Geologic Timeline Reflection

In this project, we constructed a timeline that shows how Earth has progressed since the beginning to now. 3 major events that happened during Earth's history was the Cambrian Explosion, the Cenozoic Era, and the formation of cyanobacteria. All these events has a big effect on life on Earth, and influence how life exists today. The Cambrian Explosion was an event in which many different species and types of animals suddenly appeared. It led to a sudden diversity of life, a big change to the microscopic life that previously existed on Earth. The Cenozoic Era was the "age of the mammals." During this era, mammals like mammoths, beavers, and primates came about. This eventually led to humans because we evolved gradually from primates. Finally, cyanobacteria was what first created oxygen on earth. Cyanobacteria are a photosynthetic bacteria that produced oxygen as waste. This was very important because all life needs oxygen to live, and cyanobacteria created a huge boost in diversity of life on Earth. These three events had a huge effect on Earth and how it is today.

Earth's history is very, very long. Each millimeter represented a million years, and the whole timeline was almost 10 meters long, which shows how long Earth's history really is. However what surprised me the most was that, what we consider history (human history) was so tiny, it could not even be represented on the timeline. This was shocking because it makes you think about how tiny your life is on Earth compared to the history of all life on Earth. Another thing that shocked me was how long there was very basic life on Earth. More than 75% of the timeline consisted of the Precambrian Era, where only simple bacteria existed.

What I have learned from this project is that the world only very recently looked like the world we see now. In fact so recently that it can not even be represented in our timeline. All the inventions and new creations we have made have, and all the wars that were fought have no significance compared to the long span of time that Earth has existed. However, in the short time we have been on Earth we have made impacts. Considering that we have only been here for a "blink of an eye" compared to the rest of history, I think that we have made a pretty big impact on life and on Earth. 

20 Time Update #3 on Placebo Experiment

During the past few weeks, I have come across a few setbacks. One being that I realized I needed to come up with a placebo experiment that does not involve pills, as I am not allowed to give pills to students. So after some research, I came up with an experiment that was pill free. My idea is to gather a group of 10-20 students and split them up into 2 groups. I will then take the first group in and tell them that I am giving them a very easy test, that everyone has passed so far. This gives them the impression and the confidence that they can do well on the (general knowledge) test. Then I will take the next group in and tell them the opposite, that the test is extremely hard and to just try their best, giving them the impression that they will not do well. Then I will collect the data and see if me giving the group a placebo (confidence boost) helped them.

The second setback is that I need to find people to participate in my experiment. If I used my friends as test subjects, they may not take the experiment seriously, and my data may be altered because of that. A solution to my problem would be to either create a facebook poll to see if people would like to participate, or ask my classmates if they would like to. I hope to start my experiment in the next week or so. Now I definitely have a much better understanding of how the placebo effect can take place not just with pills but also without. I have made a lot of progress in my project and will continue to. 

Unit 8 Reflection

In this Unit, we learned about evolution, and different factors that go with evolution or effect evolution. Charles Darwin, the one who first discovered the theory of evolution, taught us many things on how evolution really works. For an example, we learned about artificial selection which is when humans select traits and breed for them, this lets humans breed for the traits that are more useful to them, and the population evolves like the human wants it to. We learned about natural selection which is when the population weeds out traits that doesn't help it survive, evolution is caused by natural selection. A way to measure evolution is through measuring the allele frequency in a population. The allele frequency in a population can change as the individuals of the population produce offspring; as the allele frequency changes, the population evolves. Next we learned about speciation, which is the rise of 2 or more species from one existing species, this can happen because of the separation of a population which can create new traits and eventually a new species. We also learned about how life came about to the Earth so many years ago. Life started as very simple cells, then evolved into more complex cells until finally it formed  small plants and animals. In a broad scale of time, life has evolved very rapidly on Earth both biotically and abiotically. Finally we learned why evolution really is something that takes place, and what evidence there is to support the theory of evolution. Embryology is something that supports the theory of evolution. It shows that many species have similar stages of embryo development, which suggests common ancestry. 

This Unit was very intriguing, and I learned a lot. Although we have learned about evolution before, I feel like this Unit went much more in depth and I have a much greater understanding. I definitely want to go more in depth in certain aspects such as, the reasons to support evolution. I found it very interesting that species have many things in common including the stages their embryos go through. This Unit was also very fun in that we did some very interesting labs. One lab that I really enjoyed was the Hunger Games Lab. The Hunger Games Lab mimicked what survival would be like in the wild, from fighting for our food, to trying to find a mate. This lab helped me visualize evolution and how it really takes place in nature.


In this Unit we watched a video on how to be assertive. It talked about having good posture and good leadership skills, in order to be more respected wherever you are. I have tried to apply some of these to my daily life by trying to keep good posture, and making direct eye contact with whomever I am speaking to. However I can still work on speaking more assertively, so my voice and opinion is heard and taken seriously wherever I go.

Link to Hunger Games Lab