You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet. -- Elon Musk

As we continue reading the Martian in Physics, Elon Musk announced today his plan to put a human colony on Mars. I love it when fact and fiction become a muddled reality. The students are enjoying visualizing and experiencing Mars with the wonderful fictional character of Mark Watney, but soon real Mark Watney type astronauts may be taking center stage. What a wonderful time to be learning about science--maybe we are inspiring future astronauts! Along with The Martian, the Physics students wrapped up their physics of car crashes units with the egg drop project! Each class had only one partner group who was truly successful. This prestigious accomplishment goes to Bria and Matt S. in 2nd period and Janelle and Yamile in 3rd! Way to go future engineers! We will finish this week up with a lab in terminal velocity (sky diving anyone?), and then transition to (yes... wait for it...) motion in 2 dimension and vector addition! Yes, actually we are approaching rocket science!

The Biology students will be completing our 3 week unit in the biological macromolecules by studying the effect the enzyme catalase has on hydrogen peroxide. This enzyme naturally occurs in our cells, but in higher concentration in our liver. So yes... tomorrow we bust out the raw beef liver. YUM! (Kidding--bleh!) I made the executive decision to postpone our ELISA lab from last week until we learn more about proper lab technique and the sciences behind the processes--scaffolding skills is equally important in learning as it is in the lab. Following our enzyme lab, we will take one last review of the biological macromolecules then transition into the organelles in a cell (you've heard of them, mitochondria, nucleus, golgi complex, etc). We will end this quarter with our first big project of our cell analogy. Stay tuned for more information on that next week!

And for fun, the biology students continued their investigation of proteins learning that you can in fact  un-boil an egg! Who knew?

A giant shout out to all that my student council kids have accomplished in the past seven weeks--a dance, a 5K, and now a MOVIE in defense of charter schools.  Check out our Oasis StuCo Facebook page to see pictures from the 5K and to view our film. Great work team!