I-Search - Final

[Gregory Hewett]

Post your final copies of your I-Search projects here.

[suchithra]

Suchithra Anand
Feb. 2, 2011

I-Search- The American Revolution
When Mr. Hewett first told us about the research project, my initial reaction was that I thought it was a fascinating aspect for a project, but I had absolutely no idea what my topic was going to be. I didn’t think I’d come up with a topic in time. I wanted it to be something I could research and write about without falling asleep, but I didn’t want it to be something that would come off as immature.

I decided that I wanted my topic to have something to do with the U.S.A, and I asked myself, “What can I write that’s about U.S.A that has enough information and won’t bore me to tears?” I thought something historic could be interesting, so I considered some of the major topics that are historic and focused on the U.S.A. Finally, I decided on the American Revolution. I thought it was good enough.

I did think that the American Revolution was something I could write about comfortably. So, I decided to go with it. I felt that I could include enough information on the topic without making it so long that the reader will probably die before finishing it and not so little information that it could be read in the blink of an eye.
As I mentioned before, I had considered other topics like George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River, American Colonization, or the Boston Tea party. I suppose they are all interconnected in some way. The American Revolution stuck out because it was the most important of the others. Also, it might have been easier to search for book on the American Revolution. It was a topic that I had taken an interest in.

The next day, Mr. Hewett had us go down to the High School library because there was MAP testing in progress at the Middle School Library; but that turned out fine because the H.S library is the one with most of the books on non-fictional topics. That day, Mr. Hewett would talk to us about our topics and either approve of it, (in which case we were supposed to post it on the discussion Forum) or he would tell us it too broad or too narrow, and then we would have to refine it. My topic got approved, so I posted it on the Discussion Forum. Mr. Hewett had also told us to read the works of students who had studied under him a couple of years before we did; we were to use these as examples and guides as to how we were to write our piece. It was during this time that I found out that our work should not just be an essay or an informatory piece, but something more inclined toward a story; a story of how we did the research, a story of why chose our topic, and so on so forth.

Doing the pre-search simpler than I thought it would be. After I picked my topic. I checked out some books from the library on the American Revolution and found around three online sources of information as the pre-search guide required. After that, I just had to write part one, the first part of the piece.
I still had the rest of the research to look forward to.

Part 2 of the I-Search is on what I know about my topic, what I think I know about my topic, wild guesses I can make about my topic and things I need to know about my topic. At first, it all sounded like a tedious process, but as I got used to the idea of it, I realized it may actually be something that I could do.
What I know for sure about my topic, the American Revolution, is that it started with the colonists dressing as American Indians, and going to the Boston Harbor, as part of rebellion, and dumping boxes of tea in to the harbor. This came to be called the Boston Tea Party, although, it wasn’t as much of a party as it was a protest.

I can imagine them in their feathered headdresses, and paint smeared on their face as they caused total and complete chaos, but, for the right reasons. I think that this was in rebellion of the British, who were ruling the United States of America at the time of the American Revolution. I also think that this was caused because of the increase in price and tax initiated by the British Government in their thirst for money.

The next part of Part 2 two is on wild guesses I can make, but it seems kind of weird to be trying to make wild guesses on a topic like the American Revolution. During the American Revolution there were a lot of losses; you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that; but it would have been different if there were different losses. My topic being the American Revolution, I’m going to try to make my guesses as wild as they can get on a topic like this. I’m guessing that there had to be cutbacks on food like bread and soup or whatever they had to eat back then. This probably would have led to protests during which people would have been hurt for which people would have had to pay for treatments which in turn would cause more cutbacks. A vicious circle; but that’s just my guess. It’s probably wrong anyway.

So far, I haven’t exactly been writing about my topic except for a couple of paragraphs. This is, after all, a mostly research project and I should also be writing about my actual subject. In a more broadened perspective, without going into the details, I should be researching and learning more about the Boston Tea Party (the beginning), the colonists, the revolutionaries, the war, and the Declaration of Independence. My topic is probably relatively broad, so I would like to cover the most important points about the American Revolution. Those would probably be the ones I mentioned above, at least, I hope so.

So far, this project has mostly been a writing project. A project of literary skills; but in Part 3 we started the research. The research however, is not Part 3 but is for Part 3. Part 3 is writing about how you did the research.

I’m supposed to write about obstacles I encountered while researching and how I dealt with them. One time my laptop shut down in the middle of research, but I don’t know if that qualifies a as a problem; it was just out of battery. We kept track of our internet sources on Delicious, so I didn’t have as many problems with recovering my sources as I probably would have if hadn’t used Delicious. One of my internet sources, (the one I mostly used, which was very detailed) was extremely long. I wanted to be able to include sufficient amount of information in my notes, so I went with it. It was tedious. As an understatement. There were some complicated areas beyond my understanding, but I used other sources and more importantly, dictionaries, to figure it out. So, I stuck with it and I finally finished my notes on the American Revolution.

We were also supposed to make sure that our information from our sources were trustworthy by cross-referencing. There weren’t a lot of differences in my sources, some were just more detailed than others, some easier to understand. I doubted there would be a lot of differences in sources about the American Revolution.

The next thing we were supposed to do was write from different perspectives. One of the perspectives I’ve chosen is that of a woman during the war. There was, after all, an entire section devoted to them in a couple of my sources. It must have been extremely difficult for them because their husbands, fathers, or brothers must have been away at war. They could have been injured, or killed. While at home, they would have had to take care the house, and if they had kids, it would make the job harder; you know what monsters we can be. The women would have had to make economic cutbacks, which would have added to their difficulty. I doubt the British had the same problems because they were comparatively financially stable. But it all worked out in the end anyway. Another perspective is that of the soldiers. Being away from their family and friends would have been hard. The war also separated family and friends, in terms of Loyalists and Patriots. I’m just glad I wasn’t born then.

As part of the research, we had to evaluate for bias. From what I understood (if I understood correctly), we had to find bias, which was hard because I couldn’t find any. Like I mentioned earlier the information was pretty much the same. I guess finding bias also depends on your topic.

As a conclusion, not to the project, but to Part 3, I’m going to say that this has been a fun, enriching project. I have to say that. But it has. I also have to advice others. I advice them to look into their topic well before selecting it and not giving up. I guess it is a little cliché.

Part 4 is the final part of the I-Search, so I’m motivated to get through this. This part is about the thesis statement, a subject I did not entirely understand at first, but might be comparatively simple compared to other aspects of this project. Or not. I still think I can get through this. The American Revolution was the result of high taxation by the British and no American representation in The Parliament.

The era began with a series of British victories at the end of the French and Indian War which ended with French threats to the British North American colonies. British also imposed high tax and prices on the colonies which combined with the fact that the British were opposed to colonists and Patriots being members of the Parliament led to protests and revolt. The British, in response to the protests, sent combat troops and imposed direct rule on the Americans. Fighting broke out in 1775. By 1776, representatives from the 13 colonies unanimously voted for a declaration of Independence. In the last half of the 18th century the colonies joined together to form the U.S.A, and they expelled all British officials and each colony had self-governing states. British responded by sending in more troops to re-impose direct rule. The new states joined together to defend their respective self-governed states and fought the Revolutionary War, which lasted from 1775 to 1783. Ultimately, states collectively determined British monarchy, because of tyranny, could no longer claim their allegiance. 1776, the Congress issued the United States Declaration of Independence, rejecting the monarchy. Americans won in October 1781, and then British abandoned claims to the United States in 1783. This information was derived from en.wikipedia.org/wiki American_Revolution. ("American revolution," )

Stating my thesis statement wasn’t as hard as I expected, but proving it probably is; but then I again, I could be wrong, hopefully. Using direct and indirect quotations might potentially be simple. As mentioned before, credit goes to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution, ("American revolution,") and www.thinkquest.org/pls/_COLONIES_THE_REVOLUTIONARY, ("Colonies and the," ), (Edward, 1995).

My thesis was basically a summary of my notes on the American Revolution. I now have to prove my thesis with quotes from my sources. I derived the following from Wikipedia.
“The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America. They first rejected the authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them from overseas without representation, and then expelled all royal officials. By 1774 each colony had established a Provincial Congress to form individual self-governing states. The British responded by sending combat troops to re-impose direct rule. The new states then joined together at first to defend their respective self-governance and manage the armed conflict against the British known as the American Revolutionary War (1775–83, also American War of Independence). Ultimately, the states collectively determined that the British monarchy, by acts of tyranny, could no longer legitimately claim their allegiance. They then severed ties with the British Empire in July 1776, when the Congress issued the United States Declaration of Independence, rejecting the monarchy on behalf of the new sovereign nation. The war ended with effective American victory in October 1781, followed by formal British abandonment of any claims to the United States with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.”
Social, political and intellectual transformations including the acts of the British in the early American society led to the American Revolution.

Based on the points I have presented, the American Revolution was the result of high taxation without representation which led to war. The Americans triumphed and formed their nation, The United States of America.
American revolution. (n.d.). Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution

Colonies and the revolutionary war. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.thinkquest.org/pls/_COLONIES_THE_REVOLUTIONARY

Kent, Deborah. (1994). The American revolution "give me liberty or give me death!". New Jersey: Enslow Publishers, Inc.

Dolan, Edward. (1995). The American revolution how we fought the war of independence. Brookfield: The Milbrook Press, Inc.

Freedman, Russel. (2000). Give me liberty! the story of the decleration of indpendence. Broadway, New York: SCHOLASTIC.
;D

[dongseob]

I-Search
By : Dong Seob

I packed my bag and got ready for school and I went to school. I took my stuff for Language Art and Social Studies. I went inside the door of Language Art class. During the class, Mr. Hewett announced that we will have 3 week project, which was called the ¡®I- Search¡¯. That was the time my mouth was widely opened. I was worried that if the project is long, it would be difficult. Afterwards, he explained to us what the I-Search is and he said we could choose any topic we want, and we need to do it by ourselves.

After school, I went to home and I was thinking about what I should choose for a topic. After a few minutes, I heard a noise like thunder from the sky. It was a gigantic airplane. Our home was near by the airport so I could hear the airplanes flying every day. It was time that I needed to go out and walk around my apartment. Suddenly, a thought went into my head and I stood like a stone at my room. Then I got the idea of topic which I worried about. It was the engines of airplane. I was so excited.

Next day, I went to school. In class, we spent time at the library doing a pre- search. A pre-search is a search that we take a look at only few references for our topic to make sure that if we can¡¯t find enough information, that I should change the topic for I-Search. At the internet, it showed tons of sources for engines of airplanes that could take forever to read. Then I found out that I didn¡¯t do my narrowing idea. I thought that the topic would be too broad. I narrowed it down to Boeing 747. Again it was broad because I liked parts of Boeing 747. Again, I narrowed it down to parts of Boeing 747. I thought that was pretty good enough. Then I went to Mr. Hewett to get my topic approved. Then he said that my topic was broad. He discussed with me that the History and development of Boeing 747 would be better. So I searched for books that have histories of Boeing 747. At the library, I found a couple of books that contained the history of Boeing 747 and the problem they had while development of Boeing 747.

Now I was done with my books. I need to find some online sources. I searched on Google and several websites come up. There weren¡¯t many of them. I found more than three sites about history and development of Boeing 747. After school, I went to Mr. Hewett to get my approved topic. He asked me if I had enough sources and books. He saw my source and he approved my topic. This is how I got my topic.

The first part of part two are the things that I know about the history and developments of Boeing 747. I know for sure that Boeing 747 is a large passenger aircraft. The second thing I know is that it is made from the airplane company, called ¡®Boeing¡¯. Also, it can carry more than 300 people. I know that for sure because every airplane that has ¡®Boeing¡¯ in front of their types, it means that that airplane was built by that company. Also I know it is large because I read about it in a book about aircraft since when I was around 10 years old. Little bit smaller planes than Boeing 747 can board 300 people at maximum.

The second part of part two contains what I think I do know about history and development of Boeing 747. I think that I do know the time used to construct the Boeing 747 will take as long as the age of the Earth. Also I think that Boeing 747 was built and designed to board lots of people all at once. I got that idea because Boeing 747 itself is big as elephant, long as the total length of human blood vessel, and wide as world.

The third part of part two is about making wild guess that I think about history and development of Boeing 747. I guess that Boeing 747 was first built near 1900 and it would be difficult to make Boeing 747. I guess that the Boeing 747 is the biggest airplane that Boeing Company ever made. I guess that it would be worth to look up when the Boeing 747 was built because it is history of Boeing 747, which is part of my I-search topic. Also I can¡¯t be sure when Boeing 747 was first built.

The last but not least is fourth part of part two which is the lists of things or questions that I need to research on book or internet and know to finish this project are listed below this sentence.

When was the Boeing 747 was built first?

Why is it so large?

Who first invented the Boeing 747?

What were the problems of the Boeing 747 while building it?

When was the first flight with passengers?

What is maximum number of people that the Boeing 747 can carry?
How long did it take to construct the Boeing 747?

The problems I had while doing this project were that I couldn¡¯t find easily the websites that included information about my topic. I think it was the A380, rival company, Airbus, airplane of Boeing, information. I deal with taking lots of times to find the websites that I wanted. Second, there was lots of different information in the many websites. I needed to go to the other websites and cross reference them if it is correct or wrong. The third problem was that I couldn¡¯t find many books that have information. So I deal with depending on the online sources what I have found for the research mostly.

For the cross reference, I needed to cross reference almost all the information. Fortunately I have saved lots of bookmarks at the Delicious so it was not a big deal. Some information, I thought that it would be trustworthy because I cross referenced all the information and some information were in the Boeing official site and government official sites.

For the multiple perspectives, I was thinking at Boeing Company¡¯s perspective. Then I thought that Boeing would be proud that they had invented the first large commercial airplane which holds up to 490 passengers. Also Boeing would be proud because some of the presidents use the Boeing 747. Then Boeing would think that Airbus copied their idea and they would think they are bad. In Airbus¡¯s perspective, they would think that now they have the better and bigger commercial airplane that Boeing Company¡¯s Boeing 747 and people would mostly prefer the A380 than Boeing 747 because it is more comfortable. They would have been believed that they didn¡¯t copy the Boeing 747. Also they could think that Boeing can¡¯t build the large airplane as theirs.

For the evaluating bias, I think that the information that I have found is factual information that is presented. I think it is fact because most of the facts are written on the official government website and Boeing website. Also it is fact because I cross referenced them all.

