Blog 1.

So far, my group has assigned each other with which scenes they are going to do. And we have  talked about how we are going to perform our play. I would say the hard thing about working in a group is having to depend on other people. For example, if someone doesn’t do their part, your all looking at a not so great grade. And like that saying “if you want something done, do it yourself” that doesn’t apply when your working in groups. That’s what I hate. But we did get our scenes done real fast. Editing the text wasn’t too hard. I thought that if I just took the text straight from the text, and then edit it later, that would be easier. I soon found out that I shouldn’t have done that. Now I have to go back and edit everything. I’m becoming used to the language more. It doesn’t look like complete and total gibberish anymore. I actually didn’t realize how much I enjoyed this book until this project. It’s an interesting story. And the ending just… sucks. There’s not much more you can say about that. Everyone just dies.

All through middle school I learned about how bad littering was and how the cleanliness of the world was in my hands. We were taught that it all started with what we did. But if you take a walk through the city today, you will see tons of trash. What does this mean? Were all these people that are littering absent in school the day they taught the other kids that littering was destroying the earth? Who knows.
But I’m not trying to get people to stop littering. I think there are enough people in the world that have a handle on that and are trying to change it. I think more people should be looking at the fact that SEPTA buses give off so much air pollution. Some people may think this is considered a small problem. But aren’t big problems solved with fixing the small problems first? I believe so.
Some people actually think they are helping the air pollution by taking public transportation to work instead of driving to work everyday. But are they really making a difference? I’m not going to be the judge of that.
Recently someone told me that septa is “going green”. But in what sense are they “going green?” I’ve been researching this whole “going green” thing. It seems like a good idea.

Abandonment affects everyone. Everyone is abandoned at least once in there life. Yahoo answers states that everyday there are people who feel as if life itself has left them on a doorstep or thrown them away." Abandonment comes in many different form. According to Yahoo answers:

"Abandonment is: • A feeling • A feeling of isolation within a relationship • An intense feeling of devastation when a relationship ends • An aloneness-not-by-choice • An experience from childhood • A baby left on the doorstep • A woman left by her husband of twenty years for another woman • A man being left by his finance for someone 'more successful' • A child left by his mother • A friend feeling deserted by a friend • A father leaving his marriage, moving out of the house, away from his children • A child whose pet dies • A little girl grieving over the death of her mother • A little boy wanting his mommy to come pick him up from nursery school • A child about to be 'replaced' by the birth of another sibling • A child needing his parents but they are emotionally unavailable • A boy realizing he is gay and anticipating the reaction of his parents and friends • A teenage boy with his heart twanging, but afraid to approach his love • A teenage girl feeling her heart is actually broken • A woman who has raised a family now grown, feeling empty, as if she has been deserted, as if the purpose of her life has abandoned her • A child stricken with a serious illness or injury watching his friends play while he must remain confined to braces, wheel chair, or bed • A woman who has lost her job and with it her professional identity, financial security, and status. Now she is left feeling worthless, not knowing how to occupy her time - - feeling abandoned by her life's mission • A man who has been 'put out to pasture' by his company, as if obsolete • People grieving the death of a loved one report feelings of abandonment • The dying fear being abandoned by their loved ones as much or more as they fear pain and death • Suicide is an excruciating form of abandonment • Abandonment is all of this and more."

Abandonment is also mistaken as grief, but they appear to be very different emotions. We turn our rage that we have for others against ourselves. This is the reason for the depression and the self injury involved in abandonment. 

When Mr. Vank talked to us about the bio-diesel, none of us knew what it was. But then, as time passed by, we started to comprehend what bio-diesel is. We researched on the Internet how to make it and made up a list with all the procedures in order to actually produce this kind of combustible.
After a while Mr. VK explained to us that we weren’t going to make bio-diesel in the well-known way, which creates poor quality fuel. He described the “flow process”, a better method, which thanks to it, the BD is more efficient and effective. After that class, things started to get serious.
We created a series of blueprints, each of them representing the actual bio-diesel machine. We spent a lot of time in doing this. There was just another thing to do before acting practically: pricing all the component of the BD device. Mr. VK kind of “pressured” us in order to do it well. In fact we did it very accurately, counting every needed penny.
Finally it was time to get the stuff and build the bio-diesel implement. Now we are still working on it, by folding sheet of aluminum, cutting metal and bending tubes.
I didn’t imagine this project would have become so big: we found a way to improve the bio-diesel and we are actually building the machine. That’s just incredible. I hope our contribution will encourage other schools in order to research other environmentally friendly combustibles.

