Bird Courtshipping (Bio)

In Biology we've started learning about animal behaviours. One of the behaviours we are learning about is courtship behaviour. For this, I will be going over the King of Saxony's courtship behaviour as a bird of paradise. 

Courtship - is a behavioural feature in animals such as birds either dance, build or sing to attract a potential mate 

For these birds of paradise what females find attractive are their head feathers
So the longer the head feathers the more likely they are to find a mate and increase their reproductive success rate which in the end benefits them. These head feathers however have no other use other than being an ornament for attracting a mate. 

However, to even attract the attention of a female so she can get a good look at his head feathers, these males birds will perch themselves on a forest canopy in exploded leks and sing to attract the attention
of a female who could be a potential mate.  

Other than having these head feathers to find a mate, these feathers have no other benefits to these birds as they do not increase survival chances for the bird.

Health - Creating a hero

 Term 2 week 2 of health was diving into the Ethical approach, in doing so we were told to create a hero that represents a ethical approach for me and my friend's hero we did the ethical approach of Virtue.


The definition of an ethical approach is as follows: An Ethical Principle is a RULE or FOUNDATION that guides a person or group's thinking about ethical matters. Ethical principles get to the heart of people's attitudes, values and beliefs and therefore are a useful framework (That reflects the underlying concepts of HEE).

Our ethical approach of virtue is an ethical approach that focuses on attitudes or character traits that enable us to be and to act in ways that develop our human potential, it causes us to ask whether our actions are reflective of the kind of person we want to be.

Our hero demonstrates our ethical approach of virtue via the scales that help him to evaluate whats the best way to go about helping the woman who is being robbed

Potatools - Biology

In Biology were learning about human evolutions so how we started out as apes and involes into what we are now. The main thing we were learning out today was the tools that were made by our ancestors and how they were made and how they used them and what they were used for.

To learn about how they made the tools we decided to actually try making the tools like they would have back then, but instead of using rocks due to health and safety issues we used potatos and knives to shape our potatools. 

Below is a poster that was made showing our potatools and information about the potatools from that specific aera of time.

Biology - Human Evolution

 In Lvl 3 Biology, we are learning about human evolution from its old days millions of years ago to now. We've been given the task today to find an article about human evolution and put down what it was talking about and its key points.

For this, I used this article -->Lucy

This article goes over the first half-formed found body fossils of a past ancestor of ours. Lucy's bones were discovered in 1974, and the rest of what remaining fossils of her body were also dug up.
Lucy's Bones

This article about Lucy goes over the small things on how they knew she was a female, which species of ape she belonged to and if Lucy was the missing link to the ancestry between humans and apes. 

The scientists who discovered Lucy's fossils bones knew they belonged to one species of monkey alone and not another because her fossils fragments belonged to more than one individual. Then more fossil bones of probably the same body parts would have been found twice, this, however, was not the case. At the beginning of finding Lucy's bones, so it was hypothesized that she was a female due to her small size. And to the fact that living primates during Lucy's time had sexual dimorphism where the females were largely shorter than the males. Making it seem clear that the dug-up bones were that of a female instead of a male. Later down the line they figured out her height through her femur and learnt that she ended up being around 104 to 106 cm's in height.

Lucy would be considered half of a link, but not a missing link between apes and humans, she is more of an intermediate link between humans and apes, as there were other apes older in age way before her, so in conclusion she is only a small half of the bigger link towards humans and apes.

Connections - week 1 (Of connections)

For our second English assessment of the year and term 2 were doing connections, we recently finished watching Blade Runner 2049, and reading Klara and the sun. And lastly watching Gattaca. 
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Klara and the sun
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Locate 3-5 new vocabulary words in the articles and define them. Uncanny - A being beyond what is normal or expected Mysophobic - An irrational or disproportionate fear of germs and contamination Benevolent - Well-meaning and Kind, E.g Enjoying helping others. Circumscribed - Subject to limits or subjected to limits. Also means being limited in things to do.

According to the articles, what important themes/ideas do Klara and the sun raise? Answer in complete sentences, with accompanying explanations as necessary.

