20 time reflection

I did my final project on outdoor art in which I had many trials and errors of creating something inspiring for people’s environments. I first wanted to create a mural but it didn’t work out because I didn’t have space for it. I then changed to a fire hydrant idea. However, that idea was quickly shut down by a cop. However, shortly after, I created a play structure made of steel and wood and I hope to someday make it a big play structure.

I ended up giving it a presentation here

In the end, I think my Ted talk went well. I think that I showed a lot of the effort I put in. However, I lacked on speaking eloquently. I also lacked on giving good reference and raising awareness on the importance of our environment. From this experience, i became a little more confident speaking in front of a large group of people.

In the end, I think 20 time was a cool experience because it was something that I have never done before. I will be sure to use it as a reference for any future projects.

Ted Talk Outline

I will start out with story with a background of art, how we function in different environments, and how I want to make my community and better and more exciting place.

To make my story more interesting, I will put in pictures of making my sculpture. I will also discuss the success and failure of each project to see how I developed when it came to problem solving and figuring out different ways to make a successful project.

I will conclude my story on the importance of art, giving back to the community, and about our mental and physical health (mention and go over the 5 pillars of health.)

The End of a New Beginning

My 20% project started out as a mural and it ended up being an outdoor installation. I decided to make this change because a mural would’ve taken too long, didn’t have a space for it, and it wouldn’t have been an interactive art piece. So midway through, I decided to do a fire hydrant art piece.

In this project, I challenged myself by working with what I had. I had to learn how to make a change of plans when something didn’t work out or if there was a better idea. I was more focused on creating something artistic that people can marvel at. We come from a community where things tend to be very stressful and a lot of pressure is put onto students and adults. It would be nice if someone went out on a walk to view beautiful art sculptures. It would be a change in environment to make people have a change of heart. The whole point of this project is to help others distress.

To achieve my goal, I went around my community trying to find areas where I can make a beautiful art piece in. I went around my area and decided that fire hydrants were the best bet. They were simple, fun, and accessible. It ended up being a success because I found fire hydrants to decorate.

Through this process, I learned that not everything works. Instead of trying to always make the original idea work, you can always improvise, find a better solution, or even create something better.

If I had this project again, I would probably plan everything out thoroughly before physically executing my plan. Since I didn’t really weigh the pros and cons of my initial idea, I just went for it and it ended up being a complete failure. That ended up wasting a lot of my time. So now, I have decided to just take more time planning rather taking more time doing.

After this project, I plan on going to art school to expand my skills as an artist to create outdoor installations more effectively and efficiently. I definitely want to pick up a new challenge and see how far this project goes in the near future. Maybe I can even create a big sculpture for the outdoors, or maybe even a better idea if I have more time and more inspiration around me.

Reflex Lab

This was a lab where my partner and I did certain tests to test our reflexes. We did one activity where one person was holding up a clear piece of plastic wrap and the other person is throwing cotton balls at them. Each time the cotton ball is approaching the eye, the person who is holding the plastic wrap can’t help but blink. This is because of the function of our neurons. The sensory function is when sensory receptors monitor changes inside and outside of the body to stimulate certain actions. The motor function effects a response by activating muscles or glands to physical do the movement. The integrative function processes and interprets the input. These functions work simultaneously and very quickly.

Photopupillary Reflex: Once the light was shined onto the naked eye, the pupil immediately shrunk smaller. Once the light was not in the eye, the pupil became a lot bigger. This happened because of the somatic nervous system. A nerve impulse was carried from the brain or spinal cord to the muscles and glands, causing a voluntarily control skeletal muscle in the eye to expand from bigger to smaller.

Knee Jerk Reflex: When the knee was lightly tapped, the leg kicked out immediately a little. This is due to the monosynaptic reflex because there is one one synapse in the circuit needed to complete the reflex. Once my partner tapped my knee, information is sent to the spinal cord. After one synapse in the ventral horn of the spinal cord, the information is sent back to the muscle, causing my leg to kick out.

Blink Reflex: We did one activity where one person was holding up a clear piece of plastic wrap and the other person is throwing cotton balls at them. Each time the cotton ball is approaching the eye, the person who is holding the plastic wrap can’t help but blink. This is because of the function of our neurons. The sensory function is when sensory receptors monitor changes inside and outside of the body to stimulate certain actions.

