Ceeeeelabrate good times, c’mon!!!

What’s the best way to test what you know? To celebrate it of course! In my Physics class, we take “fiestas” rather than quizzes. So naturally, a a test would be called a “celebration!” We recently took one of these celebrations. I’m excited because things have become a bit clearer for me, but I still have room for improvement. My trouble areas were motion maps. I think I have the base idea, but just need to be more precise. I am a perfectionist, so it surprised me that what I most need to work on is precision overall on my test, but I will study nevertheless! My classmate, Zoey, helped me with finding average slopes and displacement. She helped me a ton and I will definitely be more confident on our re-celebration! (Get you a Physics class where you get to celebrate, and then celebrate again🤙🏼)

Practicing for the re-celebration-

I am hoping to create a study group with some of my closest friends, but until then I will go over my notes and test, as well as bug Mr. Battaglia some more about motion maps!! 😂😜

Current Velocity Models-

I’ll admit, I’m feeling very confused with velocity models. A few I am starting to figure out, but some I am still lost on 😬 I’m feeling the best about position vs. time graphs. A close second is velocity vs. time graphs. I’m struggling with motion maps and describing the objects movement in words.  I think I’m feeling confused because I missed the a few classes in the beginning of the lesson because I was sick. I’m confused on where the reference point is on each of the graphs, so I think that adds to it as well.

Fixing Confusion-

In order to become more comfortable, I honestly just need more practice. It takes me a lot of time and concentration to do some of the models and I know I can do better than that. 🙂

Distance, Displacement, Position-

All three terms are used interchangeably, and even have the same units of measurement. So how can we tell the difference? Here’s how I like to think about it…

Distance- How far something travels, like how far between your location and destination in Google Maps.

Displacement- What that something actually traveled, represented by the bread crumbs left behind by Hansel and Gretel. Or the line between two dots in geometry.

Position- Where you are at, in relation to a reference point, like when you are jumping on a trampoline and you are leaving, then coming back to the trampoline. (The trampoline is the reference point)

Speed and Velocity-

These words have the same situation. I like to think of them this way…

Speed- How much distance something traveled in a certain amount of time. It reminds me of when I race friends on waterslides. Each waterslide takes nearly the same time to ride, but one might have more twists or turns than the other, therefore that rider has to go around quicker in order to meet their friend at the bottom.

Velocity- How much something traveled in a certain amount of time in a certain direction. A great way to tell speed and velocity apart is that velocity ALWAYS includes direction. I like to think of it as I’m walking my dog to the corner. We traveled a certain amount of sidewalk squares in a certain amount of time, let’s say going North.

😄

Huh?

Seems silly right? How can you be stuck on an escalator if you can just walk up it? That’s exactly what my class thought when we watched a video about two people riding on an escalator that malfunctioned and stopped working. They simply stood there, complaining about their situation, and waited for a repair man to come. We all started screaming at the screen saying, “Just walk up the escalator!!” It had a simple and obvious solution, and we all got angry at the people in the video for not realizing it, but what we didn’t realize is that we all have been (metaphorically of course😉) stuck on escalators too.

Stuck on an Escalator-

Honestly, this example seems pretty stupid, but the video did too right? Anyway, an escalator situation occurred for me only about a month ago when I was studying for an upcoming French test. I decided that I would put all of my terms into a Quizlet and study them there. So I spent hours putting over 100 terms and definitions into Quizlet, and then had to start studying. After a few rounds in Quizlet I barely made a dent with the amount of terms I had and wasted an entire afternoon. That’s my escalator. What was my simple solution? Write out flashcards instead. It didn’t take nearly as much time, and after looking through the stack a few times, I was more prepared than if I would’ve been if I had studied Quizlet for the rest of the night. What I learned from the experience is, Quizlet, though still a good resource, is only beneficial for a small amount of definition terms, whereas flashcards work in any situation. Guess who be usin flashcards now? 😜

Embracing the Stuck-

Being stuck on an escalator is never good in the moment, but a lot can be learned from it when reflecting upon it afterward.  From now on, when I am spending too much time on an assignment, I realize I need to “process check” myself and form a way to make the process go quicker. Work smarter not harder right? The Learning Trait (We love these IB words 😝❤️) that can most help me with this is Balanced. Gotta balance my time better so I am more efficient and don’t have to take more time doing something than I need to.