    The overall work done so far on the Bio-Diesel Reactor project has been quite a voyage. The knowledge gained from this project has been a vast sea. Not only have I learned about the constructivist, environmental and engineering aspects of building a Bio-Diesel reactor, but I have also learned about inquiry driven work and independent study.
    The first steps of this project included figuring out how to make Bio-Diesel and then figuring out how to convert it from a “batch process” to a “flow process”. The difference between the two is easiest to determine when explained in a metaphor. Imagine baking cookies. You can make a batch of cookies and bake them in an oven, or you could have them being made in a factory and coming out on conveyor belts. The cookies being made in a factory will produce a lot more at a quicker speed. That is a flow process.
    Once we discovered independently how the process of making Bio-Diesel could be converted to a quicker, more efficient process, then the collaboration started. More on that in the next post.

    Well when we started this class back in September my immediate though was i should have picked art or maybe even digital video. It took me awhile to realize what would actually I had been getting myself into. After the first week of classes, I began to realize that my point of view on this class had changed. No longer did I think that I would like to be somewhere else ,but now i had realized what great I could do. After all that i had seen and did i could could create something great for a not only local problem but a global one. As the days began to progress more and more the possibility of building this became a reality. About a month into this project we were working on blueprints for different for all of the parts of the machine.  At that time was the time i realized that this was real and if we messed it wasn’t something where we could just start over we actually had someone depending on us other than just my teacher's hope of the project but we had real everyday living people, and once we realized that. That is when we began to propel in our work habits. 

This Bio-diesel project is incredibly cool.  I'm so psyched about it.  Half the time I don't realize how big this truly could be.  It's incredible.  I doubt it'll be as huge as is possible, but it could still have a globally measurable impact.

Well this was a great semester in Engineering class. Our teacher came up to us in the beginning, and said, "Would you guys like to do this...?" And we were psyched. Each of us got assigned a problem to solve, some involving the process in which biodiesel is made, and others got what has to go into that process that makes biodiesel. There was the process of mixing methanol and lye, and sifting out the crude oil, and then figuring out how long we need it too mix. There were several problems, one some people couldn’t find their information required, two we had to actually find out what methanoic acid, the product of mixing methanol with lye, and third all the pipes that we bought were the same size, seeing as we needed extremely short radii pipes because of the fast flowing rate of methanoic acid. Thus we solved each problem one by one, taking excessive time to actually get this done, we learned how to shift the flow rate by tilting the pipes, and we did an experiment involving metals, in which we dipped them in methanoic acid, seeing which one would dissolve through. But, we overcame all of our problems. We actually are creating a flow process of biodiesel, something no one has ever successfully been done before.

Engineering class what a blast, I’m so loving it:-P In this class where studying the compound of how bio-diesel works. After a long-term study (well not that long maybe like 6 classes), we discovered a process that will completely help filter the oil so it can be re-used. Before the process took place we had to make up 3-d images on google sketch up to get an idea of what it will look like and how we would be doing the project step by step. As of today which is the last day of January this is our 4th class period, taking the time to build the set-up for the bio-diesel to be filtered. Overall I love this class and I love making things with the best teacher ever the own Mr. VanK:-D

What are Turbines?

     A turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow.

Usually turbines have one major part, which is the rotor. A rotor is a big blade attached and fluids act upon the blades or vise versa. Overall the blades rotate and impart energy to the rotor.

Ok so I'm working on the separation of the lye from the bio-diesel and glycerin, the basic of this is we have a tube connected to a small tank confected at the bottom of the tube to pull out the lye from the others witch can then be emptied every 12 hours.