Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Green Plastics
ChemMatters - Episode 2: Plastics Go Green from ACS Pressroom on Vimeo.
How are these plastics being developed?
Scientists are looking for the "monomers" that are needed to make plastic in different areas where they naturally occur, like sugar cane, or corn. Then, though different chemical processes that I don't understand, the monomers are turned into plastic.
What makes these plastics "green?"
In normal plastics, the monomers that are used to make the plastics are taken from crude oil, which is oil that is pumped from the ground and is used in many ways, like as fuel for cars, boats and planes. However, the Earth's supply of crude oil is running out. These plastics are green because they are made from alternative sources, which are not running out.
What are some issues with plastics that were mentioned?
Both conventional and green plastics have their downsides. Conventional plastics are made from crude oil, which is a dwindling resource. It also requires power to process and turn into plastic in a factory, which often comes from some form of crude oil. Transporting the plastic also takes power. Usually the transportation is done by trucks, which require fuel to run, and they pollute the environment. Green plastics also need to be processed in a factory, which requires power to do. Like before, the power often comes from crude oil. Also the plastics are usually made from corn, which needs to be grown and transported. Some analysts say that too much land is being devoted to farming from non-humans, and not enough for human consumption. If they are right, there might be food crises without proper arrangement of our farm resources.
How might these green plastics change packaging practices?
Green plastics are often viewed as "eco friendly" and "good for the environment," which might boost sales of products who make their packaging out of green plastics. When companies see that green plastic could make their product more popular, they will switch to green plastics. Also if a company switches to green plastics, they might reevaluate their packaging design and minimize it so the product has less packaging.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Ultimate Survival Reflection
Reflect on what has helped you in understanding the "big idea" of the unit.
(Big Idea: Students will understand the use and management of natural resources, the transformation of resources into human capital, goods, tools and machines as well as sustainable development of human society to maintain the delicate balance between man and the natural environment.)
I think watching the 2 and 1/4 movies really helped me understand the "big idea", because they give real-world examples and explain them in depth. Also the project about packaging was helpful because you could go into more detail about a specific product than even a movie could.
Reflect on the unit question (What is a necessity and how does an organism ensure survival of its species within its environment?) and how it relates to the unit title: Ultimate Survival.
All of the necessities and the ways an organism survives are part of its survival. Our unit title could be rephrased as "Highest in degree or order necessities and ways an organism survives", with yellow meaning Ultimate and blue meaning survival.
How did the unit question allow us to view survival through The Area of Interaction: Environments:(FOR EXAMPLE: The effects of one environment on another, the roles our environments play in the lives and well-being of humankind, and the effects of our actions, attitudes and constructs, such as sustainable development and conservation.)
Rather than just studying biology or adaptations to an environment, we also studied how organisms, and other things interact, as well as the human effect on the environment. Our unit question was very broad, and we could have studied whether Darwin's theory is correct or not while still remaining directly within our unit question. However, we interpreted it in two different ways throughout the unit. First we started out the unit by studying our question in a strictly ecological sense, with things like symbiosis. Later, we studied the human impact on the environment is still within our question because we were studying how humans adapt to our environment and how humans adapt their environment to them. We also studied the impacts of our actions, and for a while we were a little off topic.
What would you have liked to do more of? Less of?
I think that we watched a good amount of movies. I wouldn't add any more or take away any. We did a seriously excessive amount of reflecting. I personally hate writing reflections, but I can tolerate a few. However, I don't think it was really necessary to write a reflection after every movie or youtube clip we watched. Although I liked the real world learning in the movies and the packaging project, I think that it would have been great to get out of the classroom, perhaps for a real world, concrete example, like visiting a river in Serbia and discussing the pollution.
In your point of view, how well did we investigate the unit question, concept, and area of interaction? Include this in your reflection as well and give specific examples to support your opinions.
We started out investigating the unit question really well, but later on we sort of veer off-track and investigated other things. I would loved to have stayed on the track of our original investigations a little longer, and then moved on. However, I think that as a whole we addressed the unite question well a few different ways. (e.g. looking at it from an ecological and scientific point of view, and then from an environmental point of view.
Before you write your response, go towww.bubbl.us.com and complete a web of all the related concepts and knowledge you gained throughout this unit and paste a jpg image to your blog post. Then, respond to the above writing prompts using various words from your web.
I am not good with mind maps, but if you really want to see mine, here it is:
Here were my original questions that I started the unit with. I don't think that they were very good questions. When I am asked to write questions like these, I always think of questions with extremely specific answers that don't really help me understand my topic and that I would never learn.
I did some research on these a while ago. I don't really remember what the answers were, but I did put them on a poster so they are somewhere.
I tried to answer them if I could.
Things I want to know about biology:
(Big Idea: Students will understand the use and management of natural resources, the transformation of resources into human capital, goods, tools and machines as well as sustainable development of human society to maintain the delicate balance between man and the natural environment.)
I think watching the 2 and 1/4 movies really helped me understand the "big idea", because they give real-world examples and explain them in depth. Also the project about packaging was helpful because you could go into more detail about a specific product than even a movie could.
Reflect on the unit question (What is a necessity and how does an organism ensure survival of its species within its environment?) and how it relates to the unit title: Ultimate Survival.
