CH GCE Portfolio

Welcome to the third action project for my STEAM class, Frontiers. This class is about exploration. This project connects directly to my second action project, Space Junk . For this action project, I had to create a poster based on a research paper I created this term. I choose my most recent paper on space exploration. In this paper, I choose to focus on space debris and how this affects space exploration. This poster summarizes my research paper.  CH."Space Debris Poster." Google Slides, 2022. I enjoyed completing this poster. I have a great interest in space, so putting together this poster was fun for me. I believed I have managed my time well with this project as I did include the feedback given to me by my teacher. 

Welcome to the second action project for my STEAM class, Frontiers. This class is about exploration. During this second unit, my class focused on space exploration. We went on a field experience at the Adler Planetarium and learned about the timeline of the universe. We also spoke virtually with a graduate student named  An Li who is focusing on getting her Ph.D. in space studies. For my action project, I had to write a research paper about a challenge that we face during space exploration. I choose to focus on space debris and how this affects space exploration.  Space Debris: the litter in Earth's orbit CBS News. ¨Space Junk.¨ The growing population of space debris has made it increasingly difficult to execute space missions. In response to this problem, there is a global consensus that space activities need to be carefully monitored to reduce the risk of adding to the current amount of debris within Earth's orbit. There is currently no global collective effort for curr...

Welcome to the first action project for my STEAM class, Frontiers. This class is about exploration. During this first unit, my class focused on exploring the ocean. We watched a movie called "Becoming Cousteau", this movie is about a French explorer and sailor. We also went on a field experience to Urban Rivers and learned about riverfront restoration. This trip really helped to inform me about the different threats to bodies of water and different ways of restoration. For my action project, I had to write a research paper about a challenge that the ocean faces. I choose to focus on coral reefs and the threats that they face. 

For this term, I decided to do a joint project between Woodshop and my Digital Fabrication workshop. In Woodshop we learned how to use a miter saw, table saw, belt sander, and other various tools. In Digital Fabrication we created 3D objects and learned how to slice them. We then learned how to create an SVG and cut it out using the silhouette cutter. I new thing I learned to do was take an SVG and use it to create a carving on wood using the Carvey. This was a useful skill to learn as I had chosen to make a jewelry box in the woodshop and was struggling to find a way to decorate it.  CH. "Rip Cut." Youtube, 2022. After learning about the Carvey I wanted to carve something on almost every side of my box. This was a bit drastic as I did spend most of Digital Fabrication designing things to put on the remaining sides of the box. Before I was to permanently etch the designs in, I tested it out on a piece of scrap wood. This did not go as planned as I had very fine details and ch...

Welcome to my first action project for my Social Entrepreneurship class. In this class, we learned about the five levels of Maslow’s hierarchy and the Tragedy of the Commons. For the end of our unit, we then had to create an action project and behave as an organizational consultant, and do a SWOT analysis on my school.  Purpose: I am focusing on the communication aspect of my school. Specifically on how my school collects feedback from the students and what they do with the feedback once they have collected it. Collecting feedback from students is important for GCE because it helps tailor the classes to how each individual learns. It also helps identify concerns and problems within the school so that staff can easily address them.  SWOT Analysis Strengths: Our school is better than most schools because we set aside time to collect feedback from students and is one of the only schools that actively ask students for feedback. With fewer students in the school, it is easier to co...

In the second unit of my Economics class, we focused on matrices, learned the history of economics, and how modern economists and economics have developed. Our class visited The Plant Chicago on a field experience to learn more about circular economies. In our class we also read Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist by Kate Raworth. Students were paired off into groups and every group was tasked with reading, summarizing, and explaining a chapter to the class. After the presentations, we were then presented with our action project. For this project, we had to create an idea for the eighth chapter in Doughnut Economics. All though we did not have to write out a whole chapter ourselves. We were tasked with writing out the introduction/summary to the chapter that would go into the book as well as creating an image related to our idea. I hope you enjoy my project! --------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 8 Use, Reuse, Recycle, Repea...

C.H. "Need to Know." Google Slides, 2021. 4yrs at UChicago Original Loan: $281,802.00 Total Time: 60 years, I will be 82 years old Total paid: $983,212.22 2 years at Wright College then transfer to UChicago Original Loan: $126,661.72 Total time: 30 years, I will be 52 years old Total paid: $286,879.76 This AP has helped show me how important it is to get financial aid and scholarships for college to help with the college costs. I am someone who is very conscious about what I do with my money, so having to pay off a student loan for most of my adult life actually scares me. I would rather put in the hard work now and reap the benefits later in life when I am then financially stable. Both of these paths are options for me, but I highly recommend getting a scholarship and financial aid. I like setting myself up for success. 

