Lit Morals

The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
I believe that this story teaches a very important moral! In my opinion, the moral of the story is that you can't always trust everyone, even people you are very close to. This is because if you have to much trust in everyone, people can trick you and take advantage of you! In addition, certain things can get into the wrong hands of a person who may not be trustworthy or safe!

The Four Oxen and the Lion
I believe that the moral of the story is to always work together! Especially in a serious situation such as this. This is because if you do not work together and rebel against each other, that you can get very negative outcomes. For example, in this short story, the oxen decide to use there own strategies to attempt to escape from being the lion's lunch, but in the end they all end up dying. However, if they had listened to each others ideas, and worked together, they may have not all been fooled by the lion and themselves, and had a chance at living.

The Fisher and the Little Fish
In this story, I believe that the Maxim can be interpreted in many different ways! However, the way I look at it is that if you want the best for yourself, you have to work hard for it! In addition, it takes much time and patience to receive what is best for you. For instance, it takes much time and patience to find a good college/education!

The Crow and the Pitcher
So far, this has been my favorite fable that I have read. To meet, it send out a very important moral/ message. This message is to never lose hope and faith. Don't ever give up on anything, especially yourself! Even when you think that you've tried your best and you have don't everything you could do, you should keep pushing forward and trying harder. This also leads into trying your best. Trying your best is one of the best things that you can possibly do for yourself! Nothing bad with come out of trying to succeed in something. So always have faith and never give up!

The Fox and the Goat
I think that this maxim shows that you should think before you act and think about what you're going to say before you say it. In the story, the goat believed the fox about the drought so the goat jumped into the well, then the fox followed by jumping the the goats back and jumping out. They goat was silly to jump into the well if he had yet to hear about the drought!

Ask a Geneticist:

http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=69
While I was reading these two extremely factual articles, I learned many new things about genetics! One of my favorite things that I learned was how similar humans are to chimps! Humans and chimps are over 98% the same! Can you believe that!? Humans and chimps contain of basically the same genes! Chimps are most likely made up of 2 human chromosomes or vice versa. This blew my mind to think about how similar we are to hairy, un-mannerly chimps! Another thing that i found very shocking was that goldfish and toucans have more chromosomes than humans! Goldfish have 94 chromosomes, toucans have 106 chromosomes and only have 46 chromosomes! I would think that humans would have more chromosomes than any other human being but I have been proven wrong! The biggest difference between humans and chimps are the amount of proteins in the chimps brain to the humans brain. Obviously, the humans brain produce more proteins than the chimps.

http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=184
Another interesting thing that I have learned from these two articles was that the human genome split into separate chromosomes rather than being one long strand. This depends on how each organisms reproduces. Some organisms reproduce asexually, meaning that they will split in half and produce off spring that way. Or another way to produce offspring is to produce sexually which is when 2 organisms combine to create a or multiple babies. To add onto my knowledge about chromosomes, i learned that all humans have 46 chromosomes and that 23 must come from the mother and 23 must come from the father. However, if a mutation occurs, the number of chromosomes may vary. I found these articles very informative and they helped me clear up my understanding of genomes and chromosomes!:)

Lit Wooden Bowls

The story "Wooden Bowls" is extremely touching and teaches an amazing life lesson. This taught me to always be there for your loved ones, whatever the situation may be. Never ignore or neglect your family or friends, especially when they are in need of help. This greatly applies to elderly family members. This is because you should always to your very best to make their lives the best they can possibly be because you never know when their last day will come. I can relate to this story because I had a family member who had recently passes away and i regret not spending more time with him and i wish that i made an effort to see him more often.
When connected to C.A.R.E.S, I would label "Wooden Bowls" as cooperation, self-control and empathy. I think that it connects to cooperation because in order to live a happy life, you have to be able to cooperate with people. In this story, the son and the daughter-in-law of the grandfather had to cooperate with him and help him out when he ate dinner. They also had to use self-control and not get all worked up, and yell at the old man when he spilt milk or dropped a plate or fork. As they say, don't cry over spilt milk. "Wooden Bowls" also connects to empathy because before you judge someone, you should always put yourself in their shoes and walk a mile. In the story, the parents soon realized what they were doing to the old man and how they were treating him and thought about how they would someday be old and frail and would hate to be treated like that.

