Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Performance Enhancement Advertisement

The causes and effects of using performance enchanting substances varies from each different substance, but they do all tend to have similar effects on the body. Some of the causes of using those substances are peer pressure, body image, media influences, and role models. Some of the common effects on the body when using the substances are really bad acne, stunted growth in teens, high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol changes, heart disease, blood clots and stroke, liver damage, jaundice, or liver cancer, headaches, aching joints, and muscle cramps, increased risk of ligament and tendon injuries, hepatitis B and C or HIV which causes AIDS, and baldness.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Chicken Dissection

In this lab we took a frozen Safeway chicken and we went ahead and cut it in a way so we could see and find the different muscles, the tendons, and sometimes the bones in the chicken. But of course, before we could do any of that we first had to remove the skin off of the parts of the chicken that we wanted to see the muscles, which in some areas was way easier than others (removing the skin off the torso vs removing the skin off the arms or legs). While we were doing the dissection we labeled some of the muscles that will be shown below. When seeing how it all works, the bones, muscles, and tendons; you can see how the bone is the base structure, but it's also used for movement, the muscle is for helping support the weight that the bones bare and also help the bones move, and the tendons are what keep the muscles and bones connected and provides movement when the muscle pulls on the tendon which moves the bone. In the chickens we were dissecting, there were main differences in how their muscle are compared to ours, for example the two most major differences between us and the chickens are in our pectoralis major and pectoralis minor. Their pectoralis major and minor are huge compared to their relative body size, unlike ours which are rather small compared to the rest of our bodies. This is because of two reasons, first being that chickens need those muscles for flight, and second being we raised those chicken for their white meat, so that's why their pectoralis major and minor are actually bigger than they are supposed to be.


Thursday, March 17, 2016

20 Time Update

I've learned that I am fully capable of doing this project, but it's just gonna take quite a bit of work on my part, and patience. What I've learned so far about myself, one thing isn't much of a surprise, but I'm really stubborn sometimes about trying different programs to animate, I keep making things way more complicated than they actually should be, and I'm not always the most patient one out there. I've already hit one set back, which was using a program and not being able to figure out how to correctly use it, but I switched to a different program and am already planning to try using another program to see if it works better than the one I am currently using. I'll leave this off with what I have figured out what to do so far, don't worry about that meme, it's nothing and can be ignored.

Saturday, March 12, 2016

What happens when you stretch? Relate and Review

This reading was about the different things that happen in your muscles on the microscopic level when you stretch. For instance when you hold a stretch for awhile, your muscles will try to go against it at first, but after awhile they will relax and it will allow you to gain a larger range of flexibility over time. It also goes into some interesting details of how your muscles react when they are stretched.

"The total length of a stretched muscle is a result of the number of fibers stretched -- the more fibers stretched, the more length developed by muscle for a given stretch."
So when you repetitively stretch, over time more of your fibers will be stretched and will allow you to increase the length of your stretched muscle.

"Gradually, you can train your stretch receptors to allow greater lengthening of the muscles."
Just like how you can train yourself to respond to something with quick reflexes, you can train your muscles to do something quite similar.

"While this type of control provides the opportunity for the greatest gains in flexibility, it also provides the greatest risk of injury if used improperly."
My thoughts on this quote are, yes, if you push yourself too hard in doing something (in this case, trying to become more flexible) you do have the potential of injuring yourself badly.

Monday, February 29, 2016

Unit 6 Reflection

This unit was focused around basically the anatomy and physiological aspects of bones. We talked about how our bones are almost constantly being slowly destroyed by osteoclasts and being rebuilt (slower or faster depending on your age) by osteoblasts. We also talked about the types of bones, from their classification (long, short, flat, irregular) to the types of bone that are found in bones (spongy and compact). Another thing about bones we talked about were some of the disorders that happen within the skeletal system (arthritis, osteoporosis, scoliosis, lordosis, kyphosis, and rickets). Arthritis is the inflammation of your joints, osteoporosis is when your bones become porous and overall weaker, scoliosis is when there is a sideways curvature of the spine, lordosis is when there is over extension of the lumbar spine, and kyphosis is also known as having a hunched back. The lab that we did this unit was the owl pellet lab, where we took an owl pellet and separated the bones and cleaned (to a certain extent) from the pellet from the fur and/or feathers. Next we measured the skull and the mandible (if the pellet had them) and then we tried to identify the animal the skull and bones belonged to before trying our best to reconstruct the skeleton with what bones we had. I felt really good about this unit, since I've always loved the topic of bones and have always been interested in them. Checking back in on my New Years Goals, I'd say that I've been holding up to them so far and haven't strayed far from them.


Friday, February 26, 2016

20 time and animation

20 time is when you take a certain amount of your time (about 20%) to work on a project that you want to do, whether it's to help improve something that already exists or for your own benefit to learn how to do something new. I really did not ask an essential question, instead I'm just planning to learn how to do something that I've been very interested in learning for quite awhile now. I have chosen to teach myself how to animate for my 20 project, the reason why I chose this was because of the fact that I've been wanting to learn how to animate for a few years now. My goal at the end of all of this is to be able to animate pretty well, with still room for improvement.  To see how I progress with this, I'll be posting what I manage to animate, and I'll be I guess evaluating how my animations are.

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Owl Pellet Lab

In this lab, we took an owl pellet and took it apart, so that the bones and fur of what that owl had eaten were in separate piles. We then took the bones and tried our best to identify what it was and tried our best to reconstruct the skeleton of the animal with what bones we had. What we think our animal was, is that it's a rat. We decided on this because the average skull of a rat is 30 mm in length and about 25 mm in width, and the skull we had was 30 mm in length and 21 mm in width. Another feature of the skull that made us think it's a rat would be the way the teeth in it's skull were. The differences the skeleton of a rat to a human are the shape of the pelvis is long in a rat unlike that of a human, the rat's skull is elongated and has a different set up in teeth, and the rat's tibia and fibula are fused together at some parts unlike that of a human's. The similarities between rat and human skeletons are that their ribs are roughly the same shape, the scapula are also roughly the shame shape, and that the overall skeleton is roughly the same, just with slight differences in length and built.