My Blog Future

For about the next year, my blog will become less and less Lego oriented and more and more computer oriented. At this stage, I plan to make my blog nearly all computer oriented. Instead of seeing Lego things every day, you will see "Programming Tips".

When I do Lego models, they will be built with either Lego Digital Designer or LDraw. I will probably reprogram my blog to be easier to use. I hope this sounds good to you. It sounds great to me!

Cicadas and Wraiths

Today I used two new techniques to make some space Lego models.

This is the top of my space fighter I call "The Wraith"

Here is my new technique. I attach a lego piece with a hole straight through it and then attach lego pieces on both side of it.

Here is what I call a Wraith Cicada. It uses an lego orc flag as a shell.

Here is how I attached it to the body.

Phoenix

Here is my phoenix lego model.

My lego phoenix model has three parts. Here is the details part.

This is the base. It sculpts the pit of fire the phoenix comes out of in this picture.

This is the layout. It shows where things will go.

Generals, Archers, and Builders

Here are three more custom minifigures for today.

This is my general minifigure. His rubber band belt wraps around a stud in his legs.

Here is my painter. He has the painter body, but with one leg replaced by a peg leg.

I'm not sure who this is. She could be an elf or a forester. She has custom hair made with a backwards beard piece.

Who Needs Light?

Objectives:

To observe the effect of the absence of sunlight on a plant by comparing a plant with sunlight on it to one without. The control plant is the one in the sunlight and the unknown is the lack of sunlight. 

Predictions:

A plant needs these three things to survive: sunlight, soil, and water in the right amounts.

I think that if a plant didn’t get any sunlight it would be unable to get food and would die in three days. After one day its leaves would change color, the day after that they would turn brittle, and the day after that, they would turn brown and fall off the plant.

Observations:

We have two pansy plants, one labeled “A” the other “B”. 

One has yellow flowers and the other one has purple flowers. The flowers have three or four smaller petals and one bigger petal.

The plants have green stems with thicker stems in the center of the pot with thinner stems coming out from them. The stems have buds on them, and curly leaves.
The plants have approximately 30 leaves on a stem with approximately 15 stems each, so the plants have approximately 500 leaves each.

Monday, September, 10th: Each plant is getting a half cup of water. Plant “A” is staying on the table in the sunlight and plant B is downstairs in the very dark closet.

After one day, nothing changed.

After a week, nothing changed on plant “A” but on plant “B” the stalks looked a little ghostly. Each plant is getting a half cup of water. Plant “A” is staying on the table in the sunlight and plant B is downstairs in the very dark closet again.

Two weeks after starting, plant “B”s leaves are turning clear then brown and then falling off, while plant “A”s leaves are turning yellow then brown and falling off. The stems of plant “B” are in the process of being bleached clear while the stems on plant “A” are staying green. Plant “A” is staying on the table in the sunlight and plant B is downstairs in the very dark closet again.

Three weeks after starting, plant “B” has turned mostly brown with brownish-green stems and leaves and dark-blue and white flowers, while plant “A” has green and light green stalks and leaves and has several yellow wilted flowers on it. Plant “A” feels soft and does not make sound when touched, and plant “B” faintly crackles and feels rough when touched. Plant “B” is dead.

Results:

At the start of the project, plant “A” and plant “B” looked the same except that plant “A” had yellow flowers and plant “B” had purple ones. After a week, the stalks on plant “B” started to turn ghostly looking and plant “A” stayed the same. After two weeks, plant “B” looked more ghostly and the leaves were turning clear then brown and falling off. Plant “A”s leaves were doing the same thing, except they were turning yellow instead of clear. The stalks on plant “A” stayed green. After three weeks, plant “B” died and plant “A” stayed the same as it had a week ago.

Conclusion:

Compared to what I saw, my overall prediction was correct. The plant died without sunlight. 
I predicted that the leaves on the plant would change colors, turn brittle, then turn brown and fall off and I was correct. I didn’t predict anything other than that, but the leaves turned clear before they turned brown, and the stems on the plant turned clear.
I predicted that this change would happen over a series of days, but in truth it happened over a series of weeks.
From my experiment, I can conclude that a plant needs sunlight to survive.

Custom Knights

Here are three custom Lego minifigures for today.

Here is my first knight. He uses a strap pushed over his armor to carry a second sword.

Here is my first archer. He has a quiver on his back over his armor.

Here is another knight. He carries a custom sword.

The sword is made of three parts. A flat, circular plate, a lightsaber handle, and a large, gray spike. 

Beans

Objectives: To predict and carefully observe how a seed grows and compare my observations to my predictions.

Predictions:

I think that if you put a bean in a glass with a damp paper towel on the bottom, the bean will lay on the bottom and after a few days, the skin will wrinkle up, the bean will turn gray, and the bean will die. I do not think the plant will sprout. Here is a picture of what I think will happen.

Observations:

The outside of the bean is brown, and has a ring around it lengthwise, where two halves of the bean meet. There is a white patch in a little indentation where the two halves meet. The bean has one flatter side to it. Here is a picture of my bean.

The cross section of the bean has a milky white interior and where the white patch is, there is a little packet of brown. The skin looks very thin on the cross section.

Monday, September 17: The beans are in a glass bottle upstairs. The beans are on their sides. Here is picture of the beans in the bottle.

Wednesday, September 19: One of the beans sprouted a root. Here is a picture of it.

Thursday, September 20: The two other beans sprouted roots. Here is a picture:

Friday, September 21: The roots on the beans got bigger. Here is a picture:

Saturday, September 22: The roots on the beans grew roots. The plant is growing upward.

Sunday, September 23: The bean appears to be climbing out of its skin!

Monday: The beans grew stilts!

Tuesday: The beans have grown leaves and eaten up their shells.

Saturday: The beans grew so tall that we had to take off the lid. The brown bean cover fell off the bean and fell to the bottom of the jar. The roots of the bean wrapped themselves around the inside of the jar. Four leaves grew on the stem of the bean and stem of the bean grew thicker.

Results:

After two days in the jar, the beans started to grow roots out of the side of it. After two more days, the bean grew a stalk upwards and white roots began to edge their way downward into the paper towel. After another day, the bean’s protective cover began to come off. Next, the beans stalk grew and pushed the brown protective shell up toward the top of the jar. Finally, the leaves came out of the protective shell and the shell fell to the bottom of the jar. The leaves grew out the sides of the stalk and up. The bean was now a seedling.

Conclusion:

The bean did not do what I predicted. Instead, the bean grew into a seedling. 

I learned that the white stuff in the bean is called an embryo that houses the food that is needed to grow the stem, the roots, and the leaves. The reason the the stem grew upwards towards the sun and roots grew downwards is because there are different types of molecules in each part of the plant that tell the roots to grow downwards and the stem to grow upwards.