Babe, what’s your sign?: When I used a pen with a the cap on to drag it from the sole of the foot from the heel to the base of the big toe, her toes flexed and moved closer together. This is part of the autonomic nervous system where via parasympathetic, it counterbalances the effect of the sympathetic. It restores the body to a resting state following stress.

How Fast are You: When my partner dropped a meter stick, I caught it with an average time of 0.22 seconds. However, once we tested the same experiment while I was one my phone, my performance dropped dramatically with an average of 0.34 seconds. This is because your brain can’t multitask. Our brain is actually just jumping from one activity to the other. Therefore, my reflexes became a lot slower.

Brain Map

1. The frontal lobe is in charge of controlling your personality, so it is very involved in problem solving, memory, and judgement. It also deals with our execution of behavior

2. Selective attention bases your intelligence off of how well you remember information. The selective attention makes your memory capacity broader, allowing you to prioritize more and sufficiently use your information. Your intelligence isn’t about how much you know, but how much your brain controls the information.

3. The frontal lobe is the last part to develop and in order to keep it from deteriorating, we have to keep challenging ourselves and exercising this part of the brain.

4. The neo cortex navigates your body. It deals with sense, spatial awareness, and motor skills.

5. The pre frontal cortex deals with personality. How you react and behave during a social situation.

6. The pre frontal cortex has a central bottleneck that prevents you from doing more than you can actually accomplish. Multi tasking isn’t a real thing. In reality, your brain is just jumping very quickly from one thing to another.

7. The broca’s are is associated with speech and language development. This is where you can use you hearing to associate with you language and speech.

8. The Somatosensory Cortex is responsible for thinking "is it hot in here or is it just me?"

9. The visual cortex allows us to see distinguish colors and textures. Without it, everyone would look the same.

10. THe occipital lobe is a center for you brain to process information. It collects and organizes visual data. It also helps you process the past, present, and future.

11. If my temporal lobes were damaged, you could forget a lot of easy every day things.

12. Fast brain picks up information very quickly and your mind can also quickly process it.

13. 3 things that influences your synapses is eating omega fatty acids, socializing, and exercising more.

14. The multi-sensory and your dendrites are related in which it can allow you to engage in multiple simulations and real situation. It can help you differentiate the two.

Limbic System

17. The corpus callosum is tied with youe oral language skills and your ability to understand other languages.

18. Studying music can help to strengthen the conversation between the two hemispheres of your brain..

19. The thalamus is important because it is responsible for motor control, sensory information, and states of consciousness. It also has to deal with your memory, your emotions, your consciousness, awareness and attention. Without it, you can’t retrieve different memories.

This tutorial was helpful in whicn I learned about a lot of things that I didn’t know about the brain. I had no idea how complex and interesting thhe brain was. The occipital lobe is a center for you brain to process information. It collects and organizes visual data. It also helps you process the past, present, and future. If my temporal lobes were damaged, you could forget a lot of easy every day things.Fast brain picks up information very quickly and your mind can also quickly process it.

Brain Lab

During this lab, we cut open a sheep's brain to observe and analyze the different parts that make a functioning and healthy sheep's brain. We first cut the brain in half horizontally to have a medial plane view of the brain. This is where we saw the cerebrum, cerebellum, brain stem, thalamus, optic nerve, medulla oblongata. Afterward, we made more cuts (portioned out the brain) to look into the gray and white matter more. After this tab was completed, my group members and I learned a lot about both the anatomy and physiology of different parts of the sheep's brain. In the end, each part in the brain works hand in hand to create a proper brain. This lab was very enlightening because it was very hands on.



1.)  




2.) The cerebrum is the largest part of the brain and it is asscoiated with higher brain function (thoughts and actions properly thought out.) The cerebellum coordinates voluntary movement and balance. The brain stem regulates heart rate, breathing, sleeping and eating. The anterior is the front side of the brain while posterior is the back side of the brain.

3.) The myelin sheath is part of the nervous system. Without the myelin sheet, nerve impulses break down and shrivel up. This is the cause of sclerosis. If the myelin sheath is functioning properly, then it increases the speed of impulses.

