Term 3 Blog Post 4: Termly Reflection

Introduction:

In this blog post I will reflect on my personal growth in science and on my performance in the science assessment test for this term(term 3).

How has my knowledge and understanding for Science improved and grown?

This term I have definitely improved! Looks like studying hard and having better time management did pay off after all. This term most of SLC's responsibilities have ended for me, and I took it upon myself to ensure that I had to improve my results. After all since time was the main factor that affected my results during term 1 and term 2, this term I should score much better as I would have had much more time to study and do more practice. Last term I was devastated at my Science marks(actually at most of my marks), and after a lot of hard work this term I managed to bring back some confidence.

So the topics that were focused on this term were mostly Ecology and Nutrient Cycles, I found this less boring as compared to Physics, but then again I realised that there was a lot of memory work to be done. Therefore once again most of the studying was done by ourselves, while class time was mostly used for going through worksheets and assignments etc.

I think I would have enjoyed Science a little more than last term because what we were learning was part of Biology; always more interesting to me. It was nice learning what the different relationships between organisms with one another in the environment, as well as other simple concepts of population, community and ecosystem. We also revisit what decomposers were and their role to play in order for the Nutrient Cycle to exist. I think many of us would have already found all these concepts and content familiar as we had already learnt some of it during Primary School. This made things easier for everyone when we wanted to self-study at home. I also did a ACE project with another group of fellow classmates regarding Ecology so as to allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the subject, and we presented it to our class to share what we had found and learnt.

There was also another group that did the same, and that allowed us to learn from one another! So in this way my understanding in Science has grown in that I realised the importance of hard work, and even with high intelligence or talent in Science, one must be willing to put in a certain amount of effort before seeing tangible results. After all, the joy in learning is when you put in effort; be it a certain project or assignment, and see yourself improving and getting what you deserved. Such is the case of 'No pain, no gain'.

For my knowledge in Science, I definitely managed to learn much more regarding Ecology as compared to when I was learning the same subject in Primary School. This time we went into much more detail, and learning many new terms such as "Mutualism, Commensalism, Parasitism etc." There's a Chinese idiom, '温故知新', and I think it really fits in my current situation.

With that, I know that I should not rest on my laurels, and that should I choose to go into a 'Slack Mode' now then I would surely fail my EOYs. If I just think about it, EOYs would be testing on Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Should I choose not to study hard and start early, I fear the worst has yet to come!

My performance in the Science Assessment Test:

For this term's test, I scored a total of 33.5/40, which is actually 83.75/100. This means that I got an A1! A huge improvement from last term!

I think firstly I was very lucky during this test. I actually was busy trying to study for all my other subjects, and was struggling to try to put Science into one of my top priorities. I tried my best to study over the term, but things don't always turn out the way we want too. Therefore for this particular term, I confess that I did quite a lot of 'last minute' studying.

I still remember the night just before the test where I studied from 9pm - 5am. Went to sleep for 1.5hrs and went to school the next day, all confident that I should be able to score well. I think this is very bad, and I will at all cost try to avoid such situations in the future. I finished 3 cups of coffee in on night, but I told myself that I had to score well this term, and I would not allow anything to stop me from getting an A1 this term. Therefore I wanted to make sure that I had memorised every single content from my notes. Surprisingly, I did not feel sleepy in school at all!

The test paper this term was considered easy as compared to the other terms. I do not know if it is because I studied, or simply because the teachers wanted to set a easier paper such as to allow us to score better. I did the best I could, and I got an A1. Despite that, I am actually not very happy with my score as I felt that I could do even better. Thinking about it, I really need to continue to improve my time management skills, so that I can juggle all the many things that I had put so much effort in. All my passions; CCAs, Council and the like. If I want to do well for my EOYs, to get into CSE or at least IPSP, I would surely need to work doubly hard. This year is a very important year for me as a Secondary 2 student in Hwa Chong Institution, and I am not planning to let slip my chance of becoming an outstanding student. Whether a not I will emerge as another one of those 'legendary' students that are all-rounders, or end up as a wannabe, whatever I do now will decide.

