Living History

Stone Tools

One of the first projects our class did in the year was making stone tools. During this time, we were learning about the stone age of humans, the paleolithic and neolithic era, a time where stone tools were the best technology we had. In Physics class, Mr. Amilio gave us the choice to carve stone tools out of either obsidian or another stone. I chose obsidian, as you can see here. He taught us to carve by using another rock and hitting it against the rock we wanted to carve. Depending on the angle you'd hit it from, the way it cut would be different. Using this knowledge, we had to carve a stone tool out of the material we used and test to see if it worked or not. I originally tried to make a knife, but it turned into an arrowhead since I messed up midway.

Camping

Near the start of the semester, we had taken a trip to Anza Borrego to camp and learn what it was like to be out in the wild. One of the things we did at Anza Borrego was hiking, which I unfortunatey could not take a photo of. During this hike, we went to an empty river bed that once flowed with water hundreds of years ago. We found evidence that people had lived there as there were crude paintings on wall as well as little dents in large rocks used to grind food in. It was an overall fun trip as it felt we were really in the past when we hiked, and seeing all the cave paintings with proof that there used to be people living there was surreal.

Alcala_Adriel_Modify2.pdf

Modifying Nature

'Modifying Nature' was a project that we had in Humanities. We all had to find a topic that changed our way of living on Earth, research about it, and finding the impact it made on the Earth/us. I chose terraforming, since I felt that was a more direct change to the Earth rather than just things like modified animals or modified plants (these were some topics that other students did.). Terraforming was taking a piece of land, and modifying it in some way shape or form. For example, building an artificial hill would be terraforming since the land was modified and a hill didn't naturally form there. This changed our way of living since terraforming is used many times today. There would be no way for trains or highways to go through mountains if we hadn't made a tunnel or modify the land somehow to make way for it. I learned a lot about terraforming and the positive/negative ways it affected Earth during this project. Did you know most farms are terraformed to suit needs of the plants?

Wheat Planting/Making Bread

In this project, we were split into groups of 4-6 people in order to make bread. We grew wheat and watered it each day until it grew a sprout. This was to simulate the agriculture of the Neolithic period in history, when farming was very popular. These wheat seeds were left in the High Tech High garden to grow over the Spring and Summer. In the same groups, we we're given wheat, yeast, and assigned instructions on how to make bread. This was also done to simulate what the people of the Neolithic period did to make bread. There was a lot of stretching and rolling involved before it was ready to be thrown in the oven. I really liked doing this because we learned the process on how to make bread from the ground up. We also got to eat our bread at the end, which was nice. (though my group accidentally but sugar instead of salt because we got confused.)

Clay Tablet

The clay tablet carving project was all about acting as if we we're sending a message to the new heir to the throne as nobles in history. The two languages on the top were made up by our class and using the alphabet we made, we transcribed our message from English into those languages on the top. The tablet was structured as the famous Rosetta Stone, which has 3 languages on it that all contain the same meaning. We were assigned partners and had to choose a quote that we feel is of an utmost important message that will be sent to the heir to the throne so we both agreed on, "It doesn't matter how you fall, it matters how you get back up." The reasoson why there are cracks on mine we're because some of my classmates knocked mine over, so I had to glue them together which was really annoying and frusturating.

Math Portrait

For making our math portrait, we had to find a classical/post-classical math mathematician and research their achievements, significant events, and just why they're important to history. After creating a paragraph about them, we had to make a portrait of them along with their achievements shown somewhere on the portrait. I chose a mathematician named Zu Chongzhi. He was from China, and the most notable thing he's done was getting very, VERY close to the 7th digit of Pi. He had also done work on finding a formula that finds the volume of a sphere as well as inscribing a 12,288-gon. The latter helped Zu Chongzhi find the 7th digit of Pi.

Math Vocabulary Booklet

In math, we had to write a book using math vocabulary we learnt throughout the semester and comparing it to real objects from history. Most of the topics included were from our geometry unit since we were doing it at the same time as out geometry unit. We had to show the connection between the vocabulary used and the object shown. (I did that here but I drew it and didn't get to take a photo.)

Humanities Book (No photo)

The Humanities Book we made was by far the most challenging, tedious, and longest project we've done. We had to take most of the projects we did throughout the year (some of which I mentioned here) and cram them all in a book with original work too, format the pages, print the pages, stitch it together, and then put a book cover before it was fully finished. It consisted of 2 'parts', one part being about mostly writing and the other being more focused on the art.

Philosophy Writing & Illustration

For this assignment, we each chose a philosophy beforehand. Based on the philosophy we chose, we had to draw an image that relates to it (I only have the digital copy so it's not here) and write a summary of our philosophy. We also had to write about why's the philosophy was important to it's region and why it was important to history as a whole. My philosophy was confucianism, which was focused mostly around how we should behave, our morals, and how we should all be governed.

Architecture & Climate Analysis

Before doing this book, we had already made a climate map on the region we were assigned. My region was China, so I have a colored climate map of that (doesn't fit here) to explain. We analyzed our region's climate, what made it different from others, and how people would survive in it. China had a variety of climates as the Northern side of it was near Russia and the Southern side was more tropical.

Art Analysis

Like the climate analysis, we had already chosen something to work with. For this project, we had to choose a piece of art and it's significance or what it tells us about it's region. Mine was a Greek statue, and one of the things you could tell from the description of this Greek statue was that the Greeks probably used marble a lot in their statues. We also wrote any noticings or wonderings on the artwork, though it's not shown here.

The Catapult Project - "Proboscus" Ballista

For 4 weeks, Mr. Amilio assigned us into teams of ~6 to build different catapults. Mr. Amilio would only choose a select amount of catapults to use in his intercession after the project was done. My group decided to make a ballista, which is basically just a huge crossbow. I was very proud of this project because half of our group wasn't there the whole time and yet we still made a working, functioning ballista. It shot around 120 inches, so pretty far and for something built by three 14 year olds, it was pretty good. I worked on attaching the head to the body as well as the string, so I helped screw things in place and just tied the strings on each corner to form a traditional bow. We didn't get to make a base for the ballista, so it was kind of hard to use with 1 person and was quite heavy, so it ultimately didn't make it into Mr. Amilio's sword fighting class, but it was still fun to do. It also taught me teamwork skills in the process, as I spent alot of time communicating with my teammates.