This semester has turned out to be a semester of great growth not only academically but but also personally. I have almost conquered my fear of the open ocean, gotten scuba certified, and have pushed the boundaries of what high school students can accomplish. I have also struggled this semester. I have never been in a classroom setting that was so open that we got to pick and pursue our own projects. Especially at the beginning of the semester I had a problem with creating a game plan and staying motivated to follow this plan. For science I believe that I deserve an A+. I have earned this grade by the work that I have done to learn more about sharks by communicating with experts in the field, getting access to a satellite network, finding a tag, and applying for a scientific collecting permit. While I am yet to tag a shark, I will do everything in my power to tag the shark during the summer. I have also been reading a book on the big bang throughout the semester in my free time. I have found this book fascinating learning about astrophysics and the history of astronomy. The book is called The Big Bang by Simon Singh and I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in astronomy. For math I believe I deserve an A. I have demonstrated my math skills with the math sheets Brian has passed out. I have also dabbled in wave forecasting, height of a wave and strength of a wave. The reason that I do not deserve an A+ is because I have not taken the initiative to study math outside of class. For art I believe I deserve an A. I have always been a terrible artist and because of my failures in art I have been unmotivated to try to do art. At demonstrated this mentality at the beginning of the semester when creating our first art pieces and my product represented this. As the semester progressed however, I saw the products that my piers were creating and I was motivated to make my work better. I began not only enjoying our diving session but looking for things that would inspire art. One realization I had was that underwater photography was extremely hard and that I was really bad at it. Because of this I decided to take as many pictures as I could and one of them would have to turn out well. In the end this dedication worked and I am extremely proud of my final product. Care of oneself- Put effort into my work and persist despite difficulties.
If there was anything that I could count on this semester it would be problems. I found that at every step of the way something went wrong. At the beginning of the project it was a little disheartening at times starting to plan new project instead. I had to think a lot about the risk of standing next to basically nothing for exhibition and having to explain why I had done no work. In deep thought I finally recognized that I was doing this project for the wrong reason. I knew that if I came home each and every day and could truly put my name on that day and say, "yes I have worked hard today" then it didn't matter if I stood next to nothing during exhibition because I knew I had done work. Care for the planet- Put time and effort into ensuring our local coastal environment is left better than I found it. Before this semester I was ignorant. I would use plastics like there was no consequences. I don't even want to see the waste that I created on a daily basis. This semester has really opened my eye to this growing problem that the oceans are facing and it scares me. That there is a island maybe of trash twice the size of Texas floating in the ocean that I love some much is as the same time scary and infuriating; scared for the wildlife and future generations, and infuriating at myself and others for being so oblivious to my impacts on the world. Since my awakening I have tried to limit my impact on the environment and opened my eyes to the litter that is in the environment. I never realized how much trash is scattered around our beaches until I was actually focused on finding it. Some changes that I have made to my life because of this semester is that I have started bringing a reusable water bottle everywhere I go and during lunch I have been using tuple ware instead of individual plastic bags. While I am very proud of myself for the changes that I have implemented, there is definitely more that I can be doing like going to more beach cleanups and using less plastic straws. I also need to give credit to Tessa Felice (Not sure what her blog url is) for showing how much impact I have on the world. While I do at times find her ideas radical, a radical problem requires a radical solution. Getting Along with One Another- Compassionate toward myself and others This semester my main goal was to better myself and others inside and outside the classroom. As a child I was a very active person playing multiple sports, going on long hikes, etc. but during my sophomore year I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease which meant that I could not play any sports and had to mainly stay indoors. Since then I do not believe that I have fully recovered. This semester however, I have tried to be a more active person by climbing, snorkeling, going mountain biking, and hiking. I have seen significant improvement in myself since then and can say that I am a happier and more confident person because of it. My favorite thing to do is climbing I have found that this is a very self fulfilling sport and have tried to help and share it with my piers.
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For my project this semester, I have been trying to tag a shark. At the beginning of this project my main goal was to learn more about sharks and with it I would learn more about the ocean. While I did learn more in these areas, I learned and gained skills that I will use throughout my life. In my project I contacted experts, researched shark tagging, and went through a long permit process. While we are yet to tag a shark, I will be working diligently throughout endersession and summer so that we can tag the shark.