Term 3 Blog Post 3: Interactions & Cycles

Introduction :

In this blog post, I will be talking about the issues and things we learnt in class, and the theme for term 1 was - Interactions, as well as Cycles. Basically, we were introduced to Ecology, and what the Nutrient Cycle was. It was almost a revisit to what we had learnt during Primary School, which helped us a lot as most of the content had to be learnt through memory work and self-study, so a little bit of background knowledge actually made a huge difference. My ACE project group also did a PowerPoint Presentation regarding Ecology, which helped us gained a better and deeper understanding before we officially covered the topic in class.

Ecology

Simple concepts of population, community and ecosystem

Basically we learnt many new terms such as 'population' and 'community' and 'habitat'. We also had to be able to identify a habitat and some of the organisms associated with the habitat. This was pretty much what we learnt in Primary School, and is also where the tedious 'memorising stage' is. I would guess that many of us spent quite some time trying to make sure we had the sufficient content in our heads before we headed off to any examination.

Covering things that were not during Primary School included learning the importance of various physical factors like air, water, temperature, light, minerals and acidity/alkalinity, in regards to the life of the organisms. Now that was a mouthful, and I found it hard to try to form any kind of acronym to help remember all those factors!

We also had to remember the many reasons of the importance of conserving the physical environment. I paid particular attention to this one, seeing as to how the practice assignments had a question that weighed 6 marks, asking us the exact same thing that appeared on our notes.

Relationships of Organisms with One Another and with the Environment

This one was a little more interesting for me(and perhaps my ACE project group too), as we had done more research on this area during our presentation(for the fun of it). This was because out of what we learnt for the interactions between organisms; Mutualism, Commensalism, Parasitism, Herbivory, Predation and Competition, we found particular interest in 'Parasitism'. Just a quick gist of what we found:

Tongue-eating parasite:

Cute little fellow isn't he? There were also many other interesting things that we found regarding parasites.

Now going back to the topic, we also needed to be able to establish the relationships in a food web, such as the producer, consumer, herbivore, carnivore, decomposer and the food chain. The Sun of course, is the principal source of energy input to biological systems.

There were also other areas that were not covered in class but in the notes; pyramids of numbers and biomass, as well as energy losses between trophic levels.

Nutrient Cycles

Nutrient Cycles in the Ecosystem

For the theme 'Cycles', there wasn't really much being taught in class, and the notes we were given were also minimal. Most of my class thought that this would not be tested on much during the examinations, and decided to skip/skim through this part of the notes. I on the other hand was not prepared to take any chances, and also made sure I knew the content very well.

So what we basically learnt here was the Carbon Cycle and its importance, which is really to help maintain a balance in the ecosystem. I also understood from linking to what I learnt in Ecology that nutrients trapped in living organisms are recycled with the help of decomposers.

There you have it! This post might seem a little short as compared to the others in my E-Portfolio, but most of the things we learnt this term were details that had to be memorised!

Term 3 Blog Post 2: Project Showcase

Recently, I did an ACE project with another fellow classmate in my class on the topic: Sexual Reproduction

Our project was more based on the morality issues(more on the Sexual Education side), as we wanted to expand more on a certain focus on a topic that was already part of our syllabus. Unlike last year, where I just did reports on all the various external topics that I found interest in, this year my friend and I decided that in order to get the full 5 ACE points on one single ACE project, we had to take a step further. Therefore we brainstormed on how we could come up with something creative and innovative, but yet being able to be informative. After much discussion, we decided to submit a package to our Science teacher. Yes, a nice package containing different content materials, all wrapped up and neatly labelled. So what was in our package? Here's what:

PowerPoint Slides

The most conventional and common way students decided to submit ACE projects with. We tried to make this the 'formal and informative' part of our package, serving as proof that we did our research and came up with quite a lot of content and statistics.

