During Semester 1 2022, I chose Art, Sculpting. In this class we worked on creating our own Amulets and Talismans. On this Journey we also learnt about how Amulets and Talismans came to be. We even got to find inspiration for our Amulets and Talismans by seeing the WA museum. We also went to an art gallery and observed lots of exhibitions.
Did you meet your Targets throughout the project?
I Believe I did meet all my Targets as I finished my Amulets Design by the due date and Finalized it. I also met all my non-amulet related targets such as finishing all the visual diary requirements.
How did you Develop your Designs?
I developed my designs through sketching them in my visual diary, my design I had in my mind changed a lot based on the process. Despite this I am very happy with the final outcome.
Production of the Amulet/Talisman
The shape of my Amulet did not change during the production. The shape of my Amulet is a sort of curved Triangle. I got the inspiration for this odd shape from a video game I play. The shape worked really well and made my job of constructing the pinky-sill box much easier as I only needed 3 sides rather than 4. Unlike this however the rest of the Amulet was changed completely. The original theme being a sort of futuristic theme using golds and blues. I even planned to make a hole in the center displaying an orb of some sort. As the project continued I realized that this was a little bit out of my reach so I recreated many new designs that conformed with the curved triangular shape of the soap I had carved. The one I settled on was the shape with bands going over over it. This section of the new Amulet design was inspired from the Marvel show “MoonKnight”. I really liked the design of his armor and implemented it onto my amulet. Of course I did make changes. One of the main changes I made was painting the Final job black and using special moldable plasticine to create the bands that wrapped around some of the Amulet. These bands were painted white (Like MoonKnight). My final touch to add to the amulet was an accent colour of sorts. I decided to this as the only colour of the Amulet was White and Black. I did really like the design but for it to stand out it needed more colour. To solve this problem I chose gold flakes. I painted a small amount of these flakes between the bands as the gold flakes stood out even more on the black job.
Finished Product Images
Finished ProductFinished Amulet on display stand (Including necklace)
What next?
The next step in the project is adding a string. An Amulet/Talisman needs to be a Necklace after all. As of now I have 2 ideas for the string. The first being white bands like the ones the wrap the amulet. The second being a darker black string with same scarce amount of gold found on the job itself. But we will have to see what happens next.
As we cooked dinner on Year 9 camp, the capability that my group improved on was Teamwork.
The destination was a remote place called Kalbarri. Since we were out in the bush. We had to sleep in tents every night and cook in horrible little pots called Trangias. They contained: bowls, chopping boards, blunt utensils, and a place to light our fire. Now, having to cook in the sand every day was bad enough. But to make matters worse, I was vegetarian. The only vegetarian in the group. This created problems when working in cooking groups. I was fortunate enough to be placed in a group with a good friend. But the other two members were two students who, at first, didn’t take kindly to the fact that there was another mouth to feed, one that couldn’t eat meat. That first night we were deemed the messiest group as we didn’t work as a team, the cutting was uneven, and the ingredients were all put late. It tasted, horrible. As we moved campsites, our group managed to make a mess at every location. The group was so bad that teachers even offered for me to work with a cleaner group.
I refused.
This is because something had changed by then. Yes, we were messy, and we barely cooked anything good. But over all the time we spent cleaning up our mess, I found that I developed a connection with my group members. Not only strengthening the one with my friend but even a friendship with the other two.
By the end of camp, our final meal cooked as a group was perfect. We had divided our responsibilities between us and split the vegetarian and non-vegetarian section without flaw. We finally reached a level where we worked well together as group.
I got at 87% on this piece but I thought I could do better. So I improved small parts of the text to make it better.
The red shaded in parts of the text are parts which I’ve added. The crossed out parts are the bits I removed.
In the beginning I removed some words that I thought were unnecessary. Then replaced them with shorter words. For example: “April was” turns into “She” so the use of the characters name isn’t repetitive.
I also improved some parts. Although it makes the text longer it also makes it more detailed. For example: “She turned around” Becomes “She spun around in her chair”
In other cases I Added a completely new sentence altogether. Again this does make the text longer but detailed. For example: “Hey- James was cut off and static echoed through his intercom”
Of course, nothing is perfect but for now it is the best I can produce. Perhaps in the future I may edit it further or re-write the whole story
The SDG that I’ve worked on for the last semester is goal 14. Otherwise known as Life underwater. Goal 14 focuses on the safety of water and making sure that all water bodies are clean of pollution and save endangered aquatic animals.
The target I focused on here is analysing whether or not a river is polluted at the chemical level. Sometimes a river may, look clean but it’s pH could be very acidic or it could contain larges amounts of ammonia. My project in particular focused on Bull creek. Bull creek is an artificially made water body with the purpose of being a deposit of all of bull creek’s waste water. This extremely dirty water will get cleaned as it passes down the river. The end goal of this is to clean the water before it reaches canning river.