Our project would be very important for both the scientific community and the public. To explain the problem that we are helping to solve we have to go back to the 1950's. At the start of the 50's America had a booming post-war economy, birthing rates were higher than ever, there was big leaps in science and mathematics every day, and the unemployment rates were the lowest that they had ever been. One species that was not profiting from this economic boom was sharks. Sharks were seen as vicious creature with the sole goal of devouring our unsuspected children. This caused mass hysteria and the shark populations dwindled. Fortunately, legislation was passed which protect sharks and the species slowly rose. Today the sharks have made a comeback and are almost are at the point of where they were at before human intervention. With these larger than normal population, shark sightings are getting more frequent and closer to the beach. Because of this researchers need to understand shark population better. One troubling area that we are yet to understand is in juvenile male white sharks. Usually these sharks would migrate throughout the year from the cooler waters of Canada to the warmer waters of Mexico. Instead of this yearly migration however, juvenile white sharks are staying between San Diego and Los Angelas. Our project was aimed at addressing this issue by tracking where these juvenile sharks are swimming, how deep they are swimming, and the light levels that they are swimming in. We started off this project by emailing experts already in the field of research. This included people from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, CSU Long Beach Shark Labs, and NOAA. We quickly discovered that people don't take high school students that are attempting to tag a shark seriously so out of about 30 people we emailed only 2 responded. Our next stage was to make cold calls which turned out to work way better. The next step was to find a tag that would work for our experimentation. The main components that we were looking for were price and attachment method. Surprisingly, this was the easiest part of the project. Within a week we had selected the tag and acquired the funding. Our next step was to get the proper permits. This ended up being a long and lengthy process that I am still working on today but once I get the proper permits I will be able to tag the shark. If we are able to make this work, it can and will be continued in the future. Once we get this news out to the scientific and educational communities it will lead to more funding for better and more advanced tags. Our tag will also provide important information to the scientific community which will help to find answers to questions that are troubling experts. Hopefully in the coming weeks we will be able to get the permits and tag a shark. This week I have done a lot of work on my personal project. We have finally finished applying for the permit and at the time of writing this I am waiting to hear back from some references to see if they can write a letter of recommendation for our collecting permit. This permit process involved a lot of writing that has occupied my time for the past couple of weeks. Because of this I have not had very much time to work on my digital art piece. hopefully I will be able to get out on Friday so that I can take a picture, process it, and print it. I do have a couple ideas for the art piece although, I think either a drone shot or a picture with half in the water and half out of the water shot of some buoyed boats in mission point park would make for a pretty cool picture. I am really excited to get back in the water because it has been a while because of all of the paperwork that I have been working on. I have always wondered how you can work one hundreds of pages of paperwork but after this process I can finally understand.
Unfortunately, this storm is heading for the south coast of Alaska and not southwest towards San Diego. You can tell which way the storm is heading by the little arrows inside the storm which represents wind direction. Another thing that contributes to storm direction is the wind direction of where the storm is headed. External winds can push the storm and change the course of the storm. We then find the coordinates of the storm and of San Diego. We can find the coordinates by using the numbers on the borders of the map. The storm's coordinates are approximately 40N, 15oE and San Diego's coordinates are approximately 35N, 120E. We can then calculate the distance between these two points. My first thought was to use trigonometry to find the distance but that is assuming that the earth is round (which it is not) so I used a great circle calculator which can be found here. This calculation take into account the curvature of the earth to tell us the actual distance between two points. In our case the storm would be 1456.112 nautical miles Using this calculation we can calculate the approximate time it will take to reach San Diego. The formula is Distance in nautical miles/Period*1.5=time in hours. The period is the time in between waves. We can find the period by matching the colors inside the storm to the horizontal bar below the image. In our case, the period would be 16. plugging in our values, we find that it will take 60.67 hours for the waves caused by the storm to reach San Diego.
This is my digital art piece. I was very proud of this because I have never been very comfortable in art and I thought that this turned out very well. It also got printed out and is in the fishbowl now. I am very excited for this because it is the first photo of mine to be printed and hung at High Tech High. Below is some of my responses.