Building our Rube Goldberg Machines-

I loved this activity so much! When Mr. Battaglia first announced that we were building Rube Goldberg machines I was kinda dreading it. I was thinking about howe much work they were going to take and how they would most likely fail in the end. (Wow looking back I def had a fixed mindset 😬😂) When we started the process though, I really started to enjoy myself. I worked with a wonderful team of girls and we all agreed on a game plan without any disagreement. We were all diligent on getting new supplies and adding in ideas. Time flew and I couldn’t wait until the final day when we could put all of our ideas into action. I would’ve never been able to come up with our table’s portion of the class machine without them, and they are really what made this so enjoyable for me. 💜 We didn’t have too much failure while testing, but when we did we immediately started to find a way to fix it. This helped me as a learner because we almost ignored the disappointment of our failures and quickly moved on, something I’d like to put into practice because I sometimes tend to dwell on my failures too much.

Me+Energy-

Are we friends? I am feeling pretty confident with the energy types and putting them into pie charts, but am a little hesitant because we don’t know everything there is to know about energy yet. The only energy type that still confuses me is gravitational energy. Does an object still have gravitational energy if it is on a surface? Or just when it is on a non flat surface. During class discussions we confused gravitational energy with gravity so I guess that partially is confusing me…?

Conclusion-

Overall, our Rube Goldberg machine was pretty epic. My table was responsible for the starting portion of the machine, so we had some added pressure to succeed or else the other tables wouldn’t have gotten their chance to shine. We were proud to say upon walking out of class that our table’s portion was the only one that ran without any intervention, and I felt extra special because I got to start off the entire class’s machine by setting up our table’s chemical reaction. Our Rube Goldberg left me jumping around the halls in excitement for sure! 😄

Wow, my fourth blog post already! Time is flying by!! 😆

Failure in My Life-

Just the word failure, almost instantly brings on a depressing mood, right? Makes you feel inadequate and maybe even insignificant. I think everyone has felt this way before, I know I definitely have. Kind of ironic, the topic of the writing portion on the entrance exam for my dream school (which I am currently attending ❤️) was the benefits of failure. I remember writing about one of my personal experiences where I felt I had failed. It was my first time taking the hardest tap class my dance studio offers. This class can only be taken by those in high school and at the time I was in eighth grade, but I had always loved tap and had competed with it before so I asked my studio owner if I could take the class and push myself. The class was more than I could ever expect. I was  already walking in with pressure, being a year younger than everyone. Then my teacher threw complex and mind-blowing tap sequences at us at the speed of light, gave us little time to try to understand, and then added on. I was feeling frustrated, embarrassed and judged. I did my best to understand, but just couldn’t pick it up. I always love giving my teachers a hug after class is finished to show my appreciation to them. So though I knew I did poorly, I walk up to my teacher. I reach out to hug her, and instead of returning it, she startles me by placing her hands on my shoulders. She looks me straight in the eyes, a cold stare, not just because of the unfamiliarity, but her intensity as a teacher, and tells me everything I did wrong. My heart was beating fast and my eyes were tearing up as she rambled off the list of my mistakes. When she was finished she gave me hug, but let me tell you, I could not get out of there fast enough. I hardly held myself together as I took the walk of shame and embarrassment out of the classroom. I grabbed my stuff as quickly as I could, and when I finally got in the car and closed the door behind me is when I let it all go. I was sobbing horribly, from frustration with myself and the situation, from the intensity of everything, the pressure and judgment. Worst of all though, was the disappointment. I was disappointed in myself for sure, but to know that this new teacher I wanted so badly to prove myself to was disappointed in me, crushed me the most. I never wanted to go back. I didn’t want to face my teacher. I didn’t want to compare myself to the other dancers knowing I’d never be as good as them anymore. I didn’t want to be overwhelmed beyond belief. As I cried and cried, my mom did offer me some hope. She reminded me that I was in the class for a reason, and I realized that the opportunity was too special to throw away. She helped me come up with a game plan on how to succeed in the class.

I notice that game plans help me look past the overwhelming stress of my current situation. 

Either my mom or I would videotape my teacher while she was teaching, and would go home and write out every move my teacher made. I studied these before class, and this preparation made me the slightest bit more confident. I knew I could only go up from where I started, so I continued to do my best, and I started seeing improvement. This improvement excited me, and this propelled me to do better, until my teacher started commenting on it. I eventually gained the confidence I needed and finally felt like I belonged. It became my favorite class because of the struggle I overcame.