You can download the PowerPoint Slides here: http://www.freefilehosting.net/sexualreproductionace

Comic Strips

Yes, COMIC STRIPS. I would say that this would be one of the ACE projects that really stand out among others because of our variety and quality. I created 3 comic strips regarding the same topic, but adding a touch of humour and cartoon-like quality to it. We intended this to be 'creative and innovative' part of our package.

Video Case Study

I think this really gave our package something to end with. We decided to do a case study on a man who recovered from HIV. Unfortunately, the video is with my friend who accidentally dropped and broke his thumb drive which was the only thing containing the video(after submitting it to the teacher of course) so I will not be able to showcase the video here. The video should still be with my Science Teacher though!

Update: My friend actually managed to post the video on YouTube, so here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf6MRApLoNc

There you have it, the hard work of both my friend and I. We got 5 ACE points in the end, and I think we actually deserved it!

Term 3 Blog Post 1: Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster

Recently, Japan had a huge disaster. A nuclear disaster. I read about it on the Newspaper, articles on the Internet, on television, even on Facebook. I decided to talk about it as one of my Science E-Portfolio post.

Basically what happened was that there was a series of nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, follwing the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. This spelled disaster for Japan, leaving many dead, more injured, and everyone worried. This Fukushima is perhaps the largest of the 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents, and is the largest nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

So instead of talking about the disaster itself(which I think many of my classmates would should do a post regarding this article), I decided to do things from a different point of view. I imagined myself to be Wen Jiabao, the premier of China, and write my views on the issue: Nuclear Power has no future in a post-Fukushima world(as opposed to how I decided to do on Singapore previously). I also wanted to face the issue by taking into account the subject Science.

My View:

I am premier Wen Jiabao of the People’s Republic of China. Today, I want to make my stand clear – and that is I still believe that nuclear power has future in a post-Fukushima world, that the nuclear industry will recover and regain the confidence of the people.

Like for every other discovery or invention, time has proven that it is better to remedy the defects. Throughout the history of Mankind, rarely, if ever, have we turned our backs on a technology. From the Ancient Era; where men started practising animal husbandry to when we taught ourselves to number our days. From the Renaissance Era; where men found curiosity in the sky and the stars to the invention of gunpowder. From the Industrial Era; where men discovered the precious resource of oil to the inception of steam power. Scientists have always sought to remedy the defects of their discoveries or inventions rather than abandoning them and I believe that nuclear power deserves equal treatment. After all we Chinese believe in a Chinese idiom, “前事不忘，后事之师”. Past experience, if not forgotten, can serve as a guide for the future. The Chinese government will take the Fukushima incident as a lesson, and take note not to make the same mistakes.

China is facing rapid economic growth now, and the demand for energy would then be inevitably immense. With increasing concerns about air quality and global warming, nuclear power seems to be the only other feasible alternative to coal power up to current. We therefore have already committed greatly to our nuclear plans, which are an integral part of our development strategy, and will not be changing course. We have more than 25 nuclear power plants under construction, and 50 more in the planning stages. We expect our nuclear capacity to jump 10-fold by 2050.

Some might argue that the safety risks that nuclear power poses negates any benefits it might have. The Chinese government has taken this into account, and have carefully laid out plans to ensure safety. We say, “提高效率，立下周详的计划，监督绝对不能宽松。”In order words China treats our nuclear power plant projects very seriously, and never cut any corners. To do so, China's approach to nuclear power would be centred on building many smaller reactors, instead of Japanese-style megaplants such as Fukushima, and thereby dispersing the nuclear threat if anything goes wrong. Of course there will be challenges for the government, such as to keep an eye on any contractors who may be tempted to cut corners. But as a precautionary measure, we will maintain nuclear safeguards, in a business culture where quality and safety might sometimes be sacrificed in favour of cost-cutting, profits and corruption. We have also asked for international assistance in training more nuclear power plant inspectors.

Putting all that aside, the Chinese government also know that, “Actions speak louder than words.” In light of that, China has taken involvement in the development of nuclear fusion reactors, which could be the next breakthrough in nuclear technology. We have done this through our participation in the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project, having constructed an experimental nuclear fusion reactor known as EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) located in Hefei. We hope that the world will see why China supports nuclear power, and that our actions will bring the nuclear industry back to life.

