Tooth is Lost and We Play "King of the Mountain"

Today I lost a tooth. At the start of the day, my tooth was wiggling a little. For three or four hours in class, I wiggled it and wiggled it. Greg lost a tooth. I didn’t wiggle it at music, but I started wiggling once I got to recess. I had already gotten the tooth off, and it was connected by a tiny tidbit of skin. I twisted it, and “Pop!” The tooth came out!

Today our class played “King of the Mountain” in Music. This game was very simple. Every student would sit in a circle, and rhythm cards would be handed out. The person who got the rhythm card with three sixteenth notes and one quarter note following it would be the King. The King would clap his rhythm and say the beats (sixteenth notes: tic-a-tic-a, eighth note: tee-tee, quarter note: ta, half-note: twooooooooooooooooooooooooo, whole note: whole note three four) and then do the same to another person’s rhythm. Then that person would repeat the process to his own rhythm and to somebody else’s. This would go on until somebody made a mistake. He would go to the right of the King, the dungeon, and everybody starting from the left of his original spot and ending at the King would move right one spot to the next card.

Jumbo Pyramid

1/26/13:

Today was the last day of our Speed Stacking PE Unit. Our class created a giant pyramid with a base of 20 cups! We used 107 cups in total.

We used a special and simple way to assemble the pyramid. We lined up in 4 lines, and the person at the front of each line added a cup from a stack of 12 and walked to the back of their line when the teacher called. The pyramid was soon as tall as or taller than Greg Sellers, the tallest person in our class. He is nearly 5 ¼ feet tall!

The teacher then told us to guess how many cups could be pulled from the bottom before getting the tower to topple. I guessed two next to each other, and I was right. The tower toppled from left to right, the opposite of the picture. It was tremendously interesting to watch the tower topple. It literally disintegrated with cups sliding down the sides until all that remained was a big pile of cups.

Speed Stacks Research

Today I did some research on Amazon.com. I want to buy some Speed Stacking cups with a timer and mat. I searched in the Toys and Games department, and chose “Speed Stacks Stackpack Assortment” for $40 by Play Along. One of the reasons I chose this set is because these are the cheapest cups I could find that have a timer and mat included. Some sets are $50 or $70, and most of the cups are above $100. Those are way too expensive, and some don’t even have good ratings. Others weren’t in good condition. The other reason I chose this set is because the ratings and reviews are very good. There are 12 reviews, 9 are 5-star, and 3 are 4-star. All of the reviews were happy and positive. The reviews say that these cups are very durable, fun for both adults and kids, educational, and great for hand-eye coordination. To sum up, I want to buy the “Speed Stacks Stackpack Assortment” on Amazon.com for the above two reasons.

Speed Stacking #2

At school, I participated in Speed Stacking again. This time, we had to fill in a score sheet with our times. I did the 3-3-3 in 6.18 sec, the 3-6-3 in 6.97 sec, the 6-6 in 9.00 sec, and the Cycle (3-6-3, 6-6, 1-10-1, 3-6-3) in 29.24 sec. My score for the 3-3-3 was bad, some people got 4.49. For the 3-6-3, it wasn’t the best either, some people got 6.27. For the 6-6, I did even worse. I couldn’t believe I got 9.00 sec. I can usually get around 7.00 sec. The Cycle was great, though. Only Fiona beat me with around 23 sec. To sum up, I think I should compete in Cycle tournaments.

Whiteboard Session

Today I participated in a whiteboard session from the JHU CTY Math Olympiad Course. A whiteboard session is a class on the computer using Adobe^® Connect. There were four other 4^th graders that participated in that session – Phil, Damon, and Manya. We talked a lot on the chat board, which I enjoyed the most. I enjoyed the chat board because it was very lively. Phil was annoying; he kept saying “okkookko”, “okokokokokok”, or “BYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYE!!!!!!” I liked talking about the teacher – I would always tell everybody when she was disconnected from the internet again. The problems were tricky. One problem asked: “Every two people at a banquet were served a chicken dish, every three a rice dish, and every four a vegetable dish. If there were 65 dishes, then how many people attended the banquet?” I solved the problem by finding the LCM of 2, 3, and 4, which are 12. 12/2 is 6, 12/3 is 4, and 12/4 is 3, so every 12 people were served 13 dishes. If 12 people equals 13 dishes, then 60 people equals 65 dishes. I had a really hard time at first, because I used the wrong method.

Speed Stacking

Today I speed stacked in the Alcott Gym. Speed Stacking is a competitive sport in which you stack up cups and then stack them back down again. Each set of cups includes 12 cups.
Today I practiced the 3-6-3 cup stack format. We stack up three cups, then six, then three again, and downstack all of it. I can do this very fast. After that, we had a competition.
I took 6.58 (6 and 58 hundredths) seconds to do it, getting me the title of third best in the school!!!

Google SketchUp 8

Today we had a chance to play with Google SketchUp 8. This is a 3-D modeling program where you can design buildings, furniture, and anything else you can think of.

One of the tools I like best is the Rotate Tool. The tool can rotate, distort, or stretch shapes. When I want to make a roof, I just distort the house’s top. The roof still has a flat top, so I distort the distorted sides to make the strange roof even more distorted. It turns into a crazy shape, and I call that a “roof”. Other times, when I need to make a sculpture, I draw a weird shape, and then distort it to make it even weirder. I add some water to make a fountain, and I have a sculpture!

