October Sky

October Sky is a movie about a boy, called Homer, who was inspired by Sputnik and wants to build a rocket with his friends. As Homer starts creating rockets, his father becomes upset because he thinks rockets aren't important and that Homer should work in mines. Homer didn't want to work in the mines and continued to make rockets. Homer and his friends all get arrested because one of his rockets supposedly started a forest fire. Homer and his friends use math to prove to everyone that his rockets could not have possibly started the forest fire because none of his rockets could have landed near the start of the forest fire. People then found out that the fire was started by a flare from an airport, which wasn't too far away from the fire. Homer goes to a national science fair (as his teacher recommended him to) and wins first place for explaining how his rockets worked. After that, Homer got more respect from his father because Homer proved his dad wrong. Homer's dad thought that rockets wouldn't help Homer at all in life and since Homer wasn't good at football (unlike his friends and/or family), he should work in mines. This movie was fun to watch because it shows us how determination can lead you to success in real life (because it was based on a true story).

Fragile X

Fragile X syndrome is a genetic disorder that was first discovered by Martin and Bell in 1943. A patient with this disease may suffer from mental retardation , intellectual disability, elongate face, and large eyes. Some symptoms for this disease may be large ears, limited eye contact, shyness and stereotypical movements. There are treatments for this disease, like behavioral therapy, special education, and medication. Fragile X syndrome is a disease that does not shorten a person's lifespan, the person with the disease will live as long as any other human. At least 17,000 people in the United States have Fragile X syndrome, 1 in 3600 to 4000 males in the world are born with the full mutation for Fragile X and 1 in 4000 to 6000 females in the world are born with the full mutation for Fragile X. So, males are more vulnerable to this disease. The person who has fragile X syndrome has a mutation in the FMR1 (Fragile X mental retardation 1), a protein in the DNA that makes X chromosomes.

Click here to see more information about Fragile X Syndrome!

9 Big NASA Projects went Over Budget.

What would you do if you had about $6,530,000,000? NASA would spend it on supplies and research for 9 different space projects. Some of which, I don't think are necessary . For example, i think the solar dynamics observatory sun studying satellite really matters! I think that it's $826 down the drain! Other NASA projects that are over budget are Mars Science Laboratory ($2.3 Billion!), Aquarious Water Probe ($256 Million), which is basically a part of the Mars Science laboratory because it just studies the water on Mars. Kelper Earth-like Hunter ($594.8 Million), which I think is also a waste around this time period because the market is low, if these 594.8 million dollars were sent back to the U.S. government, maybe the economy crisis wouldn't be as bad. However, if Kelper Earth-like Hunter was already launched, maybe it would find another world like the planet earth and the world's economy would become better. But, the Probe is going to launch in March 2009, and it may or may not take more than a couple years for the probe to even find anything. Hopefully, some of these probes/satellites will produce a grand success for all to joy so it will not be a complete waste.

If you would like to read this article (more of a list) CLICK HERE!

International news! Plane crash in Turkey!

Flight TK1951 was reported to fall out of the sky when it was only three miles away from a runway platform near an airport. There were 134 passengers on the plane excluding the crew, three pilots had been killed. In the plane, there were many Turkish and Dutch people and also 7 Americans, 3 Britons, one from Germany, Finland, Bulgaria and Italy. Joe Mazzone, a former Delta Air Force captain said everything looked fine as they were given clearance to land at 7,00 feet, but then the plane suddenly crashed onto the ground. Unfortunately, the cause of the plane crash was not told yet by the investigators. Also, this was the deadliest crash in the Netherlands since a vintage DC3 crashed in a shallow sea in September, 1992. Hopefully, the investigators find the cause of the crash and fix it on other planes so this does not happen again!

If you want to read more about this plane crash CLICK HERE!