The personal reflection, this huge project or, I-Search project, I think it is great idea to develop your English skills better and to lean things that you don¡¯t know more. I think that I did not too good but not too bad. I am feeling okay about what have I done so far. I think I could have made even great if I think little bit more carefully and take more time to do the research part.
Advices for the others are for this part or whole project is that what you need is not to hurry and mass up the project, but to take your time to do it. This part takes very long time to finish. You need to read, read, and read. Make sure you need enough information to present and take notes. Also you need to make sure that the information is correct and to do that, you need to cross reference information.

The history and development of the Boeing 747 is the topic of my research for my I- search. President of Pan Am, Juan Trippe, requested Boeing Company to create a huge commercial aircraft that was to carry the maximum number of passengers. This request gave birth to the Boeing 747, the biggest commercial aircraft after Airbus A380. Then, the huge project of the building Boeing 747 was started in the late 1960s.

Like I said at the first paragraph, Juan Trippe was the first person to request the construction of the Boeing 747. If we say to be more specific, he wanted twice bigger airplane than Boeing 707, which is earlier airplane made by Boeing. The purpose to request to make Boeing 747 is that he wanted an airplane that could carry many people at once and fast airplane.

The building process of the Boeing 747 was a huge undertaking for the people who constructed Boeing 747 and Boeing Company. Boeing Company didn¡¯t have the large enough land for construction assembly to build the Boeing 747. If this was so, what do you think they did? Did they give up building Boeing 747? For the answer, it is no. To complete their mission by Juan Trippe, they built a whole new assembly at Everett, Washington to build Boeing 747. The amount of land used for to build Boeing 747 sprawled about780 acres. Do you think they did success to make it? Yes, they did it. It was late 1960s when Boeing 747 first was made or was first born.

The workers who build the Boeing 747 were called ¡®The Incredibles¡¯. In the Incredibles, construction workers, mechanic, engineer, secretaries, and administrators were the workers who would have spent days and nights to complete their mission given by Juan Trippe, to build Boeing 747. You can say that the first Boeing 747 was made by not only metals, technology, and engines, but the workers who made Boeing 747¡¯s heart, effort, and their sweat. By their effort, and all the others, first Boeing 747 was able to fly on February 9th 1969 safely between London, England and New York, U.S.A.

Like the other commercial airplanes produced by airplane companies have many variants, Boeing 747 also has many variants or Boeing747 family. How many do you think there will be variants of Boeing 747? Well it is so many that I couldn¡¯t really count all. Some lists of variants of Boeing 747 are Boeing 747-100, Boeing 747SR, and the others. Some special variants of Boeing 747 are used as presidential fleets like Air Force One and for military aircrafts. One of customized Boeing 747 is used as US presidential fleet since 1990s. Some customized Boeing 747-400s have been part of the Japanese Air Force One since 1993.

Now for the supporting of my thesis, I will put some facts that were written by someone. This facts written by someone will prove that I didn¡¯t lie. Also it could give you extra information. Down below, there are information and where it comes from.
¡°The first Boeing 747 flew on 9th February 1969. This is a letter that was sent by Juan Trippe when he requested the Boeing 747 to Boeing:
Dear Mr. Boeing,
Please build us a very big aero plane soon. If it is pretty as well that will be a bonus. We will buy lots of them.
Yours sincerely,
Pan Am¡±("A brief 747 history,¡±)


¡°The development of the 747 was a huge undertaking. Boeing did not have a factory large enough to assemble the giant aircraft, so the company built an all-new assembly building near Everett, Washington. Who worked on the development of the 747 was given the nickname ¡®The Incredibles¡¯.¡±("The classic boeing,¡±)

¡°¡®The Incredibles¡¯, these were the construction workers, mechanics, engineers, secretaries and administrators who made aviation history by building the 747.¡± ("History 747 Commercial transport,¡±)

¡° VC-25A 29000, one of the two customized Boeing 747-200Bs that have been part of the U.S. presidential fleet since 1990. 20-1101 Japanese Air Force One, one of the two customized Boeing 747-400s that have been part of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force since 1993.¡± ("Boeing 747,")

¡°The list down below is the list of variant of Boeing 747, or the family of Boeing 747. As I said at the top, there are many of them.

[james]

I-search- How do birds fly?
It was just after the end of winter break. I was woken up by my mother calling out my name and with two different feelings. The first thing that I thought of was that the winter break was over and thus I can`t sleep any longer. The second thing was the delight that I could meet my friends and play. So I went to school.

When I arrived at school, the whole school was full of people saying hi or talking about what they did during their winter break with huge positive exaggerations. I entered Mr. Hewett`s room without any idea what we are going to do today. The first thing I realized when I entered the class was that there were sheets of paper named I-search on everyone's desk. So I quickly picked up the paper, but it seemed to me that I was reading something in a language that I didn't know.

During the class, we discussed about the I-search therefore I understood what the text was about. It was about "I" searching about a topic that I'm interested on and everything should be in first person.

Then a few days later, there was a new sheet of papers lying on our desk named pre-search. It was about how to do pre-searching and check if your topic is perfect (not broad or narrow and etc). So Mr. Hewett gave us homework to think about our topic till next week Monday.

When I started to think about it my mind went blank. I had no idea. So I looked outside of the window trying to think of a topic, and then the problem was solved. Because of a little bird sitting on my room window I got a question how do birds fly? It was perfect.

On Monday, we finally went to high school library to pre-search our topic. So the first thing I did was to search for three online sources in the internet. There were plenty of blogs that were at my reading level and the topic wasn't too broad or too narrow. I was full of satisfaction about my topic until I checked if there were any books about birds. There were none of them. There were some books about bird's habit or how they make nests, but there were no such books as how do birds fly?

The next day my father gave me an idea to check if there is a book about airplanes - and my father was right. There was a perfect book which told me how birds fly and also the similarities between planes and birds! So I told Mr. Hewett my topic and he approved it.

The next thing I did was reading the previous 6th graders I-search project. It took me years to read the I-search project. The project had so many pages. It was longer than The Great Wall of China. Any way it was well written and very interesting. I hope I can write better than the samples.

Any way in conclusion I-search part one was successfully done!!
After I-search part one I thought I could start researching, but I was wrong. Mr. Hewett gave us a sheet of paper named I-search part two.

There is just one more step before doing the actual research. It is I-search part two. It is the planning and thinking part for the research.

Well, to do the I-search part 2, I need to ask myself- what do I already know for sure about my topic?. Let's take an example. Let¡¦s say my topic is ocean. I can say it is deep, it is salty, it has a lot of living creatures in it, and etc. Since my topic is how do birds fly? I can say that planes has similar wing style like birds, birds have strong wing muscle to fly, bird's wings are covered with feathers to keep them warm from the flight in the air, and etc. I'm pretty sure my guess is right because if you had ever watched a bird or rode a plane, you would realize that the wings are alike and it becomes cold as you go higher up in the sky.
That was just a tip of an ice glacier. The second thing I need to ask myself is What I might know about my topic?. Well I have very little information in this section which are they are birds; they can fly because they are small and their wings can cut through the air.

The third question I must ask myself is what kind of wild guesses could I make about my topic. Wild guesses in this sentence can also mean crazy guesses like Aliens are living on mars but the guesses should be worth my time to explore. So, mine would be, birds have two hearts because they can fly for a long time and they have big lungs because they have to breathe in the higher altitudes of the sky.

The last question that I must ask myself will be the most important one. It is List at least 5 specific things which I must research about. They are:

What do birds eat?
What do the wings do?
What is the similarities and difference between birds and planes?
What does the feather do while the birds are flying?
Special habits of birds.

After the I-search part two, I had so much time until I started the I-search part three. We had almost a week, but it felt too short. I thought we had just a day to finish this.

Anyway, since we finished I-search part two, I thought that I-search part three was about writing about what we had researched about,- but I was wrong.

I asked my friends what do we have to write about I-search part three and what it is, even though I have read the I-search part three paper over and over again million times, and I got the answer.

I-search part three is mainly about writing the way you have found the information, and how you had cross-referenced some of your information.

When I found the answer, I was full of concern, because there weren¡¦t a lot of things to write about in this section! Writing 450~550 words seemed impossible to me. Anyway, here it goes.

I found my information about my topic- how do birds fly, by a lot of things, so I will explain you about my source of information step by step. Ah! Just a reminder, be sure to have the URL of your source of information! If you don¡¦t then you are plagiarizing in another word committing a crime.

Anyway, the first way I used to find information about my topic was through a book from the high school library named Flight by Donald Lopez. This book was perfect for people like me, who are looking for the most common information of birds and planes, but it wasn't detailed.

The second way I had found my information was by internet sites, such as Q&A- van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=760 , which had contained so much information on everything, so I think that this site is perfect for everyone who wants to search information about something that is detailed and easy to understand.

The second site I had used was Allstar- www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvlthree.htm . It was a site from NASA. It had contained a lot of things about flights, but it was too detailed and hard to understand.
The third site I had found useful was wiki answer.com- wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_birds_fly . It was a site that had contained so much information about birds.

The last site I had used was Buzzle.com- www.buzzle.com/articles/how-do-birds-fly.html. It is a very good site. It contained a lot of information about my topic and also some extra information such as why do some birds travel in V shape and etc.

While I was gathering information, there was a lot of information that was repeated and different than other sites. It was the time for cross- reference of information. The first and the last thing I needed for cross-reference was birds fly by their feather and birds fly because the air in the bottom of the wing is slower than higher side. So I looked at many other different sites and came to an ending that they are both correct. Birds fly by their feather and the air difference.

Now that I finished all those references, I'm ready for I-search part four and I'm so surprised that I had written so many words!! I guess nothing is impossible.

Airplanes fly in the air. This is possible because of their wings. Wings get their energy from the jet engine. The birds have the similar working style. The birds are the indirect inspiration of the working of a plane. The airplanes are nothing but the modern and superior version of a bird.

Now that I have finished my I-search part three, it is the time to start working on I-search part four, the part I was waiting for. In this part I have to include the basic information I have found about how do birds fly? and answer the questions that I have asked in I-search part two which were ¡§What do birds eat?, What do the wings do?, What are the similarities and difference between birds and planes, What do the feathers do while the birds are flying?, and Special habits of birds so allow me to start.

Birds need their strong muscles to make strength to flap their wings; their strong muscles need the wishbone in their chest to support them, the wishbone need the wings to fly, and the wings need feathers to catch the air. Every one of them is so important.

I suddenly got this topic by simply looking outside the window; I closely looked at the birds. It dived, flapped their wings, glided, and etc. I just found out that they somehow fly by flapping their wings. I also had a lot of questions such as do birds have big lungs?, do they have two hearts?, and etc.

I immediately wanted to start researching until my questions were all answered but I couldn't because I had to follow the steps, and the days passed within the blink of an eye. Soon I had finished I-search part 1, 2, 3, and started researching for I-search part 4. Now I have found amazing information about my topic and found the answer how and why birds fly, and here it is.

Birds are able to fly because they have something different about them compared to other animals, even us! You could divide the differences in to mainly five parts.

The first part is the body system of the birds. Before the research I thought birds' body system and other animals¡¦ body system were the same but I was so wrong because if they do they won¡¦t be able to fly because first of all, their body would be too heavy. Second of all, it would take a lot of time to digest the food.

Finally, other animals¡¦ body system won¡¦t fit on them because they are too small. Any way here is some information I have found about my topic. They have high metabolism rate to supply their body with energy, in other words they can digest food fast and get the energy faster than other animals. Their lungs are extra efficient at extracting oxygen from the air which would help them breath well in the high altitudes. They also eat huge amounts of high-energy food which will in turn answers the question I have asked in I-search part two ¡§what do birds eat?¡¨

The second part is the bones and the wings of the birds. Birds have strong and light bones. They also have a bone called the furcula, more commonly known as the "wishbone," in their chest to make strength to flap their wings. They also have light and long feathers as well to catch the air. When they are flapping their wings downwards they fully expand their wings, offering its full surface area for pushing air downwards but when they are flapping their wings upwards their wings folds up, covering less area. It is a lot like rowing with oars. The oar pushes the water behind the boat on the power stroke which will let me the answer of the question ¡§what do the wings do¡¨. For birds not only their wings are important but their tail also is very important. Their tail is used like the rudder in the ship. It helps them maintain balance, slow down, and land.

The third part is the reason why, how, and when do birds fly. Birds fly because they can control their feathers as easy as their wings. They can make their feathers smooth and dense when they are flying and the opposite when they want to land, and this answers my question ¡§What does the feather do while the birds are flying?¡¨ Any way they can fly when all the feathers in a bird¡¦s wings are set in a certain way, so that the air can¡¦t flow through them. Then the wing takes up a special shape which makes the air flow much faster on the top of the wing and slower in the bottom of the wing. The difference in air-speed gives the wings a lift, and therefore birds can fly. What! I don¡¦t understand!! Then allow me to explain. I would prefer you to think of a paper half on the table and half hanging. If you blow the paper on the top of it, it will rise not fall down, and that is why. There are also many other reasons why do birds fly. Some of them are like the angle of their wings, by Newton's third law, by their well developed muscles and etc.

The fourth part is the similarities and difference between birds and planes. The similarities between birds and planes are that they fly by the difference between the upper part of their wings and the bottom part of the wing, they have a similar shape of their wings when they glide and so on. The difference between them are that planes use propellers or jet engines to fly but the birds use their strong muscle in their breasts to flap their wings, and birds wings are hinged, while airplane wings are rigged and fixed. This paragraph will answer on my question ¡§what is the similarities and difference between birds and planes¡¨

The fifth part is the habit and the interesting facts about birds. Birds really do have an interesting fact. They are some birds that fly in V shape! . The scientist had found out that flying in groups will make the birds more energetic and therefore make them fly further (about 70%). However, flying in a V shape does not benefit all birds equally; instead the bird in the lead position works the hardest. Who said being a leader is child's play! The next point will certainly interest you. When the bird at the lead position tires out, it will fall further back into one of the lines of V and will be replaced by another bird from further back and keep going. The other interesting fact is how the bird learns how to fly. The answer is Parent birds teach their young ones to fly by staying at a short distance away from the nest during feeding time and the young birds get hungry and try to fly to get some food and by that they learn how to fly. By this paragraph I am able to answer one of my questions ¡§Special habits of birds¡¨

Now that I have finished my I-search part four I¡¦m so proud of myself because I have finished all the parts of I-search and also got the answer of my topic! But it is not over yet, what? I thought you were finished! Is there something else to do? Well, I need to give credit to cite and books that I have used because I didn¡¦t found this information by myself so here it is.
Ć van, Initials. (2006, July 18). Q & a: how do birds fly?. Retrieved from van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=760
Ć David Anderson, Initials, & Scott Eberhardt, Initials. (2009, August 25). How airplanes fly. Retrieved from www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvl3.htm
Ć Jonasfan2, , & Cataclysmic Beefstick, . (n.d.). How do birds fly?. Retrieved from wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_birds_fly
Ć Priya Johnson, Initials. (2010, January 14). How do birds fly. Retrieved from www.buzzle.com/articles/how-do-birds-fly.html
Ć Donald Lopez, Initials. Flight.

