Q1 Grades Reflection

I was supposed to do a reflection about my grades in Q1, more specifically my grades on my science essay, test and lab. I got all 6/6 for all 3 projects.
I am really happy with my grades for these projects. Obviously, they couldn't be better at all, because they are the maximum possible grade. However, although the grade was perfect, the projects themselves weren't totally perfect.
My strengths in my essay were that I chose a difficult topic but still wrote a full essay on it. I also met the minimum length requirement, and my essay was clear and hopefully moderately easy to understand. However, a few things that I could work on include explaining the my topic of more clearly and maybe choosing more reliable sources than Wikipedia. I recently reread my essay and realized that my explanation of my topic didn't sound as good as when I wrote it.
If I were to rewrite the essay, I would give a little more background information and try to explain my topic better.
I also think that I did well on the lab. My strengths were that we had a good data table, and my partner and I followed the lab procedure very closely. Our weaknesses were that in our lab, we used two different plants in a part of the lab where we were supposed to compare two of the same plants, and the most likely skewed our results.
My test is a little harder to reflect back on because I haven't looked over it again much. A few things I did well tat I didn't rush and I took time to fully explain things where necessary. I was one of the later people to hand in m test. Also, I think that I studied well which helped me get a good grade. However, I could have maybe studies even more so I wouldn't have missed the 2-3 questions I did miss.
Overall, I am very happy with my grades, and even though I couldn't improve in numbers, there were a few ways that I could improve in real-life performance.

Current Events #4: Bees Solve Hard Computing Problems Faster Than Supercomputers

Bees Solve Hard Computing Problems Faster Than Supercomputers
Here's something I never thought could have been possible: bees (yes, the tiny 2-3cm insects) can beat a supercomputer in solving a super-difficult problem that even some supercomputers have problems with. That problem is called the traveling salesman problem. I looked this up, and I found that the traveling salesman problem  tries to find a route between multiple cities, with the shortest possible total distance between the cities, all while only visiting each city once. The way the bees were tested is that researchers set up artificial flowers, and the bees were observed and were found to always find the shortest route between the artificial flowers. The reason that the bees have the ability to do this is that bees need a lot of energy to fly, and so by optimizing their route between flowers, they can pick up as much pollen as possible while using as little energy as possible for transportation. This seems to be some kind of evolutionary adaptation, that must really help the bee.
However, this whole post could be wrong, and could have been proved wrong by a comment on my source article. The comment stated that the bees are obviously successful at a smaller level, but that involves only 10-15 flowers, but that is also the level where supercomputers can quickly and easily solve the problem. The bees have not been tested with 100 flowers, or other high numbers like that, which a supercomputer cannot solve within the lifetime of the universe. Presumably, the bees can't handle that either. Even with their limitations, the bees are very successful for a creature of that size, and I think it's amazing how much they have going on in their little bee brains.
Sources:
Rebecca Boyle
Oct. 26, 2010
 http://gizmodo.com/5674050/bees-solv
e-hard-computing-problems-faster-than-supercomputers

Current Events 3: The Science of Prohibition, 1919-1933

The magazine/website Popular Science, also known as PopSci, recently went through its archives and featured some of its articles from the 1920s and 1930s about Prohibition. The Prohibition was a time when alcohol was banned in the USA. The Prohibition Started on January 19th, 1919 and ended on Dec. 5, 1933. During the Prohibition, people started illegally brewing their own alcoholic beverages (those brewed drinks were called moonshine), and also smuggling them from other countries. One thing that the magazine reported a few times about was how over the course of the entire prohibition, thousands of people had died while drinking bad moonshine that was poisoned with a bit of wood alcohol. I looked up wood alcohol and it turns out that wood alcohol is just a name for methanol, which can be used as an antifreeze and a fuel. Over time the bootleggers got good at producing safe-to-drink moonshine. According to Pop Sci, the Prohibition produced a new breed of chemists: the bootleggers. Whether or not they were really chemists is more debatable. Surprisingly, even real scientists got in on the alcohol action: around 1920, a scientist name John C. Olsen created solid alcohols called jellied cocktails, but I read in a Google Books version of the February 1920 Pop Sci that he didn't want to share the formula for the jellied cocktail formula or sell his jellied cocktails. The reason these were legal is that the prohibition law, (the 8th amendment) only covered liquids.

I found all of these stories interesting, because they show how desperately Americans wanted alcohol, and the crazy things they would invent or risk in order to get it. The prohibition was finally cancelled for a number of reasons, one of them being increased violence because of the smuggling, but I think that it was an interesting period in history.
Sources:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/archive-gallery-secret-science-behind-prohibition
http://bit.ly/dsxsMs