The themes portrayed in Klara and the sun are Loneliness, relationships, and love.

Loneliness - The children in Klara and the sun unlike us don't go to school physically where they can play with their friends and meet new people, the children in Klara and the sun go to school by staying at home and using technology to learn. This leaves children feeling lonely, the child at the target point being Josie. Klara the AF, her point in life is not to babysit Josie or be a servant but to be a companion to Josie till she reaches college.

Relationships - Throughout the story of Klara and the sun, we meet Klara's only friend, 'Rick' Unlike Josie he isn't lifted but that doesn't stop Josie from being friends with him. Throughout the story, we also find out that Josie once had a sister who sadly died. And that Josie's father and mother weren't on good terms so went their separate ways.

Love - The theme of love throughout Klara and the sun isn't that noticeable but is still there. During the middle of the book, we are told that Josie has the same illness as her sister that indefinitely ended up killing her. This led to Josie becoming significantly sick and unable to function or move. A part in the book that shows the theme of love is when Josie's mother goes up to Josie and tells the sick child that if Josie wants she will willingly quit her job and spend time with Josie. Quitting one's job for someone else is a show of affection itself especially when the job pays richly.

Locate another article about Klara and the sun and record something new that you learned after reading it. Link the article in your post.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/kazuo-ishiguro-klara-and-the-sun/618083/ Its a small detail that I didn't know but I think as really neat as it explains Klara a bit. Klara's name as Ishiguro picked means brightness. I feel that goes well with the personality she has, it also goes well with the fact that the sun is bright and that she's looking out for the sun and praying to it in hope that it'd help Josie and give Josie help like the sun gave the beggar man and his dog help. Klara's personality goes well with the meaning of her name, she's carefree, cheerful, intelligent/bright, but is also observant.

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Klara and the sun & Blade Runner 2049

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What connection can you draw so far between klara and the sun and blade runner 2049? For example Themes/ideas, characters, relationships, style, etc?

A few connections that I could make between Klara and the sun and Blade runner 2049 are that both are Futuristic, have robots or AI involved and both show discrimination. Another connection between these two is 'What is love?'

Futuristic - Both Blade Runner and Klara and the sun are both set in the near future where technology is more advanced and capable of becoming human-like.

Robots - In Blade Runner Humanoid robots people called replicants who act very much like humans are introduced to us. In Klara and the sun were introduced to Klara an artificial intelligent robot (AI)

Discrimination - In both Blade runner and Klara and the sun, both Replicant and AI are discriminated by a variety of people in the movie and the book. Due to them being advanced in technology and taking other people's jobs.

What is love - Both show the theme of it's not what's inside, it's about how many people love you, it's about who you are as a person.

Hos your understanding of what it means to be human/have personhood changed since studying these texts? How so?

My understanding so far hasn't changed on what it means to be human/have personhood since studying these texts, because I've already watched a couple other movies like these and they nearly share the same thing. So it's got kinda repetitive in a way. Plus I know that to be human and have personhood you have to have your own personality and your own sense of will, as well as the ability to think for yourself. That's personhood, the ability to make your own choices and to think for yourself and feel for yourself.

And If I ever meet someone like Klara, I'd feel happy that she has her own personhood in a way that works for her. And K who didn't at first, but did in the end. I wouldn't still feel different about personhood after meeting them, cause I've already watched or read things about people like K and Klara, people who can't think for themself or have their own feelings, but in the end or throughout the movie or story they all in some way learn how to feel or think for their self.

Klara and the Sun (Book)

Blade Runner 2049

Biology - Osmosis

Thursday 26th May 2022 

Today in Biology we did an experiment on Osmosis.
This started with grabbing 3 beakers and filling them up each to the same amount so each beaker had about 150m of water in them. 2 of our beakers had to be filled up with either sugar or salt while the 3rd beaker was left with just the plain water when we stuck the sugar and salt in their separate beakers we stir them till it looks dissolved, then we go and get 3 gummy bears, one gummy bear for each beaker. 

Osmosis - A term used to describe a special type of diffusion. Osmosis is the movement of water from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration.

