In my painting, I tried to paint a picture of the border between France and Germany. Between the border, there is a river separating the two sides. On the side of France, the left, there was supposed to be a darker hue to the land, to represent the death and destruction that happened in France. On the side of Germany, the right, the land was supposed to be lighter and brighter to show the difference between the two countries. However, both sides ended up looking the same and not showing the difference. That was a struggle as I was painting. To paint, I used brushes and acrylic paint.

1. Why do you believe people of the past and present have used art as a vehicle for expression during moments of emotion or trauma?

Art has many different forms and has no rules. You can create anything. This makes it easy for people to express their emotions through different forms of art and create beautiful works. The many different forms of art can also appeal to people’s different emotions or abilities. Furthermore, art is appreciated and loved by many and can display an infinite amount of emotion all through words, pictures, paints, etc.

2. Cite a moment in history where art has been used to express important experiences and how that art revealed the beliefs, values, and context of the time. 

An example of art expressing experiences is Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica”. It was painted as response to the bombing of Guernica, a Spanish town, during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing was done by Nazi Germany but ordered by Spanish Nationalists. In the painting, several animals and people can be seen suffering due to violence.

3. Looking at your own piece of art, what are you most proud of? What do you think could have been improved? Why?

Looking at my art piece, I am proud of creating a piece of art that displays a meaning. I feel that the concept, although not perfectly executed, showed the destruction done mainly in France. However, I felt that I needed to make the difference between the two countries more apparent in order to really show how much destruction happened in France compared to Germany.

4. How did art serve as vehicle of expression for you in this project? How does the art reveal your belief or values about the event on which the art is based?

Through painting, I was able to display a meaning through a simple painting of a river. Art allowed me to use my skills to display an aspect of one of the most important wars in U.S History. I was also able to display an aspect that many can forget about, the destruction done to French cities. As well, I was able to reveal my own beliefs about the war, where I felt that the destruction done to France was unjust.

In our Ecosystem in a Jar project, we were tasked with learning and investigating ecosystems in order to properly plan how to create our own ecosystem in a jar and monitoring it’s progress. After planning the types of plants and and animals needed for our jar, we were able to travel to Bain Park to collect plants, fungi, and small animals to put in our jar. Although I had a plan, upon arriving to Bain, I was overwhelmed with the different varieties of plants, insects, and other small animals that I could put in my jar.  I got a little too excited and ignored my plan which I believe led me to severely overcrowding my jar. If I were to do this project again, I would stick my plan and not put so many animals into my jar. This made my project harder in the end because I had to deal with including every species in my food web and carbon cycle.

Throughout the project, we used the Fairview Advantage skill of investigation in order to create and analyze our jars. Before creating our jars or collecting plants and animals, the class was tasked with researching and learning of ecosystems and their processes. With information on food webs and pyramids, we created plans that were suited to our individual jars . We also created digital or hand drawn sketches of our plan which were meant to resemble a real ecosystem. Throughout the month, we monitored and investigated that was happening in our jars and analyzed our findings.

Below you will find my infographic, analogy, and collection of vlogs.

Vlog

Infographic

Analogy

For our health class, we were assigned a type of drug and instructed to make a presentation and poster. In the presentation, we explained the effects of the drug, prevention, and treatment programs, as well as statistics and various subtopics. For the poster, we were to create small drawings that related to the information on effect, dangers, prevention, statistics, and addiction. Below, there is a link to our presentation, it is also embedded in the post and a picture of our poster

Link to Presentation.

As we learned about the Progressive Era, we were tasked with picking a topic relating to the era and creating a newspaper about it. I picked the Bull Moose Party, from this topic we found four subtopics to write articles about. I was able to write about the William Taft and Theodore Roosevelt split, which discussed why Roosevelt and Taft had ended their friendship. I also discussed the election of 1912, which saw Taft, Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson running against each other. The nickname of the Bull Moose Party was also a subtopic and stemmed from Teddy Roosevelt himself. My last subtopic were the beliefs of the progressive platform which included the Bull Moose Party and Theodore Roosevelt. As well as writing four articles, we were tasked with finding at least three pictures to put into our newspaper. At the end of the project, we had a gallery walk. In this walk, we had to read at least three other classmate’s newspapers and write a reflection. My newspaper can be found below.

https://www.makemynewspaper.com/designer/app/open?share=9aa805dcc47d12633f

In our health class, we were tasked with creating a presentation based on 10 different prompts ranging from personality/anxiety disorders to eating disorders and mental health issues. Our group chose to present on Anorexia and described its symptoms and causes in the presentation below. We also showed a trailer to the movie To The Bone, which tells the story of a girl with anorexia who goes to a group home for help.

Link to Anorexia Presentation

My name is Livia, and in health we were tasked with creating a poster to display our personalities. You can see from my poster that I am Albanian, and I enjoy playing volleyball and watching Netflix.

For our History class, we were put into groups and given documents to research and create presentations on. Each group had a different document, and we took notes on the documents we did not research.