I learned that preparation brings confidence.

The Importance of Failure-

I guess I really never thought about the importance of failure before this year because I  could only see it as mistake, and not as a learning experience. I’m really excited about the new mindset I am developing this year. It is helping me realize that yeah, you can never change the past or the mistake you made, but you can learn from it, and that improving from failure is possibly more honorable than having it all right the first time. Crazy right? I used to hate failing. It was a terrible feeling. Now I’ve learned that failure is almost kind of, cool. Not that I should fail purposely because you should always put effort into whatever you’re doing, but failure=learning and that is cool. I’m thinking that maybe failure can bring about confidence, just like it did in my tap class. You can walk around and be like, I overcame that. 😄

Failing #Goals-

I believe that the fear of failing stops us from taking risks, extending ourselves to others, and sharing our real thoughts. For me, I can tend to beat myself up about failure. Just replaying the disappointment, embarrassment, and negative outcome of the situation over and over in my head. Upsetting other people makes it worse. (I am a people pleaser, can you tell? 😜) So sometimes I will avoid taking that risk just so that I have the safety of not having any of those feelings. What’s weird though, is that sometimes I regret not taking the risk and get the feelings I originally avoided the risk for! So here’s my goal: stop hating on myself for my failures, and uplift myself by assuring me I know what not to do next time, and that I gave now acquired more learning under my belt. Learning is one of the best feelings for me. ☺️ I think what will help me in this is looking at what I did, and then what I could’ve done, instead of what I could’ve done and then what I did. I believe this will help me see my mistakes and look forward to correcting it in the future instead of beating myself up about what I should’ve/could’ve done.

Conclusions-

Thank you for sticking around this long! Failure is a topic I am becoming very passionate about, which is crazy to think about since I hated it not too long ago. Loving the way my school is giving my this new, wonderful mindset. I think this program may be one of the best things I will have ever done in my lifetime. Anyway, don’t let failure stop you. It’s not worth it. There’s so much you can learn from taking that risk. There’s so much you can learn from just being honest that you don’t know what you’re doing in a situation. Don’t purposely do it, but, there is so much you can learn from failing.

All About Energy-

Energy- is it what makes your car move? Is it what’s in your energy drink? Is it in my lamp? The truth is I don’t know all of the answers to these questions, but am sure to get a lot of information on what energy really is this week in Physics. Before we started digging into what energy means in class, we all wrote down a few things we knew, thought, or remembered about energy. We came up with a whole range of ideas from “caffeine” to “E=mc².” Here are a few of my ideas-

• Potential
• Mechanical
• Light
• Sound

I took Physics last year, so I tried to rack my brain for as many types of energy, formulas, terms and qualities that I could remember. I honestly don’t remember as much as I thought, but am confident my memory will be refreshed once we start discussing energy this week. Though I do slightly worry that I will be expected to know what I’m talking about more than others because they haven’t taken Physics before, and that I won’t remember everything and be as confused as the rest and be hard on myself about it. The experiments we did in class helped to bring back some memory, and I was able to ask questions and come up with ideas on the energy and it’s transfers and such during discussion, which made me excited and a little more confident because usually I have little idea what is going on and do my best to put in input, so it was nice for a change. 😊

Questions, Conclusions, Ideas, and More Questions-

Though I know the basics of energy, I have to know, are there more types of energy that I haven’t learned about? What are they? How is this 9th grade Physics class going to be different from my 8th grade Physics class? Will it be more complex version that builds on the basics I learned in 8th grade? We did a certain activity in class this week where we dropped a basketball from a certain height and studied its bouncing. I knew energy was present because it was obviously moving and not staying in one spot. But when was the energy kinetic and where was it potential? At what exact point does it switch? Is there potential energy is a non-moving object as well? I think that when the basketball is falling that is kinetic energy, but when it bounces up it is storing energy for its next drop and therefore has potential. Then we started to discuss, and others had ideas that haven’t even crossed my mind, leading me to more questions and more thinking. Sound energy was brought up, and I started thinking about sound waves. When the basketball hits the floor, is some energy transferred into the ground prouducing a sound wave to which we hear the sound? Many people said that the sound energy was nonexistent in the basketball as it bounced back up, saying it went into the air or the ground. If it went into the air, wouldn’t we have heard an echo? If it went into the ground, how does that affect the ground, and did the ground transfer energy back? If there is energy transferred back into the basketball is it potential or kinetic? If it is potential when does it turn to kinetic? And finally, where did the basketball get the sound energy from, (internal?) and how is it going to get it back, because the ball makes a sound every time it hits the ground? As you can tell my head is swimming with questions… hopefully so many answers this week to come! Gotta love science! ❤️

Mindsets! We often don’t focus on them, but they are crucial to learning! Having the right mindset can cause us to learn and absorb so much more. What I learned in Physics this week is that we must discover our current mindset first, realize what steps we must take to achieve our ideal mindset, and be committed to taking those steps in order to improve so that we can become better learners.