There you have it! I find myself taking interest in seeing such articles relevant to Science and debating on issues related to it. After all, I do learn much better when I have a passion and interest for something!

Term 2 Blog Post 4: Termly Reflection

Introduction:

In this blog post I will reflect on my personal growth in science and on my performance in the science assessment test for this term(term 2).

How have I has my knowledge and understanding for Science improved and grown?

If I were to use one word to describe how I am feeling right now, that word would be: "Wow". Many interpretations of what that could mean.

I am truly shocked, or perhaps surprised at how I fared for Science this term. This term was perhaps the term in my entire Secondary School life thus far where I scored the lowest. I shall elaborate more on that later, but now I shall do some reflection on how I actually fared this term.

As always before, I learnt new things this term; I learnt about Lenses, colours of light, reflection and refraction and much more. In contrast to what the syllabus was for last term(Chemistry), this term was focused on Physics. I never really liked studying Physics as a subject. It poses to me as an irony; I am very curious on how things work like in real life, but yet I dread all the different rules that I have to be able to memorise in order to score well for the test.

This term most of the topics were self-study topics, class lessons mostly being used to go through worksheets and assignments, as well as having some extra practice. This did not help me at all, I found myself constantly trying to keep focus when I was reading and understanding on say, what 'Colours of Light' were about on the Science Wiki. This leads me to realising something about Science and myself; all along I thought that Science was the 'Easy Subject' that I could conquer without effort, but this term everything I thought I knew was immediately crushed when I got back my results. I found it hard to remember anything, especially when we had to memorise the different situations in which light refracts(on the topic lenses). I ended up making up acronyms for myself, which really helped a huge amount.

The only topic that I felt really helped me in improving and growing in my knowledge and understanding for Science was actually 'Colours of Light', simply because I actually found a tiny interest in it. This clearly shows how big a factor 'interest' is to me when I am studying, and therefore allowed me to understand and make sure that I manipulate the factors that affect my studying in the future to my advantage. The reason why I found 'Colours of Light' interesting was because I never knew that white light was actually made up of different lights; the colours of the rainbow. It really changed how I perceived things and really could be described as 'mind-intriguing' at that point for me. Therefore I took the initiative and tried out the experiment on my own as well, and it turned out that I learnt much better this way.

So I must admit, I really have not improved in Science this term. In fact, I deproved greatly. I am not someone who would regret what has happened, but I definitely will use what I have learnt this term(metaphorically), remedy the mistakes I made, and make the necessary changes for better improvement next term; 前事不忘，后事之师。

My performance in the Science Assessment Test:

For this term's test, I scored a total of 22.5/40, which is actually 56.25/100. This means that this is the first time I did not get an A, but instead got a C5.

Never would I have imagined myself getting such a low score. It was a huge blow to both my confidence and arrogance, on how I had taken the fact that I have the potential to easily score an A1 for granted. In summary, this was a wake-up call for me.

After I got my results and went back home, I spent a lot of time thinking what went wrong. How is it that someone who got exempted for Science the previous year get a C5 for one of his term tests? It definitely could not be the issue of not being able to understand the syllabus, it definitely could not be the test paper being too hard! Then after thinking for a really long time, I came to a conclusion; Time. I had managed my time badly this term. As I had mentioned last term, I knew that the first two terms of this year will be very busy for me due to the intense amount of things I had taken up. What's more, this term was the peak busy period for SLC. I simply had no time to study. I would come home after my CCA three times a week at 6pm. Then I would take my dinner and bathe, after which I spent at least 2-3hrs settling SLC work(I had to do this almost everyday during term 2). By the time I actually started doing my homework, it was usually 10pm or 11pm!

I guess looking at the issue just with what I had just stated does not warrant me an excuse to get a C5. Truth be told, I don't have an excuse of getting a C5, but matters were only worsened when I could not study effectively due to this term being Physics. As I had stated earlier, I found it hard to concentrate when I was studying, and thus I ended up having to spend more time on each topic, which I simply could not afford! This term was really a mismatch of coincidences.

