Author: Daniel Khaldarov

I really enjoyed doing the BioBlitz. I am already a person who enjoys hiking and nature and the guides that I was with were very intelligent and had a lot to say about the plants in the park as well as some geological history of the park and even some information about the indigenous people who lived there. Everything they explained sparked my curiosity and would lead to more questions so it was a very educational experience while being relaxing.

Working with MakerHub was also a really good experience for me since I had never worked with 3-D printing before but I have been curious about it ever since the news story a few years ago about 3-D printed guns. Tinkercad was a very good tool for introducing someone like me to design because I have absolutely no design experience whatsoever but I was still able to figure it out very easily. I got to talk with one of the MakerHub guys one-on-one and we had a very interesting discussion about all the possibilities of this technology and how it is going to impact our lives in the future. When asking about the 3-D printed guns and the ban on the designs, he explained to me that with some basic design skills a person would be able to design almost anything that could be made out of plastic and there is really nothing the government could do to regulate something like that. I found that really interesting since this is clearly going to greatly impact our lives in the future, thankfully mostly for the better. While I have already chosen a career and skill path that I want to go down in my life I can see that for the next generation, skills like programming and design are probably going to become absolutely essential or offer a huge advantage and open many possibilities for people as the technology to create anything from the comfort of our homes on our computers will become a reality.

Our work in the lab was also great for me since I had no idea how soap was created at all and have also been curious about how drugs are actually synthesized in a lab, though I am sure it can get much more complicated than the simple procedure we followed to make aspirin.

I definitely believe all these experiences have made me a more well-rounded person

Other than that, I have to say working with my group I learned a lot about communicating and managing workload with my partners especially when other obligations begin to interfere. In this case I thought it was a good thing that we had the same groups for both of the projects.

Finally thank you Jake and Professor Greer, I thought both of you were great instructors and class time was always a pleasure because you made it so much fun.

First of all, I really enjoyed the lab and thought it was a very interesting experiment. I have always been curious about how medicinal drugs are actually created so I felt that it was very enlightening to actually be able to make our own aspirin. One thing this lab highlighted was the importance of following procedures very carefully. My group had to reread each of the steps before doing anything and also read a few steps ahead and then back in order to make sure we were doing everything exactly as written and in the correct order. Thankfully, our efforts resulted in the successful creation of aspirin with no salicylic acid but I could see that many groups were not as successful. I do not blame them since I was still unsure if we had done everything absolutely correct in the procedure but it was probably this attention to detail that made our group successful. One of the greatest strengths of the scientific method is how mathematical and procedural it is, that if it is done correctly the desired result will be achieved. One problem, however, is the potential lack of precision with humans themselves that can interfere with the experiment.

If I was an author in the New York Times, my goal in a popular science article would always be first and foremost to inform my readers and tell them the absolute truth about what is written in a scientific journal. I think it is most important to put the truth ahead of any sort of inaccurate clickbait headline which will just cause more people to read the article but give them inaccurate information. One thing I would do is make sure that all relevant information in the article is mentioned, maybe leaving out certain technical details but not anything which affects the conclusions of the research or experiments. I would talk about possible future implications of the research but phrase it in a way so that the readers can clearly differentiate what is known for sure from the research and what may be possible in the future due to this research. If possible, such as in the ketamine depression article written by Vox which I presented on, I would have some anecdotal interview with a person who underwent such a trial and how they were affected, getting both someone who was treated effectively and someone who was not if possible, in order to have both sides, while including statistics on the rate of effectiveness. This way people will be more able to relate to the research and how it could effect them.