Well, something that I can definitely say is that this project was definitely an interesting way to start off my new school year. The purpose of this project was to create a presentation as well as a proposal regarding a policy change within Novato, which in our case, was establishing a new solar farm. The process of creating this policy was quick and simple, but actually creating the effects of our policy change and affirming that they were the actual outcomes of enacting this alteration was far more difficult than any of my group members expected, requiring an increased amount of effort outside of school. That was what we spent a majority of our time doing, and the fact that we had to add predictions for fifty, one hundred, three hundred, and eventually one thousand years for both the Earth as it currently is, as well as how it should be with the policy. The most difficult part of making these predictions was that they needed to include the changes in biotic and abiotic factors, how the carrying capacity and soil quality had changed over time, the climate and weather within the area, and other aspects of the ecosystem such as biodiversity and population. Other content that we had to include concerned the presence of flora and fauna, as well as how these attributes were affected by any possible policy change, as well as what sort of effects bringing about the construction of these solar panels may have on locations worldwide. While we were doing the project, we also learned more about the symbiotic relationships between organisms within the ecosystem, with one example being the impacts that bees have on almost all aspects of our lives, as well as mankind's impact on climate change.
Biology Concepts:
Biodiversity- The variety of species in an ecosystem relevant to the genetic difference as well as differences between species in ecosystems.
Carrying Capacity- The amount of organisms that an area can sustain based on the available resources.
Resources- Materials that are required to live; Non-renewable resources can not be replenished, where as renewable resources replenish themselves over time.
Symbiosis- A relationship between two different species in which they interact with each other, such as mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, and competition.
Succession- The series of biological processes which results in the change of the ecosystem, typically the recovery of a damaged environment and the formation of a new ecosystem.
Weather- The day to day condition of the Earth's atmosphere.
Climate- The average year after year conditions of temperature and precipitation.
Greenhouse Effect- The effect which results in the reflection of heat in the form of infrared waves, and subsequently rising temperatures.
Biome- A group of ecosystems that have a similar climate and dominant species.
Biosphere- The sphere in which all life in the world exists, from 11 km below the surface up to 8 km above the surface.
Autotroph (Producers)- An organism that is able to produce its own energy, through means such as photosynthesis or chemosynthesis.
Heterotroph (Consumers)- An organism that receives its energy by consuming other organisms, rather than producing its own.
Detritivores- An organism that receives its energy by consuming the dead or decaying remains of other organisms.
Decomposers- Organisms that break down the remains of organic materials and deposit the energy back into the soil as nutrients.
Food Web- The system of intersecting and interdependent food chains.
Biotic Factors- Living components of an ecosystem.
Abiotic Factors- Non-living or inanimate aspects of an ecosystem.
Reflection:
Looking back on how this project went, I would give this a 3/10, at least in terms of my effort and my contributions to the final project. There were a lot of flaws in our presentation that I thought we could have fixed, such as the wordiness of our predictions slide, a multitude of typos within our presentation, and just the content overall, but I know that I tried my best to get things done even outside of the classroom at home or during lunches. I know for sure that we definitely could have worked more cohesively as a group and formulated ideas for our presentation together, and that we could have drastically increased our work ethic during class, which probably would have made the difference between us getting a low A and our group collectively getting a high A, maybe even a 100. Last year, we did a Do-It-Better project, which isn't included on this website, and the whole point of that was to redo one of our projects that we thought we didn't execute as well as we could have, and if we could pick a project this year that we could do again, I would definitely choose this. I think the fact that we had so many days if non-project work interspersed between our ten cumulative work days had broken up our consistency as compared to last year, where we had less non-project days than work days. Ultimately, though, there were two small peaks in our project, with the first being that the amount of detail we put into our solar panel and our policy was pretty thorough, and we spent the good part of two days working on it, which is why, in my opinion, it was one of the positives of our presentation. The second peak was that our group was able to finish this project much faster than anticipated, which gave us far more time to make corrections on it, but we were overconfident due to the fact that our initial draft had received a good amount of appreciation. This leads me into our first pit, which was that our work ethic was pretty low, and something that we could significantly improve upon, considering the fact that we had so much time on our hands and we spent about half of it playing splix.io. (It is a pretty addicting game, though.) Our second major pit goes in tandem with the first, and it is the fact that our presentation wasn't as good as we could have made it, with evidence being that Jeffrey's name is on the title slide, the new slides we created to replace our predictions weren't used, and there were many mistakes in our slides. A couple things that I learned from this project are that one should never be overconfident about their work, the way we were, and that time is one of the most critical aspects of a project, one which we shouldn't have let go to waste. I'm definitely going to improve my work ethic for future projects, meaning less computer games and more computer-generated models, and I could also improve my time management skills so that we are able to use every work day that we have to the fullest extent.
