Do It Better

Overview of Project:

In this project, we were tasked with repeating a project from the year to improve it. We had a little more freedom in this project, because we didn't need to follow the original instructions as strictly as before. My group chose to redo the Intergalactic Planetary Project. In this project, we modified the original instructions to include topics from both our gravity & orbit unit and our waves unit. We had the idea to discover how noise sounded on different planets. We chose to look at Mercury, Venus, and Earth. We had the idea to show how different air densities affected sound waves using orbeez as a model. We ran into some complications with this idea, however, because they were very popular in our class and it was very easy to get distracted with them. We had to expedite the process of using them to get rid of them as fast as possible, and so we ended up just filming videos of each model instead of doing them in person like we had originally planned to do. We researched how you heard sound on Mercury & Venus, and made sure to include Earth as a constant and point of comparison. We also had an unexpected amount of trouble growing the orbeez. We first researched how to speed up the growing process, and found that salt was a proven way to make them grow quicker. However, when we put salt in and left the orbeez overnight, we discovered that the salt had for some reason stunted their growth. We hypothesized that this was because we put too much salt in, so we repeated the process after taking water and salt out. Because we had two different sizes of orbeez growing, it was also hard to determine when they would all be fully grown. We ended up separating the two different sizes and letting them grow. However, the orbeez that were in the salt seemed to be permentantly stuck in a semi-grown state, so we ended up having 3 sizes of orbeez instead. This worked out well because we could have 3 different "air densities" in our model for each of the three planets.

Do It Better Script

This was the script that we made that went along with our slideshow. Originally, most of this was on our slideshow, but we realized it would be better if we only put the important points on it.

Intergalactic Planetary: How Other Planets Hear

This was the slideshow that we presented for our final project. It included background information, explanations of each planet's atmosphere, and videos of our model.

Content

In our slideshow, we talked about the cause and effect of a lot of things. We found that:

Different environments, organisms, and surrounding objects → different atmospheres

Changes in air density → changes in pitch, volume, and acoustics of your voice

Atmosphere with CO2→ muffled sounds

We also used the engineering design cycle to help us complete our project. We first did a lot of background research from respectable sites such as Harvard and Caltech. We then started to brainstorm possible models that would accurately demonstrate what we had learned. We then planned our timeline and how to fulfill our vision to the best of our ability in the time we had. Our next step was to create our slideshow and make our orbeez. We started testing different ways to grow the orbeez successfully, and then we did a series of trials to determine how to best show the sound waves moving through them. We spent a while finalizing our experiment, and improving the slideshow to make it detailed but concise.

Reflection

Two things I did well in this project was communicating with my group and critical thinking. I was very good at listening to the suggestions my group came up with, and I was able to share my own suggestions as well. When complications arose in our project, I was able to help find different solutions in a calm way. I made sure that everyone was on the same page when it came to our plan and idea, so there wouldn't be any confrontations or confusion regarding that. I spent a very long time researching on very credible sources like Harvard and Caltech. This made me have a lot of background knowledge in the subject that was helpful when it came to completing the project with my group. I used all my resources and encouraged my group to ask for help when we were stuck.

Two things I needed to improve on was managing my time and following through on my goals. I was good at setting clear goals, but often I struggled to follow through with them. This led to me working on certain aspects of the project that were actually pretty low priority compared to other things I had to get done, because sometimes I would be working without a clear plan of what I wanted to accomplish. Also, the fact that it was the last project of the year combined with the fact that I was in a group with my friends made it very difficult for me to manage my time well. I was good at hardly ever getting off task, because I would work on the project almost the entire time. However, my efficiency severely decreased because there were a lot of distractions.

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