Mindsets.. What are they?

I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t pay any attention to my mindset. I just assume that I should have a positive attitude, so I focus on that, but everything was put into perspective for me this week.

I learned that there are two types of mindsets one can have- Fixed and Growth

When people have a fixed mindset, they rest in the comfort of knowing what brings them success. They’re often closed off to others’ ideas, and failure is viewed as a negative part of their life. Constructive criticism can be viewed as a personal attack. We can all relate to, or often have, this mindset, because why try something different and challenge yourself if what you know brings you success? In a growth mindset, everything is viewed as a learning experience, even failure. People with growth mindsets still see their opinions as valuable, because they are, but are open to accepting others opinions as well and value them equally to their own. They are grateful for constructive criticism, because it’s a way for them to grow and better themselves. Interesting right? After hearing about these mindsets and learning more about them, I realized that I needed to ask myself…

Which mindset do I have? 

Discovering my mindset-

Isn’t that a scary question? It’s kind of like asking yourself- “Are you ok with admitting to not always challenging yourself for the sake of success?” To answer that question, yes and no. After discovering the two types of mindsets I think to myself, yes, I can definitely see myself doing that in the past, but I have a pretty good growth mindset now, as an eager freshman at an advanced high school. Then I have to further reflect and think, am I just to scared to admit to having a fixed mindset, or am I really on the path to a great growth mindset? To be honest, I don’t really know the answer to that one. What I do know though, is that I’m partially ok with admitting to having a fixed mindset because I want to get better! To me, the first step to getting my ideal mindset is to finding out what areas I have a fixed mindset in, and admitting it to myself so that I can know which areas to work on. The main areas of my life are dancing, school, operating (and hopefully programming soon!) lights at my church, and being a Christian. I definitely have a fixed mindset in dance. I of course want to learn and get better, but sometimes I can get discouraged by those who are better than me or just not having enough time to sink into practicing in order to get better. Plus I’ve been dancing since I was two, so the thought of putting in a ton of effort into something I know I do well in at the level I’m at isn’t very appealing. In school, I honestly think I do have good growth mindset. I am so excited to absorb new knowledge about all of my subjects and just learn to be a good learner! My school also assists me in developing a better growth mindset because we do a lot of collaborative work, so that helps me to be open to others’ opinions, though I really do love and value others opinions because they are either the same as mine, or something completely different that I could’ve never thought of and I think that’s just awesome. Being a freshman also helps because I’m only starting to develop my system of success so there’s no way I would fall in a routine that I could never grow in. Failure is something I will have to work on though, for in previous school years I was so used to success that failure would make me stress out. Growth mindsets cause you to look at failure as a way to learn, and that will be difficult for me to adapt to. Next, lights! Oh how I love my lights. They are a whole new passion for me, and make me so excited. I’m not sure where my mindset is on this one honestly, because I can see aspects for both. I have a fixed mindset because I’m the youngest lights operator in my church, and it makes me feel special, and like that’s something most can’t achieve. I believe I do have a partial growth mindset because I just want to learn, learn, learn all about these lights. I want to push myself and start programming even though it’s really difficult. Lastly, but certainly the most important, being a Christian. I’ll admit, total fixed mindset here. It’s so easy to just go through the motions. I guess what I’m scared of is the effort it will take to get super close with God, and then maintaining that. Wow. I really thought I had more of an overall growth mindset than that. Well, time to get growing!

My next steps-

Alright, now that I’ve admitted to myself that I have a lot of growing to do, it’s time to figure out how I’m gonna do it! My main obstacle: time. Never enough hours in the day right? I either need to pull back, or schedule myself in enough time to push towards my goals. For dance, I should practice at home for fifteen minutes on the days I’m not going to the studio. For school, I need to view failure not as an embarrassment, but as just a way to make me better. As for lights, I often look forward to going into to practice programming, but end up getting too tired to go in. How am I ever going to get the skill without practicing? The answer is I won’t, so when I plan to start programming, I have to keep the promise to myself and go through with it. I’ll thank myself when I get to watch my first programmed song playing out in front of me on a Sunday. Faith-wise, the answer is simple- 10 minutes in my Bible everyday is a must.