In the third unit of my junior STEAM class "Urban Planning," we spent the past couple of weeks learning about sustainable design. In this class, we talked about different local and global community design projects. We looked at many community designs from across history. My favorite places that I researched design were Oak Park and Austin township. I enjoyed learning about these different communities and how their housing design and transit design changed over time and what factors contributed to those changes. While researching during our internal investigation, we viewed and listened to James Kunstler’s, Majora Carter’s, and Ellen Dunham-Jones' Ted Talks. They all presented 3 different subjects on communities and cities. These subjects talked about the architecture of cities and how it’s gotten lazy, the inequality and segregation created by designs of some communities, and how we can fix these issues with concepts such as retrofitting. There were also other terms my cl...

In the second unit of my junior STEAM class "Urban Planning," we spent the past couple of weeks learning about energy. In this unit, we learned about the War of Currents, AC/ DC energy, circuits, and Ohm’s law. For our FE, we met virtually with guests from Farr Associates. We learned about sustainable and energy-efficient architecture. For this action project, we had to create a circuit using 1 main switch and at least 1 parallel branch switch. We then have to calculate the voltage and current running through the circuit and estimate how much energy could be saved with our energy-efficient design.  CH. "circuit model and frame." 2021. Lightbulb 1 would represent the power to the entire room. Lightbulb 2 would represent a coffee machine. Lightbulb 3 would represent the dishwasher. Lightbulb 4 would represent the ceiling fan and light in the room. Lightbulb 1 and 4 will always turn on at the same time because they are part of the same branch. You can turn on and off l...

This is the first Action Project (AP) for my STEAM class Urban Planning. In this first unit, we learned about the law of sines and cosines, the 7 ancient wonders of the world, free body diagrams, bridges, gravity, and Newton's Laws. For this unit's field experience, our teacher walked around downtown Chicago and showed our class the DuSable bridge, the river walk, and lower wacker virtually. For this AP, we were tasked with making truss bridges with a maximum of 60 popsicle sticks and a bottle of Elmer's Glue. One struggle I had with this project was getting the two truss sides of the bridge to stay together. To fix this I had to think of creative ways to keep my bridge up while I glued them together. CH. "Slideshow." Google Slides, 2021.

In the third unit of my junior STEAM class "Light, Sound, & Time," we spent the past couple of weeks learning about time.  We spent the first week learning about different ways people measured time. We learned about latitude and longitude, Foucault's pendulum, and arc length. We learned about the theory of general relativity, the twin paradox, and the concept of time travel. Our class met with Taylor Hoyt, a UChicago graduate who studied astrophysics. The class focused on the history of time-telling devices such as incense clocks, candle clocks, and hourglasses. My research helped inspire my own time-telling device called the Light Alarm. I was inspired by the simplicity of the physical design of modern alarm clocks. I was also inspired by sundials and how the device uses light to tell time. I took these qualities and created a unique way of telling time. Watch my video to learn more about my invention! In conclusion, I liked completing this unit. I had a fun time lea...

In unit two of my junior STEAM class "Light, Sound, & Time," we spent the past couple of weeks learning about sound.  We learned the anatomy of the human ear and how it perceives sound. We learned about the speed of sound, reflection and refraction, soundwaves, frequency, and wavelength. We learned about the Doppler effect and musical instruments. For our action project at the end of the unit, we had to make a one-string guitar or Diddley Bow out of common materials.  CH. "Diddley Bow." 2021. The Diddley Bow creates sound through the one guitar string. This guitar string is pulled tight between two nails that are mounted on a piece of wood. At one end of the string, there is a dead battery wedged underneath the string to create tension. The other end of the string runs through a soup can, this also creates tension. The tension allows the string to vibrate. The soup can then amplifies those vibrations the same way a soundhole does on a guitar. This creates the so...

This is an action project for my core class Light, Sound, & Time. In this first unit, we learned about light and how it works. I learned a lot about wave-particle duality, the visible spectrum, the electromagnetic spectrum, human eyes, and similar triangles. A couple of students went on an FE to the GCE building to use the darkroom that our teacher set up. For this project, we were asked to build our own pinhole camera to show how we could use light to capture images.  CH. "Pinhole Camera." 2021 I made a pinhole camera. The dimensions of my camera are 4.5 inches tall, 6.3 inches wide, and 8.4 inches long. The volume of my camera is 238.14 cubic inches. In order to capture a picture, the inside of the camera has to be completely black. When you close the camera, it has to be a completely light proof so that unnecessary light doesn’t mess with the picture. Once you place the light reactive paper inside and close the camera, you can not let any light in unless you are taking...

