Crime Scene Investigation: Terrence Bond: Death By...
In this project students were placed into pairs and were told to solve one of the three crime scenes. My partner and I had the third crime scene in which a body was found by the dumpster, the body was ran over so we originally concluded that it was a hit and run. WE had to figure out who ran over the victim, who the victim was, and what exactly went on that night.Fly larvae was used to determine the time of death which turned out to be 1-2 days before the body was found. We used a casting of tire track found at the crime scene and matched it to a car in the parking lot, when looking at the car it was observed that there was blood on the mudflap of the rear tire. The car was registered to Mr. Peterson and his family, Mr. Peterson claimed that the blood on the car was his own but DNA testing proved that it was actually the victim Terrence Bond's blood and fingerprints taken from the crime scene matched Mrs. Peterson's fingerprints. However, the toxicology report concluded that Terrence Bond died from Aspiration on his own vomit.
I really found this project fascinating and because of that I was really engaged in the project and participated as much as I could. I learned how to map DNA, how to tell the difference between fingerprints, and how to read a toxicology report. The toxicology report was the hardest for me because I did not know what to do or say when I was writing my evidence log. So I asked for some, I sent my teacher an email asking for help on what I should do. She sent me a response telling me that I had to do some outside research to figure out what the toxicology report was saying. Once I did the research I actually understood what the toxicology report was saying. All in all this was a great project that showed me how much I could actually do without help.
I really found this project fascinating and because of that I was really engaged in the project and participated as much as I could. I learned how to map DNA, how to tell the difference between fingerprints, and how to read a toxicology report. The toxicology report was the hardest for me because I did not know what to do or say when I was writing my evidence log. So I asked for some, I sent my teacher an email asking for help on what I should do. She sent me a response telling me that I had to do some outside research to figure out what the toxicology report was saying. Once I did the research I actually understood what the toxicology report was saying. All in all this was a great project that showed me how much I could actually do without help.
Dissections Time!
The animal I was dissecting was a pig. During the dissection I learned about the digestive system, respiratory system, circulatory system, reproductive system, the urinary system, and the brain. While doing the dissection I learned where many of the vital organs where and their functions, I learned about the liver, the gall bladder, the large and small intestines. I learned about function and parts of the heart; I located the four chamber, the pulmonary veins and arteries, the superior and inferior vena cava, and the aortas. The urinary system contains the kidneys and the badder while the reproductive system contains the ovaries and the uterus. I only learned about 3 parts of the brain: the frontal cortex, the cerebellum, and the brain stem.
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Monkey Meal Planning
For this project I had to create a recipe for either chimpanzees or monkeys. The recipes had to meet a certain criteria, it had to provide enough nutrients without going over any of the limits. The hardest part about this project was getting the proportions correct. Some of the ingredients I chose ended up being taken out since it would cause the recipe to go ever the limits.
Community Connection
For my Community Connection I picked up trash along the river trail. I was a bit disappointed about how much trash is actually along the river trail. A lot of it was stuck in the bushes, just out of sight of the people who walk that trail everyday. It felt nice to help pick up that trash and prevent it from contaminating the environment around it.
Durango Nature Studies Habitat Assessment
For this project we conducted surveys at the Durango Nature Studies nature center, after conducting the surveys we analyzed the data and used our information to write a habitat assessment.
Before doing the actual field work we had to learn how to differentiate between the different types of frogs, we used unique characteristics specific to each type of frog to help us remember the difference between them. We also learned how to tell the difference between the macroinvertabrates we would find there.
Once we learned how to identify the frogs and macroinvertabrates we went to the nature center for the actual field work. When we got to the nature center the first thing we did was try to capture the frogs. We did this by working in pairs to search the pond, one person tried to scare the frogs so that they would dive for cover in the pond where the other person was waiting with the net. Once we were done with that each person went their separate way to do the individual data collection consisting of water quality tests, vegetation plots, and macroinvertebrate counts for both the pond and river.
The nest week we began to analyze the data. We compared the water quality tests' results to what the perfect water would be like. We made graphs and Charts using Excel for all of our data. To calculate the diversity for the vegetation and macroinvertebrates we used the Shannon-Wiener index and plugged the equation into Excel to get the answer.
For our paper we had to use technical writing, so our papers had to be free of opinions, based on fact, and we couldn't use words like "we" or "I" . This was not too hard for me but it still was a challenge to stay objective at times. I think my paper turned out alright but I think that I could have made some major adjustments to make the paper better but overall I am satisfied.
Before doing the actual field work we had to learn how to differentiate between the different types of frogs, we used unique characteristics specific to each type of frog to help us remember the difference between them. We also learned how to tell the difference between the macroinvertabrates we would find there.
Once we learned how to identify the frogs and macroinvertabrates we went to the nature center for the actual field work. When we got to the nature center the first thing we did was try to capture the frogs. We did this by working in pairs to search the pond, one person tried to scare the frogs so that they would dive for cover in the pond where the other person was waiting with the net. Once we were done with that each person went their separate way to do the individual data collection consisting of water quality tests, vegetation plots, and macroinvertebrate counts for both the pond and river.
The nest week we began to analyze the data. We compared the water quality tests' results to what the perfect water would be like. We made graphs and Charts using Excel for all of our data. To calculate the diversity for the vegetation and macroinvertebrates we used the Shannon-Wiener index and plugged the equation into Excel to get the answer.
For our paper we had to use technical writing, so our papers had to be free of opinions, based on fact, and we couldn't use words like "we" or "I" . This was not too hard for me but it still was a challenge to stay objective at times. I think my paper turned out alright but I think that I could have made some major adjustments to make the paper better but overall I am satisfied.