Biodiversity- The variety of species in an ecosystem relevant to the genetic difference as well as differences between species in ecosystems.
Carrying Capacity- The amount of organisms that an area can sustain based on the available resources.
Resources- Materials that are required to live; Non-renewable resources can not be replenished, where as renewable resources replenish themselves over time.
Symbiosis- A relationship between two different species in which they interact with each other, such as mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, and competition.
Succession- The series of biological processes which results in the change of the ecosystem, typically the recovery of a damaged environment and the formation of a new ecosystem.
Weather- The day to day condition of the Earth's atmosphere.
Climate- The average year after year conditions of temperature and precipitation.
Greenhouse Effect- The effect which results in the reflection of heat in the form of infrared waves, and subsequently rising temperatures.
Biome- A group of ecosystems that have a similar climate and dominant species.
Biosphere- The sphere in which all life in the world exists, from 11 km below the surface up to 8 km above the surface.
Autotroph (Producers)- An organism that is able to produce its own energy, through means such as photosynthesis or chemosynthesis.
Heterotroph (Consumers)- An organism that receives its energy by consuming other organisms, rather than producing its own.
Detritivores- An organism that receives its energy by consuming the dead or decaying remains of other organisms.
Decomposers- Organisms that break down the remains of organic materials and deposit the energy back into the soil as nutrients.
Food Web- The system of intersecting and interdependent food chains.
Biotic Factors- Living components of an ecosystem.
Abiotic Factors- Non-living or inanimate aspects of an ecosystem.
Reflection:
Looking back on how this project went, I would give this a 3/10, at least in terms of my effort and my contributions to the final project. There were a lot of flaws in our presentation that I thought we could have fixed, such as the wordiness of our predictions slide, a multitude of typos within our presentation, and just the content overall, but I know that I tried my best to get things done even outside of the classroom at home or during lunches. I know for sure that we definitely could have worked more cohesively as a group and formulated ideas for our presentation together, and that we could have drastically increased our work ethic during class, which probably would have made the difference between us getting a low A and our group collectively getting a high A, maybe even a 100. Last year, we did a Do-It-Better project, which isn't included on this website, and the whole point of that was to redo one of our projects that we thought we didn't execute as well as we could have, and if we could pick a project this year that we could do again, I would definitely choose this. I think the fact that we had so many days if non-project work interspersed between our ten cumulative work days had broken up our consistency as compared to last year, where we had less non-project days than work days. Ultimately, though, there were two small peaks in our project, with the first being that the amount of detail we put into our solar panel and our policy was pretty thorough, and we spent the good part of two days working on it, which is why, in my opinion, it was one of the positives of our presentation. The second peak was that our group was able to finish this project much faster than anticipated, which gave us far more time to make corrections on it, but we were overconfident due to the fact that our initial draft had received a good amount of appreciation. This leads me into our first pit, which was that our work ethic was pretty low, and something that we could significantly improve upon, considering the fact that we had so much time on our hands and we spent about half of it playing splix.io. (It is a pretty addicting game, though.) Our second major pit goes in tandem with the first, and it is the fact that our presentation wasn't as good as we could have made it, with evidence being that Jeffrey's name is on the title slide, the new slides we created to replace our predictions weren't used, and there were many mistakes in our slides. A couple things that I learned from this project are that one should never be overconfident about their work, the way we were, and that time is one of the most critical aspects of a project, one which we shouldn't have let go to waste. I'm definitely going to improve my work ethic for future projects, meaning less computer games and more computer-generated models, and I could also improve my time management skills so that we are able to use every work day that we have to the fullest extent.