Wet Market Reflection

Last science class (21st of January 2014 on a Tuesday) we went to a wet market to look at fruits and vegetable and spices and all sorts of other plant life. Well, right now it would be plant death. We, in groups of two, looked each at three fruits and three vegetables. Also, some of the groups were given money to buy a particular fruit or vegetable, including ours, but we never got to buy our starfruit because Sheng Siong Market was out of starfruit. As far as I know, our group was the only one that failed to buy a fruit.
Here's a list of all the fruit we took notes on:

Lotus Root

Lotus root is long a tubular. It seems to have an unattractive color, and an unattractive taste, so it probably doesn't spread its seeds through animals. Inside the lotus root are large holes, possibly for seeds, or possibly filled with air to float, or maybe even to decrease the amount of root the lotus has to grow.

Chili

Chili is small and red. It quite obviously does not like animals. It has a distinct spicy taste which animals quite obviously would hate, and its red color serves probably as a warning. The store has a whole bunch of fresh chillies, so they are obviously very easy to grow in our climate. Or maybe chillies just grow a whole bunch of seed pods on one plant, explaining their quite diminutive size.

Eggplant

Eggplant is oblong, and also quite nice smelling. The eggplants large size and juiciness probably means the eggplant seed pod can survive for a very long time, and is packed full of useful nutrients. Perhaps the nutrients can also be used to attract animals to eat them.

Dragonfruit

Dragonfruit (why does my spellchecker say this is wrong?) is very colorful. And, as Ryan said, demented shaped. The colors probably serve to attract animals, and so does the smell and sweet flesh. The flesh contains thousands of tiny hard black seeds. Make tons of tiny versions and hope one will survive?

Longan

Longan is relatively small and brown, about the size of a cherry or grape. It is extremely sweet tasting, again just like grapes, and contains a single large brown seed in the middle. This fruit is definitely animal spread, as the flesh is delicious and the seed is hard and undigestible.

Guava

Guava is a large and extremely watery fruit. The skin is about as hard as the flesh, slightly harder than a firm apple. The guava is, compared to most fruits, surprisingly un-sweet. One type of guava is bright pink on the inside. Small seeds reside inside the fruit.

The question is: Why are there so many fruits, vegetables, and spices? Other than, of course, that humans like eating different things. I think because if there are more types of plants that can do different things, it means that plants can grow almost anywhere. The more different capabilities, the more chance plants have of overtaking more places.

Sources:
http://www.joyharari.com/content/uploads/2012/10/Lotus_root.jpg
http://www.rna-seqblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/chili-peppers.gif
http://imgsrv.gardening.ktsa.com/image/ktsag/UserFiles/Image/E_Images/eggplant.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Pitaya_cross_section_ed2.jpg
http://www.newhealthguide.org/images/10415496/image001.jpg
http://wiki-fitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/guava01.jpg

Quickfire- SAS Settings

SAS Still Frames

Parallel Structure

Have you ever heard the saying, "The Fools mistakes are known to the world but not to himself, and the Wise Mans mistakes are known to himself but no to the world?" This is called parallel structure. These two sentences are similar in many ways, but slightly different.

Navidad en Spain

The traditional Spanish Christmas food is known as 'Pavo Trufado de Navidad', which means turkey stuffed with truffles (the mushrooms, not chocolates). In a place called Galicia, a region in North-West Spain, surrounded by water, the most popular meal for Christmas is seafood: shellfish, mollusks, lobster, and even small crabs.

Turkey Stuffed with Truffles

Seafood from Galicia

http://www.mujer.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Pavo-trufado.jpg
http://www.itrainsinspain.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/mariscada.jpg

Questions

You are buying ice cream for a party at your school, in which 1500 students will attend. 1. What is the population in the above scenario? 2. Give two reasons why you wouldn't survey the entire population? 3. Describe the sample you would survey, and explain why you chose that sample. 4. How would you use the results of your survey to make a generalization about students’ preferred ice cream flavors?

1. The 1500 students attending
2. It would take a really, really, really long time... unless we use Google Survey
3. Perhaps a randomly selected thirty, and to keep the survey from being biased, 15 will be male, 15 will be female, 10 from each side etc.
4. We can say each person questioned counts for 50 people. We can then find

Invictus

Invictus: impossible to defeat, unconquered, in the sense "you can beat someone physically, but you can never break what they think is true."

27 years in a tiny cramped cell, working long hours in hard work every day. How can that not break your spirit? People would go insane, wouldn't they? But then, why didn't Nelson Mandela? There is an obvious answer, he ,quite simply, really wanted to change South Africa. But still, I don't think that anyone could ever survive for 27 years like that. Perhaps it was the poem that he always kept with him, that made everything seem possible. The poem to him, was probably a sign of hope- and a sign that no one could break his spirit. Without the idea that anyone could break his mind, he could continue living normally in a place where everything was hopeless.

So does that mean that your mind is only broken if you think it can be? The key to not giving up is not thinking it is possible to give up? Or is it merely a sense of hope, that your dream might suddenly turn around and go your way? Or does Mandela's poem symbolize something completely different to him?