Cosmic Chemistry Project

Task:

For our cosmic chemistry project we were split into groups of three or four and asked to make three different projects representing the how the sun is important to nuclear fusion, fision, and the big bang. The three categories we chose included: Artistic, Visual, and Movie makers. Our group split up the workload and I mainly worked on the script for the movie makers section.

Content:

• Nuclear fission - a nuclear reaction in which a heavy nucleus splits spontaneously or on impact with another particle, with the release of energy

• Nuclear fusion - a nuclear reaction in which atomic nuclei of low atomic number fuse to form a heavier nucleus with the release of energy

• Alpha decay - a type of radioactive decay in which some unstable atomic nuclei dissipate excess energy by spontaneously ejecting/releasing an alpha particle

• Beta decay - a type of radioactive decay which simply emits electrons

• Gamma decay - a type of radioactive decay which emits energy (not particles); it releases electromagnetic radiation similar to visible light or UV radiation, but higher on the energy scale

• The Big Bang- the prevailing cosmological model explaining the existence of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution.

Reflection

Overall I really enjoyed this project. I am a big fan of group projects rather than lectures and tests because I feel like I remember the information that I learned much more. I also think that I am more motivated to learn when I am working as a team. This topic surrounding the big bang theory has always interested me to begin with so I found it easy to go in depth in learning about it. Two things that I thing I did really well were collaboration and communication. I collaborated well with my group because they were all people that I previously knew well so we were able to bounce ideas off each other very well. I used communication well because me and my group all agreed on what part of the assignment we were going to do and we all did our part. Two things I think I could improve on are conscientious learner and character. I could have been a better conscientious learner by not getting distracted talking to my group and always staying on topic. I could have used character better by pushing myself out of my comfort zone more and trying to make my work above and beyond rather than just completing what was asked of me.