Reinvention project
The Reinvention project was about re-creating Romeo and Juliet. We were put into groups of 4-5 and were all assigned a conflict. My group was assigned to the French Revolution conflict. We then read the play version of Romeo and Juliet. In order to re-create the play of Romeo and Juliet we had to create costumes, a set, blueprints, a physics essay, lighting, music, food, budgets, and weapons that all take place in our specific conflict. This required knowledge on our conflicts and so we also had to do a lot of research on whichever conflict we were studying.
My group for the Reinvention project was Jasmin Diaz, Gabriella Schnepp, Anna Ryburn, and Elijah Miller. I loved working with this group because we worked really well together by having great communication, and also splitting up our work evenly. We also helped each other with whatever needed help.
What I specifically made for this project was one of the lighting descriptions, the set with Jasmin, a model of a French Cannon with jasmin, a blueprint of a musket, and a physics essay on a musket. I also helped with many other products for our re-creation of Romeo and Juliet as well. Before this project I did not know anything about the French Revolution. I made sure to do a lot of research on the French revolution, and that is how I have gained knowledge of that conflict. I learned that the French Revolution was a civil war in France between the Commoners and the Aristocrats. I learned that the commoners started this war after hearing about the Enlightenment theory, which was a theory that everyone was equal. The commoners wanted to be an equal with the Aristocrats and so they started a war and because of their strength in numbers, eventually cut the heads off of the King and Queen of France. I of course have learned much more, but that was just an example of what I learned about France during the French Revolution.
Many things went well with this project including how our final product turned out. Certain people in my group are super good at art and drawing and so our costume sketches were superb. I am also really proud of our booth. We made sure to put up all of the requirements inside our booth while also decorating it with decorations that made it look like France. We made our booth very educational while also being aesthetically pleasing.
The struggles that we had were that one person entered our group late, and did not work as well as the rest of us did. Sometimes that group member refused to work, and only made things harder on the rest of us. We tried to get this group member to work and helped that person as much as we could, but the bottom line was that they didn't do much at all and didn't really care about our project. However, we still ended up being very successful with the final product of our project.
I made sure that I prioritized when working on this project. This is because we had many things due over the course of this project and so I made sure to work on the things that were due the most recently. I also made sure I was always working on something because there was always something to be done. Although I created a lot of the work and my fair share and helped on a lot of things, I feel like instead of helping on a lot of work I could of been in charge of more things. For example I am not a good artist and so I let my group members be in charge, and so maybe I could of challenged myself and at least tried to draw some costumes.
If I could change the project I wouldn't want it to be a museum. This is because our museum was really boring and didn't even look like a museum. I think it would be more exciting if exhibition had been more interactive. This is because the audience gets really bored after just listening and I think they would of have more fun it our exhibition had been more interactive. I think it would also be better if we actually transformed the room. The only things we did was put up walls and put black tarp on the white boards, and so it still looked like a classroom.
What I learned from the humanities side of this project was all about the French Revolution. I learned many things about the French Revolution such as that it was a bloody civil war in France between the French Commoners and the French Aristocrats. I learned about the enlightenment theory which was that everyone was equal. I learned that the commoners heard about the Enlightenment theory and decided that the way they were living was not fair and so they decided to rebel against the Aristocrats. This eventually led to the King and Queen of France getting their head chopped off. I also learned about Stalin's Russia as well and how Joseph Stalin made Russia a Communist country by ruling Russia in terror. I also learned about weapons that were used from the French Revolution such as a Guillotine, Cannon, Bayonet, and Musket. I learned much more but this only some of what I learned through the history side of this project. Before this project I didn't know anything about the French Revolution or Stalin's Russia. I think it is important to know about history and significant wars that happened in the past, therefore I am always going to take the knowledge I gained of history through this project with me for the future. I wish I could of learned more about the other conflicts, instead of only knowing about three.
For the physics side of this project I learned a lot about the physics of a musket. I learned that the momentum of any average firearm would be zero. This is because the momentum of the projectile when it is released from the gun is the same as the recoil and so they cancel each other out making the total momentum Zero. I also learned that when the gun is not being fired the bullet has a type of potential energy called chemical potential energy, and when the bullet is being fired it has kinetic energy. Like all weapons a musket has simple machines made up of it. A lever is in a musket which is a rod pivoted on a fulcrum. Newton's first law is: an
object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. I learned that this comes into play with a musket because the bullet will stay at rest unless its acted upon by an outside force. In the opposite direction, once a gun is shot, the bullet would keep going on forever unless its acted upon by an outside force(s) such as air resistance, friction, etc. Of course I also learned much more about physics during this project and this is only some of the knowledge that I have gained. To be honest I didn't know anything about a musket before this project, and all I knew was that it was a gun. I thought it was really interesting to research and learn about weapons and so I am going to take this newly found knowledge with me for wherever I go in the future. I think it would of been cool to study other weapons as well, instead of just the one that we chose to do our essay on.
My definition of good is doing something good for someone else and not benefiting from it in any way. I still have trouble answering the question "what is evil". I believe that evil is mostly an opinion. Yes, some things seem to be just pure evil, such as killing or raping young children. However, other things people may agree or disagree if something is evil. Sometimes I believe that the person committing an evil action, does not think that he/she is doing evil. Another example that shows evil is an opinion is that some people thinks that natural disasters are evil and some do not. In conclusion I think that evil is merely an opinion. I think that good does over power evil. It seems to always have done so in the past and I don't see why it would stop now. The world always seem to benefit from the evil that is was previously put through. I think that man can learn from his mistakes and not repeat history if man was able to feel empathy for everyone in the world.