Evan -- Blogmeister

Evan
Miss Transue
English H-8
June 1, 2011

Have you ever heard of a spud gun? Do you even know what I am talking about? Let me start off by saying that spud guns are illegal. They are illegal because they qualify as zip guns. Zip guns are any firearm that uses a combustion chamber to fire a homemade projectile. You are probably wondering how it exactly works well its really simple.

The physics behind all this is the high-temp gases cause pressure within the combustion chamber. The forces are balanced across the chamber, where the sides are fixed (though may flex slightly). The forces are unbalance along the chamber because the spud can move. The spud and the gun gain equal amounts of momentum in opposite directions, but the greater mass of the gun means its velocity is lower. The acceleration of the spud effectively stops when it leaves the barrel, as the expanding gases are able to disperse sideways (Physics).

Now how to make your own you ask? Well first get a bbq lighter, then some plastic water piping, but make sure its pressure rated! Then get some pvc cement glue and glue your pieces together. After that dries for twenty-four hours take it all and drill a hole to fit the spark plug from the lighter internals into the plastic combustion chamber. Once it’s all fitted together nicely get your hairspray or starting fluid and spray it into the back of the combustion chamber. Once you have completed that quickly tighten the end cap and give her a try.
In conclusion you have learned what, how, and created your own spud gun. So please kids don’t shoot at anything you don’t intend to kill or harm.

Works Cited
"Physics Mini Potato Spud Gun Homework Help." Instructables - Make, How To, and DIY. Web. 02 June 2011. <http://www.instructables.com/community/physics-mini-potato-spud-gun-homework-help/>.

Did Romeo and Juliet actually have to kill each other or was there another way to make the families stop fighting?

April Freewrite

It all started on day when I woke up at around three A.M. to go to the bathroom and get a drink. I went down stairs went to the cabinet and grabbed the tall Blues Racing glass and Filled my cup. I was so thirsty that I chugged the entire thing. I finished up and went back up stairs. Right as I get into my door I hear a loud crash that sounded like glass breaking and a quick pound. I leaned over to grab my pistol and headed down the steps to find out that it was only my dog. I put my pistol in my holster and turn around to head up stairs.

Right then and there a zombie popped out in front of my face like what would happen in scary movie. I grabbed for my pistol but he already had me and was dragging me outside to his little feisty friends! I heard Charlie running down the stairs and I yelled for him to grab the shotgun. Charlie came at the zombie with the gun. He then took the butt of the gun and smacked the zombie over the head. I get up and we run to the cellar and get down in my safe room.

The safe room consist of a piece of hydraulic lifted steel that when you press a button you can open it and go down a latter four hundred feet under ground. When you go down in the safe room you see right away that it is stocked full of canned food and weapons. When we got down those four hundred feet we just waited out for the zombies to go away. The zombies seemed like they would never go away for over Fifteen hours straight. It wasn’t until the third night that we heard something that sounded like a helicopter. We started our travel back up into civilization again and realized that the united state army finally did something right in helping the people. We talked to a few people and they said the wave of zombies followed a few groups so and are heading for southern California. Charlie and I went back into our would be rooms but the us army dropped an atomic bomb to try to kill the zombies and managed to not be there in time.

Evans Around the world II

For my second around the world we have to pick a country and find seven interesting facts about them. I picked Russia because Russia always intrigued me and I have always wanted to go to Russia.

Russia has as many as 160 ethnics groups with a population of 142 million people which may look like a lot but because of Russia’s size it’s not a very densely populated country (“Facts”).

Russia contains four religions that are contained by its 17,075,400 square kilometers (about 65 million square miles) some of the many religions are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism (“Facts”).

Due to Russia’s large landmass that spans over eight time zones there is a bunch of dramatic weather changes. If you go far north it could be really cold and snow can be there for months or years on end. If you go far south you could run your self dry in Russia’s desert (“Facts”).

Even though Russian is Russia’s official language there is many other languages including German, French, and Ukrainian (“Facts”).

Russia is the world’s largest country in the world amplifying half way around the world (“General”).

Although there is over 142 million people in Russia nearly eighty percent of people live in the western part of Russia (“General”).

Instead of using actual letters like the United States of America does in their alphabet the Russians use Cyrillic symbols (“General”).

Although Russia is so huge and looks like it will take for ever to get to, it only takes three hours and thirty-five minutes by airplane (“General”).

Russia touches twenty-two bodies of water and twelve seas. If you’re a tourist you can not just find the world’s largest country but also the world’s deepest lake, (Lake Baikal), (“Language”).

With Russia having a vast supply of natural resources Russia depends heavily on mining for the countries money (“Language”).

Even though the official religion is Russian orthodox only twenty percent is Russian orthodox (“Language”).

Russia is the world’s second most leader in nuclear warheads and bombs (“Language”).

In conclusion these seven interesting facts that I found about Russia are very cool to read about. I found out a lot of stuff that I did not even know about this country before this blog.

Works Cited

"Facts about Russia: the Most Interesting Facts about Russia." Travel All Russia - Russian Visas, Cruises, Tours, Flights and Hotels. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://www.travelallrussia.com/facts-about-russia/>.

"General Facts About Russia." AIT: Ukrainian Translation, Russian Translation, Software Development. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://www.stranslation.com/Russian_Translation/general_facts_about_russia.htm>.

"Language – Russiapedia Basic Facts about Russia." Get Russianalized – Russiapedia. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://russiapedia.rt.com/basic-facts-about-russia/language/>.