4.)




5.) The thalamus relays and processing center for sensory and motor info. THe optic nerve takes info from the retina to the brain. The medulla oblongata regulate breathing, hear, and blood vessel, digestion, sneezking, and swallowing. Pons is a brainstem structure that regulates the brain during sleep and little movement. The midbrain is involved with vision, hearing, motor control, sleep, and temp regulation. Corpus Callosum is a communication link between the left and right cerebral hemisphere. The hypothalamus is where the brain's blood testing laboratory, constantly monitoring the blood to determine the body's condition.

6.)

  

Structuring a Plan

20% Time trains students to think differently. It allows students to think more actively, allowing for more innovative and creative ideas because students are working on topics they are actually passionate about. The essential question that I asked is whether or not someone can change their emotions and mentality based on the aesthetics of their environment. for my 20 Time Project, I have decided to create an outdoor art instillation. I want to create something where students, parents, and everyone else in the community can go outside in nature and feel inspired or stress-free from an outdoor interactive art piece. With that being said, would this help someone feel better being immersed in a different environment? Or would they still feel the same based on how stressed they are?

My goal is to create a lasting outdoor instillation that is able to withstand rainy weather and powerful wind. I want it to be something that is physically interactive, something useful to people. Most importantly, I want to create something that people can dive into and enjoy and feel better about their problems.

I will measure the progress of my achievement by how much of the piece I get done every time. So far I was thinking about using umbrellas with light bulbs hanging down from them. With a slight wind, they would make a lovely sounds and hopefully, there will be a bench area where people can listen, watch, and enjoy. 

Clay Brain

My group members and I used different play dough to identify different parts of the brain. As seen in the picture, we differentiated the left and right hemisphere. We then used play dough to identify the different parts within the brain.

Breaking Barriers

I decided to start painting on fire hydrants and I realized that a lot of poeple in this area are freaked out by it. Someone saw me painting near by their house and ran out to see if I was vandalizing their property. I got kicked out multiple times but I kept trying at each house and I ended up doing three. I learned that I don't give up to easily because when each person kicked me out, I would try harder to find a different fire hydrant to paint on.

It's difficult to try to find a new fire hydrant each time because it definitely takes a toll on the efficiency of my project. I think that I should make a different direction and decorate people's personal space for them and paint their walls. I know a family that is willing to let me paint a mural on a blank wall in their garage.

This experience has made me realize how much I loved to help out my community and it also taught me to be fortunate of the beautiful environment I live in.

The Woman with a Hole in Her Brain Article

Today I read the article "The Woman with a Hole in Her Brain." There is a 24 year old woman who lives in the Shandong Province of China who has been living with a major part of her brain gone. Before the article explained the affects of having that part of the brain lost, the article made an emphasis on how the brain is very adaptable. Without that part, it still managed to function. Anyway, she was missing her cerebellum which is also known as the "little brain." The cerebellum controls movement and balance and giving us the ability to communicate orally and physically. This explains why she learned how to walk at the late year of 7 and talked with clear speech at 6 years old.

After reading the article I decided to research what would happen if someone had either a severely damaged or missing transverse fissure. The transverse fissure is a deep groove that is located between the cerebrum and cerebellum. I feel like the brain could probably still function properly without the transverse fissure because it only acts a a divider. As long as the cerebrum and cerebellum (helps with the main functions of our body), are present and functioning properly, with or without a transverse fissure should be okay.

Back on Board

It's been a while since my project but I have been working diligently on a sustainable outdoor instillation. It became a lot harder than I thought because I realized that I had to take the weather into account. I started looking up other artists, such as Robert Indiana and I researched his public art instillations such as his "LOVE" statue, which I have seen in Taiwan, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. So, i was inspired to paint on fire hydrants around the community and it made me realize that I'm actually pretty creative with some of the projects I've done and I should respect and give more credit to some of the ideas I have. Although it was a huge setback to discard my old project with yarn, I feel like I have a very strong hold on my new fire hydrant project. From now, I want to create new designs and think of new simple ways to create an intriguing fire hydrant. I guess the idea behind it is that the law states it is illegal to park within five feet from a fire hydrant. But I think they need friends too. I think this is a quirky idea to support kindness in school and throughout the community. I guess it is also a great idea to go outdoors and look at some art when students or parents get stressed out.