The topic of my experiment is making milk plastic with milk and an acid. I started my research in early September to find which experiment I would want to do. After researching, I created my research question and began creating my experiment in late September. Through October, November, and December I wrote my procedure and conducted my experiment. I had to redo it a few times due to errors. After conducting the experiment, I wrote my conclusion and data analysis. The science fair itself was conducted on January 23rd. To improve my experiment, I would test more acids with a wider range of pHs.

Data Tables and Graphs

Orange Juice

Tomato Juice

Tea

Lemon Juice

Vinegar

Data Analysis

      From my data, I saw that changing my independent variable(the pH of the acid) affects my dependant variable(the strength of the plastic), and whether a plastic will form. As you can see from my graph, a high pH, such as the pH of the tomato juice, will not create a plastic and are therefore shown as zero on the graph. This is also seen with the orange juice and the tea, which both had a pH of four. This leads me to believe that any acid with a pH of 4 or higher will most likely not create an acid. The only acids to create a plastic were the vinegar and the lemon juice, which both had a pH of two. Although they had the same pH, the vinegar created a much stronger plastic. On the third trial, vinegar had its maximum force of 4, compared to the lemon juice who only had a maximum force of 2. Looking at all the trials, you can see that the force used for the lemon juice was mostly under 1, compared to the vinegar who’s force used was mostly over 1. I can conclude from this data that a more acidic acid, will create a stronger plastic.

    Although the data seems accurate, there were most likely errors that occurred during the process, which can be seen in the data for the vinegar. In trials 4 and 5, the vinegar broke at a force of zero, which seems inconsistent compared to the other trials. Many factors could play into this. I might have used too much force when I started pulling down initially, which could have resulted in inconsistencies in the data. Another reason for this might be an inconsistent thickness in the plastic. It is nearly impossible to get an even thickness throughout the plastic because of how hard it is to roll out. This could have left some spots thicker than others. It could also explain why there is such a big difference between the lemon juice and the vinegar. Although I tried to prevent them from being different thicknesses, it is possible that one might have been slightly thicker than the other, resulting in more force needed to break it. Other than that, I see no other errors that may have occurred.

Abstract

     The topic of the experiment is casein plastic made with milk and acid, for the purpose of determining how its strength is affected by changing the pH of the acid. I used five different acids with pHs of two, four, or five and made five batches of plastic, each with a different acid. Three acids with pHs of four and five did not create an acid. I tested the rest of the plastics by placing them on a spring scale and pulling to find how much force was needed to break them. I found that a lower pH results in a stronger plastic, and I am confident that my data and conclusions are correct.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A6zCdzAnj3LRsLJf6-hg9NGdfKtblScdwiqxnOpYb2k/edit?usp=sharing

The poem “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe uses repetition and word choice to portray the theme of love. One of the biggest themes in this poem is love. This poem portrays him and Annabel Lee falling in love, her dying, and him still loving her after her death. Edgar Allen Poe repeats many phrases in this poem including, “ My Annabel Lee”. The use of repetition lets the phrase linger in your head after you have read it, which relates to how his love lingered even after Annabel had died. Also, “my Annabel Lee”, was the phrase that was most repeated, which also shows how much the loved each other, referring to her as his. The author uses the connotation of words and phrases to relate back to the theme of love. Edgar Allen Poe uses phrases like “ It was many and many a year ago” and “ kingdom by the sea” to give fairytale-like characteristic to the poem. Whenever we think of fairy tales, we think of a Prince and a Princess living happily ever after. The author uses these phrases to portray their love as fairytale love, eternal and happy. The use of structure, such as repetition, and word choice portray the theme of love in “Annabel Lee.”

For our distillation lab, we were tasked with separating salt, sand, and water from a Erlenmeyer flask. We were given the flask filled salt, water, and sand mixed together. The first thing we did was separate the sand from the salt water. We placed a coffee filter over a beaker and secured with a hair tie. Then we poured the saltwater-sand mixture over top. Because of the different sized particles of the sand, water, and salt, we were able to separate just the sand. The coffee filter allowed the saltwater to pass through and left the sand on top. This is because the saltwater it is a liquid and had smaller particles than the solid sand. Unfortunately, we lost all of our photos of this process.

After that, we had to separate the salt from the water. We had to do this process twice, because we broke the flask the first time. We started by connecting a tube to our flask and then made our cooling stations. We cut two holes in a solo cup, one on each side, passed the tube connected to the flask through it, and filled it with ice. Then we took two large Dixie cups and cut a hole at the bottom of each. We filled one with ice then put the other cup over it, and passed another tube through it. We did not have this cooling station in the first attempt Finally we cut off the bottom of a balloon and placed it over the beaker that collected our water, which was in a solo cup filled with ice. Then we placed the tube through it. We connected each of our tubes with a glass connecter. Then we turned on the hot plate that the flask was on. Because water has a lower boiling point then salt, the water boiled, turned into water vapor, passed through the tubes, and left the salt behind. This is why cooling stations are important. As the water vapor passes through the tubes it goes through the cooling stations, turns into a liquid, and falls into the beaker which is also surrounded by ice. We also made sure to replace the ice that the beaker was in regularly. You can see our set-up for the second attempt in the pictures below.