Another tool I like is the Fill Tool. The tool can color in any selected area a certain color, like green. It can also fill the area in with a texture, such as wood, metal, or water. Finally, it can fill the area with a translucent or transparent color, such as gold glass or translucent blue. It has many uses, from making sculptures interesting to look at, to making a creation look realistic.

To sum up, I enjoy using SketchUp!

Here is a link to download SketchUp:

http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/download/gsu.html

Battle of the Books Round 2

Today was the second round of the Battle of the Books. And what an exciting round it turned out to be! The Hypernovas scored 14 out of 15, the Book Dolphins 10 out of 15, and both the Sea Serpents and The Champs scored 9 out of 15. Hypernova team member Patrick Peng made a mistake on the 13^th question, ultimately leading to the loss of a point that could have made the score perfect! During an interview, Patrick Peng said that the loss was because he was too nervous to remember the answer to the question: “In which book did a pap (dad) say that a jar of honey attracts more flies than a jar of vinegar?” The answer, he said, came back to him and seemed obvious after the Battle. The Sea Serpents and The Champs have been eliminated. They will not be competing anytime soon. However, the two remaining teams, the Hypernovas and the Book Dolphins, will be moving on to compete against fourth-fifth grade classes!

How much is a million?

Today the fourth graders in my class (except for Mallika, Archit, Rhea, and Swathi) presented their “How Much Is A Million” projects.

My project was on pencils. I learned that a million pencils put eraser-to-point is 18,500,000 cm long, 6,000,000 grams, and a million pencils put width to width is 700,000 cm. My favorite part was when the weight crushed the person.

Greg’s project was on flash drives. I learned that the length of a million flash drives is equal to around 140,000 football fields. My favorite part was the introduction, in which he crossed out certain parts of the text. “Today I will be presenting the project Mrs. Chen made me do I wanted to do. I had to will compare one million of an object to something else. The instructions said I have to I want to use two ways to prove each mathematical equation correct.”

Kevin’s project was on Eta Carina. At first, we settled in for a nice presentation, but then he said it was the sun, and then he said it was Alpha Centauri… anyways, it was a complete mess. The equations had too many big numbers and zeroes and took too long to explain.

Patrick Fan’s project was crazier. I think he plays too much video games. He included Sonic, Tails, Shadow, Mario, and some other characters. He also included too many animations and distractions. There was at least one thing flying around at any given moment.

All in all, I enjoyed watching some projects and did not enjoy watching others.

Art

            Today my mom’s Art Docent lesson was on Analogous Colors and Tints and Shades. She spent a lot of time preparing for this lesson. I definitely enjoyed the lesson and the project.

I learned a lot in the lesson. I learned that analogous colors are three adjacent colors on a color wheel. For example, Red, Orange, and Yellow, or Green, Blue-Green, and Blue are sets of analogous colors. Tints are the colors that are formed when you add white to any primary, secondary, or tertiary color. Shades are the colors that are formed when you make any primary, secondary, or tertiary colors darker. I think this is very helpful art information.

In the project, we each got a strip of a picture to scale up onto a large piece of paper. Then, we colored in the picture, the gray being the pure version of the color, the white being the tint, and the black being the shade.

All in all, to prepare the paints, the lesson, and the energy to keep us all in order and quiet, my mom must have used a lot of effort on this project. So,

Thank You Very Much, Mom!

Chess

The Greek Gift

Today I enjoyed Chess Club after school. First, I played Carson. I was up a pawn right after the fourth move, and I retained that advantage until the end. I lost two of my pawns and was just about to promote my third when it was time for the lesson. I knew I was probably going to win because his king was a long way from his other pawn, which I could take easily with my rook. Also, my pawn, which was two squares from promoting, would force the rook to take it, and I would be a rook up, and checkmate. After the match, we had a lesson on the Greek Gift. This is basically a Bishop sacrifice that gets rid of an essential shield pawn, achieving checkmate. After Bxh7, Kxh7, Ng5+, Kh7, Qh5, Re8, Qxf7+, Kh8, and Qxe8#. There were many examples of this, and other variations of the line, but it all ends up in checkmate or a major advantage. I think it is an amazing strategy. It is also flawless, easy to remember, and quick. The only position in which it does not work is when the knight on d7 and pawn on e6 are gone. After king takes h7, knight check, king escape, and queen moving out, the bishop comes to the rescue on f5, blocking the checkmate square. All in all, I learned a lot during this session of Chess Club!

Battle of the Books Round 1

Today was the Battle of the Books. The 4 teams of Ms. Chen’s class clashed together at lunch recess. One of those teams was The Hypernovas, consisting of Kevin Zhang, Daniel Dickman, Gregory Sellers, and, last but not least, Patrick Peng.  During the intense Battle, they fired answers at the 15 questions that could mean the survival or death of their team. At the end, they found out that they were tied with the Book Dolphins for first, each with 10 points. The Champs, with 7 points, lost (The Champs Lost!J). But the worst team by far was the Sea Serpents, with 6 points. Had this not have been the first round, the Serpents and Champs would have been eliminated. This was only a practice round, though. The Battle was VERY exciting!