Natural Selection - Evolution II - 10/8/17

Weekly Blog : Victor N. 8B

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News Article
Peppered Moth WS
Natural Selection

Summary:

Natural Selection is organisms that are best adapted to the environment, to survive and reproduce. Through this week, I went through the journey of how the theory of natural selection came-to-be to becoming finches. Charles Darwin is the person who had a theory about natural selection while sailing the HMS Beagle. He made important discoveries through South America and had a famous book called, the Origin of Species. Darwin saw that birds on different islands acted the same, but looked different. He thought that there was a change in the DNA, and there was. "Every species exhibits variations." Traits are passed on from the parent to their offspring. If an organism has traits that will help it survive, then most likely it will reproduce and carry on that trait. And that is what natural selection is. This week is Manufacturing Week. Visiting 2 companies: BriteLab and Jabil Blue Skys, I learned that there are many steps engineers and manufacturers go through in manufacturing. The four letters PDCA represents 4 steps. The first step Plan. Engineers plan out what they want to do and what they are going to do. Once they are satisfied, they move on to step 2 which is Do. They do what their plan is.  If there is anything wrong with their plan, they Check and modify it, which is the third step. After checking any modification, they will finalize the project, and Act. Sell their product, use it, and spread the word. You can learn more about what our field trip was like by clicking here: News Article. 

SP3 - Conducting Investigations

To understand natural selection, I did an experiment to see if my hypothesis was correct. During the activity about finches, my group and I had a tool to pick the things inside the cup. The tool, mine was a spoon, represented the finch's beak. The things in the cup represented a variety of things that will go into the finch's stomach. My hypothesis was the each tool will pick up a different thing. For example, the spoon will pick up the most beans, and the scissors will pick up the most rubber bands (worms). The only thing that was proven correct was that the scissor will pick up the most rubber bands. In addition to that, the scissor picked up most of the things. As you can see, I did an experiment to test my hypothesis to carry out investigations. 

XCC - Patterns

Through this week, I learned about natural selection and manufacturing. I have noticed many patterns in both of them. Natural selection is organisms that are best adapted to the environment and survival. Now if you have an animal, like a cricket, it may be surrounded by predators like snakes. Those crickets are best adapted to the environment and will die. This goes for the all crickets and animals surrounded by predators. For manufacturing, there are steps that engineers and manufacturers go through. Like I said above, PDCA represents Plan, Do, Check, Act. For each thing, that engineers want to make, they have to plan it out, do it. If there is anything wrong the check and modify it. After they are satisfied, they use it and sell it. This goes for all the things they want to construct and make.

Multiplier

This week, I was a Wanderer. I was a wanderer because I wanted to know stuff, not only in the activities about natural selection but also in the field trip we had.

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