In conclusion, birds fly because they have high metabolism rate to supply their body with energy, strong and light bones, light and long feathers to catch the air and by having wings that takes up a special shape which makes the air flow much faster on the top of the wing and slower in the bottom of the wing which give them a lift. That¡¦s how birds fly.


By Dong Min, Byun also known as James. ;D ;D

[yasmin]

The Ten Deadliest Snakes By: Yasmin

Snakes blow my mind when I think about them. My interest in snakes started when I was very young. When I was eighteen months old, I was at a pet store. The shopkeeper was showing someone a green snake. I went behind him, grabbed the snake’s tail and yanked it out of his hands. Then, I ran around the room with the snake in my hands.

When I was a little, my favorite book to look at before I went to sleep was about animal babies. Every night before I went to bed, I would watch my favorite shows, which were “Crocodile Hunter” with Steve Irwin and “The Jeff Corwin Experience”. My favorite part of the zoo was the Reptile House.

When I was six, I touched a deadly snake at my play school. It was an Indian Cobra. This cobra wasn’t too dangerous because its fangs were removed and it acted in movies. Here in Chennai, I’ve been to the Crocodile Park many times. The caretaker put a teenage Python around my neck. It started to wrap its body around my neck and licked my face. My mom freaked out so my dad pulled it off of me.

I want to become a Herpetologist when I grow up. A Herpetologist is someone who studies snakes. I have seen many deadly snakes like the Russell’s viper, Spectacled Cobra, Burmese Python, Krait, Saw Scaled Viper, King Cobra, Anaconda and loads more. On a snorkeling trip in Thailand, I missed the chance to see a Banded Sea Krait. Only the divers in our group saw it.

My dad and I want to go out one day with the Irula Tribe. They are local villagers who catch snakes for a living. They have been doing this for generations. They pull snakes out of their holes with their bare hands. They extract venom which is then used to make anti-venom. My mom won’t let me go until I understand how dangerous snakes are or I wear a rubber suit.

Something that looks like a rope can do so many amazing things. They are a masterpiece of engineering. Just think of a snake’s impeccable speed. They are as fast as a torpedo. They are stealthy hunters. Their spit can kill you! They can swim and climb trees. Some live underwater. Some can almost stand up. They can measure up to great lengths.

Most people think snakes are slimy, evil creatures that bring disaster. They forget that they only harm in self defense. I want people, including my mom, to understand that snakes are not what they think they are.

I chose the ten deadliest snakes in the world because I want to know how and why they kill people. I also want to understand how they live and their unique characteristics.

A snake is an organism like no other. Some have deadly poison, fierce strength and breathtaking looks. They can taste the air. They are unseen.

There are hundreds of snakes in the world. They live in trees, logs, water, caves, deserts, grass, and underground. Some snakes are born to live both in water and on land.
Snakes usually try to keep a safe distance from people; and only bite in self defense. Of the non-venomous snakes, only constrictors, like the Python and Anaconda, are a danger to human beings.

Snake venom attacks people’s nerves, blood, skin and soft tissue. A snake will never run out of venom. Its body keeps generating more and more. Cobras and Coral snakes have neurotoxic venom which attacks the nervous system. Snakes, like the Rattlesnake, have necrotoxic venom that attacks the soft tissue/skin. The Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake has hemotoxic venom that attacks the blood.

Snake bites can be treated by anti-venin (an antitoxin to venom). Anti-venin is made from actual venom which has to be extracted from a snake. Whether or not the person will live depends on many things.

All of the venomous snakes in the world have fangs. Snakes like pythons and anacondas have throats wide enough to swallow an elephant.

Snakes can not only move forward, they can also move sideways. Snakes have a special spinal cord that bends like thin rubber. This is how their bodies are so flexible and their movements are very contorted.

I think snakes have a season for reproducing, like many other animals. Snakes can be born live and or from eggs.
Snakes have the bad reputation of being nasty creatures that want to kill everyone. They are not that way. I think humans kill more snakes, than snakes kill humans. People corner and chase them away. They are only forcing the snake to defend itself.
A snake can never be tamed or become a loving pet like a puppy or other animals. People buy snakes and put them in glass enclosures. All the person is doing is taking away their freedom.

1. What types of venom does each snake have?
2. Who was the first person to discover a snake?
3. How long after getting bitten by the deadliest snake can a person stay alive?
4. Is there a certain species of snakes that evolved from another snake?
5. Where are the most snakes found in the world?

When I started, I checked out a book from our library that had information on all the snakes in the world. Then, I rummaged through the internet in search of websites. I searched day and night. It felt like a year had gone by just sitting there and punching questions into Google and Wikipedia.

The sites on the internet were not fair because there were many trying to sell snakes to me, and many asking me to visit snake parks thousands of miles across the ocean. I came across many sites that were completely off track. I was disappointed because I was looking for some real information that would help me. Instead, I got a lot of unnecessary facts.

Every website seemed to have a different list of the top ten deadliest snakes in the world. Some rated the snakes on the toxicity of their venom. Others rated them on their aggressiveness. There were lists that rated the snakes by the number of people that they killed in different regions of the world. It was very hard to decide on which list to use.

I found a list of snakes on a travel website. Then, I found two other websites that both had the same list. I decided to ditch the travel website and use the other two.

The three sites that helped me with my topic about snakes were Types of Snake Venom, Ten Deadliest Snakes in the World - Top Ten Planet, and Steve Irwin’s snakes. The Ten Deadliest Snakes-Top Ten Planet gave me the list of snakes that I used. I got most of the information about the snakes on my list from Steve Irwin’s Snakes.

I broke my research up into sections like types of venom, ten deadliest snakes list, snakes instincts, and their scientific names.
I took notes out of my book and websites. I kept my research organized, so it would not get lost.

Sometimes, it was hard because I lost a few important websites and didn’t know the URL. I had to go searching for the same site through the internet. I should have saved it in multiple places. I accomplished getting most of my notes and stopped minor problems.

I still need a bit more information for my notes, so I have to get more websites to use. It is easy to find websites, but hard to keep track of them.

A lot of the websites that I found had different reading levels; with loads of words. I had no idea what they meant. I had to scan through the information and find appropriate, helpful information at my reading level. I had to throw away many sites.
It was hard to get accurate notes, sites, information, and books for the project. I hope I don’t have any more problems as I continue.

A snake is a work of art. Their deadliness is another thing. They hide under rocks, in holes, and in trees. They are camouflaged in sand, leaves, and water. You think you will be able to see one and take cover. You are wrong! The snake is almost invisible and will appear when least expected.
These are ten of the deadliest snakes in the
world. They have venom; they have camouflaged skin; they have strength.

The Inland Taipan is found in Queensland, Australia. It is also known as the Fierce snake. It is the deadliest snake in the world. Its color is from reddish dark brown to dark tan with shades of olive-green and buff. Their scientific name is Oxyuranus Microlepidotus. The venom from a single bite of this snake can kill up to a hundred adult humans and up to 250,000 mice. In one bite, 11 milligrams of the most potent venom in the world can be injected. It has 750 times more venom than a cobra. This snake can grow up to 1.7 meters. It only hunts during the day. The Inland Taipan lays 9 to 12 eggs at once. It eats little animals like rats, mice, frogs, and lizards. It has a sharp sense of smell and sight. When provoked, it shall strike quickly with multiple bites.

The second deadliest snake in the world is the Common Brown snake. It is also known as the King Brown snake. The scientific name is Pseudonaja Textilis. It has a light brownish color that reflects the sun. It is found in Australia, Indonesia, and New Guinea. It can grow up till a length over 2 yards. When provoked, it will flatten its neck before striking; and will hold its neck high in an S shape. It has a greater venom output then any other Australian snake. The venom is of low toxicity.

The Malayan Blue Krait is the third most deadly in the world. It originated in South Asia and Indonesia. Its scientific name is Bungarus Candidus. It grows to a length of 1.6 meters. It has a different venom structure compared to any of the other snakes. The Krait is nocturnal and does not like the sunlight. It likes to live near water and attacks only in self defense. It eats small lizards and creatures.

The Taipan is part of the Inland Taipan family. It is the fourth deadliest snake. Its coloring is any shade of brown. Oxyuranus Scutellatus is its scientific name. It is found in northern Australia and New Guinea. It prefers to live in fallen logs and roots of trees. It has the longest fangs of any Australian snake and its venom causes paralysis. It has a rectangular head and red eyes. It grows up to a length of 12 feet. It eats bandicoots, birds, mice, and rats.

The Tiger snake is fifth on the list. It has a coloring which resembles a tiger. It has dark orange and blackish bands. Its scientific name is Notechis Scutatus. It is found in southern Australia. It lives in creeks, wetlands, and coastal environments. It eats mice, birds, lizards, and frogs. It can grow up to 2 meters. Its young are born live and not in eggs. The young can number 30 at once. It causes paralysis. Death can come in less than 30 minutes.

The Beaked Sea Snake is next. It is the sixth deadliest snake. It has a bluish gray color. Its scientific name is Enhydrina Schistosa. It is found in Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, Madagascar, and more. This snake can swallow prey twice the size of its neck. It grows till a length of 1.2 meters. This snake eats eels, catfish, fish eggs, and small fish. Most sea snake bites in the world are caused by this snake. It has a special flat tail for swimming.

The Saw Scaled Viper is in the seventh position. Its color is light buff and is camouflaged in sand. This snake is found in most parts of Asia and in Africa. Its scientific name is Echis Carinatis. This snake is very ill-tempered and aggressive. This snake is quite small but very dangerous. When provoked, it will rub certain scales together to make a loud rasping sound to alert their enemies to stay away. It does not like intruders in its territory.

The Coral Snake is a common snake. It is found in Central, North, and South America. It is a part of 50 different species. Its color is big red bands with small yellow and black bands. Its scientific name is Micrurus Fulvius. It lives underground, in cracks, and in small crevices. It grows till a maximum of 3 feet. It eats other snakes, lizards, reptiles, and amphibians. A lot of snakes that aren’t as ferocious as the coral snake try to mimic it in defense. There is a rhyme to tell whether a snake is a coral snake or a mimic snake; ‘Red on Yellow, Kill a Fellow, Red on Black, Friend of Jack.’

The Boomslang is a very dangerous snake. It is found in sub-Saharan Africa. The Boomslang is a member of the Colubridae Family. Adult females are olive brown and adult males are brownish black, bright green, or bluish green. Its scientific name is Dispholidus Typus. It lives in the branches of trees. It eats frogs, lizards, small mammals, eggs, and birds. It can grow up to 5.5 meters. It injects venom from its rear teeth.

The Death Adder is the last on the list. It is found everywhere in Australia, except for Tasmania and Victoria. It is a wide, narrow tailed, brown to reddish orange snake. Its scientific name is Acanthopis Antarcticus. It can grow up to 1.5 meters in length. It can have up to 20 offspring at a time. Its venom is strongly neurotoxic causing paralysis.

I was able to gather this information from many sites on the internet; the first site was Top Ten Planet.com, the second site was The Steve Irwin’s Snakes. I got this information in the classroom out of my Student Trait book in Mr. Hewett’s class.
This is all my research that I have gathered so far.

By:Yasmin Grade:6 ;D

[soojin]

Soo Jin
All about Barack Obama
It was one sleepy and boring morning, and the excitement began as the class started. My first class was Language Art and Social Studies, with Mr. Hewett. He started to talk about the project called I-Search. First, I wasn¡¯t excited at all, but as soon as I heard the words, ¡°You can choose any topic that you want,¡± I noticed that I was interested in this project. I always had projects which already had a topic, and just research about that. This time was different. Hooray~!

First, I didn¡¯t know what to do. That was the biggest problem. I started with writing down the topics in which was interested. There were several ideas. I couldn¡¯t choose a few of them, because there was not enough information that I needed for this project. I was going to choose ¡°Aliens and UFOs,¡± but my friend said that she wanted to do that.

So I decided to choose another topic. I thought about carefully and fortunately I could think of something. I think it was in the third or fourth grade when I became interested with presidents. One day, I got to watch Korean news, and saw the pictures of South and North Korean¡¯s presidents¡¯ and I was wondering what they actually do. So I chose to have presidents as my topic. Still, I had to choose which country¡¯s president I was going to write. About I decided to choose the United States. Why? It is because maybe other students would not be interested with the topic that I choose. Also, I am going to learn more about Korean president later, so I wanted to know about the United State¡¯s president. I am also not in the Korea right now; I am in India and go to the American International School. That is why I had chosen this topic. I thought maybe this topic is a little too broad. So I narrowed it down to ¡°US president, Barack Obama¡±.

I was always interested with presidents. I was curious of the facts of president. It is really complicated. Maybe I will be able to know more and more about the presidents by doing this project. The reason why I chose President Barack Obama is that I am interested with him more than others. I once was really surprised with him, because he was the first black person to be a president of the United States. I don¡¯t know why United States people picked only white colored people to be a president until now. That¡¯s why I chose him to be my topic for I-Search. Also I found out lots of web sources and book about him that will help me throughout this I-Search project. I think now I am ready to rock and roll with the topic of Barack Obama.

The things that I already know for sure about my topic are that Barack Obama is president of United States right now he is America¡¯s first African-American president, he is the 44th president of the United States, has two daughters, and by becoming the president he surprised the world. I know this information for sure, because he is famous and I heard about this. I have chosen this topic because I don¡¯t know much about him so I wanted to know more about him.

I think there are some things that I might know about Barack Obama. The following sentences are what I want to know about Barack Obama. If he was rich or poor when he was young, if he was famous even before he became president. He must have not been that poor or either rich. I think wasn¡¯t famous at all before he become a president, because I think he surprised people when he just give a try to become a president.

If someone tells me to make some wild guesses, I would make guesses like this. I think President Barack Obama is going to be kind president during his 5years including passed times, present, and future. I think he must be really happy when he became the president and wanted to tell all his relatives. He must be surprised when he first stepped into the White House because it is huge. These are the wild guesses that I can make about my topic.