Questions and Conclusions-

Though all this mindset stuff is really cool and interesting, I certainly don’t have it all figured out yet. I know you have to work on getting a growth mindset, but once you have one, is there a way to get a better one? If you have a really good one, is there anyway to get better? Simply, can you still grow in your growth mindset? Other questions I have are sourced on why I think a lot of us have fixed mindsets, lack of passion. Once I picked up lights I was almost obsessed with them, I wanted to learn everything and jump in right away. Is it possible to only have a fixed mindset because you’re not passionate in something anymore? And if so, should you stop doing that thing and replace it with something else your more passionate about to acquire a growth mindset, or is that just giving up? Overall, I think learning about mindsets is so essential to my learning this year. I think it’s very easy for us to have fixed mindsets, because we don’t know about the types of mindsets before we discover them! So now that I have, I look forward to becoming a person with a growth mindset. It gives me hope, and excitement. And New Year’s resolutions! 😝

Continue reading “Blog Post #2- My Mindset” →

My first blog post- yay!! 😆

The Experimentation Process-

Tubes of Mystery… sounds like something you would find in Harry Potter right? Anyway, when I walked into my Physics class for the very first time this year, I was given one of these “Tubes of Mystery” (oooooh ahhhhhh) – a piece of PVC pipe with four knotted ropes hanging out of it, but with the openings on the top and bottom sealed with duct tape. I had never seen anything like it before, so when my awesome Physics teacher (Mr. Battaglia) allowed us a few minutes to observe the tube, I just stared at it in awe as I played with the ropes, pulling one out and watching the rest pull in at the same time, over and over and over. I was confused at first on the pattern of how the ropes worked, but almost immediately after I figured it out, I needed to know how it worked inside. Though I wanted to jump to conclusions, Mr. Battaglia explained that observations are crucial to discovering an answer to a question. So I, along with the team I was working with, quickly jotted down some observations, and they included:

• When one string is pulled out, the rest are pulled in at the same time.
• If you pull out two ropes that are not diagonal to each other, the tube can slide on the rope either vertically or horizontally, depending on which ropes you pulled.
• The tube slid smoother horizontally than vertically.

Using these observations, we eagerly started sketching ideas of what we thought was going on inside the Tubes of Mystery. I found that each idea we had led the next, so we generally had a range of complex and simple versions of the same idea. We called them “theories,” and that’s where we went wrong, besides the fact that our ideas may or may not have been a replica of what was happening inside of our Tube of Mystery. Mr. Battaglia told us that theories were “practically scientific laws, but just had to be proven,” so from there we brainstormed other words we could use to replace “theory” and decided on “idea.” It ended up being a wonderful learning lesson for us and the entire class. We were able to present our ideas and hear what ideas other groups had come up with.

Pro Tip: Never use the word “theory” to describe an “idea” 😉

Finally came the day when we got to test our ideas! The whole room was buzzing with excitement as we attempted to make (hopefully) mini replicas of the Tubes of Mystery. Our group split up to work one on one, and we each took an idea to test. In the end, we came up with tubes that were almost there, but just had one detail that made them incorrect. The tube I made totally failed, but I wasn’t sad, because I didn’t result with a mini replica of a Tube of Mystery, but instead a lovely friend named Fred John Styles, who to me, was just as good as finding out how the Tubes of Mystery worked. I was excited for my classmates that did figure it out, but for me and Fred, sometimes its good to have somethings that are undiscovered… it’s the spice of life, right?

Dabbin on them science haters

How do Tubes of Mystery work? I don’t know!

Chillin like the coolest Fred ever… oh wait, that’s me.

Conclusions

Even if I had found a way for a tube to work like the Tubes of Mystery, it wouldn’t really be an exact replica would it? Maybe. But not without opening up the Tubes of Mystery and observing what’s inside. Does it really matter though what is inside of the tube? No! If we figured out another way of making a Tube of Mystery then, yay us! If we have our own method, we can replicate that and it doesn’t matter how the original works, because if they work the same, our newly discovered method is just as good as the original. Tubes of Mystery- ha! We figured you out! Not so mysterious are ya now…