Jeonghun

**3-24-2011**
 * Entry #1**
 * Search for life on Mars- Electronic Devices **

Electronic devices are really needed for a mission to Mars. People wouldn’t be able to go because space suits are electric devices, by using electricity to control microphones, climate, etc. We wouldn’t be able to see anything if it weren’t for electronic devices because cameras are the reason why we can visualize Mars and robots allow us to move and see different parts of Mars, not just one, by being an electronic device. If it weren’t for electronic devices, how can we even prepare for the mission to Mars? We wouldn’t have rockets to launch the rover, no computers to graph the route, and of course, no rover.

Jack P - Great job overall, especially where you are describing the differences between signals and other devices. There are some grammatical errors, such as the capitalization of analog, or awkward wording, in your second sentence of the second paragraph, but other than that, great job JJ! //Ms. Mc: Very good overview of electronic components and ideas about how we might use electronic devices on our mission to Mars! Please include the entry # in your title. 10/10//


 * Entry #2 **
 * 3-28-2011 **
 * History of Rockets **

Sketch of Aeolipile




 * The history of rockets began with a bunch of rocket-like inventions. One of them was called an aeolipile. Aeolipiles were invented by a man known as “Hero of Alexandria” and were spheres connected to a bowl of boiling water with two L-shaped tubes sticking out. The boiling water would create steam and the steam will come through the pipes, into the sphere. The steam will exit through the L-shaped pipes, giving the rocket thrust. Next in China, gunpowder filled bamboo tubes were fired from arrows, but the Chinese figured out that the bamboo tubes alone could fly by themselves, discovering the first rocket. This innovation soon spread to Mongolia during war and spread all the way to Europe. **





The spread of rockets didn't end there. An American scientist, Robert H. Goddard was experimenting with rocketry and invented the first liquid fuel powered rocket. He continued to build rockets that got bigger and bigger. As the liquid fuel powered rocket was being created, small rocket societies were the new highlights of the world. A German company (Society for Space Travel) created the V-2 rocket and it was used to bomb London. Although it was too late for bomb to create a change in outcome, the Germans already had plans for a rocket that could reach the US. However, after the war, German rocket scientists went to all over the world and were surprised by Goddard’s results. The Soviet Union then launched satellites into space and made the world want to explore space even more.



//Ms. Mc: Good overall summary of the history of rocketry. The second paragraph about modern rocketry could use more details about the names of the scientists and dates are always good to include when discussing history. I like how you showed the progression of rocketry with your drawings! Please be sure to include a figure # and title for all drawings/photos. Also, please include the entry # in your entry title. Good job! 14/15//

**Entry #3** **4-04-2011** **Mission to Mars**

On the upper right corner, click the green flag to start and the red octagon to stop**.** media type="custom" key="8963402"

** Entry #4 ** ** 4/12/2011 ** ** Rocket Parts **



**The rocket has many parts to it. The top of the rocket is a piece called the nose cone. The nose cone had a cone-like shape to allow air flow around it. If the air doesn't flow around the rocket, then air resistance will slow or even stop the rocket. The body tube is the main structure of the rocket, like the bone is to the body. The rocket wouldn't be a rocket if it didn't have a body tube. It'll just be fins, a nose cone, engine, recovery system, and wadding just lying around. The recovery system (which is located inside the rocket) is** **basically** **what's going to land. It'll also get the rocket to come back to Earth safely and we can just keep on reusing them without having to spend more money. The recovery wadding helps protect the recovery system from hot gases created from the engine that can cause damage. If the recovery system catches on fire, then a whole rocket went to waste. The launch lug just helps keep the rocket to launch straight and not to the side. The fins help keep the rocket going straight during** **//flight.// Then engine mount helps keep the engine in place because if the engine falls out, then the rocket won't go very high. The engine itself is a device that propels the rocket and cannot be reused.The engine eventually will run out of fuel and die out, but inertia will help the rocket to keep on going.** // **Ms. Mc: Excellent explanation of the function of the rocket parts and great figure too! 20/20** //

**Entry #5** **4-18-2011** **Rocket Launch Lab Analysis**

The purpose of the experiment was to see if the mass of the rocket had any effect on the rocket flight’s height. First, different forces acting on the rocket had to be understood. It was found that before launching the rocket, there are equal amounts of force between gravity and lift from the launch pad. As the rocket experiences lift-off (when the rocket finally gets off of the Earth’s ground), thrust (push) from fuel (in this case, gunpowder) overcomes the force of gravity, moving the rocket vertically. Although the rocket is moving vertically, gravity is still acting down on it along with a little bit of air resistance, it's just that the thrust of the fuel in the rocket is greater than gravity's force. Powered flight (when the rocket uses fuel to help climb out the Earth’s surface) continues to overcome gravity and even when gunpowder runs out, the rocket continues to move upwards due to inertia (One of Newton’s law saying that an item at rest will stay in rest and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon an outside force). Eventually, gravity’s pull “comes back” and the rocket reaches its apogee (highest point of a rocket’s flight) and arcs to either back to earth, or to go somewhere in space. Using this cycle of forces, it was hypothesized that the rocket with more mass will decrease its apogee's height because gravity pulls down more on object with more mass, making the object not lift off the ground as much as an object with less mass.