There are a few things that I need to know about my topic for this project. The things that I need to know are how he lived when he was young, how he becomes a president of United States, his family tree, and how he lives now. Maybe there is a lot more information to know, to finish this project, but I am sure that I will be able to figure it out when I am getting in the part that collects the information.

Barack Obama, he is the first African American president in United States, and he is also the 44th president. On November 4th, 2008, voting lines were longer than anyone could remember. For thousands of Americans were there. The activity that usually took 15minutes became hours of waiting. Most people were excited and willing to wait to cast their vote in this historic election.

Barack Obama¡¯s wife Michelle Lavaughn Robinson was born in 1964. Barack Obama was born in August 4th 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He has two daughters and the older one is Malia Ann Obama and she was born in 1998. Her younger sister Natasha Obama was born in 2001. Barack Hussein Obama Sr., who¡¯s Barack Obama¡¯s father was born in 1936 and passed away in 1982, and he was born in Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province Kenya. Stanley Ann Dunham, who¡¯s Barack Obama¡¯s mother was born in 1942 and passed away in 1995. She was grown in Wichita, Kansas.

He returned to United States from Kenya to begin law school. He was 27, which was older than other first year students in Harvard. At the end of the year he won the position as one of about 80 editors of the law review publication. That summer he was working in a Chicago law firm and he met and fell in law review¡¯s presidency. He was first black elected in its 104 year history. After his graduation, he returned to Chicago and joined a small law firm. In 1992, he and Michelle were married.

He had politics on his mind. In 2002, as Washington prepared to go to war in Iraq, Obama made an antiwar speech. In 2004 Obama decided to run. That year, he was selected to give the keynote speech. He later won the election in Chicago with 70 percent of the popular vote and became only the third black elected to the United States Senate since the end of the Civil War. He was 99th in seniority. He missed his family, especially daughters Malia and Sasha. So he and his wife, Michelle, decided not to move the family, so Obama commuted between Washington and Chicago.

Making decision to run for president wasn¡¯t easy for Barack Obama. His wife was worried about his safety and their family life. He would have to spend nearly two pears campaigning across the country, introducing himself and learning about voters¡¯ concerns. Obama made his announcement to run for president on Feb. 10th, 2007.

His campaign eventually raised $750 million, hundreds of millions more than McCain, who is his rival, became 72 during his campaign. The election day, the miracle happened. Obama got 375 electoral votes and his rival, McCain got 173 electoral votes.

That¡¯s how he became the president of United States. He published two books and the first book is called, ¡°Dreams from My Father¡± which was published in 1995, and the second book is called, ¡°The Audacity of Hope¡±, which was published in 2006.

How do you think Barack Obama become a president? Very few people think that it is easy to be a president, but it is not. Well, if it is easy, everyone will come up with their opinion with that they can be a president. It is really hard to become a president and the paths that Barack Obama and other presidents took were really long and ruff. He, Barack Obama, must have thought a lot to make his way to a president. I also think that it will be really hard to become a president. Every time when we have a vote, just one person gets to become a president and everybody else will lose their right. Also not every person is making their way to president.

Do you want to know the path that Barack Obama took to become a president? I will tell you now. Barack Obama started to study in United States. He was older than anyone else who are first year students in Harvard. At the end of the year he won the position as one of about 80 editors of the law review publication. That summer he was working in a Chicago law firm. He had politics on this mind. In 2002, as Washington prepared to go to war in Iraq, Obama made an antiwar speech. In 2004 Obama decided to run. He later won the election in Chicago with 70 percent of the popular vote and became only the third black elected to the United States Senate since the end of the Civil War. He was 99th in seniority. Making decision to run for president wasn¡¯t easy for Barack Obama. That¡¯s how he became the president of United States. You can see how hard it is to become a president. But it is okay to try to become a president. I am just telling you that it is not an easy thing to do.

Credits

Book
- Jhaveri, K. (2009). Obama the historic journey. New York: The New York Times.
(Jhaveri, 2009)


Website
- Barack obama-wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama ("Barack obama-wikipedia, the," )

-Barack obama biography. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.biography.com/articles/Barack-Obama-12782369 ("Barack obama biography," )

By: Soo Jin ;D

[kanish]

I search
Kanish

Black holes

When I was a baby my mother told me that I used to spend a lot of time just looking at the stars in the sky. At the age of six, my father gave me a book about astronomy. I had read the book, as it was 60% pictures. It seemed as if there was always so much going on up there, and I wanted to know more about it. The moon going around the earth; the earth going around the sun, along with so many other planets. It seemed as if there was a busy road work system up there which seemed to be working perfectly. For a six year old it was an awesome system. As I grew older I realized that there was a lot more to learn and discover. I always read books about space and I would watch many programs about space as well. I would continuously ask questions about space and what lay beyond. Astronomy was definitely my passion. When I was ten, my parents presented me with a telescope and a book. I read the book that was about black holes but it only gave a little bit of information. That is when I became interested in black holes. I tried to research on them but I still only knew two things. They were black and they absorb everything even light.

A few weeks ago Mr. Hewett told us to think of a topic for our I-search project and to make sure it was neither too broad nor too narrow. He also told us to make sure we had enough information about the topic. I started to think about what I wanted to learn about. I was a little worried as I did not know what I wanted to learn. I was thinking about doing the topic about blood hound’s sense of smell as I knew that their noses as their noses are very sharp . The problem was that I could not find any information. I then thought about aliens. I looked on the internet, and after five minutes I realized that this topic was going to be too broad and half of the information was not even real. Then it just popped into my head. I like astronomy, so I decided to do my research on black holes in the universe. Black holes are so mysterious and that is what makes them interesting. I have always wanted to learn about them and here is my chance. I looked in the library and I found all the book‘s I needed. I also found websites on the internet which were my reading level. I had it approved by Mr. Hewett and now this is my topic “Black holes”.


Now it’s time for part two of the I- search. I don’t really know much about black holes. Like I said before all I know is that they are black and no one can see them. I also know that they are in the center of each galaxy and that they are formed from a super nova. I know this as I had read a book, which I had already told you about, and also because of one of the shows I had watched on television.
I think that black holes are black because their gravity is so strong that they absorb out their own color. I think this because black holes absorb everything so they should be colorful but they are not, they are black. I also think that black holes are smaller than a star but black holes have a lot more gravity. I think this because I heard that a black hole has a lot of energy compressed in a small space.

I can make many wild guesses about black holes. Firstly I think that if someone goes into a black hole, and survives, they will go to a different or a parallel universe. I also think that black holes will take you back in time with the amount of energy it has. I have many other wild guesses but they would take a billion pages to write them all down. There are a lot of questions that I would like answered, but as nobody has ever been in a black hole, we do not know.
Now I need to write down what questions I am going to research about. There are many questions I want to learn about but I am only going research on the ones I find most important. Here is what I am going to research. 1 Why are black holes black and not any other color like blue green or pink? 2. Is it possible to travel through black holes? 3. How do people find a black hole? 4. How strong and how small is a black hole? 5. How close is the closest black hole and can it harm us? 6. How is a black hole formed? 7. How does a black hole die? These are the questions I will be researching.


It’s now time for part three of I-search. It’s the main research. I looked in my books but it seemed as if they were not going to help me much as they were all giving basic information. So I decided that I would go on the internet. Mr. Hewett made us sign on to a website called “Delicious” so that we could keep track of all the sites we used. He also told us that we could look at anyone’s Delicious account so that we could find information from other people. So I started by typing black holes in the search bar and believe it or not, a lot of information popped up. A lot of people must be interested in black holes.

I used the first site which was called black holes FAQ. Thanks to that website I found a lot of my information. I remembered that my teacher said that we would need to cross- refer so that we could make sure that our information was correct. So I cross referenced my information and I found out that one of my answers was different from the other so I looked at another site and found out that my first answer was right.
One problem was that some of the information I found on Wikipedia was hard for me to understand. I typed in how does a black hole form? It kept on using these long words. Luckily I had found the same information, which was my reading level on another site called kids Astronomy.

I then typed in does a “black hole die” in Google and it took me to a site called wonder quest. It was very easy to understand and helped me a lot. I typed in the question “which is the closest black hole” and Yahoo popped up. It said Cygnus X-1 was the closest, but when I looked on another site it said there is a black hole in the middle of the galaxy and that was the closest. After cross-referring a few times more I came to the conclusion that no one knows this for sure. Most people believe Cygnus x-1 is the closest. Finding the answer to the question, why black holes are so black was not easy. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. Every time I typed it on Google, it talked about some black hole in America. Google started giving me information that I did not require, so then I started to re-read all my books but I still could not find it. I spent the whole week looking for answers. I almost gave up when I had found a book called From Blue Moons to black holes by Melton Knocke in the library. Halleluiah, I found my answer on the 20th page, I was so happy. The book was a big help.

I found all my answers. I was now happier than ever. I was able to cross- refer the information except for the question, why a black hole is black? The answer seemed correct so I did not really need to cross- refer. I also discussed some points with my friends and my family. I finished all my research. While doing this research I have learnt a lot of things like books can sometimes be more useful than the internet. I also learnt how to cross- refer, and best of all I learnt how to use delicious. Here is some advice. Firstly don’t rely just on the internet. Secondly always do cross-reference. And you should also use delicious. It is a fantastic website which keeps track of all your URLs.


It is now time for part four. I have finished all my research and now I am going to tell you all about it.
Finally after spending one whole month researching on the internet, and reading books I have come up with many answers.

Here is my first question’ why is a black hole black. This was the hardest question to answer. It seemed as if no one knew the answer, but then I found it. I discovered it in a book called From Blue Moons to black holes by Melton Knocke. I first thought that black holes were black because they absorbed out all their color but I found out that I was wrong. The reason black holes are black is because black holes absorb in all of its light. So that means that it has no light to reflect its color. I find this very interesting.

The next question I researched was, is it possible to travel through a black hole. After a lot of research I found out that it is not possible. It is not possible to travel through a black hole because firstly you will feel uncomfortable because of the tidal forces. Eventually you will be stretched and will die. If you travel through a big black hole then you will only notice the tidal forces at around 600,000 km from the center, but if you travel in a smaller black hole you will notice the tidal force around 6000 km from the center. Another problem is the x-rays. They will fry you. A cording to Tedd Bunn If man ever did invents a spaceship in the future in which you could travel through a black hole he won’t be able to see anything except probably distorted images. In conclusion it is impossible to travel through a black hole. Hopefully in the future it will be possible to travel through a black hole.
The answer to the third question, which is how people find a black hole, was the simplest one. Firstly people cannot see a black hole with their eyes (even if the black hole was very close). The reason for this is because black holes absorb light, so nothing reflects back. The big question is that how do people find them. A black hole emits special x-rays. Scientists try to find these x-rays using a machine. This is very clever.

The answer to the question how big and how strong is a black hole was a little difficult as I kept on getting different answers, but I have come up with a conclusion. Firstly there are two ways you can answer this, mass and space. I am first going to tell you mass wise. A black hole weighs about the same as a massive star. It is about (10^31) or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. That’s a lot; also this is how it gets a very strong gravitational pull. In space wise a regular black hole has a 30 kilometers radius while a super massive black hole has a 3 million kilometers radius. It is only four times the suns radius.

The next question I answered is where is the closest black hole and can it harm us? No one knows this answer for sure. A lot of people believe that a black hole called Cygnus X-1 is the closest black hole. This black hole is 6000 light years away from earth. Other people believe that the closest black hole is the black hole in the centre of the galaxy. This black hole is 26000 light years away. Luckily none of these black holes can harm us.

One really interesting question was how a “black hole is formed”. Basically a black hole is formed when a large star runs out of fuel and explodes. To be more precise when a star runs out of energy or fuel it can’t support its heavy weight then the layers keep on compressing the star. When the star becomes as small as an atom it explodes, forming a black hole. The process is very long and not all stars become black holes only the big ones do. For example our sun is too small to become a black hole.

The next question was how do black holes die? It was a little hard to figure out the answer. A lot of people believe that black holes do not die. Others believe that only small black holes die. At the same time others believe any black hole can die. So I have come up with a conclusion, I found out that only small black holes die. A few larger black holes can die but it takes such a long time. When I say long I do not mean ten- twenty hours. I mean 1000s of thousands of years. This is due to hawking radiation. In other words, when a black hole runs out of energy it then collapses and dies.

In conclusion black holes are black because they absorb in their light, so it has no light to reflect its colour. It is not possible to travel through a black hole. Scientists use x-rays that black holes emit to find them. Black holes are about 10^31 kilograms and they are strong depending on their size. (Bigger black holes are stronger). The closest black hole is called Cygnus X-1 and it cannot harm us. Stars are formed when a super-giant star explodes and die when they run out of energy (and most of the time only small black holes die).

I hope all this information taught you enough about black holes. I have learnt a lot. Below are all the credits and all the sites I have used.

Credits

Websites

Black holes. (2010 , December ). Retrieved from imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/black_holes.html ("Black holes," 2010 )

Black holes. (1998). Retrieved from www.kidsastronomy.com/black_hole.htm ("Black holes," 1998)

Bunn, TB. (1995, September). black holes faq. Retrieved from cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/BHfaq.html (Bunn, 1995)

How far is the nearest black hole?. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/ast99/ast99015.htm ("How far is," )

randt, sb. (2008, march). How far away from earth is the nearest black hole? when, if ever,
is earth going to be destroyed by it?. Retrieved from uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080412145201AAlPyDn (Brandt, 2008)

Skhandelwalst, Initials. (2006, september 17). how does a black hole die. Retrieved from www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-132491.html (Skhandelwalst, 2006)

can a black hole die. (n.d.). Retrieved from wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_a_black_hole_die("can a black," )

Black holes die, but it takes a while. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.wonderquest.com/black-holes.htm ("Black holes die,," )

Books

Shea, GS. (2004). Enyclopedia of skywatching. San francisco: City Press. (Shea, 2004)

Knocke,mmk. (2005). From blue moons to black holes. Amherst, New York: prometheus (knocke, 2005)

[annsophie]

The Ancient Roman Familis
My topic is called The Ancient Roman Families. With this topic I want to find out how the people have lived in Rome. I hope that this will succeed without choosing a topic that would be too irritating, broad, or maybe too narrow.