All of the necessities and the ways an organism survives are part of its survival. Our unit title could be rephrased as "Highest in degree or order necessities and ways an organism survives", with yellow meaning Ultimate and blue meaning survival.
How did the unit question allow us to view survival through The Area of Interaction: Environments:(FOR EXAMPLE: The effects of one environment on another, the roles our environments play in the lives and well-being of humankind, and the effects of our actions, attitudes and constructs, such as sustainable development and conservation.)
Rather than just studying biology or adaptations to an environment, we also studied how organisms, and other things interact, as well as the human effect on the environment. Our unit question was very broad, and we could have studied whether Darwin's theory is correct or not while still remaining directly within our unit question. However, we interpreted it in two different ways throughout the unit. First we started out the unit by studying our question in a strictly ecological sense, with things like symbiosis. Later, we studied the human impact on the environment is still within our question because we were studying how humans adapt to our environment and how humans adapt their environment to them. We also studied the impacts of our actions, and for a while we were a little off topic.
What would you have liked to do more of? Less of?
I think that we watched a good amount of movies. I wouldn't add any more or take away any. We did a seriously excessive amount of reflecting. I personally hate writing reflections, but I can tolerate a few. However, I don't think it was really necessary to write a reflection after every movie or youtube clip we watched. Although I liked the real world learning in the movies and the packaging project, I think that it would have been great to get out of the classroom, perhaps for a real world, concrete example, like visiting a river in Serbia and discussing the pollution.
In your point of view, how well did we investigate the unit question, concept, and area of interaction? Include this in your reflection as well and give specific examples to support your opinions.
We started out investigating the unit question really well, but later on we sort of veer off-track and investigated other things. I would loved to have stayed on the track of our original investigations a little longer, and then moved on. However, I think that as a whole we addressed the unite question well a few different ways. (e.g. looking at it from an ecological and scientific point of view, and then from an environmental point of view.
Before you write your response, go towww.bubbl.us.com and complete a web of all the related concepts and knowledge you gained throughout this unit and paste a jpg image to your blog post. Then, respond to the above writing prompts using various words from your web.
I am not good with mind maps, but if you really want to see mine, here it is:
Here were my original questions that I started the unit with. I don't think that they were very good questions. When I am asked to write questions like these, I always think of questions with extremely specific answers that don't really help me understand my topic and that I would never learn.
I did some research on these a while ago. I don't really remember what the answers were, but I did put them on a poster so they are somewhere.
I tried to answer them if I could.
Things I want to know about biology:
- How long have humans been on the top of the food chain?
- This I am answering mostly from knowledge I gained in humanities. Humans were only top of the food chains when they developed very advanced tools and were evolved almost to the way were are now. I think that by 40,000 years ago we were top of the food chain, but we could have been before that. I don't know for sure.
- Who's second on the food chain?
- Would a human be harmed if you took a random 1000 cells out of his body?
- No, humans lose many more cells than that each day so 1000 cells woudn't harm the human body.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Piracy
"It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor."
Steve Jobs
Piracy is probably the worst thing that the music, movie and possibly also the game industry has to face nowadays. It is defined in a modern way as "the unauthorized publication, reproduction, or use of a copyrighted or patented work". You can get pirated content by illegally downloading things, buying them from illegal distributors or recording them from a concert or other place. One study says that piracy has cost the music industry $12.5 billion dollars.
In Serbia, piracy is very common. What you do online is never ever patrolled, ever. There are also sellers that download illegal content, and them put them on CDs and DVDs. They have a "fleet" of hundreds of different DVDs, all extremely cheap. Buying a movie is cheaper than legally renting it. Buying software like Windows 7 is a fraction of the real cost.
However, the big music, movie and software could learn a thing or two from the people who sell pirated content. Unlike real, expensive products, pirated CDs have very minimal packaging that is much better for the environment than real packaging. A real copy of Windows 7 has think plastic, and glossy paper labels and manuals. A lot of that is waste. However, a pirated copy has only one printer-paper label, the CD and a plastic label. I think that big companies should look at how the small, illegal sellers are packaging their products, and see if that can make their packaging minimal like that.
Steve Jobs
Piracy is probably the worst thing that the music, movie and possibly also the game industry has to face nowadays. It is defined in a modern way as "the unauthorized publication, reproduction, or use of a copyrighted or patented work". You can get pirated content by illegally downloading things, buying them from illegal distributors or recording them from a concert or other place. One study says that piracy has cost the music industry $12.5 billion dollars.
In Serbia, piracy is very common. What you do online is never ever patrolled, ever. There are also sellers that download illegal content, and them put them on CDs and DVDs. They have a "fleet" of hundreds of different DVDs, all extremely cheap. Buying a movie is cheaper than legally renting it. Buying software like Windows 7 is a fraction of the real cost.
However, the big music, movie and software could learn a thing or two from the people who sell pirated content. Unlike real, expensive products, pirated CDs have very minimal packaging that is much better for the environment than real packaging. A real copy of Windows 7 has think plastic, and glossy paper labels and manuals. A lot of that is waste. However, a pirated copy has only one printer-paper label, the CD and a plastic label. I think that big companies should look at how the small, illegal sellers are packaging their products, and see if that can make their packaging minimal like that.
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