Graph #1: Relationship between the mass of the rocket and its apogee’s height using Trigonometry

Graph #1 showed a significant amount of increase in apogee as the mass increased. The mass of the different rockets didn't have a significant difference in terms of grams : 43.3, 44.4, 44.5, 42.3, 43.6, 44.1, 43.5, and 42.3 grams. There was only about a 0.1 gram difference, which was barely any amount. But those small differences made a huge difference in the apogees. One difference of 0.4 grams between the rockets' masses (one that weighed 44.1 grams and the other one that weighed 44.5 grams) created a difference of about 6 meters in height (75 meters and 81 meters)! The difference in height (caused by a mass of 2/5 of the weight of a pin) was nearly four times taller than an average human. Using these results, it was determined that the graph was a direct relationship since it rose in a steady upwards trim with one outlier : the one that weighed 44.4 grams (which only flew 55 meters). Because the rockets flew higher as their masses increased, the hypothesis (saying that the rocket would decrease in apogee as the mass increased) was not confirmed. It seems that the inertia of the rockets helped the rockets fly higher by making the rockets get harder to go to rest from being in motion at a very fast speed. This may have not been the case though; certain errors may have entered the experiment. The rockets were tested on different days, giving weather and wind patterns to change. The wind might have the rocket lift up more and the weather could rain down on the rockets. Also, the angle of the rockets were measured by different people. Most measurements were taken while lying down, but some decided to sit upright, decreasing the angle measure. The rockets weren’t the same either. The rockets were the same models, but were constructed by different people. The people might have used more paint than others and could have placed the fins or other pieces differently.

** Entry #6 ** ** 4-25-﻿2011 ** ** Crash Course in Astronomy Questions & Answers **

What is a galaxy? How are they formed? Picture #1: Two galaxies colliding with each other. A galaxy formed 2 billion years after the Big Bang when gravity collapsed matter. Galaxies are basically collections of stars, stellar fragments, and interstellar dust and gas. They are judged by their shapes of either spiral, elliptical, or irregular. Galaxies can also collide with each other and create a bigger one as seen in picture #1. How did our moon come to revolve around Earth? Picture #2: Moon forming from a collision between Earth and another planet. Our moon came to our orbit when the Earth was collided with a planet the size of Mars as seen in picture #2. A chunk broke out from Earth and caught the Earth’s gravity, making it orbit. The moon then had heavy collisions that formed its craters. Ms. Mc: Good answers and pictures. Please use "Figure" for pictures (-1/2). 9.5/10


 * Entry #7 **
 * 4-24-2011 **
 * History of Astronomy﻿﻿ **

** The history of rockets began in China when an account was found in the //Lie Zi// text during the 3rd century BC. It said that a Chinese king encountered a mechanical engineer who presented himself a life-size automaton figure of himself. It was said that it had all the functions of a human, moving and having all organs. Earlier clocks were also built around the beginning of robotics. The cosmic engine is a 10 meter clock tower in China that used gongs and bells to tell time in 1088. The western world had myths of robotics. One is about the Greek god Hephaestus, who was the deformed god of metalwork, and he created mechanical servants that served him. The western world moved on with robotics as inventors such as Leonardo da Vinci, had dreams of modern inventions. Some pursued these dreams and others recorded them. ** ** Between the year 1500-1800, automatons were created that could be used for tasks, such as acting, playing music, or even flying. This was also the time when cloth productions were fully automated. From the 1800’s and the modern world, humanity progressed and built more complex inventions that could help humans with their tasks. Germany built the first digital computer and space shuttles and satellites sprung out in a short period of time during the cold war. Most people think that the industrial revolution innovated humans to create more robots. ** 

Ms. Mc: Good general summary of the history of robotics. Don't forget to inclue captions for your figures and refer to them in your text. +8 extra credit points.

**5-5-2011** **MINDSTORMS Programming Code Explanation ** <span style="color: #ae229d; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 22pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">This challenge is to see if a MINDSTORM robot can follow a line to a finishing point from a starting point. This is the first challenge so it is basically a test to see what you learned. <span style="color: #ae229d; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 22pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">**Block #1-** A movement block telling ports C and B servomotors to rotate forwards for 2.25 seconds with a power of 75. The robot moves forward for 2.25 seconds. <span style="color: #ae229d; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 22pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">**Block #2-** A movement block telling ports C and B servomotors to make a 190 degree point turn to the right with a power of 50. The robot makes a right angle turn to the right. <span style="color: #ae229d; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 22pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">**Block #3-** A movement block telling ports C and B servomotors to rotate forwards 1.19 seconds with a power of 75. The robot moves forward for 1.19 seconds. **Block #4-** A movement block telling ports C and B servomotors to create a 190 degree point turn to the left with a power of 50. The robot makes a right angle turn to the left. **Block #5-** A movement block telling ports C and B servomotors to rotate backwards for 0.87 seconds. The robot moves backwards for 0.87 seconds. **Block #6-** A movement block telling ports C and B servomotors to create a 1390 degree point turn (2 full circles) to the right with a power of 50. The robot makes to full circles to the right. **Block #7-** A sound block telling the brick to make an applauding noise. The robot makes an applauding noise. **Block #8-** A display block telling the brick to show a smiling face on the coordinates (22, 3) on its screen. A smiley face appears in the middle of the screen of the robot. **Block #9-** A time block telling the robot to wait four seconds before doing anything else. The robot waits 4 seconds. **Block #10-** A display block telling the brick to reset. The robot resets. Figure #1: An NXT software program for Challenge #1
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Entry #8 **

**﻿** **﻿**