Furthermore, I will also learn what the children at that time have been doing; an example would be the education, what they played... Then I would also be glad to know some things about the women, or let’s say the mothers. I’d be very interested to know the routines that they’d follow each day, or anything else that they did each day. For instance, I will want to know if the women had to clean the house, maybe cook and take care of the rest of the household. Or perhaps the family actually had servants that would do all the work for them. Other than that, I will also want to learn about the men. Here I would enjoy learning if they have been working, like the men do today; also if there is something else about them, I would of course also be very interesting to know. Furthermore, I want to know what the differences were between the rich and the poor families. Were dissimilarities between the rich and poor, or not? This and maybe some other things I am going to tell you in this piece of writing.

However, I didn’t want to do this topic at first; I actually wanted to do the something about the world, but that was way too broad, so I had to think of something else.


Then I came up with ancient Rome, but my mother said that that would still be a topic that is way to immense, for me to cover in just a few weeks , because then I would have to learn where they first lived, their culture, how the language changed, each ruler and what they did, and a lot more. So, I could forget this. After I came up with the idea, I then knew that I wanted to do something with the ancient Romans.

Afterwards, I came up with the idea of writing something about ‘Julius Caesar’. I thought about this for a while, but then I thought that this wasn’t really an area that interested me, since I would then have to study everything from the beginning of his life, to his death, what battles he fought, how he ruled, and plenty more -which I thought would be one of the most boring things to ever study about! As a result, I had to look for something else again – if possible, something with ancient Rome!

Therefore, I finally came up with the idea of the ancient Roman families. Now I could finally study about the Romans, and at the same time have something that interests me. At this point I could finally study what I wanted to.

I am really interested in the Romans. It’s probably because I like to learn about the interesting areas in the ancient history; like for example ancient Egypt.

Also I have a few books on ancient Rome at home, which I almost never had time to read. So at this point of time I could read them, and get extra facts too. Furthermore, the Romans are a topic where I can very easily find books to read on. There are surely a lot of websites on it. So, it is just right subject to me.

After I decided upon what my topic would finally be, I was asked to do a few guesses about the Romans. Well, at first I could not even think of anything that they have done. It was a tough obsession for me to do, since I could not write about the Colosseum, because for me, it did not have the tiniest scent to do with my topic. However, after letting these thoughts go through my mind for a few times, I thought of the rich and poor and their dissimilarities. This was an excellent idea, so I then came up with the things I knew for sure that were different, and then I made random guesses.

So, as I have mentioned before, there has once been an immense disparity between the rich and poor families in ancient Rome. One of the dissimilarities has occurred to be the children. Whereas the royal kids had the opportunity to play, have fun, and possibly also go to school and learn, the unfortunate boys and girls would be supporting their families. I am absolutely positive, for saying that this fact is true ,because even today, the wealthy people live in a much better state and have a chance to join in for schools, while for the poor would not have the money to attend one. So, in the olden days, the people who were prosperous could afford the life style and other things to be more suitable than for the poor; the children would also be getting stricken of it. As a matter of fact, you can now understand that the moneyed people lead a much more comfortable life then the poor have done.

I also think that another difference between the rich and the poor have been the clothes. While the rich probably only had luxury clothes made out of silk and other materials of high quality, the poor perhaps didn’t have any garments to wear, and if they did, it would probably just be an old shred of cloth. I think that this opinion might actually be true, since also now the ones that don’t have the money, are not wearing quality clothes; so I am almost positive that this is true.

If I wanted to, I could make so many random guesses about the area I am doing for this project. However, I’m only going to be stating only a few guesses. As before, I will tell you about the schooling. I think that the richer children would have maybe been homeschooled, where as the poor ones would have gone to a normal public school (of course only if they could). Another think that I am guessing about is that the poor families would maybe also be that they would pray every day for a better life. I think that out of these two suppositions, the one that I made about the schooling would probably be correct.

Then I came up with the things that I wanted to learn about the Romans. As you might imagine, it wasn’t easy to decide on just a few. Well, I then concluded to five ‘sub-topics’. These are being stated right below:

°Clothes. Here I wanted to compare what garments that the rich and the poor would be wearing. Also I wanted to know what the clothing are made of, what types of clothes there are, and for what they got worn
.
°Education. At this point I desired to know about the comparison between the rich children’s studies, as well as the ones from the children that are at a normal rate or poor. The paragraph(s) which will contain this information will also tell what the kids had to learn.

°Women. In the paragraphs I am going to tell you what the mother or women did each day, if she also had to, like the most moms do nowadays, take care of the household, cook or even work.

°Daily Life: Here I would then explain what the family’s routine, or what they did the whole day long, if they stayed at home, went to school… This will again be compared with the richer families and the normal to the rather poor families.

° What the children played: In the paragraphs containing information about this, I will tell you with what the kids entertained themselves with. If they had toys, any other kinds of games, and what they would be playing.

So now that you know what I was interested to look up, you might as well think about how I have found my information. Well, it was not as easy as you might think it was.

There were a few problems that I had to overcome during my I-search. However, I managed to get them under control; so these at first nasty and annoying problems soon weren’t an immense issue to me.

There was a site on the computer that really helped me find all the information necessary. The site’s name was: atschool.eduweb.co.uk/nettsch/time/rlife.html. This was the webpage which provided half of the information about the garments that the men and the obviously also for the women (needless to say is that for the women, the jewelry would also count to this part for now). This side also let me know three- quarters of the facts about the ancient Roman schools.

However, before I came to find this site, I was first linked to another site that I had found throughout my Pre-search. I thought that it might be good, but my thoughts were incorrect. At the site, there were games which were recommended, but it was meant to be costing money. Since I needed information, I looked at the bottom of the page to see if there would maybe some information given; as I thought, I could forget this site completely. There actually were facts given, but only about the architecture that the Romans have once used. So, what else could I do then delete this site from my delicious account, which I then did.

I had found about the same information about the architecture in a totally different site too, so I then came to the conclusion of thinking of perhaps changing one of my sub-topics; I let this thought go through my mind a few times, but then I thought to better not to. Yes, of course I would have more information on my topic, the ancient Roman families, but I would then have to cancel one of my other sub-topics, which I thought played a big impact on the Romans. So, I left everything as I wanted it at first. This was not bad at all for me since I afterwards found everything that I needed in books, so I could just forget about the Roman houses.

Then after my experience with this website, I came to know the site which I told you about earlier. I actually found this site randomly; well, while I was looking for a website, I clicked on this website by accident, and then…

Of course there was also a thing that I wanted to double check in another source. It was about the woman’s fashion. There in an article I read stood that blond hair was in fashion, so the women let themselves have a wig made from the hair of a Germanic slave. This sounded way too modern to me, so I wanted to check in a different source. To my amazement, it actually also stood there. Then I knew that it must be true because it stood in two sources. As a result, this problem was then solved for me.

After knowing and experiencing these problems myself, I would want to let the students whom will be doing this project in the next years that I hope that they will like the topic that they have concluded to choose. If you did not select a subject that truly like, you won’t have the tiniest spark of fun while doing this. During your Pre-search you should really think about the area that you want to do, and decide if this really is a topic that you will enjoy working with for between a month and three weeks. So, decide carefully!

So now after I have told you all about how I got my information, you are probably going to ask yourself when I am going to finally tell you everything about the Romans. Well, here it comes:

“The boys started school with seven. (Girls didn’t go to schools). Also simply the rich ones could go to school; usually the poor children had to stay at home and help their family.

At that time there weren’t any public schools; they could only study at home or go to a private school. In public schools there was only one room that would contain as much as twelve kids. It started at dawn and it has been ending in the early hours of the afternoon.

They also had stages instead of our way of having grades; the first stage would contain reading and writing. The boys wrote on wax tablets with a stick called stylus. To erase, they’d rub the wax smooth. The book would be a large piece of paper rolled around something similar to a stick. It has been called a scroll. Additionally everything was written by hand. There were teachers for: literature, arithmetic and multiplication.

The next stage was focused on Roman literature and grammar; the teacher has been called Grammaticus.

In the third stage they gave fictional speeches. Except this, they were also learning about history and astrology.

The Romans had seven numerals that would represent the whole alphabet. They were reading and writing in Greek and Latin. The language was called Latin, and nowadays we use their letters.

Today there are a lot of toys, and board games and other things that children can play with. But at that time they did not have these things, so the children only had very few things to play with. Some of the poor children couldn’t even play since they had to help the family.

Some toys that they played were similar to the ones that we play today, like the kites and the hoops. They also played with seesaws and swings, but of course not on a playground!

Otherwise they also would play with small animal dolls made out of clay and toy houses, marbles, flashing fingers, spinning tops, building bricks, and they played board games like checkers. Girls would also have wooden dolls.

Next I am going to tell you about the clothes of the ancient Romans. The men wore at home a simple tunic that went down to the knees; it also had a belt. They also had sandals called a Saleae. When they were going out they wore a toga made of very fine wool, it went down the entire body and hung only over one shoulder. They would wear heavier sandals called a Calcei. Men at that time would never wear a beard; the only people that had one were the criminals.

The women wore a stola, which reached the ankles and was made of fine wool. Sometimes they would also wear a tunic. Now for the make-up, they had it on the cheeks, and the lips. Nowadays only women wear make-up, but at that time even the men wore it. All of this make-up was then stored in a specific type of jar. The Roman women had jewels like earrings, and bracelets. The average people had them made out of bronze or glass, while the richer ones had the made out of gold and gemstones; they even fastened jewels to their shoes.

The Roman women even had hair styles. They liked it to be high piled up and curled on the top of their heads. Blond hair was in fashion at that time too, so some of the richer women let themselves have wigs made from the Germanic slaves.

Now, after you’ve heard all of this you surely want to know about their daily life, so here it comes:

Like now, the father was responsible for the family; he also arranged marriages; he bought or sold slaves and he did his work duties. The mother took care of the household and the slaves did everything that she said. The slaves lived with the family in the same house. When the parents ought to have enough children to carry on their business, and family name, the children that came afterwards were abandoned; they were nasty to their parents and so they got sold by slaves.

The boys became an adult with sixteen, while the girls “come of age” at fourteen. If the girls didn’t marry soon after the age of fourteen, they would get punished. At that time the ideal wife should be loyal and brave. When the rich married, there was a large ceremonial festivity, while when the poor married the men bought his new wife from another family. While I am just comparing the rich and poor, I also want to say that the poor had a working farm or cottage as the rich had villas. The pets at that time were cats, pigeons, and a very common was the deer.

Next I will tell you about the food (This still belongs to the daily life). The Romans often missed their breakfast, so instead they would eat a snack like cheese, fruits, bread and water to drink. Then the main meal would be at around three p.m. There they would eat fish, meat, they would also drink a lot of wine mixed with water and flavored with herbs or honey.

Next I will tell you about the banquet food. The main kinds of there were shellfish, olives, figs, boiled eggs, fish, cabbage, peathingys, wine, fresh fruits, nuts, or cake. There the manners would be like this: lie on your left side on the sofa around a table, wash the hands before, between, and after the menu. When they are full they would then burp and pass gass; after the menu stay and play games.

The Romans often liked to go out. They went to ancient temples or religious buildings, stores and markets where they could buy bread, wine, meat, fish, pots, pans, and lamps were also sold. Farmers set up stalls to sell fresh fruits and vegetables. For special items like gold, silver, other jewelry and perfume, they would go to the city’s square. The Romans would often also go to the theater, which were open-air buildings. They were all free. The best theater, Marcellus, had about 20,000 seats. The chariot racetracks were also free, men and women sat together and about 200,000 would watch it. Romans liked to go to the games. The Colosseum is a huge outdoor theater, were 50,000 people can sit. There gladiators would fight against each other, and men fought with the wild animals. This was a great show.

Now I will recall all of the facts, so you can surely remember them:
How you could see, the Romans have already had schools at their time with the three stages and all of the writing, and reading equipment. (Only that they were not as good as the ones nowadays) Besides that, they did not have public schools; instead they had private schools or they’d study at home.

Also the children played with toys board games, swings, seesaws, and other toys if they could have them.

You probably also kept in mind that men wore tunics, or togas, and salaes and calceis, while the women wore a stola. The women’s hair was curled up; they wore make-up as well as men, and a lot of jewelry.

The next thing I am going to recall is about the daily life. The parents took care of the household and of the festivals, the children had to marry by the age of seventeen.

They mostly missed breakfast therefore had a small snack, and they ate a lot at three o’clock. At the banquets they had all kinds of exquisite food. Also, you probably remember the table manners. (Lie on your left side on the sofa; if you’re done with eating, burp and pass gas. Then they would stay to play games)

The Romans mostly also went to the theater, the chariot races, and to markets. “

To conclude I want to say that the information that of the paragraphs that I have quoted above. I got all of this information thanks to two sites and three books. This is one site I’ve used: Life in roman times. (n.d.). Retrieved from atschool.eduweb.co.uk/nettsch/time/rlife.html ("Life in roman," Here comes the other one: Daily life in ancient rome. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.ancient-rome.biz/daily-life.html ("Daily life in," ) . Now you know the websites, so I will tell you about the books. The first one is: Malam, J. (2008). Ancient rome. Lasalle.Cichago,Illinois,Usa : Raintree (Malam, 2008).The second book is this one: Watts, F. (1994). Everyday life in roman times. Great Britain: Grolier . (Watts, 1994) So, now I will tell you the citation of the last book: Dargie, R. (2005). The poor and rich in ancient . Sydney,Australia: Franklin watts. (Dargie

Ann-Sophie ;D

[dhersh]

Hersh Desai
Mar. 14, 2010
White Light
I hurtled into class my heart beating heavily. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump my heart was drumming in my ears. I quickly scrabbled to my seat for the bell had rung only seconds before. I turned my head to the board after greeting my friends. Something was different! The word I-search was written on the board. No later did Mr. Hewett explain this. He said that everyone was to pick a topic and pre-search about it. When I say pre-search I mean thoroughly understand the target topic.

Everyone was buzzing with ideas. I myself was having some topic trouble. First of all I had trouble thinking of anything any way and what I did think of was quickly lost.

I had high hopes for a quick finish but sadly god hadn’t planned things that way for me. He intended to drag this out as long as possible. After I found a topic contestant I had to do something called a pre-search. Essentially I had to check if there were enough resources to study from.

First I thought of magnets. It really was a topic that I wanted. However the library had a different opinion. It didn’t supply me with as much as one informational book. The only thing I managed to get was a mere experiment book.

After that depressing setback, I tried my next topic. I quickly tried to think up another topic. Laser cutters were the new topic. Luckily, I found a book on it by looking around so that meant that there were books but, it was definitely too complex for me and I couldn’t understand it.

