Hyojeong Shin's STEM Portfolio
Hi, my name is Hyojeong Shin, and I'm a student at Roland Park Country School. I began participating in RPCS STEM program in eighth grade and began STEM Institute in ninth grade. In eighth grade, we built a water turbine in order to save energy by using water collected from rain to generate energy. We also came up with future asthma treatment called Leukotrine Inhalers. The purpose of these inhalers is to counteract the amount of Leukotriene that the immune system is producing.In freshmen and sophore years, I completed STEM IA,IB, IIA, and IIB. Each of them focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. For my eleventh grade STEM intership, I studied the process of compost, and researched which material (tarp or hay) helps the process of decomposition the best.
1. Water Turbine Project - 8th Grade
Air pollution is a big problem in many areas including
Baltimore. Air pollution can cause many diseases, sicknesses, and also death
depending on how bad the air pollution is. Air pollution can also be
very expensive to clean out. When the total number of deaths adds up,
which is 113 deaths a year in Maryland, it can be very costly to pay for medical
expenses. Also the asthma attacks that take people away from jobs will add up
and affect the community. The impact of fossil fuels is the most common reason
for air pollution in America, and all but two percent of the nation’s energy
production comes from fossil fuels. The carbon that is produced by power plants
in the U.S is 2.5 million metric tons, which contributes a lot to the air
pollution. About 2,000 people a year die from fossil fuels and it can also cause
global warming. We need to replace the fossil fuels by finding an alternate
energy source, and we believe that we can do this using our project. The fossil
fuels are damaging our environment and we need renewable energy like the rain
water that we are using in our project, to stop burning coal and oil. Our
project data showed that our turbine generator does create electricity, and so
therefore it can be used as an alternate energy source.
2. Leukotrine Inhalers - 8th Grade
In the future, the current technology will be much more improved. The
leukotriene modifiers will no longer be an oral medication but, an inhaled
medication. The medication from leukotriene modifiers will
be placed inside the flu viruses.
The viruses with the medicine inside, is then put into the lung cells. Before
the viruses are put into the lung cells, the DNA and RNA from the virus cell
must be completely removed otherwise it will not stop the leukotriene from being
produced by cells. DNA and RNA control the function of the cells. Removing
the DNA and RNA will allow the medicine to enter the lung cells. Normally
flu viruses enter the body to infect the cells in the body. In this case, we are
using the flu viruses to insert medications into the lung cells, without using
machinery. Instead of the flu
viruses infecting the body and making it sick, it will help the body by using
the medicine that is inside the virus and preventing leukotrienes from being
made. The medication can be inserted into the virus because the DNA and RNA have
been removed. The viruses will attach to the cells
and it will prevent the cells from
producing the leukotriene. After the gas enters the body, it
enters the lung and attaches to the cells
and prevents the leukotriene from causing tightening of airway muscles and
production of excess mucus.
3. Welcome to Mars - 9th Grade
We programed our robot using the Lego NXT Robot in order to travel through rough terrains just like Mars. We had to program the robot to turn, to sense objects, rotate, and shift speed.
4. Seasonal Change - 9th Grade
Our research question was what is the impact of amount of sunlight on leaf fall rate and percentage of green leaves. Minutes of sunlight is the independent variable, while rate of leaf fall and the percent of leaf thta is green are the dependent variables. We used scratch to build our model to show how sunlight affects the leaf fall and percent of leaf that is green. As the slider on the length of sunlight variable moves, the values of each independent variables change according to the least square regression equations that we got from fathom. The least regression equations represent the results of this experiment. Attached document includes the two graphs that show the least regression line. The negative slope of the first graph shows that as the amount of sunlight increases, the leaf fall rate decreases. The positive slope of the second graph shows that as the minutes of sunlight increases, the percent of green leaves goes up as well.
We tested to see if car soap is harmful for the soil and plants. Our hypothesis was that the soap would increase the bacterial population in the soil. We discovered through our data that there was a decrease of 56% of the population of bacteria for the soap and a decrease of 50% for the water. Therefore the soap had a more negative impact on the bacteria in the soil. Even though there was an environmental shift causing the plots with water's bacteria population to decrease, we still see a larger decrease in the population of bacteria when soap was aplied to the plots.
The problem we investigated in this experiment was how to design a bottle rocket
to have the greatest horizontal distance. Our prototype consisted of two coke
bottles, large fins, a nose cone, and play-doh in the nose cone for stability.
We learned that there was just too much mass. Our next design had one coke
bottle, smaller and more aerodynamic fins, a nosecone, and play-doh in the nose
cone. The overall best trial was when the rocket went 73 meters with 600
milliliters of water. From our results, we concluded that a bottle rocket that
was aerodynamic and had about 200 grams of mass with 600 milliliters of water
was the ultimate combination for the longest horizontal distance.
7. Ionic Compounds (snow removal substances) Impact on Concrete - 10th Grade
The purpose of this research was to determine the best chemical to effectively
remove snow while causing the least corrosive damage to concrete and the
environment. Due to the many different options for snow removal solutions, it is
often hard to find the perfect chemical that effectively removes snow and ice
while causing the least damage to concrete. In this experiment, concrete samples
were submerged in magnesium chloride, calcium chloride and sodium chloride
solutions in order to determine if the solutions would deteriorate the
concrete. Over the course of five weeks the mass of concrete samples and the
volume of solutions were measured and recorded. There has not been enough
evidence for chemical or physical deterioration for any of the chemicals tested.
Furthermore,the research resulted in an accumulation of data which contrasted
previous reports conducted. The contrasting data resulted in inconclusive
information about the chemical and physical deterioration effects of the
solutions.
8. Short Term Memory - 10th Grade
Short term memory (STM) is a type of memory capable of storing small amounts of
information for short periods of time and in most instances, this information is
only storied until it is no longer needed. However, these memories can be
strengthened if the information is repeated (Colman, 2015), and they can be
influenced by numerous factors such as noises, visual distractions, physical
environment, and social media. For example, according to Gregory (year), STM is
reduced if the items of a sequence of information sounds similar. Elicott and
Cowan (year) concluded that fast speed music leads to impaired task
performances. Hence, the impact of exposure to music in general has been shown
to have negative influence on people’s short term memory. However, little work
has been done on the impact of specific types of music. Therefore, this study
explores the question, “Will white noise or pop music hinder one’s ability to
remember shapes in a sequence?” We hypothesized that pop music will hinder one’s
ability to remember shapes in a sequence more than white noise will.