N.p., 2005. Web. Jun 2012. <http://dreamscience.org/idx_science_of_dreaming.htm>.

. "Sleep Science." Sleep Science. N.p., n.d. Web. Jun 2012. <http://sleep.science.mma.edu.ph/>.

. "Stages of Sleep." WebMD. N.p., n.d. Web. Jun 2012. <http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10/sleep-101>.

. "Content Analysis Explained." Dreamsearch. N.p., n.d. Web. Jun 2012. <http://www2.ucsc.edu/dreams/Info/content_analysis.html>.

For my 10% Project, I created an electronic shirt that lights up when different combinations of the letters are pressed. It is more of a visual project but below I have created a slideshow to document my process. My project was successful since I managed to make my shirt light up in various patterns.

Enjoy....

I decided to learn the physics behind human teleportation. 

Click here

Physics of Running. 

I did my 10% project on thermal energy, which is just another term for heat. My project thoroughly explains the meaning of the word “heat,” and shows examples of how it is present in our everyday lives.

Click here.

My project is about the history of scientific theories. This means that it's about what scientists believed as true over time. The main theories that I'm focusing on are ones there were held to be true, but then discovered to be false. Two very important theories were geocentric theory, and spontaneous generation. I explained how each of these, and 3 more theories were proven false, and how this changed the world. I did this project because I think it's an interesting topic, and think it has to be considered in the future. At the end of the presentation I talk about how this could relate to modern day, and everything that we have learned could be proven wrong.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/44589199/Spanish%20benchmark%20Q4.mov

here is my video 

On this page I made a twitter with interesting physic facts as well as pictures.