This is our last round learning the Python programming language. After we have studied all of the rules and technical writing of the programming language, we have set our hands on real practice projects that are both fun, interactive and helpful for our studies.
We have been learning about lists in python for weeks, as a result, students get the opportunity to practice it in a project. For example, I have worked on a program that can randomly appoint random names and put them into different teams. This project can be used for users who want random groups when they insert the names of all the players in. As an example, I insert the name of the students of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and the program can divide them into different teams randomly.
Credit: Pen Installations
This is just a simple example of a small program that the programming language can help us to create, but there are a million of ideas and solutions that programmers can invent and program to help solve global issues in an eco-friendly way which can result in a better place to live for all of us. Our civilizations will be much more developed with advanced-technology and applications that are made from different programming languages. Technology and programming teach us how to be more innovative to create creative solutions for our world.
In this modern civilization of technology, urbanized citizens live in a city full of infrastructures, carrying their career stress everywhere they go. In this busy world, People tend to forget about their true passions, dreams, and happiness.
Documenting my observing of nature down
That is why being outdoor is important, not only to your refreshed feelings but also to your own development as a person. How you can learn and explore new things in a wild environment, how you can find new interests in a different lifestyle, how you can make beautiful memories and just let ourselves be close to a calming paradise. In nature, there’s a million wonders for you to discover, about yourselves, about people around you and about the beautiful world you live in.
In the exploration ‘Outdoor Leadership’, I have experienced many new interesting ways to be in nature and learned many important skills as well.
Traditional Cooking
Many habits that we do for granted in our daily lives are done in a different way in outdoors and all of the things that we have convenient access to is hard to find; therefore, we need to learn how to adapt to this new environment.
When we are in the city, people live in buildings, houses or huge apartments, but in nature, we camp and sleep in a tent.
Some of the fundamental skills we learned are how to set up tents, make fire & collect firewoods, cook food and more by our own which I really enjoyed doing during our trip because I felt like I am being responsible for my team and actually get to live in a very different lifestyle.
Wilderness Rescuer Training
Imagine if you or someone in your team encounters a sudden health problem that requires immediate evacuation. It would be not as stressful when you can just call the ambulance right away, but when you are outdoor, you need to deal with it in a completely different way. Even if you can call the ambulance, they would take a very long time to come, so what can you do during your waiting? This situation is one of the most common causes of death in Cambodia when people do not know the right way to help a patient when there’s an emergency. After getting trained about all of the emergency wilderness first aid, we all know how to help the patient before the evacuation comes including how to check for the pulse, major bleeding, deformities, serious injuries. How to make sure that the environment is safe and comfortable. We have practiced all of these skills during our trip to Mondulkiri.
Exploring Birds
Besides all of the things I have learned, it is as important to be aware of your interests, particularly of how it has changed before and after being outdoor. For me, I have developed several new interests and passions after going trekking in Mondulkiri. I become more interested about staying or trekking in nature, camping, cooking, being a wilderness rescuer, trying new things in different environments (some of the examples are: phnong food cooking, rescue scenarios, trekking and camping in a new wilderness place)
Overall, it was a successful trip with all three of my goals accomplished at the end (my three goals are: to be more comfortable in nature, push myself to the limits and to find beauty in nature. I have learned many new things and discovered my own passions, interests and what nature means to me, learn to be comfortable in the uncomfortable
‘Look beyond the sky, Dance with the moon, Enjoy the rhythm of the stars and See the beauty of life” – Angely Rose
As the world has revolutionized greatly by new inventions of Technology, It is crucial to study and understand further into the field. In the present days, there are great inventions that can help humanity with our daily lives, including different applications, hardware, software, and robots.
FLL (First Lego League) is a robotic competition that inspires and empowers students from all around the world to code robots and do scientific researches to compete together in Singapore.
The Field of Missions for the Robot to complete
This year, I am one of the participants that involve in the FLL Robotics Competition 2019, theme: Into Orbit. The three main components of the competition include programming, project researching, and core values. For the programming part, I have been involved with technical skills which are Coding the Robot by using the EV3 program. To prepare for the competition, My team and I also need to research on a problem that astronauts face during long-term explorations within our solar system.
The topic that we chose was ‘Circadian Rhythm’ which refers to the unfamiliar pattern of habits astronauts face when they go up
Our Team’s Robot
into space. Circadian refers to the human biological clock of living organisms that controls all of the hormonal releases and other functions of our body that works by using the light that is detected from the optic nerve. On Earth, the 24-hour cycle is valid and continuous which makes our body circadian clock works well according to the cycle of sunsets and sunrises. However, environments up in space like inside the international space station (ISS) has a different pattern of lighting. A day inside the ISS, there are 16 sunrises and sunsets a day (1 per 45 minutes) which really messes up the astronaut’s circadian rhythm and gives them side effects on their health including the rise of acids in the stomach, wrong hormonal releases which can lead to headaches and other health problems.
