This is the end of the year!  I'm the only 8th grader and its been pretty weird all year.  Iv had classmates sometimes in the year just because of some things that happened in the school year.  Iv also had one classmate named Won. (no really her name was Won)  She was the best classmate every but she only stayed for a week and 4 days.  She was going to stay for 3 weeks but it snowed and rained for most of the time.  Last year seemed like the year would never end but this year went by fast.  Iv meet lots of good people and their really nice here.  Im going to miss most of the people here.  (Emphasis on MOST!)  To all the people here goodbye and have a good time here at the amazing SHREINER ACADEMY!

ALL OF THE LIGHTS!

Hey I'm back! I know I haven't blogged sense March but I just had stuff to do.  So anyway now sense I'm back I'm going talk to you about light.  Lots of people use it every day but when someone asks you what it is you probably can't tell them.  First I'm goning to talk about artificial light.  Artificial Light is the light we use in our flashlights and cars and even our phones.

Next I'm going to talk about the Electromagnetic Spectrum. The Electromagnetic Spectrum is just light bouncing off a prism.  A white light hits the prism and reflects off of it and makes a rainbow.  That why when its done raining you sometimes see a rainbow.  The light bounces off the water and reflects back into the sky and creates the rainbow. 

Next is Electromagnetic Waves.  We have all made a circuit right? Well it's something like that.  The electromagnetic waves are flowing through the light so when you turn on you lights at home you know that there is an electromagnetic wave flowing through it.

Light can be described as packets of energy called photons.  Photons also have two parts that can make them more stable. 

Reflection is something we see every time we look in a mirror.  The light would bounce off the mirror and show you what you would look like.  But would you believe that what the mirror is showing you is wrong?  Every time we look in the mirror we see the our reflection looks like were turned the other way.  If you take a picture of yourself and look at it while looking at yourself in the mirror it shows that the mirror bounces the light back at you but doesn't show it right.  The picture doesn't bounce the light back at you so it shows what you really look like.

Refraction  is something like reflection.  When a wave of light passes through some sort of space, it slows downs, changes speed or changes direction.  That why when you put something in water it looks like its broken.

A prism is a device that shows rainbows.  When you shine a white light in a prism it shows the colors that we don't see or what we call a rainbow.

Magnets

Magnets are fun to play with.  Have you ever had two magnets and wondered why sometimes they wouldn't stick together?  Well on a magnet there are north and south poles like on earth.  If you try and put two north poles together there going to repeal each other. This same thing would happen if you tried to put two south poles together.  If you put a north and a south pole together then they would stick without trouble.  The reason the north to north and south to south wont stick is because they have the same magnetic field. 

Electricity and magnetism have something in common.  They both only attract if there opposite and don't if their the same.  On earth we have our north and south poles and they also have their own magnetic fields.  The core in the earth spins really fast and burns lots of cobalt thats why we have or magnetic field.  That's why when your lost and you have a compass the needle points north. 

Things that have iron, nickel, or cobalt are magnetic.  Did you know that your cars had cobalt in them?  That's why those big magnets can pick up the cars at the junk yard.  Some of the things we use in our homes are magnetic.  One time I was using someones charger to charge my phone and it was magnetic.  I walked past a refrigerator magnet and I saw it get stuck.  You never know what can be magnetized until you try it out. 

Hybrids...do we need them?

Hybrid cars have two things that make it go.  Most hybrids are gasoline-electric types.  The gas engine in the car is smaller then the ones in the gas powered cars and they also get more mileage.  The gas engine only goes to a certain speed.  So, if you wanted to go up a steep hill then thats when the electric motor kicks in. When your stopped at a red light or stuck in traffic then the electric motor can handle the job on its own so the gas engine shuts off.  The hybrid car never has to be plugged in to charge.  If the battery is low then the gas engine turns on and it burns extra electricity for the battery.  Another way the battery gets charged is that when its low the electric motor spins backwards and converts it into electricity.  Hybrid technology is getting better and getting much cheaper.  So for your first car you should go out and buy a hybrid car. 

          

WHY WON'T THIS THING TURN ON!?

  We all know what circuits are right?   Well for the people who don't, this is for you.  The people who do know, maybe you'll learn something today.  I'm going to start off talking about a complete circuit.  For there to be a complete circuit energy needs to be flowing through that object.  We've all watched TV right?  Well the cord at the end of the TV is where all the electricity is coming from.  The electrons from the outlet are flowing through the cord and into the TV.  Then they go back through the other side of the cord and back into the outlet and its start all over again. 