After yet another setback I was slightly annoyed, but I still had time and topics left so it was okay. The third topic I tried was rocks and minerals. This time once I looked into it I decided that it wasn’t really a good topic and I would not be interested. I thought something else could come up soon. How wrong I was.
This topic, not the last but definitely one of my favorites: night vision. It was perfect on the computer. However in the books once again the topic failed horribly.

What could I say? My topics weren’t really good for the resources at hand. The main problem here is by this point I was downright depressed. The feeling of not having it done was surrounding me like a candy in a jar of ants. It was like a giant sword hanging above me threatening to crush me. No matter what I did it was a constant thought continuously nagging me.
In a final attempt to destroy the lingering feeling, I went to the library during lunch. This time I was resolved to find a topic. As I scanned the shelves I came across a topic. It was just right for me. Its idea was complex enough but, not too simple. The topic was white light.This topic was just what I needed to get rid of that last bit of guilt and annoyance in topics. I was ready to start researching!

These are the things that I know for sure. I know that white light is a mixture of the all colors of the rainbow. I also know that when white light hits a translucent surface it passes through. The last thing I know for sure is that as the light travels through than object some of the colors are absorbed and the remaining colors show through in order to give the object color. I also know that white light can be separated through a reflection at a certain angle in a pyramid of glass.

These are things that I already know about the topic but I don’t know if the information is true. So the first thing is that white light may affect the way that our eyes register colors. I also remember reading that if a dark color is absorbed the item that absorbed it becomes hotter and if a light color is absorbed then the item becomes colder. I think that white light can also be reflected without separating the colors. I learned this from self-experience so long as white light is sunlight.

Now comes one of the easiest parts. The wild guesses. My first guesses is that white light can also produce heat like all other light. My next guess is that white light doesn’t necessarily have to be white. Also I think that white light can be artificial or natural. Maybe white light is powerful enough to charge solar batteries. Maybe white light is only actually white colored light or maybe it’s only highly concentrated light.

This part is about the five things I intend to research. I think that first thing I’m going to research is how do objects “absorb” light. I am taking this question because I don’t understand how an inanimate object can absorb light. The second question is “What exactly is white light?” It could be solar or artificial. The third question is can white light affect the way that we see. From what I understand can reflect off of certain objects. The color of the object’s reflection determines the objects color. The fourth thing that I’m going to research is how white light is created if it can be created. I want to know if it is possible to create white light. The fifth thing I’m going to research is “What is the visible light spectrum?”

The idea of part three is to take notes and record them. However this isn’t the reason why this is being written. This is the story of my research and how I got it done.

I set out to find some good stuff for my research to devour. I figured that the only way to make it through this was to continuously eat and digest all information that comes in my path. I have to be merciless and spare no information. I also have to be quite specific about what it is that I actually use and what exactly that I throw out.

So, keeping my main goal in mind I went to the library to find some useful books on my research topics. I knew that they were there because of the pre- search that I did. I found all of the books I found during the pre-search and during other spare time I invested in finding a topic. Taking what I could, I sapped all useful information from the books in order to continue with my research.

Then I turned to the internet in order to find more for myself to integrate into my collection of information and knowledge. In this pursuit I first went to the original three websites and slowly but surely copied each and every useful scrap of information.

In all of this I still have to make sure that I cross-reference to make sure that my information is of high quality. I cross- referenced my information through my other sources of information. For example from sources one, two, and three I check one to two and three and if two of them are different the third is the decider.

While I went through this information I was looking for bias. Sadly my topic not being perfect for the creation of bias did not hold any what so ever. Well, at least no bias that I could detect.

If indeed that someone else was going to do an I-search I would recommend bending your topics to the books in the library. Also I would promote choosing a broad topic before looking at the books then after narrow the topic. Also when looking for information I suggest Google and Wikipedia. In addition Mr. Hewett will probably show you how to do vertical and horizontal page placement. I personally prefer the vertical lay out, but it is all your choice in the end. Also if you were to pick a topic something that you have some sort of personal interest or connection will work nicely. Even something that you just happened to know about will work well.

It’s time to start actually doing the research and solving the questions I have for my topic, white light. White Light is a combination of all the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

My first question was how objects absorb light. Well the interesting thing here is that they do not absorb light. Their colors absorb it. For all the art fans out there you already know this, but black is the absence of color that is why space is black; there is nothing to light it up. Hence white is the color combo of the rainbow. In other word white is the combination of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Now back to the answer of the question since black is no color it absorbs all the colors that hit it but white is the combination of all colors so all the colors get bounced away. This rule applies to other colors too. For instance blue, depending on what shade it will absorb everything except for blue. Then the blue will reflect and that is the color we see. (Light)

My second question was “Is white light solar or artificial?” if you want the answer read on! Here’s the lowdown white light can be solar or incandescent- artificial lights like light bulbs, flash lights, or lights. The truth is it doesn’t really matter because in essence white is just a combination of colors and can be formed by any source. As proof of this I’ll give an example. If you stand in a dark room with one small window and you place a square pyramid in the light it will pass through and as it does it will become separated into different light wave lengths. These will show differently as the frequencies will vary in colors such as red, yellow, orange, green, blue, indigo, and violet. (Light)

The third question is “Does white light affect the way that we see?” The answer is yes but how is the question. Let me explain in our eyes there are tiny cone-shaped receivers. These tiny cones open wider and close shut in order to adjust to the light coming into the eye and make it easier to see. The light around us also has something to do with it. When things become darker or start to reflect darker light we have to adjust our eyes and then we will be able see better. So depending on how bright our surroundings are we can adjust our eyes. (Eyes)

The fourth question is “Is white light creatable?” this one, if you were paying any attention to my research you would know that white light is any white colored form of light regardless of the source so white light is obviously creatable. For example it’s creatable because a mere flashlight could make it and if it’s not too cloudy during the day time were practically bathing in it. As a matter of fact it’s all around you most of the time either way all you need to check if it’s truly white light is a prism shaped piece of glass. (Eyes)

The fifth and final question “What is a wave length?” This question could only be answered through intense research and vital information. This topic, being difficult to find and understand, took some work so my knowledge is limited. Never-the-less I will explain a wave-length is a certain frequency that varies largely from an atom to a billion miles long. Each wave-length is different and has its own special frequency. In the visible wave- lengths we can only see in the short span of infrared to ultraviolet but there are many other colors of wave-length that we can’t see.(Wave length)


Bibliography
(Light)- www.wisegeek.com/what-is-white-light.htm
(Eyes)- science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/visible.html
(Wave length)- www.wisegeek.com/what-is-white-light.htm

[sooah]

Soo Ah Jang
March 16, 2011

UFOs and Aliens

How interesting aliens and UFOs are! Some people believe that
UFOs and aliens exist, and other people think that it’s just a childish thought. What do you think?

UFOs and aliens are like a handful of mysteries. It’s still an unsolved mystery that no one is sure of. People may figure it out in thousands, and millions of years. Since I was little, I had some interests in UFOs, space, planets, and aliens. “We will begin a project called I-Search,” Mr. Hewett said one day, “we are going to start with a pre-search. While doing this, you will get to figure out if your topic was too broad, or narrow, or just right and has enough information.”He passed out a few papers about the I-Search. I didn’t feel that easy. I never got to do a big research project like this. In the evening, I thought about my I-Search topics which we have to come up with at least three topics. I came up with ideas like ‘solar energy cars’, ‘process of making online games’, ‘Things that make solar energy cars’, and ‘How solar energy cars absorb solar energy. I wanted my topic not to be so common, too, which is about science –which I would like best to research about- also.

The next day, I typed up ‘solar energy cars’ on Google. And oh, gosh, those were ridiculous. All about those solar things! I couldn’t even understand a bit. I had no idea what I had to do. I typed ‘process of making online games’. Not a thing showed up. It must have been too broad to begin with. I need something else. Something interesting and not so common. Something about science, I thought. There was nothing I could think of. I was stuck, in process of choosing my topic. It was like being in dark space. UFOs! Light bulb flashed in my head. I didn’t know how I thought it up. It was a very interesting topic. I typed it up on Google. Tons of information filled the page. I briefly found about five URLs of pages that tell about aliens and UFOs. I worried if it was too broad, but then I just thought that there will be no topic that will be just right like this, and I’d like to research a lot about. It was a shine of light in the dark space. I also searched for books in the whole middle school and high school libraries, but I only found one good book about UFOs and aliens. And good grief! It was on my reading level, and had lots of pictures, too. Finally, my I-Search topic was chosen!

Mystery circles and UFO pictures are so interesting to research about! Don’t you think so? They make people come up with lots of ideas and let us think about many different opinions of people. Everyone knows that no one is sure if aliens and UFOs exist or not, but some people strongly believe in UFOs and aliens, and others strongly disagree. It’s because there are some scientific proof that they don’t exist, but there are also some people with pictures of UFOs flying around. I think that some people believe those because of UFO pictures and the mystery circles (also known as crop circles which I will talk about later), which is placed in many different countries. The Mystery circles look like symbols; but more unusual. It’s believed in as alien language or message from outer space creatures. It’s a mystery! Most people think that the Mystery Circle is made by aliens, because it’s impossible for human to make it and let the plant grow as it is crooked.

I know that long time ago, two farmers insisted that they made the mystery circles. I have read them in some books of mine. They even showed how they made it, but the way they drew the circles out of machines leaves out the mark of machines, which the real mystery circles do not have. I think why some people insist that aliens do not exist because they think it is not possible for some other creature can live in another planet, because there is no water available in other planets, and it is either to hot or cold because it’s to close or far from the Sun (people insists that there are scientific proof).

My wild guess is that there will be another planet like the sun and Earth which we don’t know about because it is off the limit of technology where humans can travel by rockets. Also, I think that people who really strongly believe in aliens and UFOs even makes a diagram to show how a UFO looks like if you break it down, and I think that it is worth my time to research about the mystery circles all around the world, and how people who disagree of aliens think it is made. I also want to research about opinions of people of both sides.
These are what I want to find about my topic:
• Why some people think that UFOs and aliens exist
o Some pictures of UFOs that people took
• How people think that the mystery circle is made
• Since when people did start believing in UFOs and aliens
• Scientific proofs (if there are any) that aliens and UFOs doesn’t exist or do exist
I think I will be able to know the basic facts of UFOs and aliens if I collect information on these, and it will be fun!

There was a lot of information about UFOs and aliens, but problem was that most of them were examples in where, when, what, and how people saw the circular discs, which are UFOs. They help a lot with developing multiple perspectives, but only having the examples of seeing the UFOs are difficult to deal with. The first time when I typed up ‘UFOs and aliens’ on Google, web pages that are linked to many different sites filled the page. I thought that this project, I-Search, was going to be easy, then. As the time passed, my thoughts began to change. I thought that there was too much information.

I didn’t know where to search for information at first, but as time passed, I decided to choose the basic pages. I got a lot of information from www.wikipedia.com/wiki/UFO, www.wikipedia.com/wiki/crop-circles, and other sites including a book about aliens. One of the information I found said that there can be several UFOs seen on England. I was a bit curious about it, but few days later when I researched in another book, I found the exact same information on it.

Imagine that you are a farmer. You go to your land and water your crops, and pull un-needed crops off. You feed your family with it. One day, you go to your land, like you do normally. What in the world do you see! You see huge pattern made out of flattening the crops. What would you think? It will be horrible enough, isn’t it? And you suddenly think what could have done it. Was it a UFO? How can a person make this in twenty four hours? Was it a human which has done it? You would come up with tons of questions. Maybe you will think of zooming UFOs diving in the sky. You look up in the sky. You see a circular disc flying around. You sure are going to suspect it.

People who say that they saw aliens and UFOs describe it really well as if they are seeing what’s happening now through their eyes, but what I think is that they are exaggerating a little bit. People can’t really remember things very well that happened in the past, but people who are describing the UFOs and aliens they saw, may not remember things that well. If they don’t explain it well, then people will not believe in it. So what I think is that people are putting a bit of bias when describing, by adding up the ones happened before, making it more interesting. For example, people can exaggerate by saying “There was a circular disc at the sky, which had a shining light coming from it,” It’s a plain description of UFO. You can exaggerate it into “There was a huge circular disc zooming around in the sky, shooting laser beams.” Which one would you more believe in? Second one, of course. Also, when people believe something that it was great, then what they saw would also turn great to them, which exaggerates things. Even if I saw a UFO-like thing, I would exaggerate a bit, too. “Edmond Halley, the British astronomer, wrote that in 1716 glowing shapes lit up the night sky so brightly, and he could even read a book in the night.” We don’t know if it’s an exaggeration but my opinion is that it might be.

Later I found a Korean non-fiction book about UFOs and Aliens. It really helped me a lot! I found the information about Vmanas in Indian Sanskrit, crop circles, and things appeared in Bible from all other sites. While I was reading this book, I saw summarized versions of it; because it was famous non-fiction series and was matching with all other information, I really relied on this book. Also, I sort of suspected on the Ezekiel part of the Bible, but I later found that it was true by cross-referencing with the Korean book.

UFOs and aliens are interesting topic to work on, but it might be a bit boring or you may not find good information. So I don’t really recommend it as a good thing but it’s just ok. Maybe if you are interested in mysterious spaceships, you will like to research about this topic for weeks.

No one knows if UFOs and aliens exist, but UFO-like-things were already seen since a really long time ago. People also believed in the existence of UFOs and aliens since then. UFOs and aliens can actually exist, and there are lots of possibilities that UFOs and aliens exist. UFOs and aliens might have made the mystery circles (also known as crop circles or crop formations), too. So there is a lot of proof and evidences that UFOs and aliens can exist.

First of all, what are UFOs? UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. It is any unusual apparent object or happening in the sky which can’t be identified by the observer ("Unidentified flying object," 2011). (Lee, Song, & Maeng, 2005) UFO- like things can be mistaken by satellites (there are tons of satellites out there, so it can be mistaken), birds or insects (it looks like a UFO when sun shines on flying birds, or sometimes it can be fireflies), shooting stars (shooting stars fly by drawing a huge light of curve, so it can look like UFO when taken a photo), clouds (clouds can look like a UFOs when they are shaped into circles by wind), machines (airplanes, helicopters, etc.), balloons (once there was a photo which looked like a UFO because of light shining on balloons), and small percentages are hoaxes. Really weird things happen if UFO-like-things come near. Animals become weird (they can faint and give all sort of reactions), becomes very, very hot (sometimes even dries a pond), shoots lots of shiny colors (people get weak by this), buildings stop and power goes off, electronic machines turn on suddenly, Wi-Fi gets disturbed, and sometimes people even get absorbed in UFOs.