My Roller Coaster Website

Scorpia 

Class response

Roller coasters are fun to ride at big amusement parks, but now i know why it takes the engineers so many years just a build a small one. In class we have to build a roller coaster using toilet paper rolls for the tracks, boxes to help the roller coaster stand up, and a marble, which is our colorful roller coaster. Instead of using electricity that pushes a roller coaster up a hill, we just start the beginning of our roller coaster as a hill (which doesn't have a climbing part). Our particular roller coaster starts off as a hill without a climbing part with a steep beginning only because our roller coaster climbs another hill again with the force it starts off with. Next, our roller coaster flies off the tracks and lands into another set of tracks with a paper funnel to make sure the marble lands into the right spot. After going through the funnel, we built a loop for the marble which finishes off with the marble landing into a cup. While doing all of this we also had to make sure we had enough "omega" dollars to buy supplies, which is money that teachers give you when you behave well. This experiment was very fun and I hope to do more experiments like this again!

Here is a cool website with an example of what we did - only a lot better!

State: NJ's school report card isn't going to make it's parents happy!

New Jersey's middle school students don't look like they are straight A students this year! "About 30 percent of the 7th graders failed language arts and 35 percent failed math." Many middle school students didn't make it past the proficient grade for the NJ ASK. A third of all the students failing language arts and math, that's not good. What the NJEA should do is give a better learning curriculum to the teachers. I think the teachers of my school are excellent, but maybe the teachers of other schools aren't as great. "The change in scores is part of a conscious effort to identify middle school students who might need extra help preparing for high school." I do not think this could help at all. If a teacher is good at teaching and can help a student with problems, the student will be a smart person. Whatever happens, however, is the NJEA's decision.

Click here to read the article


Click here to see NJ's report card

Obama's Inaguration

Obama's inauguration is very important because he is the first African-American president of our country. He did what no other African-American did so far, he became the president. On the 20th of January, Obama officially became the president of the United States of America. Also, he gave a speech on what he plans to do to while he is president.
The first article is about the inauguration day and the schedule of events that occur on that day. For example, it shows when the people without tickets get to enter the National Mall, where they get to watch the inauguration on giant screens. Also, it shows when "The metros start in Washington where two million people are expected to come to the city center to watch the inauguration."
A basic summary of the second article is Obama reversed counterterrorism policies of the Bush administration. After talking with 16 retired generals, he wants to rewrite the rules for dealing with terrorism suspects. However, many questions came up, such as "What should be done with terrorists who cannot be tried in American courts, either because evidence against them was obtained by torture or because intelligence is too sensitive to use in court? Should some interrogation methods remain secret to keep Al Qaeda from training to resist them? How can the United States make sure prisoners transferred to other countries will not be tortured?" Everyone wishes he gets good answers for these questions.
1st article
2nd article

Current event: HOLOGRAPHIC T.V.!

Picture this... You are playing your new video game (or watching a TV show)... a game/TV show you waited for a long time... you put it into your system... Then it LITERALLY COMES OUT OF YOUR TV! These aren't your ordinary 3-D glasses, these are TVs that produce holograms! "Don't be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes." (CNN). Now, you will be scared when you watch scary movies... Now you'll be surprised in movies when someone sneaks up behind you! Now... You will click here to read more!

Current Event: Solar power - advanced!

Have you ever noticed that solar panels are always tilted- askew? They are never facing up, but diagonal! This is because the panels could only absorb sunlight from one direction. The bad thing about this is that when the sun is faced away from the panels, the panels don't absorb anything- those were the old times. Now, researchers have developed a new anti-reflective coating that boosts the efficiency of solar panels and allows sunlight to be absorbed from almost any angle. The old untreated solar cell absorbs two thirds of the sunlight it receives; but the new solar cell absorbs 96.21%! Hopefully, we can give up other fuels and start using solar panels for energy! Jeremy Leggett, founder of Solar Century, a leading UK solar-energy company, believes that the future is already very bright for the solar industry. Even though solar power is expensive, maybe we should all try to get ahead of time and start using it now and save money in later years!

If you want to read more about the new solar energy, click here!