Geological Timeline Individual Reflection

     In this project, we made a geological timeline to show different events in the course of Earth.  I found that there are three events in Earth's history that stood out to me the most.  The first event is the diversification of vascular plants.  A scientist can look at fossils to see that more plants are around but plants increase the amount of oxygen and decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, making Earth more habitable.  This eventually led to different mammals and eventually us, humans, living on the Earth in a suitable environment.  The second event is the Permian Extinction.  An extinction may seem like a bad thing, but this allows newer and fitter animals to roam the planet.  Reptiles, marine, and terrestrial organisms radiate during this period while many present day insects dominate.  This is a significant event in Earth's history because many of the larger animals went extinct while the smaller animals survived.  This can be seen as natural selection, as I learned in Biology class.  The third event is the origin of primate groups.  The arrival or primate groups are important to us because it gave rise to humans.  Without these primate groups existing, we may have never existed on this planet or we would have been significantly different.

     During the course of this project, we discovered more and more about how long Earth has been existing.  Since astronomical numbers such as light years are hard to comprehend, the Earth's scale is a little more understandable.  Earth's history is can be measured with eras and periods.  In the beginning eras, nothing much happened because the Earth is still taking its shape.  However, as time progresses, Earth undergoes more and more events.  Eventually towards the end, there are so many things happening it is hard to draw and write all the major events.  The amount of events that happened towards the end of the timeline really shocked me because the events seemed like it all happened in the recent years.

     The amount of progress humans have made during such a short amount of time has really left me dismayed.  We have been around for such a short amount of time, yet we still find ourselves asking each other to stop and save the environment.  All the mammals that lived before us managed to not destroy the Earth for a long amount of time.  However, we perform such detrimental actions such as the burning of fossil fuels and throwing plastic into the ocean.  We have managed to hurt the Earth so much, but we also have had many important discoveries such as writing with pencil and paper and high tech things such as the internet.  All the things we use today were discovered by someone not too long ago.

     I still wonder about how much longer Earth's history will be.  I learned about how we are only in a blink of an eye in terms of Earth's history but I do not know how much longer it will be.  I do not have an estimate because if we are only a blink of an eye, the history would be so large one could not comprehend.  Also, I wonder about the different actions we perform that hurt the environment.  Burning fossil fuels really hurts the environment, but I do not know how much longer we could really keep doing this and still living on Earth.

The Latest Check In - 3rd 20 Time Blog Update

     After working on my 20 time project for a good amount of time already, I have learned many things about my subject.  Since I am creating an experiment, I need to first gather information.  I have already gathered enough information about my topic to understand what is going on.  Since I am working on sleep and memory, I learned about the different sleep patterns and various beneficial ways to study and memorize concepts and words.  Through the course of this project, I have learned many things about myself.  Over the course of this project, I have learned that I work very productively in the amount of time in class.  The classroom is silent which causes me to focus clearly on the task I am working on.  Also, I have learned how creative I can be to solve various problems.
     Through this project, there have been many setbacks and things that hold me back from my desired goal.  The first setback I encountered is that I need to find the words, concepts, or diagrams I need to give to the people performing my experiment.  Recently, I have been using random word simulators to form random words.  Now, I have been moving into grasping concepts from biology.  For example, this can be things we learned about evolution and photosynthesis. After I gather enough of these, I can move onto creating diagrams.  These diagrams can also be from my biology vodcasts or even be other geographical maps.  The main setback that has be pulling me back the most is that I need to spend a lot of time finding things for my experimental people to study and memorize.  In the next class, I plan to handle this setback by gathering various things to study from my biology notebook and going online to finds various concepts and diagrams to study.
     My next step in my 20 Time project would be to finding a lot of people that want to perform my experiment.  Since I have finished gathering information, forming a hypothesis, and forming an experiment, I can now run my experiment.  To run my experiment, I will need people to run my experiment.  I can do this by asking my friends to do it.  I will give them my procedures and once they finish, they can both tell me their results as well as any advice so I can run the experiment smoother.
     Once I form a conclusion about the hypothesis I made, I can see what makes sense.  If my hypothesis is correct about sleeping and taking a naps, then I can apply this studying habit into my own ways of studying.  If this experiment proves to be beneficial, I can use this way to study during a big test or even during finals week.  I can also tell my friends and peers about this and they can study more effectively.

Unit 8 Reflection

     This unit was all about populations constantly changing and evolution of populations.  Some of the essential themes and understands are evolution, the role of variation in evolution, causes of change, why change occurs, what evolves, and natural selection acting on phenotypes.   One of the major concepts about evolution is that natural selection acts on each individual.  However, this is not the case; the whole population evolves.  The natural selection acts on the phenotypes, but the genotype changes because of this.  Another concept that people miss is that evolution is the change of allele frequency in a population over a period of time.  Going in to this unit, I knew what evolution was but I could not have told you a solid definition.  The concept of evolution can be seen by the Hunger Games Lab.  This lab really helped me understand all of the concepts of evolution in a real example and this lab really cleared things up for me.  The Hunger Game analysis can be viewed here.

Pathwayz. Gene Pool. Digital image. Pathway. Ben Himme, Web. 10 Apr. 2017. <https://www.pathwayz.org/Tree/Plain/GENE+POOLS+%26+ALLELE+FREQUENCY>

     This unit covered most concepts of evolution.  However, there is not enough time to learn everything of one subject.  Some things I wonder about are why evolution is evolution and why natural selection is so random.  Natural selection acts on individuals but I do not understand why it acts the way it is.

Get Holistic Health. Screaming in microphone. Digital image. Get Holistic Health. Get Holistic Health, Web. 10 Apr. 2017. <http://www.getholistichealth.com/13375/how-to-develop-assertiveness/>.

     In the previous unit, we learned to be more assertive.  Since then, I have made efforts to try and be more assertive.  One thing I have done that I found really helpful is to stand up like a hawk and not slump my shoulders like a turtle.  I found this to be helpful because standing straight gives me more confidence to become more assertive.  I still need to work on my voice and stating things in a more declarative tone and not in a question-like tone.