Science Holiday Break Homework

To check out where i recieved my infromation, click here



While I was reading "What is heredity?", I learned many interesting things. I learned that every child receives half of their chromosomes from there mom and the other half from their dad. This happens when a sperm cell and an egg cell join to create a single cell called a zygote which has 2 sets of chromosomes as well. I learned that out body contains of 2 sets of chromosomes. Each set contains 23 chromosomes so in all we have 46 of them. In addition, I learned that each parent contributes one set of chromosomes. However, the child must receive exactly one of each chromosome.



While I was reading "What is a trait?", I learned that there are different types of traits like physical traits, behavioral traits, and medical traits that people may inherit from there parents. Examples of a physical trait would be hair color, eye color, or height. An example of a behavioral trait is the way you act or your personality. In addition, you may inherit a disease from your parents such as cancer. Not only do your parents effect you traits but the environment does so as well. For instance, the sun may change the color of your skin or your hair. Also, you can change the behavior of a dog, depending on how it is trained. To add on to the information I have taken in, I learned what homozygous is. Homozygous is having two of the same allele for a trait. An example of this would be if two parents had a hitchhiker thumb, then the child will have them too because the parents alleles are the same.

Current Events #2

The article i read was about ozone depletion. Ozone depletion is a well know topic today. It is a common topic that people talk about. As a matter of fact, our ozone layer is being destroyed right this very second. The ozone is a blueish-grayish gas that contains of three different types of atoms. An example is O2, this is the gas that human breathe in. Our ozone is being destroyed because humans are using many different pollutants like hairspray and may other things that contain chlorofluorocarbons, better known as CFC's. CFC's are the main cause of our ozone's depletion. A place there is suffering terribly of ozone depletion is Antarctica. Due to the destruction of the ozone above them, many icecaps and glaciers are melting. This effects the animal life that lives in the waters because there homes may be melting.

In my opinion, I think this is a subject that we should take into our consideration. We should think about how we treat our Earth, and begin or continue on to treat it better. However, on the bright side, according to the article, they will eventually find a resolution to this problem that will help conserve our ozone layer. This makes me feel better about our ozone, but i still have to keep in mind that our Earth needs as much help as it can get!http://library.thinkquest.org/26026/Environmental_Problems/ozone_depletion.html

Class Review (Science)

One of my favorite experiments/activities we did in class was when we all acted as animals hunting for prey! In this activity, we went outside and lined up, then Mrs. Gavin threw different colored toothpicks all over the grass, then we all had to do the best we could to gather the toothpicks in a certain amount of time! Some of the colored toothpicks were harder to find then others. This is because they camouflaged with the grass. For example, the green ones were harder to find since they blended in with the grass!

This activity showed predator-prey relationships because we had to each gather our own food while Mrs. Gavin or a different volunteer would act as a predator and try to chase us away from the toothpicks while we were trying to gather our food. This activity also exampled competition. This is because we all had to do our best to collect as many toothpicks as we could to "survive." People were running as fast as they could to gather as many toothpicks as they could before other people took them. I am a very competitive person so i really enjoyed this activity!

(I received my facts and information from my ISN and handouts that SunnyD had given me during class.)

Science Current event #1

The article I read was about the thinning of the ice in the oceans of Greenland, and on the coastlines of Antarctica. This September, NASA reported that the loss of ice is caused by the glaciers speeding up where they flow into the sea. The reason for the thinning ice is that satellite lasers are effecting the currents/flow of the ocean due to the loss of glaciers. Unfortunally, the glaciers are thinning out about 9 meters per year!

I believe that this is something that should be handled very quickly and should be something to worry about. I think this because the ice is thinning at such a fast rate, it could possibly hurt our environment. Also, as it mentions in the reading, future sea levels are now unpredictable.

I got my article from the website... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090923143331.htm