jueves, 26 de septiembre de 2013

Slinky experiment

Hey guys, today I remembered about the first IA I did and Physics and even though it was a complete failure I felt like sharing it here. Well, the thing was that our teacher asked us to investigate some property of a slinky spring. My group thought that we were too cool for school, and we could come out with an innovative experiment rather than sticking to the common and boring ones. So we decided to investigate the effect of the viscosity of the medium on the period of the slinky spring. Sounds pretty professional right? Well, our experiment consisted in measuring the period of a slinky submerged in water, honey mustard, ketchup... Do I really have to say what happened or can you just imagine? Apart from the fact that the slinky did not move in the mediums at all, it got very sticky and hard to clean up... :S I wonder if there is a way to carry out that experiment successfully. What do you think?
IB said we had to be risk takers, they did not mention that we should be successful too, so does that give us credit?

lunes, 23 de septiembre de 2013

Logo design

I am taking Arts HL in IB Diploma. Last year one of my projects was to design a logo for myself. I think this is not only a very useful project because you might even use it in the future but because it gives you the opportunity to create a piece of art based on you. When creating my logo I focused on reflecting my personality. My logo was composed by my two initials (they come to be IB...) which i managed to fuse and give the appearance of a butterfly wing (butterflies have a special meaning to me) and then i also added a purple teckel dog because the teckel is my symbol (long story), and purple my favorite color. Here I leave you with my logo
I know its too baroque to be a logo, probably i would have to shape it more simple to use as a profesional logo, but I am everything but minimalist, thus as an art project and as a reflection of myself is just what I wanted to do. Also, notice that the colors of the letters mimmic those of a flower:)

viernes, 20 de septiembre de 2013

Memory Project

So this is an unicef project, it basically consists in doing an accurate portrait of an orphan child. I did a protrait of a vietnamese girl and i had it sent back to her. This is a good project If you are good at drawing. But what i enjoyed the most was the connection established with the girl. When i received the picture of the girl with my portrait my day also brightened up. I want to repeat this project soon, and i recommended to all my art folks!
This is the picture i received back, isnt it amazing that the background i chose matches her clothes?
Hello guys, if you were reading about the anisakis experiment, i will now tell you what i did next. Well my purpose was to investigate its resistance so first i tried to boil them to see how much they lasted. I did this in my old high school in Spain. Here are the pics of the procedure

Yep guys, i boiled them alive, but dont feel sorry for them, they were going to die cooked anyways.
The other experiments i did was to put them into vinegar, lemon, fridge, freezer... 
It was a cool investigation to carry out, really interesting for lab rats like me:)
Hope this inspires you

jueves, 19 de septiembre de 2013

Anisakis simplex experiment

The first cool project i want to share is my investigation on the fish parasite the Anisakis simplex. Not that many people have heard of it, but this parasite lives in almost all the fishes that habit the seas. I f you ever eat raw fish that has not been treated against the parasite you will probably get infected and you will have to go to the hospital to get treated. This parasite is a worm that lives inside the fishes and produces allergic reactions in humans when ingested alive. For my Extended essay topic i chose to study the resistance of this parasite to the cooking methods. First of all the collecting of sources was very difficult at first, all easy ways such as questia.com were useless. However i found my way into the universities archives and the fish industry studies and I think this sources I obtained make my exploration way more interesting. Second thing I needed was the actual parasite to experiment with. It might sound disgusting at first but after some minutes I promise it became really cool. I had to actually buy fresh fish, open it, and find the parasites. Here ill provide you with some pictures of the process


I hope this is getting interesting for you guys! 

1st Contact

Hello everybody, this is the first entry of the blog. First, I want to introduce myself, I am from Spain but  I live in New york since four years ago. Right now I am in my senior year of high school and I am an IB diploma candidate. Now that you know me I want to explain why I am writing this blog. Everyday i come out with new projects I have to do and new ideas for them. I want to post all the cool things that are going on in my high school an even back home. I will post many of my projects for the IB diploma but also about many other things, I also encourage people to contribute to this blog talking about their projects and innovations. I want this blog to be a source of inspiration for future students and for anyone who is creative and is interested.