Significance I find that whenever I am near the ocean, I am having a good time. Some of my earliest experiences were going to the beach during the summer and bodyboarding all day tell we got so sunburned that we couldn’t bare it and would go home. While the beaches of San Diego might not be the most picturesque with clear water and white sands, I always find that when I am in the ocean, it’s an adventure. When I first saw this picture, I was a little disappointed by how dull the colors were. Everything in the photo was dull I I thought that it did not accurately depict my experience that day. For this reason, I decided to color the subject in bright colors to make my experience better represented by the picture. Perspective This is a picture taken by Evan Vavra of me snorkeling at Mission Point Park. Evan was standing on the jetty with the RX 10 taking pictures of Brian and I in the water. It was a cold dreary day in April. The visibility of the water was around seven feet so it was a relatively clear day and we saw many things in the water including stingrays, halibut, crab, and sea cucumber. The main goal of the day however, was to put the artificial reefs that my peers created out of clay into the bay. Some of the pictures that I took of the reefs are on the wall in the fishbowl. Evidence- Life is only how you think of it. What is a terrible thing for one person can make another persons day. I feel like in photography, this is especially true. A picture only conveys what the photographer wants it to convey. For example, a photographer may go to a war torn country that is of course very sad, but the pictures they take may not be sad by showing the power of human destruction, but hopeful by showing the power of human resilience. In this photo I was attempting to turn a rather dreary photo and make it vibrant and full of life. I did this by coloring the subject (myself) with bright and vibrant colors. Connection- As a native San Diegan, I feel a profound connection to the ocean. From going to the beach during summer days with my mom to paddle boarding with my dad, I have spent a significant amount of my childhood in the ocean. It is a privilege to live in San Diego for this reason. Many people go their whole life without living their city much less drive hundreds of miles to go to the beach. Because of this disconnect to the ocean, many problems that are facing oceans are not being discussed. By taking photos in and around the ocean, we can show the general population that the oceans can and need to be saved. Clearly state why the core facts and concepts of the work at hand matter to me or to others. One of my goals coming into this semester was to use the resources that are available to me. As a senior going into my last semester at High Tech High, one of the things that I have regretted the most was that I did not ask to use some of the many things that we are able to use as a High Tech High student. This semester I have tried to work on this skill by setting my bars high, learning how to use many things including the underwater housing, GoPros, and other DLSRs. As my semester project, Savannah and I are trying to tag sharks in the San Diego area. This is a very ambitious task that at many points in the semester have seemed that it will not work out. However, we have persevered through these struggles and are still working towards this goal. This work is very important to me because as a child growing up watching Jaws and Sharknado, I have been instilled with fear for these creatures. From this fear stemmed curiousness and for the past few years, I have been very interested in knowing more about these creatures. By tracking these sharks (hopefully juvenile white sharks) we will be able to see where these sharks move, depth, and from this information where/what they eat. Describe myself as a learner and seek out challenges that lead to growth. This semester I believe that I have done a great job challenging myself. The reason I decided to apply for Semester Azul was because I was unsatisfied with the projects that I had completed at High Tech High and wanted to do something that I was actually proud of. I also knew that Semester Azul provided me with the freedom to pick the project that I would want to do. I decided to be very ambitious with my project and right now I am attempting to tag a shark. I have been challenged at every step of the process. I started off the project by emailing professionals in the field . of shark research because I was too nervous to talk to them over the phone. I quickly learned that people won't email you back if you start with "Hello I'm a high school student attempting to tag a great white shark and I don't know anything about tagging sharks" (a bit over exaggerated but it gets the point across) At this point in the project I am constantly calling professional, still sounding like a fool, but a fool thats getting information. I can describe a complex question, problem, or issue and its relevance to myself and the world. The effects of global warming on ocean ecosystems. One of the main contributors to global warming is the release of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere. These greenhouse gasses stay in our atmosphere and trap the heat that is trying to escape from our planet thus warming our planet. The ocean absorbs much of this heat which negatively affects aquatic ecosystems due to habitat destruction, loss of prey, and change in deep water tides. One of these greenhouse gasses is Carbon Dioxide. While CO2 is a necessity for life, too much of anything can be detrimental to any organism. The ocean absorbs 93% of the CO2 in our atmosphere which lowers the ph levels thus making the ocean more acidic. All organisms require a specific ph level and any fluctuations in this level can negative consequences. Global warming also changes the deep ocean currents such as the global conveyor belt which is caused by changes in water density at the caps and other factors such as the moon, weather, and temperature. The global conveyor belt helps to distribute nutrients and also changes weather patterns. As the ocean waters heat up, the global conveyor belt slows down changing the earth's climate. Affects caused by slowing in the global conveyor belt include loss of nutrients and change in weather patterns. These two factors greatly affect human lives by creating massive storms and damaging our fisheries. Show evidence of my environmental stewardship and why it matters Since joining Semester Azul, I have done a lot of deep thinking about my affect on the earth. The reason that I started thinking was because during one of the snorkeling trips that I had taken I saw a plastic sandwich bag floating next to, the very same type of bag that I use on a daily basis. This got me thinking about all of the one time plastics that I use once and then throw it away after. Since then I have tried to limit the amount of one- time plastics that I use whether its not using a straw at a