There are lots of opinions what aliens and UFOs are. The different opinions are that they are from a different dimension, are from deep inside the ocean floor (people didn’t investigate the most part of the ocean), that aliens are from a far away future (when we can be revolutionized), are from a country which is secretly trying out a new invention, and they can be from the word of spirits.
You can see UFO-kind of things often in these places (Lee, Song, & Maeng, 2005):
• Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington State
• Niagara falls
• The Texas Triangle: Lubbock, Texas; Alpine, Texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico
• The Gulf Strip
• The New Madrid area of southeast Missouri
• Nevada Highway 375, north of Las Vegas

From when did people start to get interested in UFOs and aliens? It has only has been from 1950s. It’s not even 100 years. People saw lots of UFOs before, but people didn’t get much interest in it. UFOs got well-known since when Kenneth Arnold (an American man), saw nine shiny flying objects in the sky when he was flying over a mountain with his airplane. He described it as ‘flying saucer’. It was a first time that a human described UFO as ‘saucers’.

There are many types of UFOs that you may not even know. There are hat-like UFOs, triangular UFOs, pan-shaped UFOs, crown-shaped UFOs, rectangular prism UFOs, corn-shaped UFOs, and doughnut shaped UFOs.

Lots of people see UFOs zooming around the sky. These are some types of UFOs that people see them fly. UFOs fly zigzag, shakes, falls like a leaf, transports, changes directions 90 degrees, flies in acute angle, circles around a thing, or flies in a group with other UFOs or things.

Vmanas appear in ancient Indian Sanskrit. Vmana is a kind of flying machine that can fly as fast as a thunder, and can fly as slow as a moon. Based on the writings, Vmana can attack other Vmanas by a powerful missile, can disappear from the sight and can make it appear by laser beems, and can transport to anywhere they think of. Also, Gods rode on these Vmanas and joined the war.

UFOs also appear in the Bibles! For example (what I cross-referenced), when Ezekiel, being of limited technological knowledge, was praying, he saw a thing that had shines of light all around coming out of bunch of clouds. This is what he said:
“a whirlwind coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself; and brightness was all around it and radiate out of its midst like the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. From within it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man.” Then he described the vehicle they rode, “Now as I looked at the living creatures, behold, a wheel was on the earth beside each living creature with its four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their workings was like the color of veryl, and all four had the same likeness. The appearance of their workings was, as it were, a wheel in the middle of a wheel.” Doesn’t it sound like a UFO? I think it is, and it sounds like old UFO reports in the past ("Ufo history," ).

In the pictures of mid-ages, there are lots of circular objects that are shining on top of Maria or Jesus. For example, you can see UFO-like shapes in picture made in 1486 (UFO-like shape is shining on Maria’s head), 1710 (circular object is shining on Jesus, who is praying near the river), and another one in 15th century (you can see a flying saucer behind Maria’s shoulders, out of the window).

In 1997, American air force had a surprising presentation. They said that UFOs that were found in 1950s and 1960s were their secret airplanes. They said that they put up a really fast silver plane to spy on Russia’s military secret. They also said that these didn’t make any sound because they flew really high. They said that from 1947 to 1969, they got 12,618 UFO reports, but 95% were mistaken. They just told that the other 5% are not sure.
Some people believe that UFOs are leaving behind more damage than just few burn marks. How they thought up with it are because of crop circles, also known as mystery circles or crop formations (they may not always be in circular shapes). Crop circles are sizable patterns created by flattening of a crop. The exact date when crop circles began to form is unknown, but they mostly began to form in 17th century. Crop circles began to increase from the 1970s to now. 26 countries reported about 10,000 crop circles in the last third of the 20th century, and how interesting, 90% of those were located in southern England! Nearly half of all circles found in UK are located within a 15km radius of Avebury.

How are crop circles formed? Usually, they are made overnight, but they can be made during the day. Nobody knows how they are made, but UFOs and aliens might have made them! There are some ways how humans construct a crop circles. The most common methods are to tie one end of a rope to an anchor point, and the other end to a board which is used to crush the plants. The most recent methods include uses a lawn roller. Stems are swirled around and interwoven to make crop circles, but some people think that crop circles are saucer nests where UFOs sat down or are mystery messages from outer space. They often occur in UFO-haunted areas. That’s why people think of UFOs and aliens.

Crop circles have occurred in many countries. In Australia, people think that it is because of kangaroos that stomped on their land and made a mess, but in kangaroo-less England, crop circles began to form. It even included a smiley face =)!
What happened after scenes of UFOs? There are a lot of them. Here are few examples from (Blackwood, 1999). “In ninth century France, farmers were very disturbed by “cloud ships” that kept ruining their crops. They suspected three men and a woman who came from the aerial vessels, and stoned them to death.”; “A Japanese general say lights circling in the sky and ordered his aides to study them in 1235. They concluded that the lights were “wind making the stars away”.”; “Nuremberg, Germany was filled with strange cylinders, which released colored spheres that zoomed about, trailing smoke.” (there was same thing happening after five years in the Basel, Switzerland); “Edmond Halley, the British astronomer, wrote that in 1716, glowing shapes lit up the night sky so brightly, and he could even read a book in the night.”; and “A Texas farmer in 1878 described the dark shape that passed over him a “large saucer”- it was the first time that the word was used.”. Often, people found dead animals that looked like it had some serious surgeries. There once had been a horse with organs taken out which looked like it has been dropped after a journey of long length in the sky. Wow, that’s creepy. There are tons of other examples, and these are only a little small piece of them!

UFOs and aliens may exist and may not. Still, even throughout many searches, no one knows. It’s true that there are many pictures of UFOs and aliens, but no one is for sure. The universe is humongous, and there are parts that humans didn’t even investigate. Earth is like dust compared to the universe. So let’s look at the universe outside the box. There might be creatures or a different kind of thing (which may not be what we call ‘creatures’) more developed than we are. If we investigate more and more, than maybe we can figure it out and be part of them. We can have our technology developed, too, by UFOs and aliens, if they exist. So let’s look forward to our Earth.

These are the credits for sites and books I used:
Blackwood, Gary. (1999). Alien astronauts. Tarrytown, New York: Benchmark Books.
Lee, Guang Woong, Song, Hui Suk, & Maeng, Seong Ryul. (2005). Why?: ufos and aliens. Korea: Yerim.
(I really got lots of information from the top credit)
Alien history. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.illuminati-news.com/ufos-and-aliens/html/alien_history.htm
Unidentified flying object. (2011, February 27). Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO
Crop circles. (2011, February 22). Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle
and
Ufo history. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.ufopicture.org/ufo_history.html

[elijah]

Elijah Tappan-deFrees 3/17/11
I-Search: Robespierre

It was as normal day as any. My backpack was in my locker and I was heading to class. When I arrived there was a different air about the room. The teacher announced we were going to the library. I followed him and my class down wondering what this could be about. My questions were soon to be answered for when we got to the library the teacher told us to pick a topic that was o true great interest to us. It could be anything. ANYTHING. Even candy or light rays. Frankly this left me like a fish out of water. There was such a great big world out there. My mind was overflowing with topics. To name some Ke$ha, vampires, Jack the Ripper, alien abductions, the chupacabra, the 1920 gangs and so many more. I took control of myself, and tried to narrow it down to things the class probably hadn’t heard of yet. I came up with three options. The Mystery of Roanoke, The Stalin Era, and what Nazi Germany was like. Roanoke failed simply because, well, it was a mystery. No one knows what happened, so there’s not enough credible evidence out there. Nothing online but bizarre speculations and no books I the library. The Stalin Era had a great number online but only one small page in a book. And Nazi Germany was just really, I guess, gross. Concentration camps, small crimes punishable by a firing squad, and forcing 10 year olds to become soldiers. I had no idea what to do, when it hit me like a blot of lightning. I loved the macabre. But I loved tyrants even more. So when I thought of two macabre tyrants I became elated. The first one was Vlad of Drac, but every one knew his name. So I turned to a name I heard in a history book. A man who sent thousands to the guillotine. A man whose name is both had to pronounce and to right. Maximillian Robespierre. The ultimate tyrant of the 18th century. I was going to research the time in his life when he ruled over France with an iron fist sending both nobles and peasants to the guillotine. So with this epiphany I looked on the Internet to find three online data sources. I got nearly 25,000. I approached the teacher with this epitome of interesting. I asked him if I could research this topic. I shall never forget what he said. He said it was a good topic if I was sincerely interested. So I did. Maximillian Robespierre, here I come.

I was incredibly exited to start the actual research. But before that we had to go through a long period called the pre-search where we check if there is enough information. I began to scour the bookstores, libraries, and the Internet. At school on that very day I found a book entitled Robespierre and the French Revolution. This was quite a find considering neither Odyssey nor Landmark had anything relevant. A school had more books than a bookstore. Fancy that. I figured online would be my best resource, considering the sheer number of articles I found. But no. Thousands were totally unreliable blog posts and others got totally off topic, talking about the engineering of a guillotine and biography of Louis XVI. After wading through tons of articles like these I found 4 out of 25,000 reliable pages. I was battered but happy. I had managed to find the information I needed. I could finally start the research. But no such luck. On the day after the pre-search, the teacher gave us a sheet. I was bursting with elation to start the real project, but my soul was battered against the rocks of despair when I realized what we were writing about. We were narrating how the idea for the project came to us. Dear reader, I must thank you for enduring that hapless story of how the idea came. The real research shall begin momentarily. Until then.

What do I know of the given topic? What can I type on this paper that is absolutely 100% facts about Robespierre? For starters, I know he grew up in a 3rd class family. I also know that his parents died at an early age, and he lived with his aunts before he scored of scholarship at a high-rated university. As another tidbit I know he sent about 1,784 people to the guillotine in one year. But for the most part I know very little about Robespierre or the French Revolution. I have picked these facts up along
the way, through a book called A Wicked History of the World.

What do I think I may know of my topic? I think Robespierre was a delegate. I also think the French Revolution started because the commoners were treated unfairly (Don’t all revolutions start because of this?). I also think that after the people overthrew the government Robespierre stepped in and began to lead. I think at that time he imposed harsh laws and began his “Reign of Terror”. I am also thinking that Robespierre managed to stay in power because his elections were rigged. I based these facts on evidence taken from other revolutions and harsh rulers.

I can make quite a few wild guesses about this time period. One of these would be that Robespierre was not married. Another is that he guillotined Marie Antoinette. Yet another is that he, himself was guillotined in the end. I do also believe he somehow managed to aid the Revolution to come to power. But in the way of ones that are worth exploring, I have an idea that Robespierre might have written all the laws of France himself.

1. How did the French Revolution actually begin?
2. When did Robespierre take over?
3. Why did Robespierre guillotine so many?
4. Did Robespierre guillotine anyone significant?
5. What laws did Robespierre enforce?
6. How did Robespierre die?
These questions will guide me through the research.


I was sitting at the computer, staring at it with contempt. I was wading through hundreds of sites on Robespierre, without a lot of luck. After searching “Robespierre” on Google™ I got thousands of hits. This should have been good, except for the fact that almost every single website was totally unreliable. I had found unearthed about two good websites but anything else was just a fiasco. When I first searched him I clicked on the first link I got. This turned out to be a photos page that consisted entirely of pictures of the portraits of Robespierre. Interesting, but I couldn’t learn much from it. The next link down was a BBC article on Maximilien Robespierre and was one of the more helpful sites. I quickly bookmarked it to Delicious™. I was going go back to it, but now I had to find more sites. Scrolling down a little I found a long, well-researched Wikipedia article on Robespierre. I thought I was on a roll, but then I hit a total dead end. The next website I found wanted me to download a game. Another told me I had just won a Scandinavian cruise. And another was totally school (or any place) inappropriate. But ones that did pertain to the subject were just weird, opinionated blog posts. I decided to go for one last try, when I discovered a teacher-certified website. It had all the information that the other good ones had, plus it linked to another good one. I saved them all. The only way I overcame these obstacles by simply plowing through clutter.

With my good articles in hand I now had to evaluate each one carefully to make sure most of the information was credible and had little or no bias. The only thing I found haranguing was that no one seemed to agree how Robespierre had a mortal wound to his jaw inflicted 24 hours before his death. Some said he was shot in a riot, others stated that he attempted suicide the night before his guillotining. To overcome this I turned to less reliable yet still moderately believable sites. 3/5 I found said attempted suicide and 2/4 of my reliable sites agreed with this. I wrote “attempted suicide” down as a fact. With that little obstacle gone I got down to checking for bias on the good sites I used. I actually found none to my delight. It seemed that the person who wrote the articles attempted and succeeded to use a “textbook voice” with no opinion swamping the facts. This added to better completion of the research.

If anyone who is doing this project now needs advice I have some. Don’t try to use little, never before heard-of sites to do research. I found that these sites are some unemployed guy’s opinion on an obscure topic he saw on television. I had more luck with the large-company sites like Wikipedia and BBC. But now, I must go type more notes on the Reign of Terror. Ciao!







In the country of France, 1758, a child was born. His name was Maximilien Robespierre. And in 35 years he would change France forever. Although a brilliant man, he was power hungry, and caused one of the most horrific massacres of all time. So I believe he was a misunderstood genius. This is his sordid tale.

Maximilien was born to a 3rd class family in Arras, France, 1758. The oldest of 4 children, his parents had little time for him. In 1764 his mother died in childbirth and his father was killed in Munich, leaving the siblings to grow up with their grandparents. When Maximilien was 8 he attended collẻge or middle school. At 11 he was accepted to Lycée Louis-le-Grand the Harvard or Yale of that time. He began to admire the Rome Republic, Ciero, Cato, and other classic figures. Right after Louis XVI visited Louis-le-Grand. Maximilien, age 17, was chosen of 500 students to deliver a speech to the king. On the day of the speech, Maximilien and the crowd waited for the king and queen for several hours in the rain. When they arrived, the royal couple remained in their coach for the ceremony and immediately left thereafter. Maximilien would become one of those who eventually sought the death of the king.

