Into the Wild Project!
Camping Trip Reflection
This camping trip was a very memorable part of this year. It was filled with many good times and I have started some good new friendships. A moment that I will never forget is going on the hike where we went through the mountain with the caves. I really liked climbing up the semi difficult obstacles and the view of the mountain was really pretty. I also probably will also not forget when Adam somehow got water in sleeping bag. Something that I learned about myself during this trip is that I like being around people a lot and to be alone for a long period of time would be very very challenging for me. A new friendship I have made during this field trip was with Santi. Before this field trip, I had never talked to Santi. The right situations though can build new friendships. It was Daisy, Savannah, Santi and I were hiking together. We were following Josh Breton's dad and we realized that we were way off course. Somewhere, Josh's dad left us and it was us four all alone. We talked a lot finding the way back and I had a good time with him. Something I wish could of done differently is actually cook the ramen. My water was in the right conditions to cook it, but I was too lazy. On the way back I got really hungry and craved the ramen noodles. Something that I wish we could have done as a team was maybe go on some more rigorous trails. It was fun doing that easy ones, but more of a challenge would have been awesome!
For the Physics portion of this project, I really liked the products we built. One of these products were the Soda Can Stove:
Something I learned about physics by using my soda can stove is how fire needs oxygen. If we didn't use a pot holder, the pot would restrict the oxygen and the lack of oxygen would eventually put out the fire. While making this stove, I learned that working as a time is nice because you can rely on one another if truly needed. Something that went well is that my stove worked and successfully heated the water! An obstacle I came across is that my first stove got lost. To solve this obstacle, I worked hard in a short amount of time to make another. If I could change anything about the stove, I would have put more alcohol in my stove because it ran out of fuel before I could fully cook the ramen
Another Physics product was my mint tin headlamp:
A specific thing I learned from physics while making the mint tin headlamp is that if a circuit of wires touches another piece of metal, it automatically shorts the circuit and runs down the battery. I learned that working with peers is good because you can use each other has a resource. Sina helped me out a lot with this product. Something that went well is that my headlamp worked pretty well and I was able to mentor Zack E into success! An obstacle that I ran into is that my headlamp stopped working out of the blue! But to overcome it, I carefully adjusted my circuits and changed the way the wire was attached to the switch. Before I knew it, it worked again! If I could do something differently, I would have secured my headlamp on the hat better so it would have not kept on falling off.
We also made a Lantern!:
I attempted to make a cooler for my group and it failed pretty badly. I will explain more later, but this is what it looked like
From this project, I learned that when water evaporates, it becomes cooler. That is how my cooler was supposed to work. My plan had two pots inside each other. In the space in between them, there is sand. You fill this sand with water and wait for the water to evaporate. Once the water evaporates, it cools off the middle pot where all your food is. During this product, I learned that I should work with my group. I kind of made this my own product and didn't let anyone help me. This is probably part of the reason why it didn't work. I really can't think of anything that went well when making this. It was a complete disaster. An obstacle I had is that I used plastic pots instead of clay. That was one of the reasons why it did not work. If I could change anything about my cooler, I would have made the pots clay instead of plastic.