Have you ever made your own power source? Well you need a battery, two strings of wire, and a bulb.  The battery has a positive and negative side.  You put one end of the wire on the positive and one end of the other wire on the negative.  Then you put both ends of the two wires on the bulb and the bulb should light up!  

                               CLOSED CIRCUIT  OPEN CIRCUIT

You all have switches at home right?  Have you every wondered why the lights turn on and off?  When you flip the switch down the circuit is open so the energy can't flow through and the light can't turn on.  When you flip the switch up the circuit is closed so now energy can flow and the light turns on. 

Next is a short circuit,which is a current flow along a path where usually no electricity flows through.  Short circuits can have very high temperatures because of the high power waste in the circuit.  If you have a high voltage capacitor and its short circuited by a thin wire the wire could really explode.  Just know that some circuits are dangerous and that we all need to be more careful when we use and make things. 



You will get a shock out of this!

Just think if we didn't have electricity.  Think about what you do when you get home, now think about what that would be like without electricity.  We use electricity for TV, our homes, and lots of other things too.  On the weekends I play my game.  Now if we didn't have electricity I wouldn't be able to do that.  Most of us have cell phones and laptops and I use mine all the time.  If we didn't have electricity then we could never charge them.  I would hate having them if you couldn't charge them.           

                                                   STATIC ELECTRICITY
There are two things I'm going to talk about today and that's static and current electricity.  Static electricity are just electrons jumping from one object to another.  Static electricity can transfer from things like a metal doorknob to your finger.  If you have on socks the electrons from the rug rub onto the socks and you start to become negatively charged.  So watch where you walk when you have on socks in you house.   

                              
                                CURRENT ELECTRICITY
Current electricity is just the constant flow of electrons.  Current electricity is everywhere.  When you plug in something in your outlet the electrons are going through the plug into the outlet.  Then they go back through the  plug and into the battery.  So without current electricity the world would be a lot different.    

  CONDUCTOR

Have you ever seen a really tall building and the top of it had a pole? Well that's a conductor and the conductor is made of metal.  The lighting is attracted to the pole and  if there's ever a thunderstorm the lighting shoots towards the pole and the it's sent to the ground safely.  Some houses have conductors but mostly the taller buildings have them.        

  

                                          INSULATOR                                  There's also something called an insulator.  It keeps the electricity from going out of control.  Have you seen jumper cables?  The cables have some rubber on them because when you put them on your car there's a shock that could hurt or be life threatening.  So the rubber is something you should always have when you have jumper cables.  Electricity is everywhere so we should have the most out of what we have now because in the future we might not have it.

       

                     
                                  

ATOMS!

Atoms are everywhere, we just cant see them.  There in our food, our drinks, there even in us!  In about 1802 a guy named John Dalton built a  model called the atomic theory of matter which means that each type of matter is made up of one type of atom.  Then each atom could be put into a group called an element and each atom was identical.  An example of that would be that gold atoms make gold and iron atoms make iron.  Dalton also said that an atom could not be created, made into smaller parts, or destroyed. 

                         

In 1897 a guy named J.J Thomson found the electron.  He used a device he created that had a vacuum tube with two medal plates at each end.  He found that a beam would form between the plates and he called this beam the cathode and the anode.  When you put a magnet near the beam it would cause it to bend and this mean that the particles of the beam were electrically charged.  Thomson discovered that the beam was made of negatively charged particles and they were later called electrons.  If there were the same number of protons and electrons then they would cancel each other out.  If electrons leave then the atom becomes positively charged, but if more electrons come then the atom becomes negatively charged.  When the electrons come or leave the atom becomes and ion because of its either positive or negative charges.  Thomson thought that electrons were stuck throughout a positively charged area.  For example everyone knows what cookie dough is right? Well the electrons are the chocolate chips and the dough is the positively charged area. 

There was one more guy I wanted to talk about.  His name is Ernest Rutherford and he made a device that had a beam and a thin sheet of gold plate.  They shot the beam and most of the particles went through the gold.  He found out that the gold had to be made up of mostly empty space.  When the other parts of the beam didn't go through he changed his theory saying that there had to be some positive particles in the gold.  He called this the nucleus and the particles inside the nucleus were the protons.  The electrons were the other particles spinning around it really fast.  Well of course there's so much more to tell but then I would have to get into the more scientific terms and you would all get bored.  Hope you learned a lot.