restaurant, carrying a reusable water bottle with me everywhere I go, or using tupperware instead of plastic bags. Today in the age of consumerism, it is easy to use plastics and throw it away without thinking about the consequences that your actions have. Just a quick stroll along the beach has shown me that our way of living in not sustainable and needs radical changes. Seeing all the plastics and other waste lying on our beaches makes me wonder: If this little amount of land is so polluted, how much trash are in our oceans? It's almost daily that I hear about the amount of micro plastics found in fish, whales, and many other species. Even the deep ocean is affected by these plastics because of deep ocean currents. Environmental stewardship doesn't only matter, it is necessary to ensure a bright and healthy for all species. I can work productively with others toward shared goals, doing my part in a timely manner. This semester I am working with Savannah to build a shark tag and hopefully this summer we will be ready to tag a shark. This is a very ambitious goal and we are working very hard to make this happen. Throughout the process, we have had to revise our plan because of many issues. We started by emailing many people already in the field to no avail. From there we started watching videos, reading scientific articles and tried to find any information that could help us in this process. From there we started looking into the tags specifically trying to figure out what tags we should use, how much it would cost, and if we would even be allowed to do it. After weighing the pros and cons of each tracker we have narrowed it down to a category of trackers called satellite tags. The reason for this is mainly because of the cost. Other tags such as acoustic tags require thousands of dollars worth of equipment to use while satellite trackers just need access to a satellite and a shark to be tagged. This brings up another problem for us which is access to a satellite. We have already submitted a proposal through High Tech High to an organization called ARGOS that has many satellites orbiting earth right now. They also sell tags that are made to communicate with the ARGOS satellite and tell us information such as depth, temperature, and location. Choose a mode of communication that fits my purpose and my audience As a said above, I started my .project by emailing a bunch of experts to get more information on their areas of research. I quickly realized that this was not a very good method of communication because not very many people have the time to email a high school student in the middle of a busy day. Out of around 30 emails that I sent two people replied, out of those two people one person didn't come close to any of my question and was a little condescending and the other person gave me good information about tags. I then realized that if I wanted people to answer me back then I would have to show that I was serious about doing the project by showing the work that I had previously done and I would also need to talk to them on the phone. This proved to be a greater success than emails. e
At the beginning of the semester I was unsatisfied with the math workload but now I am very happy with the amount of math that we have been doing. I just finished doing U substitution and now i'm moving into integration by parts. Below is some of the math that I've been doing. I took a MOOC course on ocean fisheries. In this course I learned about the trophic levels and why ocean ecosystems were so fragile. I thought that this course was fascinating because I learned a lot about ocean ecosystems and it also compared ocean trophic levels to land trophic levels. One fact that I learned that I thought was interesting was that when an organism eats another organism about 90% of energy is lost. This means that if at the fourth trophic level 99.9% of the energy is lost between prey and predator.
I was out this week sick so I need to catch up. While I was sick however, I have been working on my personal project. We discovered that the tag that we were planning on buying would not work because the insertion method was by using epoxy to attach. This will not work because we have no way to touch the shark for safety reasons. We have found another tag that is inserted through a javelin. It is called a sPAT which pops off of the shark after a programmed about of time. We would insert the tag into the lower dorsal fin where white sharks have no nerves
The Ted ED video was very interesting. What struck me the most is how the earths ecosystems are all dependent on the deep sea current patterns. This is something that I had never learned about. Here are some of the things I learned: A gyre is a big loop in surface currents that travel clockwise in northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. This natural phenomenon makes air traveling north in the northern hemisphere to deflect eastward and air traveling south to deflect westward this is the opposite in the southern hemisphere. This wind pushes currents and due to the properties of heat retention in water, this helps to distribute heat. Thermohaline circulation is caused because near the poles there is colder water and when the ice freezes it holds on to salt which makes it more dense and sinks; this frozen water gets replaced by warmer water. Thermohaline circulation and surface currents combine to form the global conveyor belt. This conveyor belt is the longest ocean current known to man and travels throughout the globe. When the warm water rises, it carries micro-nutrients helps to start the food chain in ocean ecosystems. This conveyor belt moves very slowly (a couple inches per day) rising temperature cause the conveyor belt to slow down which alter weather patterns, food distribution, and heat dilution. A couple questions I have from this video are: Why does rising ocean temperatures make the conveyor belt move slower? If frozen water is more dense and thus sinks near the ice caps, why does ice in a cup of water float? How deep do ocean currents affect? If the earth warms to a certain extent could the global conveyor belt cease to exist? This is a cool hole that I found at sunset cliffs. It was a very circular hole that had equally circular rings inside of it. I believe these rings were caused by periods of a lot of water and periods with no water. This could have been due to a storm or just the tides. I traced the image with a sharpie pen which is why the rings are not very circular. I then used Photoshop to color the rings and then put it on top of the original photo. This is some of the math that I have been working on this week. I am a little behind because of last week which is why the "differentiating logs is not completed but I will definitely have that done by next week. I am feeling confident in calculus right now even though I was gone for so long. I have been helping other people to understand how to solve some problems especially in the "Implicit Differentiation" worksheet.