unit 7 reflection

This unit, we learned about muscles and mobility. We started the unit by learning about the different movements different body parts can execute. Afterward, we started to dig deeper on the muscular system. When it comes to labeling and classifying in anatomy, you have to be very exact, which is why we had to memorize various terms that determine the size, shape, and action of a muscle. A way for us to understand the anatomy and physiology different muscles was the chicken dissection lab. We sliced open a chicken and looked at all of the different muscles. We labeled them and saw how they were structured on the chicken.

We also learned the different functions of what happens inside the muscle and my group made a muscle contraction video. Last but not least, we learned about the harms of performance enhancement supplementals. A lot of them such as caffeine, high protein diet, or creatine can either be completely harmful, or safe if used in moderation. My partner and I made an interesting and comical high protein diet ad.

Moving forward, I went to learn different techniques to easily gain muscles in certain area. I want to understand the perfect balance of protein, exercise, and nutrients to have a body with a healthy amount of muscle.

Performance Enhancements Advertisement

Truth is, a lot of performance enhancements cause more harm than good. Although it may seem as if a high protein diet could lead to a person becoming more muscular, it is in fact only a myth. When someone consumes too much protein, a lot of the excess protein ends up causing build up of toxic ketones. This causes dehydration in the body. Also, a high protein diet may seem effective with weight loss at first, eventually, weight loss can become harder to maintain because in the end, it a lot of water weight was lost. In the end, a moderate amount of protein with a healthy amount of exercise is ideal. In the end, all performance enhancements are unsafe if they are not used in moderation. When it comes to our health and wellbeing, balance is key. The question I have left is: What kind of performance enhancement out there is completely safe and effective no matter how vigorously you use it?

Chicken Dissection Lab

I came in during that last ten minutes of class because of a doctor’s appointment so I wasn’t able to contribute a whole lot to the lab experience. However, my lab partners filled me in that they first got a whole raw chicken and made sure the drumstick was facing toward them. Then, they cut off some of the skin and started dissecting the chicken. They started intricately cutting the chicken to show each muscle.

As all organisms have different qualities that depict how they function, chicken, and humans alike, have different muscles bones and tendons that each play a huge role in their movement. The tendon in the chicken is what binds the muscle to the bone. The bones allow body parts to be flexible and move in different directions. Muscles help our bones move altogether. The pectoralis major give the shoulder movement, biceps give our arms movement, and the sartorius gives our legs movement.

Chicken muscles and human muscles have many similarities and differences. A chicken has deltoids, triceps, and biceps. Those are the essential muscles in a human arm that allows it to move properly. Also, both humans and chickens have tendons that perform the same function: attaching muscles to the bone. Another quality is that humans and chickens have the sartorius muscle and it is around the thigh area

What Happens When you Stretch

1. When this occurs, it helps to realign any disorganized fibers in the direction of the tension.

-I felt that this was a cool piece of information because it seems like stretching may be a small action, but it can actually help a lot with your health. The realignment in fact rehabilitates all of the scarred tissue back to health which was something I never knew about.

2. Proprioceptors (also called mechanoreceptors) are the source of all proprioception: the perception of one's own body position and movement.
 

-I have never heard of proprioceptors before and after learning about them, I found it interesting how it is able to detect any physical displacement within the body. Without them, our body cannot rehabilitate itself.

3. When stretching, it is easier to stretch a muscle that is relaxed than to stretch a muscle that is contracting.

-This is a useful piece of information so I know to make sure my muscles relax the next time I stretch. Getting a more effective stretch is very important to make sure that you are taking good care of your body. 

Summary: This reading taught me how stretching benefits the body and how to effectively stretch. It is beneficial to stretch because when the muscles contract, it sends signals to the spine to get informations from the proprioceptors that detect any physical displacement within the body. This is how certain organs help to protect the muscles, tendons and ligaments from injury. Therefore, when you effectively stretch, your body is able to rehabilitate itself. When stretching, it is best to do it when your muscles are relaxed.