Nevertheless, I knew I could not let this drag on. If I do not act correctly and properly now, the issue would just be brought forward to when I am having my EOYs. Last term I barely missed my A1 and I was determined to get an A1 this term, this term I got a C5 and I am still determined to get an A1 next term. Right now I have realised my folly and arrogance, and I am sure that next term I will gradually improve. Despite the fact that I would not longer be able to get exempted, I know that it does not really matter as long as I learn from my mistakes and score well for the next test. It would have been better for me to have the wake-up call now then have it during the EOYs.

Onward to a new term; deprove I shall not, disappoint I shall not!

Term 2 Blog Post 3: Singapore's intention to build an offshore underwater nuclear power plant

Recently, I read an article regarding Singapore's intention to build an offshore underwater nuclear power plant. Here is the article:

Reflection

I feel that there are both pros and cons to Singapore's intention on building an offshore underwater nuclear power plant, but I feel that Singapore should go ahead with her intentions despite some risk being involved.

Firstly, Singapore's limited land space leads us to focus a lot on land maximisation. Building a nuclear power plant underwater is actually saving Singapore a huge amount of space, but yet providing Singapore with a large amount of energy. These large amounts of energy are essential in aiding Singapore's growth and progress, and could be the solution to the land scarcity in Singapore. This is crucial as Singapore is beyond her limited land resources and making use of other available resources to build her nation, as nuclear power is a much more efficient method of generating electricity compared to fossil fuels.

Secondly, by building the nuclear power plant underwater, we are in fact minimising the risk of any disaster as the water acts as a shield to Singapore in the case of any outbreak; the abundance of seawater would mean an abundant supply of liquid water that could be used to cool the generator and prevent it from overheating or a meltdown. The underwater nuclear power plant is also planned to be built 20km away from Singapore; this is quite a safe distance away from Singapore, should any misfortune happen. Therefore, the feasibility of Singapore's intention to build an offshore underwater nuclear power plant is further increased.

Lastly, some might argue that Japan's recent nuclear power plant disaster should serve as a warning to Singapore, that we should not consider this idea at all because no matter how many possibilities an underwater nuclear power plant might pose, gambling with our lives, in this small little island, is simply not acceptable. However, I feel that the recent disaster in Japan instead serves as a learning point for Singapore, that although we are shielded from tsunamis and earthquakes, we should still build the power plant to withstand such natural disasters, as there is certainly no room for mistakes when the lives of 5 million people are at stake.

To conclude, I still feel that it is a good idea to build an offshore underwater nuclear power plant after weighing the pros and cons in the points I have stated above.

Term 2 Blog Post 1: Project Showcase

Recently, I did some research along this line: How Has The Structure of the Atom Changed Over Time?

Unlike last year, where I just did reports on all the various external topics that I found interest in, this year I decided to do something different. Therefore, I decided to come up with something more creative and innovative - a pamphlet. I made sure that content was not just the only thing of importance and quality in my project, I also ensured that aesthetics and being as concise as possible was constantly a factor and goal I worked towards to. I also used it for an ACE assignment, and so here's what I've come up with:

*If the images cannot be seen(too pixelated due to enlarging), you can view the Google Docs version of it(click start presentation) here: https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AQ9q2-IxeSsFZGhjc2ZjN2ZfMWN6ZDJwNjYy&hl=en_US

The lines you see are actually dividers, making this 2 pictures 6 pages in a pamphlet. I was actually quite happy with what I came up with, as it actually did look quite professional considering this was my first time attempting to do my ACE projects for Science in a different way. The best part is of course, that I managed to learn as much as I would, but in a fun way!

Apart from that, I also did a PowerPoint presentation on Covalent Bonding. This was a topic that was covered in the previous term, but I felt that I could build more on what we had learn and do research on a particular area that was not taught during lessons. You can download the PowerPoint at this link: http://www.freefilehosting.net/covalentbonding