Hyper Tonic - High Concentration 
Hypo Tonic - Low Concentration
IsoTonic - Equal Concentration

Hypothesis - I think that the gummy bear will be a Hypo Tonic which means it will have a high concentration. I think this is because Osmosis has a semi-permeable membrane, which means that only certain liquids and gasses can exit and enter through the membrane. It will have a high concentration because Glucose is a larger molecule and won't be gained entry to the membrane which means that the molecules within the first beaker will still be within where they started. I think the 2nd beaker which has the salt will be a high concentration as well like the sugar because like glucose it's a larger molecule and particularly needs more help to get through the membrane and because Osmosis is semi-permeable it's likely entry for salt will not be granted. By this, I'm thinking that both gummy bears by the end will still be their regular small size.

I think the last beaker, the beaker with nothing but plain water will be Isotonic, with equal concentration, this is because there is no other molecule to interrupt what is already in the beaker. therefore the water molecules are at an equal concentration on both sides of the membrane, and the movement of the water will be the same in both directions, making them equal. This means that I think the gummies will be in the medium size not small but not too big either.

CONCLUSION
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Friday 27th May 2022

Its been a day since we stuck 3 gummies bears in 3 different beakers, one with sugar, one with salt, and one with just plain water. Today we poured out the water and stuck our gummies bears on a sheet of toweling paper. Out of one of my hypotheses I only got one right, I said that the gummies bear in beaker 2, the gummy bear that was stuck into salt and water didn't grow an inch and stayed its regular packaged gummy bear size. This tells me that gummy 2 was indeed hypotonic.

For Gummy 1 the gummy we stuck into sugar and water, which grew massively in size. Meaning that it's hypertonic and not a hypo tonic. due to having a higher concentration than the gummy bear that was hypotonic and also being much larger in size than the hypotonic gummy bear.

The last beaker, beaker 3 was the beak with just water in it, the results of that were odd. The gummy had grown in size but it wasn't as large as the gummy stuck in sugar. when taking the water gummy bear out of the beaker it broke in half, but when we took the sugar one out it stayed intact. Like gummy 1 it's also hypertonic and not as I thought an Isotonic. When comparing Gummy 1 (Sugar) to gummy 3 (Water), Gummy 3 is a hypertonic, and Gummy 1 is a hypotonic this is because Gummy 3 lysed, and broke in half which means gummy 3 took in more water than it could handle, compared to gummy 1 which was still intact.

School Year

The School years coming to an end soon, so I wanna talk about my year and what my school highlights were for this year. Not much had started at the start of the year so I'll leave that out, I'll move to subjects. I have to admit my favorite subjects this year were Science, PE and Health. I personally before this year didn't really like PE, but when I took it this year because I wanted to get fitter I actually began to enjoy the class, I had a few good friends in there which made the class even much more fun, and I had a great and understanding teacher, which I felt made the class a lot better. I enjoyed Science, because I pretty much always enjoyed doing science each year cause science is just my thing. My favorite subjects on science were Bio and Chem, I enjoy Bio because I get to learn about the human body and I'm future years I'll get to do more Dissection's which I enjoy doing. I like Chemistry but didn't know much about it or even understand it till I began doing it this year, thankfully I know understand Chemistry a lot more better than before which makes the subject much more enjoyable, my favorite part of chemistry is playing with all of the chemicals and seeing the reactions they make.

And Health, I picked health this year because it was a class I looked forward to like the other two classes. I enjoy health cause I get learn about new interesting things and the teacher was great so it was much more easier to understand the class and enjoy it. In my opinion what makes a subject you don't like better is the teacher, I didn't use to like Math till I got my math teacher for this year, he made me like math a lot this year, each week I would wait for math because he was funny and just made math seem a lot more easier to understand which was very helpful as I'm not that typically good at math.

So over my year most of my highlights were based in these subjects, I also had a few good funny moments in English, which made a few of my highlights for this year. I find English kind of hard so having the English teacher I do now that's willingly to sit down with me and help me with my work made me really happy as I thought I'd right out fail English all together this year.

But I've had an overall good year this year and I cant wait to see what happens next year.