For our second unit of Design and Engineering, we had to finish this term by designing a bike that would fit the persona given to us by our teacher. We had to design a bike using empathy. We learned about designing with empathy in our last unit. In this unit, we learned about speed conversions, gear ratios, Newton's laws, energy, derivatives, and we learned a lot about the volume and area of 2D and 3D shapes.  We met virtually with a representative from Divvy to learn about the program that they have in Chicago and how they believe it is helping our communities. We went to a bike shop called Earth Rider to learn more about e-bikes and how they work. I worked with another student to complete this project, here I have attached the link to their blog post .  Our persona lives in Banff, Canada, and has to travel 3 miles to school every day. They have to travel along winding roads and it is often cold. They have to carry their school books during this ride to and from school. They ...

In my STEAM course called Disease we recently finished our third unit called “World”. In this unit we focused on the spread of diseases. We studied the different classifications of diseases. We focused on the different aspects that are considered when a disease is affecting a community. We studied how epidemics affect the world. We also learned different key concepts epidemiologists use regarding the spread of diseases. For this AP we were instructed to pick a disease of our interest. We then had to study a particular outbreak of this disease from the past. The purpose of this project is to create a newspaper article that informs readers about the outbreak we chose. The article explains what caused the outbreak, how the outbreak was controlled, and what we can do to avoid an outbreak like it from happening again. This AP led me to learn a lot about disease that is current in our world today, COVID-19. Currently we are facing a pandemic. I found it really interesting that I had the oppo...

Welcome to my second action project for Disease. We just wrapped up our second unit called Mind. In Mind, we looked at the brain and focused different parts of the brain. Our main resource was the DMX-V file which is a textbook that has a long list of mental illnesses, including their symptoms. This book is often used by medical professionals when studying mental illnesses. In this unit, we looked into different mental illnesses specially autism and we chose one that we wanted to research on our own. We looked deeply into autism and read a book by Naoki Nigashida called, The Reason I Jump. I chose to research attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I made a simulation and did a lot of research on what it's like to live with ADHD. ADHD The scientific definition for ADHD is, "ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder defined by impairing levels of inattention, disorganization, and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity." My definition is that someone with ADHD has "differen...

In my STEAM class, Cure, this has definitely been an interesting unit to learn through e-learning. We studied the Hippocratic oath and the difference between a doctor and a healer. We learned about cell's, mitosis and meiosis, and practiced conic sections. We took virtual FE's and spoke with Dr. Neeraj Jain, a doctor who specializes in pain medicine at Hinsdale hospital. As well as Kellee Athens, who is very knowledgeable about the Zika Pandemic. For this AP we were tasked with choosing a surgery and studying it very thoroughly. We had to explain a person that had has had this surgery performed, and how there organs, tissues, and cells were affected by the surgery. I choose a Hip Arthroscopy because it is a procedure were I have easy access many things that I could use as my primary sources. I believe that is what makes this project and this procedure super interesting. CH. "Slideshow." 2020 In conclusion, this was definitely both a challenging and interesting project...

This is an action project for my STEAM class called Population. Unit 2 of my Population class was called "From/To". In this unit, we focused on Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, Natural Selection, and organisms' ability to adapt to their environments. We have been learning the difference between mutation, natural selection, variation, and evolution. We have been trying to incorporate this into the real world and how it can affect the animals we know today. We have also been learning about the mean, median, and mode along with the first quartile, third quartile, and the IQR. For this Action Project, my class was supposed to find around twenty cats and dogs. We then collected their weights and approximate heights and put them into a spreadsheet. After that, we were each assigned a random group of cats or dogs and an environment that would be their new home. With our new groups and environment, we were supposed to predict which traits would help our animals would ...

Hello! For the first STEAM class of the year, Population, we learned about taxonomy, set theory, quadrilaterals, and biology. To prepare for this class over the summer we read In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall.  We also went on our first FE to the Lincoln Park Zoo where we chose the animal we would study for our AP. We then continued to study our animal by visiting the  Field Museum to observe the taxidermy animal we had chosen. For our AP we had to create a project explaining the taxonomy of the animal of choice. I chose Hoffman's two-toed sloth because I think sloths are really interesting. In the project, you will read about Hoffman's two-toed sloth, its habitat, taxonomic categories, and the morphological traits that show the taxonomic categories. You will also learn about set theory and how my animal compares to other animals my classmates have chosen. I hope you enjoy it! CH. "Slowly Sloth." 2019, Issuu CH. ¨Sloth GIF.¨ 2019 In conclusion, I reall...

In the last unit of our freshman STEAM course called food, we focused on GMOs and GEs. We went on Field Experience to the Green City Market in Lincoln Park. We interviewed the vendors and the farmers from all over the Midwest and learned about their opinions on GMOs and organic crops. For this final action project, we were instructed to choose a side in the argument on GMOs. I hope you enjoy! CH. "GMOs." 2019