Your first challenge of the astronomy unit will also serve as your second problem set of the semester. Your job is to partner up with someone of your choice and produce the following two drawings.

1. Draw each planet and the sun to scale. Label each planet and include information about the composition (what the planet is made of). Color the planet appropriately.
2. Draw a scale model of the distances from the sun to each planet. Pick a scale for your sun and draw out this second model. Label each planet and the its distance to the sun. Provide a key with the scale.

For both of these drawings, you choose the scale. For the first drawing I might recommend making the diameter of Mercury, 3031 miles, equal to 1 mm. Scale the diameter of the other planets off of this. For the second drawing, I might make the orbital radius of Neptune, 2790 million miles, equal to 50 cm and scale all of the other orbits off of this. Good luck.

As part of our astronomy unit, students need to begin familiarizing themselves with the night sky above San Diego and the specifics of how to orient themselves using the stars. By far the most important start to find in the northern hemisphere is Polaris (the North Star) due to its orientation along earth’s axial tilt. Start by going to this article on the SummitPost blog to read more about how to locate Polaris in the northern hemisphere.

When you are finished with the article and feel you have a sense for locating Polaris, research and learn about the following topics: Bortle Scale, light intensity magnitude, and how to calculate magnification of the telescope.

Finally, if you have time, begin to familiarize yourself with the Messier Catalog of objects in the night sky. Write a post in your blog commenting on what you would like to photograph and why.

During the first semester every student in this physics class has to submit 26 items to their blog. The breakdown for these items is as follows:

• 10 Problem Sets. We will start these the week of Sept 14th and have one to two per week. You will only need to get 10 signed off.
• 10 Writing Pieces. Each writing piece is a short blog post that should be a few paragraphs in length. Five of these written posts can come in the form of video reflections. For a video reflection, you should watch one of the approved physics videos and answer the following questions: 1) What was the science the video taught (summarize the main scientific ideas the video explores)? 2) Why is it significant? 3) What questions does this raise for you and why does that matter? The other five writing pieces should come from texts and seminars. When you’re given an approved text, you will be given a prompt to write about.
• 3 Mini Projects. You will be required to do some acting practice (of which the Hindu plays are 1/2), sewing (we will work on sewing pajamas later in the semester, and painting in preparation for the Toga Night play. You will be allowed to replace one of these mini-projects with a pre-approved project you propose.
• 3 Major Projects. Everyone will be part of a team that takes and frames an object in outer space. Everyone will build and test a rocket engine. Everyone will have to perform oat Toga Night.

All of these pieces of work will have a blog post requirement. Your letter grade will drop by 1/2 (B to B- for example) if you are missing any written pieces or problem sets. Your letter grade will drop by a full grade if you are missing a mini project. Your letter grade will drop two full grades if you are missing a major project.

Now that you have been assigned a Hindu epic to act out your job is to learn the story, decide who will be the script writer/director and who will be the actors. At that point, the script writer/director will have the job of getting a script ready by Tuesday morning for a quick edit. Actors will need to begin learning their lines on Tuesday, and we will perform these at week’s end.

For the stories you are adapting, check the following suggested sites that give a solid summary of the story you are assigned.

Ramayana

• Summary. Points 6 – 10 should be emphasized.
• Cartoon version

Buddhism Part 1: Siddhartha’s birth to realization of suffering

• Summary. Only ready points 1 – 11

Buddhism Part 2: Siddhartha becomes Buddha

• Summary. Points 12 – 17

Buddhism Part 3: The Buddha’s first teaching. Returning home.

• Summary. Points 18 – 22

Bhagvad Gita

• Summary

Ganesha creation myth

• Summary

You and a partner have been given a Hindu God to research and present on. These presentations are meant to be short. This is simply a way to introduce the class to the god, goddess or demon. With that in mind, please keep the presentations under five minutes. Have a visual of appropriate size ready to display. Also, both people in the partnership need equal time sharing out to the class. We have discussed research norms. Wikipedia is a wonderful place to start, especially when the page is not flagged and when there are sources cited. However, .edu and .org as well as respected newspapers and magazines are usually better for finding information online.

Do your best to address the following questions in your presentation.

1. What is the god in question and who worships her/him?
2. What mythology exists in relation to the god you are studying? What stories are the god/goddess central in?
3. What does the god/goddess symbolize? What does the clothes or animals pictured with the god/goddess symbolize?
4. What ceremonies do the followers of the god/goddess practice?

Good luck and I’m looking forward to your presentations.

You had a chance to sit and observe the world and to develop questions about the world. Today, you will use those questions to make your first blog post in our class. Take the most intriguing question you came up with. Do a bit of research on your question. Go to your blog and post your question along with what you learned from your research. What other questions does this new information raise for you?

If you have additional time, go ahead and start your high school DP. You will want a tab for each grade, 9 – 12 and a spot for math, science and humanities.

Physicist Richard Feynman defines the scientific method in a minute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBFZEYkzKXc

Fantastic! You have successfully logged on to the HTH network and have found the class blog. From here you should do the following:

1. Peruse the class blog. There are links at the top of the page for Assignments, Grading, the Class Syllabus, etc. Take 10 or 15 minutes to read about our coming semester. If you have any questions, write them down for discussion later on.
2. Go to gmail.hightechhigh.org and log into your High Tech High email for the first time. Students coming from High Tech Middle Media Arts or High Tech Middle need to use the same email password they had last year. Students new to HTH should use the username and password you’ve been given to log onto the network. You can change that password once you’re into your gmail account.
3. Once you’re in gmail, click the Google Apps button in the top right hand corner of the page. Open the Blogger App and follow the prompts to start a Class Blog. Please title the blog appropriately (you will use it to submit work this year) and select a url that makes sense. I might choose – Brian’s 9th Grade Science Blog as my title and bdelgado_hthscience.blogger.com as my url.
4. Once you have created the blog, please send me an email (bdelgado@hightechhigh.org) with the following information:
   • Your blog url (make sure you’re sending the url and not the dashboard page. the url will have the address you select and blogger.com in the address. See my example above).
   • What do you enjoy about science?
   • What is challenging about science?
   • What do you hope to get out of this year?

Thanks and good luck!

I’m very excited for the coming semester. This blog is the major resource for students in my science class at High Tech High. This semester we will be doing some astrophotography, some rocketry and learning about humanity’s transition from mystical forms of thought to rational and, eventually, scientific forms of thinking. I’m looking forward to getting to know all of the students in the class and for the coming academic year.

Make sure you are following the guidelines laid out in the project plan for completing and submitting work from your personalized plan. The general rule of thumb is that you should be heavily documenting your work on your blog this semester. The major difference between science and playing around is that scientists write stuff down so they can reference it in the future. This should be a guiding principle for you.

Project Planning Template