Narrative Essay

Evan

Miss. Transue

Cp English H-8

9 March 2011

Raging Flames

Did you ever do anything you regretted? If it involves fire or gas this is a thumbs up for you. It all happened over my great older brother of mine that lets his 14 year old brother light a fire.

A very long time ago, (about one year). My brother thought it would be cool to have a little get together with all of his college buddies while dad was gone on a road trip. He first told everyone there is a get together at the house and they should come over. Well as everyone showed up I got the drinks together and started cooking the food. While the food was cooking I asked my brothers friends if they want to play a game of basketball. While we were playing basketball everyone wanted to switch to pool basketball so we played pool basketball for the rest of the night.

That next morning most of the people were already leaving. So as we all sat around thinking about what to do while watching the fox news channel. My brother then started to pick out jobs for us to do around the house before my dad got home that night. My brother said he was going to clean the pool, my sister is going to clean the house and my little brother and I had to pick up the trash from outside. I told my brother that I was going to light the trash and burn it so my dad doesn’t find out. After we picked up all the trash I told my older I wanted to burn all the trash.

On my way down to the fire pit I had to grab some tiki oil which is used for lighting outdoor candles that keep bugs away. My dad and I always use this to light fires but there was only about a cup full left and it wasn’t enough. I kept looking around for more tiki oil but couldn’t find any. Since I could not find any more tiki oil I then saw the regular gasoline that is meant for cars. My dad always told me about the dangers of using gas to start fires, and how it was never safe. Well I took some of that and all the trash bags and put them down in the fire pit. I dowsed all the trash in gas and tiki oil and forgot the most important thing needed to light the fire so I ran back up to the house to get the lighter. The last thing I remember is a click, click and a loud boom!

My brother was running like a track star would at a track meet right down towards me. When he got to me I was screaming my head off to get him to put out the fire on my arm. He was trying to calm me down and said “your arms not on fire, so shut up and get your but back to the house.” Right after he said that I could not think of anything but laughing my butt off. Later that night my dad came home and I was trying to figure out how to tell him that I nearly lost my arm today. I went straight for it and said “dad I went to light the fire and the gas caused a flash fire towards my face and burnt my arm.” My dad then took me down stairs and luckily for me he hates hydrogen peroxide so he dumped a whole bottle of rubbing alcohol on my arm. My arm looked like a giant pot of red boiling blood water on a hot stove. My dad ripped off the rest of the burnt dead skin. When he did that my arm looked like you took a knife to yourself and skinned yourself. Later that night me and my dad went to the cvs pharmacy in Montrose and picked up some scar zone which is a cream that helps reduce scars as they happen. My dad helped me take care of my arm and actually felt sorry for me because he was not there when it happened. The next weekend we went to a campground and went jet skiing.

In conclusion gasoline, a lighter, and a little stupidity can go a long way. I mean from the trash pit back to your face that is, so never use gasoline for anything but cars and stuff it is intended for.

February Freewrite My dad bought these things called Tannrite. Tannrite is a binary agent that is a mixture of Ammonium nitrate, aluminum dust and magnesium. I encourage you to try these but only under adult supervision and use of a little common sense. The science behind the boom and a little white cloud of dust is the high powdered rifle projectile hitting the mixed molecules at a high velocity. When I was reading up on this stuff that my dad had brought home one day I found out that you can only shoot it with a high powdered rifle and not a center fire pistol or a .22 caliber. Having my dad shoot it with his glock .357 sig pistol and having the Tannrite blow up was a positive for me and a negative for the advertisers of Tannrite. Since my dad thought the Tannrite was so cool he went out to the store to buy more. Finally, I asked dad (not knowing at the time he was going to use Tannrite) if we can go ice fishing and he said yes but we had no idea how to put a hole in the ice. We then asked my Brother in law who is an active marine if he had any ideas. He then said that the Tannrite made a big hole in a piece of plastic so he had the idea to make a hole in the ice with it. Shannon the marine put the Tannrite out on the ice and we did not know it at the time but he put about a gallon of gas under it in a bucket that we thought he put there so we can see it. Later, Shannon and I took shots at the Tannrite. I was using my Mosin Nagant 91/30 Russian rifle, and he was using the M1 Garand American Infantry rifle. We took turns taking shots at the Tannrite and then he finally had enough of making him self look like a fool and took out his good old .243 with a scope and finally hit it. It was hard for my first time shooting my new rifle so I had not broken it in yet. You can check out my videos by emailing me at 14005@elklakeschool.org.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

When you see colors, you may automatically think of a way that you're feeling. It may be sadness or it may be love. Other colors may represent many different things. What do colors mean to you? For me black means anger, blue means sadness, yellow means happiness, and red means love.

Black: Anger, because in the winter it is so dark and glumy and it makes me mad.

Blue: Sadness, whenever someone cries I think of the color blue because their tears are blue.

Yellow: Happiness, because yellow reminds me of the sun and how warm it is in the summer and it brings warmth to your heart.

Red: Love, because most hearts are red so thats why red reminds me of love.

Whenever you see colors in the field or in the sky you should think about how the colors make you feel. Instead of just seeing them, really, think them through.

I commented on three different peoples blogs for my English grade. My English grade is not that great but hopefully this commenting on this one person who in their blog talked about how, for their new year’s resolution they were talking about how they wanted t quit smoking. I commented on the blog and told him that he did the right thing and I hope that he does and will never start back up again. I really feel bad for him and it makes me sad when I see or hear of people dying from cancer from smoking tobacco. Every time I here of people smoking I think of my grandpa who passed away in April of 2010 from smoking his pipe way to much.

In the book some wicked this way comes I wanted to know if Jim have ever really died? I'm guessing no but I really need help. Can you help me please?