10/27/16 - Julia Orlando

Hello! Welcome back to the sci fi blogspot. In class we did not do much today as a class but a lot for our own grades. In case  you missed yesterday, Mr. Rivers introduced guidelines for our short stories. We worked on what we did yesterday in class today which you can do at home too ( no biggie in case you missed what we did in class!) I know that sounds a little frightening - especially for people who hate writing essays but it has a good concept. You get to chose ANY medusa you want in the world whether it be politics, environmental issues,feelings, whatever you like! The only catch was we have to add a scientific element to our story which may or may not be hard. For my story, personally, I am thinking about doing feminist time travelers. It sounds lame but it will be really heart felt while expressing that science feel to it.

The next thing is to finish - or start - your tic tac toe board and decide what to write or what you don’t want to write. Once you got your premise down, you have to talk to Mr. Rivers to get his approval to start more than just your prewrite tic tac toe. For me, I talked about how the feminists in my story will change different aspects of the world, technology, and future. It will be different for everybody but if you are having trouble you can always ask classmates for advice. Don’t worry!

P.s. Don’t forget whatever your sci fi text may be for tomorrow! Marking period is kind of almost over, so try to keep up with your points

10/25/16 Maeve McVeigh

Today in class we read each other’s “Dark Matter” endings.  Everyone found interesting ways to make their endings Sci-Fi. Such as including, aliens, time travel, black holes and much more. A majority of the class was spent reading each individual ending. Then we commented what we believed were the strengths of their writing as well as what made their text Sci-Fi. There were a variety of endings due to the creative freedom we were allotted. This was a good way to force us to think outside of the box in order to prepare us for the short stories we soon will be writing. After we read and discussed the class’s endings, we then listened to the original ending BJ Novak had written. His wasn’t a very Sci-Fi like ending but did end it with a comedic tone.

10/19/16 Soumya Duggirala

In class today we watched part of an episode from The Twilight Zone. It's part of our unit on short stories, since the episode is its own self contained story with a short story structure. We didn't get to watch the end of it, so I'm really curious as to how it ends. Mr. Rivers has been telling us that there's a twist at the end, which makes me want to watch the end of it.

It the episode, we follow the three survivors of a rocket crash-landing on some asteroid or something. There were originally eight men, but five died because of the crash. We don't know why the crash happened or how the three are going to survive and get back (or if they get back, as I'm suspecting they don't). One of the three, Corey, is super antagonistic, always at odds with the other two and always caring more about himself. He doesn't want his water going to a dying crewmember, and he left one of the other two dead in the mountains, also taking his water. Where I watched ends shortly after this.

Watching this episode makes me more intrigued as to Twilight Zone episodes in general, and what made them stand out from other sci-fi texts.

The History of The Twilight Zone

10/18/16 Tiernan Doyle

Today we explored the idea of the short story, and how they compare to novels, with its structure more of like a joke rather than a full story. We watched the newest trailer for the new star wars movie, and discussed the idea of characters of different genders and races being represented in science fiction. We also discussed the idea of which was better at displaying this idea of representation, star wars, or star trek. We further examined this by viewing a video that timed how much talking time all female characters except leia have in all of the original star wars movies, summing up to just over a minute for the entire trilogy.

Chris Vachris

Hey all its Chris Vachris. Sorry for being late with the blog post but here it is.

So I was graced with having to blog the same day as senior skip day so to compensate for some missing students Mr.Rivers made it known that we'd be scaling the class back a bit for the day. We finished our presentation's and they were all informative. Luis (sorry if name is wrong) provided and enjoyable presentation with the visually pleasing PowToon program. Our other two presenters Nikita and Alex both gave very simplistic but well done presentations which would actually benefit the presentation as it makes the idea of Chaos Theory easier to understand for the audience. Overall the day really just continued and added to the classes general knowledge of chaos theory nothing new was presented.

Ben Schultz- 10/5/16

Hi Everyone, today in Science Fiction Exploration Class, we began our Chaos Theory presentations. We began with Tiernan Doyle (Sorry if I spelled your name wrong), who used a skit about time travel, and borrowing pencils to demonstrate how Chaos Theory works. He showed that depending on whose pencil a volunteer borrowed, the impact could be wildly different; from Tiernan losing his hand, to the school burning down. We also had a presentation from Mason, who used small toys to demonstrate chaos theory.  He used the metaphor of a meteor crashing into the small toys to show how no matter how many variables we control, we can never predict exactly how the meteor will affect the toys.We also had a presentation on how the web comic, Homestuck, and the game they play in it, demonstrates Chaos Theory. Everyone's presentations were informative, and helped us to understand exactly how Chaos Theory works. To see how many examples our class though of that relate to Chaos Theory, really shows how much of an impact chaos theory has on science, and how much scientists need to take into account when calculating things.

Jacob Sedar

Hi everyone welcome back to the Sci-Fi blog. Today in Mr. River's class, we continued on with the Chaos Theory presentations. Nikita's audience was small children and taught chaos theory to us while Julia had the audience of 3 year old kids and used Jenga and Candy Land to explain it. Soumya had the audience of teenagers and used carrom to show that there would be many different versions of what could happen in the game. Luke, Ben and Chris had the audience of children and wrote a children's book about chaos theory showing many different ways that 'The Little Engine Could and Could Not' was not able to get up a hill. Sean had an audience of high school students and used computer filing and data to show chaos theory. My audience was people who played Destiny by using the game mode 'Trials of Osiris' to show the many factors that I would be and not be in control of.

From these presentations today, I could tie Chaos Theory into many other subjects in school. For instance in physics, if car A is going 3 m/s North and has to make a turn with car B next to it, there are many possibilities of what could happen if car A turned into car B or if they never hit each other. In different dimensions there would many variations of what could happen if there was an accident. The cars could have not collided or could have and someone got hurt.

10/03/16 - Julia Orlando

Welcome back to the Science Fiction Blog spot! Today in Science fiction today Mr. Rivers started off the class with talking about chaos theory and how we need to get with partners. He allowed us to get with partners ( groups of two) and then decide which one of the two questions on classrooms you and your partner wanted too. One of the questions is about the tone towards the dinosaurs and how it changes throughout the film that he sooner presented. The other question is about how the scientists and engineers use science to help the people who visit Jurassic Park and how chaos theory will effect the science these engineers use on them.
In the 15-18 minute Jurassic Park clip that was presented us as a class were able to see three different people voyage around Jurassic Park to get a good look of dinosaurs. We see a woman and two men who are blown away by the magnificent. They are all fascinated by the dinosaurs and the owner of Jurassic Park is genuinely pleased with himself. He then takes them onto a ride where they see a presentation about mutation and how the dinosaurs are made. The woman and the two men are excited until they find out how the dinosaurs were created.
The dinosaurs were created through genetic modification and you see how manipulating the scientists are too the people. You see how this will not work in the favor. This is all we did today.
Do not forget to finish your chaos theory project by Wednesday!