After analyzing the problems, we have come up with a solution to help astronauts deal with this problem better, which is to create an artificial 24-hours cycle of day and night time to help adjust the astronaut’s biological clock to work better. To implement the solution in spaceships, we are planning to use a type of glass that has high capability to prevent light so that we can keep the spaceship dark for 12 hours to make it seems like night. For the 12-hours day time, we are going to use a special type of lamp which os the LED lamp because it has special effects on the astronaut’s environment.
The week of the competition came, and we flew to Singapore to stay there for a week with our host families. There, I have learned about a newly industrializing country, especially its continuous development of infrastructures and technology. We visited a company called ‘Cloudera’ to study business management and tech development in the entrepreneur world.
A Team Spirit Moment
After all of the hard works we have put in for the presentation and the robot runs in this competition with hundreds of other teams, my team (LLA 1) had won an award ‘Overseas Best Performing Team’ and received a lego trophy and one medal for each member.
Business Management Session
Overall, this exploration was a wonderful learning experience and I appreciate all of the opportunities and achievements we had throughout this amazing journey.
Acids and Bases are important, not only in the science world, in the industrial world and other fields as well. The different ranges of acids and bases are identified as the pH (Potential of Hydrogen) level.
All though Acids and Bases might be similar in some ways, there are huge differences between them. One of the differences is that Acid produces positive hydrogen ions when dissolved in water, making it to be able to conduct electricity because of those charged particles in the solutions. Whereas base produces negative hydroxide ion when dissolved in water.
In the industrial world, Acids and bases are important because a variety of products contain these two. For example, sulfuric acids are used to manufacture detergent, paper, and paint. Soaps contain a type of base called Potassium Hydroxide. Bases are also found in many cleaning products, concrete or deodorants.
The Acids and Bases also plays a role to balance the pH level in our body to ensure great health. If the pH level is unbalanced, it will cause some health problems. Unbalanced pH level can cause stomach ache due to the rise of acidity. Unbalanced pH level in the brain can cause depression, moodiness, memory loss, hallucinations, anxiety, and restlessness
We can easily detect acids or base by using the indicator, which can be a red litmus. The indicator will change color according to the level of Ph that comes to contact with it. To further test and study this theory, we have done a PH test of different substances including:
Lime juice
Vinegar
Lime Soda
Water
Toothpaste
Baking Soda
Bleach
We have used red cabbage solution as the indicator. Here is a photo we got after adding each substance into a plastic cup and what it had changed when we put the indicator in.
The photo of Substances with no Indicators (By Bopha) The photo of substances when Indicator is put in.
This experiment shows how substances change their property when it comes to contact with the indicator (cabbage solution).
Life is all about happiness. Beautiful memories, wonderful people you have met, glorious days, delightful moments in nature. All of these is what makes our life bright and worth living. Some people might argue that life contains more dark moments than happiness, But I say, without that darkness, happiness can’t shine. Life would not be complete without some tough times.
In this round, the theme for literacy class is ‘Happiness’. To discover deeply about happiness, how can we achieve happiness, and what does it mean to us and other people, We’ve read and study a lot of poems & writing pieces from famous authors and watched a lot of films related to the topic.
As we discussed and study deeper into the topic, we have found some interesting facts about happiness related to money, social bonds, nature, and enjoyment.
CNBC.com
Talking about Happiness, there are a lot of assumptions that most people tend to make about it, one of which is that money can buy happiness. According to a study titled: Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory Consumption of Experiential and Material Purchases which they surveyed a lot of random people and the result is surprising. People got excited about both product purchases and experiential purchases. But they tended to feel more positive about experiential purchases, and their feelings about material purchases were more likely to be tinged with feelings of impatience. Which means experiential purchases can have a more positive impact on the person’s feeling and social connections.
A 32-year-old mother of seven children during the great depression (Wikipedia)
There are many ways to achieve happiness according to the situation we are in. For instance, during the great depression, achieving happiness is unlikely and very hard due to the severe effects, it put on the citizens. In order to be happy, citizens can escape to another happy world through arts, culture, and music. They can watch movies that they can relate too or listen to entertaining kinds of music. All of these helped Americans to feel more positive besides the complex and frustrating situation in the country. This showcases that, even in the darkest of time, happiness can be found if only one remember how to turn on the light (1).
Many famous poets use poetry as a way to capture their happiness and to express their delightful moment. Many poems capture the emotional range of the poets and their philosophy of life. Some of the poems are: “Truth By Nikki Grimes”, ‘I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud By William Wordsworth’, ‘From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee’.
Goalcast
The philosophy I took out from ‘I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud’ and ‘From Blossoms’ is to spend more time with nature. We need to look deep to see the beauty, the meanings and the sensation that nature gives to us. We can just let ourselves enjoy the view, forget the darkness and welcome the beautiful feelings that nature offers to us. Be grateful for the moment that you have with nature and save it as a beautiful memory. Because life is short and one day, someone is going to take away these beautiful days from us, so make it meaningful and value every moment you know that makes you happy. Hold onto every beautiful memory as life goes on.
(1): A quote from Albus Dumbledore, Character from Harry Potter Series written by J.K Rowling