Bull creek has been doing this job since it was 1968 when the river was dug out. The creek was actually named after an early settler by the name of Henry bull, who owned the land since 1830. Before the settlers came, the creek was already a very wet place. In fact it was very significant to the Wadjuk Beeliar tribe. They referred to this wetland as the “Gabiljee” meaning water place.
My project involved many chemical and physical tests down at bull creek to answer one major question.
“Is bull creek doing it’s job?”
My plan was to make write a scientific report on my findings and compare test results from 2 different sites. The first site was at the beginning of bull creek. This water is expected to be dirty here as this is the place where all the sewerage feeds. The second site is located at the end of the bull creek. This sight is behind Rossmoyne senior high school under a bridge. The water here should be cleaner as it’s only a few metres from depositing into canning river.
Me at site 1
This project is part of goal 14 as it’s focused on helping water quality at the local level here, in bull creek.
Me at site 2
During this project I worked by myself. This meant that I could work at my own pace. During my time on this project I often took breaks and helped my classmates with their projects. Of course I would always get my work done in the end.
In the beginning my goal was to create a scientific report to express all the data I was going to collect down at the creek. It took a while get approval to leave the school and do testing so in the mean time I practiced using the pH indicator and the other tests (Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate) on tap water. Curiously while doing this I noticed that the hangar’s tap water is highly alkali.
Once given approval to go down the creek I got to see both sites for the first time. I took with me, two 2L bottles to hold the water from each site, A salinity tester and a bucket. The salinity tester also doubled as a thermometer. This was useful because the temperature would’ve definitely changed by the time I got back to the hangar. During this I had to try and memorise each the temperatures of each site and which bottle holds which sites water. I should’ve planned this part ahead of time. When I got back I entered in my first results and got to testing.
TERM 3
Site 1 (No band)
Site 2 (Red band)
Averages
Temperature (At site)
26.9 C
24.6 C
25.75 C
Temperature (In bottle)
20.1 C
19.9 C
20 C
pH
6.9
7.7
7.3
Salinity
0.40ppt
0.40ppt
0.40ppt
Ammonia
8.0ppm
3.0ppm
5.5ppm
Nitrite
0ppm
0ppm
0ppm
Nitrate
0ppm
0.25ppm
0.125ppm
Consistency
Clear
Clear
Colour
Yellow
Yellow
Debris types:
Brown clumped substance, worm thing, Live mosquito, small organic particles, sand, dirt
Dirt, sand, Small plant roots
Test results 1
The first test was a huge success and now with the data I’ve received I can start to work on the report. The first few stages of the report were very simple. I needed to write a hypothesis and materials. I even learnt how to write additional parts of scientific reports that I’ve never known about previously. For example a risk assessment.
Finally came the day when I would do, what I thought would be my final journey to bull creek. I emptied the water from the previous tests and cleaned them and my other materials. Mind you, these two testing dates were months apart. I was very curious how different (or similar) the results would be.
TERM 4
Site 1 (No band)
Site 2 (Red band)
Averages
Temperature (At site)
23.33 C
26.7 C
25.015 C
Temperature (In bottle)
19.0 C
18.9 C
18.95
pH
8.1
8.6
8.35
Salinity
0.40ppt
0.40ppt
0.40ppt
Ammonia
6.0ppm
0.50
3.25
Nitrite
0.5ppm
0.5ppm
0.5ppm
Nitrate
0ppm
0ppm
0ppm
Consistency
Clear
Clear
Colour
Yellow
Green
Debris types:
Small swimming insects, debris from flowers,
Lots of green vines (Appears to be growing), organic debris
Test results 2
The second test taken in Term 4 was very different to the first test, just as I’d hoped. Unfortunately though, a problem came up. Amongst my plethora of tests I had two pH testers. One was a digital stick and the other was a solution based indicator. The problem lay with the data collected from them. The two pH testers gave me drastically different results. Perhaps the digital tester was calibrated wrong or the solution test was diluted. The only way I could find out the true pH was to use a Universal indicator.
So, with the help of my teacher Mrs Donnelly, I borrowed one from the science office and tested both term 4 sites again. Unfortunately I couldn’t test the term 3 sites. But this was better than doing nothing.
TERM 4
Site 1
Site 2
Universal indicator pH
6
6
Universal Indicator results
The universal indicator test has shown us that the previous results were largely exaggerating the rivers alkalinity. Instead both sites sit at a pH of 6.
Of course, the only thing I’d do differently was to use the universal indicator on all 4 tests rather than the later two. This wasn’t possible because by the time I realised the error in the pH tester the Term 3 tests were long emptied. Maybe next time.
The end of goal of my task isn’t yet finished as I still need to compare the data against each other and again with the ideal river qualities. This leaves two options. Either bull creek is doing its job. Or not. If so then we can leave it or monitor it incase something changes. If it isn’t then I will start a new project on how we can fix this and make sure bull creek functions as it should to make a healthier canning river.
During this project I found that I had improved on my
Finally, I would like to thank my Teacher and classmates for helping me with all of the testing and being patient with me as I dragged them down the creek for testing every so often.
