Universal food for life

Coming to Liger Leadership Academy, I get a massive opportunity to take a look at literature, outside world issues, and travel, yet I forgot to pay attention to what forms and gives me energy. Fortunately, I got to take a deeper understanding about it in my Life Science class. Did you know that all living things require energy? Well, that’s right life runs on chemical energy. But the question is where does this chemical energy come from? Glucose.

Glucose is a simple carbohydrate that have a molecule formula of C6H12O6. It is basically sugar. But what make Glucose? Glucose is made using energy in light through a process called Photosynthesis

Photo Source: http://theconversation.com

To elaborate on the picture above, photosynthesis requires Sunlight, Carbon dioxide, and water in order to run through this process. There are two stages of photosynthesis; Light Reaction and Calvin Cycle. Light Reaction is the stage where oxygen are produced for the next step; Calvin Cycle. Calvin Cycle is the stage where Glucose (sugars) are produced. 

To me, this is a new and fascinating topic to look through because I’ve never studied such these little things in our body and life before. This also teaches me the importance of trees and those plants out there who are doing photosynthesis in order to produce glucose to carry out our life processes.

Newton’s Three Laws

Have you ever heard about a guy who discovered gravity? He is Issac Newton. Not only gravity discovery, Issac also discovered his three laws of motion. So what are those three laws?

According to Wikipedia, Newton used them to explain and investigate the motion of many physical objects and systems. Now let’s understand and learn about the first law. The first law of motion could also be called “The Law of inertia”. The definition of inertia is the tendency of an object to resist a change in motion which means an object would stays the same and it will change if there’s an unbalance force or external force acted on that object. Here’s an example of this first law:

This example shows that the ball will continue to stay at the spot where it was kept. This conveys the statement that says “an object at rest stays at rest and an object continues its state of motion”. The ball will not stay at that spot anymore because there’s a force to the ball which there was a person kicked the ball. At first I thought learning about science was complicated, but it’s easy if you break it down and understand the concept step by step. 

There’s a website which helps guiding us learning about STEM where we use it all the time when we do reading. It is called ck12.org. If you are interested to read the 2nd and 3rd Newton’s Law of Motion, you can read it here: https://www.ck12.org/book/CK-12-Physical-Science-For-Middle-School/section/14.0/. 

Acid & Base

Acid is an ionic compound that produces positive hydrogen ions (H+) when dissolved in water. Acids have many important uses, especially in industry. For example, sulfuric acid is used to manufacture a variety of different products, including paper, paint, and detergent. In addition, acid taste sour. Warning: do not try to taste anything to know whether it’s acid or not because if the food has the acid of 0, it might bring you some harmful consequences.

A base is an ionic compound that produces negative hydroxide ions (OH-) when dissolved in water. On the other hand, a base is an ionic compound that tastes bitter and sometimes slippery. A common product that contains base is bleach. Base is slippery, bitter. Soap is also in a base. Soap, concrete and Deo are all base.

The Element of Life

Carbon is the element of life, but why? That’s right because everything made up of carbon! If you don’t know what carbon is, it is a chemical element with the atomic number of 6 and its symbol is “C”. It reacts with oxygen. It also produces carbon dioxide by burn in the air.

We did the experiment of black snake.

Procedure:

Put some 20g sugar and 5g sodium bicarbonate in a beaker and mix them thoroughly. Place a plastic tray on the table and cover it with aluminum foil. Place the aluminum tray in the middle of it and fill with sand. Place a mixture of sugar and baking soda over the sand and use the beaker to soak everything with alcohol and you’re ready to go. Fire it all up using the matches.

Result:

When you light it, it forms the ashes combination and forms this shape. According to my research, it says “The sodium bicarbonate produces carbon dioxide gas, while the sugar creates carbon containing ash” and that’s true!

Science – Matter

Atoms is a very small element. Even though we can’t see them visually, but it is one of the consideration topics that we should learn about. This round I’ve been learning about Atom Family. To give us more understanding about Atoms family, the facilitator gave us a few paragraphs that could explain it and I found it very helpful for this science learning. 

In the center of Matterville, there is a place called the Nucleus Arcade, where two members of the Atoms Family like to hang out. Perky Patty Proton, like her sisters, is quite large with a huge smile and eyes that sparkle (+). Patty is always happy and has a very positive personality. Nerdy Nelda Neutron is large like Patty, but she has a boring, flat mouth and eyes with zero expression (o). Her family is very apathetic and neutral about everything. Patty, Nelda, and their sisters spend all their time at the arcade.

Around the Nucleus Arcade, you will find a series of roadways that are used by another member of the Atoms Family, Enraged Elliott Electron. Elliott races madly around the Arcade on his bright red chrome- plated Harley-Davidson. He rides so fast that no one can be sure where he is at any time. Elliott is much smaller than Patty and Nelda and he is always angry because these bigger relatives will not let him in the Arcade. He has a frown on his face, eyes that are squinted with anger, and a very negative (-) attitude.

The first energy street can only hold only two Electron brothers. The second energy street, called the Energy Freeway, can hold 8 brothers. The third energy street, called the Energy Superhighway, can hold 18 of the brothers.

The morale of Matterville is stable as long as each negative Electron brother is balanced out by one positive Proton sister. The number of residents in Matterville

depends on the Proton and Neutron families.

Challenge: What would happen to the morale of Matterville if one Elliott Electron was kidnapped?

As you’re reading through the Atom Family paragraphs above, I hope that you learnt something about it. 

On the second week, our facilitator assigned us the topic, research about it and teach everyone in the class. I was assigned to present and teach about Atomic Force. Basically, Atomic Force is the reaction when two particles charge either repel or attract each other. Basically, there are four types of Atomic Force which have different roles; Strong Force, Weak Force, Gravitational Force, and Electromagnetic Force. These are my team slideshow to help more understanding about Atomic Force:

In conclusion, I enjoy learning about atoms because it is interesting to learn about things that we don’t see. I’m excited to get to know more about these topics and it would be very fascinating thing if I could see them with microscope!