As an adult and young man, the greatest pull on Maximilien’s political beliefs was Jean Jacques Rousseau. This led him to support the Jacobian Republic and in return they proclaimed him “incorruptible”. How wrong they were. After completing his law studies, Maximilien became involved in a long and mind-numbing series of politics, which ended with him being elected, by the people, “Public Prosecutor of Paris” after the Champ de Mars massacre of the French Revolution. Shortly after a Girondist (name Jacques Pierre Brissot) strongly suggested France should oppose Austria. Maximilien disagreed fearing “militarism” which could turn the tide for the failing reactionary forces. He also thought stability was more important, suspecting counter-revolutionists hidden in the public. This ignited a rivalry between the parties Jacobian and Girondist. In 1792, Maximilien resigned the post of public prosecutor to spite the Girondist party. By doing this, Maximilien was often accused of failing to prevent the infamous September Massacres.

Now came the tidal wave. The final push that sent Maximilien over the edge. In 1792, Louis XVI. Robespierre insisted that the King be executed for attempting to flee the country in a time of crisis. Maximilien held the position that if one man had to be killed to save the French Revolution, the king was the best choice. Henceforth, the king was guillotined, and Maximilien became more power-hungry than ever. Working off his King’s Execution euphoria, Maximilien asked and author named Desmoulins, to publish a book. A book attacking the Girondist party and Jacques Pierre Brissot. On June 2, a group of men arrested 32 counter-revolutionary Girondidsts.

Now, readers, came the storm. A storm of blood and rage that poured down on France, sparing no one from its lethal drops. It was called the Reign of Terror. The most horrific period in France’s history when 1,285 people were guillotined in a single year. It was spearheaded by Maximilien Robespierre. After Louis XVI and the monarchy fell, France faced even more food riots and treasonable acts than before. In 1793 the Committee of Public Safety changed to the Committee of General Defense. They elected Maximilien into it, even though he didn’t ask to be. Maximilien was often seen as the dominant force of the Committee, even though all members were supposed to be equal. As he was an orator, Maximilien proclaimed the Terror necessary. In his view the Republic and virtue were inseparable. He states: “If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country. ... The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.”
The quote was taken from: en.wikipedia.org.

Robespierre believed that the Terror was a way to flush out the enemies of the Revolution, so he urged it forward as the most essential thing. In his book Report he named all the enemies of the Revolution: traitors, monarchists, and saboteurs. He later included “false revolutionaries” to the list. Robespierre believed that the Terror must hold no mercy and said that "uncertainty of punishment encourages all the guilty". He did not just call out for blood and death, but also to expound original ideas of the revolution including political equality, abolition of privileges, and suffrage. Despite executing revolutionaries for “treason” he was still considered one of them, even though he had an impeachable process. In 1793’s winter, Maximilien decided to destroy the Hébertist party for fear they would steal the thunder of the Committee. He also believed their atheism and “bloodthirstiness” could be concealing old aristocracy. In 1794 Robespierre ended his alliance with the Dantonists, seeing as Danton looked to end the Terror calling it “gratuitous violence”. Maximilien thought the Terror’s end would be a loss of political power. He began to attack Dantonists as well as Hébertists. Between March and April 1794, the Dantonists and Hébertists were totally wiped out. After, Maximilien increased the Terror, passing Law 22, which abolished the need of witnesses and jury at a court.

Although Maximilien’s desire for change was mostly political, some tendrils extended into religion. He wanted to form a church based on his Deist beliefs. In 1794 he established the “Culte de la Raison et de l'Être suprême” or “Cult of the Supreme Being”. In honor of the Cult, a celebration was held on the Champ de Mars. At it, Maximilien delivered this speech:

“Is it not He who’s immortal hand, engraving on the heart of man the code of justice and equality, has written there the death sentence of tyrants? Is it not He who, from the beginning of time, decreed for all the ages and for all peoples liberty, good faith, and justice? He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power. He created men to help each other, to love each other mutually, and to attain to happiness by the way of virtue.”
Taken from en.wikipedia.org.

Throughout the festivities, Maximilien was in a joyous mood. He was talking of things for which he was passionate; virtue, nature, and disagreements with atheism. Despite Maximilien’s mood, many thought he had taken it too far. Some thought he descended the steps in such a way as to imitate Moses. One commented “Look at the bugger; it’s not enough for him to be master, he has to be God.”. These small rumors would be start of Maximilien’s downfall.

After an attempted assassination of another Committee member, Maximilien feared for his own life. Two days after the attempted assassination, a girl with two small knives tried to murder Maximilien. She failed, and in turn Maximilien passed a law doubling the number of executions. This allowed even the simply suspected to be guillotined. This began to make people question Maximilien, for executing for the smallest crime or suspicion. Maximilien presented a speech, defending against the accusations of dictatorship and tyranny. He also hinted of a threat to the Republic. He presented this at the Jacobian club and at a common stage and both times it went down equally well. The next day, another member of the Committee gave a speech praising Maximilien. The crowd expected clarifications on the threat, and when there was none they were outraged. Accusations to the Committee arose, resulting in a shouting match. All the while Maximilien sat in a stunned silence. When a crowd member realized this he yelled “The blood of Danton chokes him!”. Many arrests were made. Shortly after, the Committee of General Security ordered the arrest of the Committee of General Defense. When the soldiers arrived, they found all but Maximilien dead; and Maximilien had attempted suicide by shooting himself in the jaw only to shatter it. For the rest of the night, Maximilien was moved to a table in the room of the Committee of Public Safety where he waited for his execution. He lay on the table bleeding profusely until a doctor was brought in to fix up his jaw. Although Maximilien was known for his speeches, the last words that have been recorded of him saying are, “Merci, monsieur,” to a man that had given him a handkerchief to soak up some of the blood from his face and his clothing. Later, Maximilien was held in the same containment chamber where Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI, had been held. The next day, July 28, 1794, Maximilien was guillotined. He was guillotined face up so he could see the blade coming at him. People say when the executioner tore off Maximilien’s handkerchief his final screams rang across Paris until the guillotined silenced them.

There you are friends. The epic tale of a yet another genius corrupted by the tantalizing fruit of power. I still stand my ground that he could have been a great man, had it not been for his unquenchable thirst for power. Others say he was evil through and through. The question is what do you think?

[iniyan]

by:iniyan I-Search
NOOOOOOOO! Winter break is over and now I have to go to school! Well, to tell you the truth the first few days of school were actually pretty fun, but I was wrong. Wednesday morning I walk into class and read the schedule for today. It said I-search. Mr. Hewett had told us we would start a project the week before but I didn’t really think about. When we started the I-search Mr. Hewett gave us a bunch of papers and told us to read it. I didn’t really read it because we were also doing vocab at that time and I was searching for words on that sheet. We didn’t do much on I-search because we were out of time, but then for homework he told us to get a topic we were really interested in.

I kept thinking about this even on the way home. As soon as I got home I freshened up and then started to try and get ideas. My mom was trying to get my brain started but I didn’t like what she had suggested. Then my sister called my mom because she had a project just like me. After my mom went I started day dreaming (if she was there she would have gotten mad). When I was daydreaming I remembered a time my sister had come back from school when I was sick and was bragging about all the things she learnt as if she was Einstein (I think it is a natural thing because I like showing off what I have learnt sometimes). As she kept blabbering I realized this would go on forever but again I was wrong. She said her friend had told her that a star bursts at the end of its life. Then it struck me; I knew what I was doing, I was going to do the ‘life stages of a star’. After I wrote this down I got a few other ideas but I knew I was going to stick to the star idea.

On Monday we went to the library to get sources of information. My friend, Kanish, was doing black holes so he found books on stars and black holes and shared them with me. For the online sources I got four, two wiki pages, and two sites I don’t know. I figured out that the books were much easier to read than the online sources. Now is the hard part; talking to Mr. Hewett. I was one of the last ones to meet him but everything went well. He said that my topic would be a good and an interesting one but also a little bit similar to Kanish’s. That was all we did for the I-search part one and after that we would be on I-search part two.

Yes! The I-Search Part One is over! Now it’s time for part two. When I read the paper it said first I had to write about the things that I knew for sure, then I had have to write about things that I know for sure about my topic. The third part said I have to write about wild guesses that I can make about my topic, and the fourth said I have to list at least five specific things that I will research or pursue later on.

The first thing I knew about my topic is that a star bursts at the end of its life once its energy is finished. I also knew that the hotter or blue star dies faster than a red or cooler star because it uses up its energy faster. I also know that a star becomes a red giant but I don’t know when.

The things I think I know probably aren’t that true because I think I know these things. I think that a star becomes a black hole sometimes. I also think that a star doesn’t always become a red giant. Another thing that I’m not sure if I know or not is the name of a star’s birthplace.

Now it’s time for wild guesses! The first guess I can make is maybe stars become black holes only if they are much hotter than they should be making a bigger explosion. Another wild guess I made is that maybe a star is hotter depending on its magnitude or height. This wild guess I have read in some books and some others have declined this so I’m not sure if it is true.

The first thing I need to research is:

1. How many stages there are in a stars life?

Why: I need to research this because it is part of my topic and if I don’t my research won’t be complete.

2. How stars become red giants and when.

Why: I need to research this because a red giant is part of a stars lifetime.

3. The beginning of a star.

Why: I need to research this because I need to how a star is born and it is the beginning or first stage of a star.

4. How and why stars burst.

Why: I need to research this because this is what happens to a star at the end and is the last stage of a star unless it becomes a black hole.

5. If stars can become black holes but some can’t what happens to the ‘some’ stars?

Why: I need to research this because f stars can become black holes this will become the end of a star making it one of the stages.

Now that I finished part two I have to start part three. In part three I have to write how I overcame obstacles, how I cross referenced, how I looked at my research in different perspectives, how I evaluated bias, and a personal reflection and advice for others.

Whenever I tried to cross-reference I would find different things (mainly in books). I had to make sure even the books and the internet sources went together. I cross-referenced all the time. When I was at the beginning of my research it was easy but at the end it was pretty hard. I think it was hard because some books on stars would give you information as a story instead of telling it with facts. The four internet sources I chose were good for the beginning but at the end only two of them were useful because the others were not really a site for stars but for advertisements. I overcame these problems because of my friend Kanish who gave me this fat book only about space. The book was written with the help of an astronomer’s information and summarized by an author.

When you look at I look at my information I usually look at it in reader’s perspective and author’s perspective. I do that because of bias. You find bias in almost everything, especially in factual information. If I looked at information in my way I would either agree if it was useful or not and if it had anything to do with what I was doing. If I was looking at it in author’s perspective I would think why I would have written this information. Mr. Hewett has an example about bias but you will have to read the next paragraph to find out what it is.

As I said in the paragraph before I look at writing in two different perspectives (An authors and readers perspective). When you look at writing in author’s perspective you would usually find bias. I said I had two sites that had bias because they were mainly for advertising. Advertising always has bias because whatever someone is advertising is advertised to prove they are better than someone or something else, but it usually doesn’t work so people complement themselves to make other people think all the complements are true. In my case the websites said they had the best information on stars so I tagged it. Later when I actually read it there was nothing much at all.

I have some advice for whoever is reading this. Firstly don’t believe everything a book or website says. Don’t try to be the first in the class but don’t try to be the last. You should use Wikipedia but if you don’t understand it do not use it. Thanks for reading.

As I said in I-search part one I am researching on The Life Stages of a Star. I told you that I was daydreaming on a day when my sister came home from school and started blabbering on and on but something about star caught me. I thought I would do just stars but it would have been too broad. Then I thought I would do different types of stars but I thought it might be too narrow. Then I thought of the life stages of a star and thought ‘perfect’ that is how I came up with this idea.

Stars are hot bodies of glowing gas. Their birthplaces are called nebula or nebulae (plural). They vary in size, temperature, mass, and diameters ranging from 450 times smaller to 1000 times larger than the sun. The hottest stars are blue and the coolest are red.

Stars are born in a region of high density called nebula. The first stage of a star is a nebula. There are different types of nebula. One of the nebulae is the reflection nebula. In a reflection nebula starlight reflects on dust particles of a nebula. An emission nebula, such as the Orion belt, glows brightly because of the gas energized by stars that already have formed within. Planetary nebulae are the outer layer of a star when it changes from a red giant to a white dwarf. Dark nebulae are dense clouds of molecular hydrogen that partially or completely absorb light from stars behind them. Stars are born when forces within the nebula like the gas’s gravitational pull or by a nearby star explosion. As it does it breaks up into tiny clumps that may form a star.

As the clumps of gas start to shrink they form what astronomers call, protostars. A protostar is a baby star that will start generating energy in its core by nuclear fusion. The shrinking cloud of gas starts to spin round faster and faster. The centre, or core, of the protostar gets increasingly dense and hot until nuclear fusion is finally triggered. The energy produced helps release most of the disc of gas away; leaving the new star shining brightly. If a protostar contains enough matter the central temperature reaches 15 million degrees centigrade.

A red giant is a star with a cool surface. It is formed at the later period of a star’s life and when a star looses hydrogen in its core. Red giants have diameters 10 to 100 times the suns. They are bright because of the temperatures but their surface temperatures are cooler than the suns. Very large red giants are usually called super giants, but super giants’ diameters are 1000 times larger than the sun and are about one million times brighter.

A supernova is the explosive death of a star and is usually when a star obtains the brightness of one million suns. There are two types of supernovas. One of them occurs in binary star system where gas from one star falls onto a white dwarf causing it to explode. The second way occurs only to stars eight or more times the size of the sun. When a giant stars nuclear fuel has expended, it cannot support its outer layers. First, its core collapses then rebounds dangerously, blowing off the star’s outer layers. Some supernovas are so bright we can see them with the naked eye.


If the collapsed core of a star survives the explosion it may stay behind in the form of a neutron star. The core becomes extremely dense and is made entirely of neutrons. A black hole forms when an extremely massive star explodes. The star is too large to be a stable neutron star and keeps collapsing until it eventually disappears. It leaves only a source of gravity that not even light can escape.

If you counted my paragraphs (except the opening one) you would see there are six main stages of a star. Of course there are more but they don’t happen as often so I didn’t choose to write about them. Well, I hope you learnt more on a star’s life and enjoyed my I-search.

Citations: The first two citations are websites and the last three are books.

("The life of,”)-The life of a star. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.astro.keele.ac.uk/workx/starlife/StarpageS_26M.html

("The life cycle,”) -The life cycle of a star. (n.d.). Retrieved from
www.telescope.org/pparc/res8.html

Jones, CJ. (1994). Astronomy. Great Britain: Eye Witness.
(Jones, 1994)

Gifford, CG. (2001). Facts and records book of space. London: Kingfisher.
(Gifford, 2001)

Owen, JO. (2004). Sky watching. Washington D.C.: Fog City Press.
(Owen, 2004)