Unfortunately we have not made very much progress on my personal project. I talked to Molly and she gave me a good idea for a project which is to pick a local fish and do multiple dissections on it and document the innards of the species. I think this is a more viable option. Also the reason that tagging sharks didn't work out was because we didn't have a boat that we could use and so we had to contact researchers to see if we could do our project with them. Unfortunately, not very many people responded so we were unable to continue with our project. However, I spoke with Bryan and he said that if I wanted to develop a tag this semester, We could go out on the blue dot boat during the summer and see if we could tag any sharks then. I was not here this week but have gotten work done on my project. We are still emailing people without much success. We are looking into building our own trackers so we have started emailing other people trying to get more information on their tags. Luckily, we have had more success and we got a email back from the DOBBS Institute that was very informative.
**Pressed the Save button instead of the Publish button** This is my Juxtaposition image. We only made one draft because I didn't know that we were making a second one. In the image we made fish that had adapted to an environment that was full of trash. We used Photoshop and sourced images off of google. I am not very proud of this product because I feel like at this point it is fairly rushed. I think that if I could spend a couple more hours on it I could make it into something that I am proud of. I am fairly confident using Photoshop so I didn't learn much but this draft is definitely not a good example of my skills.
There is many things that I am proud of this week in the area of math. Throughout my high school experience, I have felt that we learn math concepts just to say that we have learned them without also learning how we can apply these concepts real life. In the last week however, I have applied mathematics to one of my future projects which is to get scuba diving certified. This week, I calculated the pressure that is applied to a person given their depth in a body of water. I have also learned a lot about the properties of water. Water is made up of two different atoms namely hydrogen and oxygen. Two hydrogen atoms are covalently bonded to one oxygen atom. This causes the oxygen atom to have more electrons than protons which gives it a positive charge and causes the hydrogen atoms to have more protons that electrons which gives it a positive charge. This is called a hydrogen bond. This hydrogen bond is why water is the best solvent known to man; Any molecule that has a polarity (either positive or negative) can break these hydrogen bonds and can dissolve in water. Water also has a high heat capacity. This means that water can hold temperatures without much fluctuation. This is why places like San Diego does not experience much fluctuation in temperature while places like Nebraska does. Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere greatly affects our oceans. CO2 has a slight negative bond which means that it is hydrophilic (can dissolve in water). This hydrophilic nature causes the oceans to absorb 93% of all carbon dioxide. This causes the oceans to have a lower ph level (more acidic) which can harm marine life. While there are many marine organisms that can use carbon dioxide such as algae, there is not enough to keep up with the high demand. So far we have emailed multiple people in the field of shark tagging. We have emailed multiple institutions such as Monterrey Bay Aquarium, I was not here for Monday so I do not have the map of San Diego coast or the Semester Azul Math Intro. I took this photo at sunset cliffs. I ended up not taking many photos because of camera troubles which meant that I had less photos to choose from. Next time I will shoot more photos so that I end up with better quality photos. One thing that I learned from this photo is that if you are shooting into a cloudless sky, I should get more foreground in the photo so that it does not look as boring. Another thing that I need to work on is asking Mike and Bryan for resources so that I can take better photos and enhance my photography skills.
My goal for this semester is to build and track sharks. This is a very ambitious goal so I will have to work hard to make sure that it happens. My first steps will be to contact some experts at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Monterrey Bay Aquarium and Ocearch which is an open source website that tracks many aquatic animals. Some of my strengths include ambition about the world around me, asking questions, and working hard to answer those questions. Something that I need to work on is asking Mike and Bryan to use the equipment such as the Mavics , underwater drone, underwater housing and GoPros. These things would really enhance my photography skills and would also prepare me for using resources in college and in my career. |
Semester AzulThis semester I am in Semester Azul which is a class with around 20 students of all high school grade levels. We are exploring the vast mysteries of the ocean learning about the ecosystems, climate, and human influence. I hope you enjoy my progression!. Archives
May 2019
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