Starfish

Ten Interesting Facts About The Starfish

1) The Starfish actually isn't even a fish, because it does not have bones, so it's actual name is a "Sea Star," but it is commonly known as a "Starfish."

2) Sea stars are in the phlym of the Echinodermata, which means "spiky skin" in Latin, and are classed as Asteroidea.  They are in the same phylum as sea urchins and sand dollars.

3) Sea stars don't have blood, they use a water vascular system.

4) If a sea star loses an arm, they can easily grow the arm back.  If they get chopped up and part of the center gets lost, the center part can regenerate a whole new sea star so that there is two.

5) One can not tell the gender of the sea star by just looking at it and observing it, it must be dissected and the gonads have to be looked at under a microscope to determine if there is a tail or eggs.

6) Sea stars are protected by an armor made of calcium carbonate and it is covered in spikes to protect it from its' predators.

7) The eyespot on the sea star is located on the ends of their tube feet, which they use to walk.

8) The sea star has two stomachs, and they digest on the outside of their body.

9) Sea star are referred to as benthic because they walk on the body of the ocean floor, they do not swim.

10) Sea stars don't just have 5 arms, they can grow up to 40 arms.  It all depends the kind of species.

Mollusk Anaylsis

All week in marine biography, we have been learning about mollusks.  On Wednesday, we dissected a clam. and on Thursday we dissected a squid.  The mollusks have a morphological feature after which the phylum is named.  The word "mollusk" means "soft thing."  Therefore, mollusks have soft bodies which explains the name of the phylum.  Since mollusks have soft bodies, they face biological troubles.  Because of their soft body, they are more fragile.  Along with that, they have more difficulty to support their bodies in terrestrial environments or to fixate to substrates in aquatic habitats.  A lot of mollusk species solve this problem by having a shell to support and protect them, and also to prevent dehydration.  Mollusks are divided into classes.  The five classes are: pelecypods, or bivalves, which includes oysters, clams and mussels.  Gastropods include snails and sea slugs.  Cephalopods include squids and octopuses.  Scaphopods include tooth shells.  And polyplacophora include chitons.  All the animals we dissected in class had a vertical symmetry.  Each animal we dissected down the middle and they all were pretty much the same in their own being.  The clam had a hard but smooth shell that was very hard to open, the inside of it was very gooey and slimy.  The squid was overall squishy and soft and were clearly no bones in it, but there are two parts of it that are hard which was the beak and the pen.  The pen supports the squid and gives it structure but isn't a bone, and the beak is it's mouth, and those are the only two hard spots.

New England Aquarium Field Trip

The marine animals had all different behaviors.  I observed an octopus for a while, and it stayed suctioned to the corner for the tank for a long time and it was sleeping.  When I took a picture of it with flash on, it woke it up and it starting moving and suctioning more tenticles to the glass.  Octopus are very smart animals and they can get out of almost anything, that's why it's hard to keep it in a tank because they will find a way out.  The workers at the aquarium will put a metal box of food in the tank and they will lock the box, and the octopus manages to get the box open.  Another marine animal that I observed were the penguins.  It was mating season at the aquarium so the penguins did a lot of mating.  They also love standing on the rocks and squawking, making loud noises.  They also swim all around and have a lot of fun.  The penguins also get attached very quickly to humans so they try not to touch them.

Marine conservation is a very good thing, because it's tying to save the marine environment.  One way for marine conservation is to not cut down the mangrooves because there are so many marine animals that have habitats surrounding them.  Another way is to not touch the animals because they try to have the aquarium in a wild-like situation as well as they can, so they need the animals to be independent.  One example is that one of the aquarium workers told me that they try not to touch the penguins because one day they're going to try to put them back into the wild in areas where they have become extinct.

http://www.neaq.org/index.php?gclid=Cj0KEQjw0fOoBRDn88Pol8bqhN0BEiQARGVJKms5KWJXGhanq1Uel_KL6sQB7OpdnyJQFG6-h0JrjNgaAukL8P8HAQ

(these are all pictures taken by me)

This field trip enhanced my learning about marine bio.  This was the third time that I have gone to the New England Aquarium, but since it was a school field trip, it was the first time that I actually had to study the animals to be able to write about them, so I had learned more.  It makes me really interested in the marine animals and makes me want to work with them.

Deep Sea Lights

What deep-sea organisms are capable of bioluminescence, and how does this ability benefit these organisms?

Deep-sea organisms that are capable are the Anglerfish, and it uses it to lure prey, and micro organisms use it to signal distress.  Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living animal.  It's a form of chemiuminescence.  It benefits deep sea organisms for many different reasons.  For some creatures, if an animal is in trouble, it will draw attention to them so that another fish can come save them.  Another example is for luring prey in.

The organism I chose is the Anglerfish.  The fish is named for its characteristic mode of predation, where a glow shows from the head to lure other fish in.  They are members of the Lophiiformes.  The Angler fish might possibly be the ugliest creature on the planet.  There are more than 200 species of Angler Fish, and they live in the murky depths of the Atlantic and Antarctic Oceans.  Only females wear a piece of dorsal spine that protrudes above their mouths like a fishing pole.  The lure is of luminescences.  The Angler Fish uses its bioluminescences to lure in other fish as prey so that it can survive.

Marine Ecosystems: Energy Flow

In the food chain, I was the Beleen Whale.  The Beleen Whale eats krill and Copepods, and the Phytoplankton is at the bottom of the food chain as a producer.  The trophic levels start with the producers, then the primary, secondary, tertiary, and then quaternary.  As the trophic levels go up, the energy decreases by 10%.  Biomagnification occurs when the concentration of a substance in an organism exceeds the background concentration of the substance in its diet.  Examples are mercury and DDT.

Oceanography Final Essay

The fundamentals of physical oceanography and meteorology make the Earth habitable.  The physical oceanography includes the waves, tides, currents, etc.  The meteorology includes the winds and the climate.  Earth is the only planet in our solar system and universe that can sustain life.  That is because the Earth is in a spot in the solar system that enables us to be able to comfortably live in our planet.  The Earth is the third planet away from the sun, so we get the perfect amount of sun in order to live, we aren’t too close so we don’t get too much, and we aren’t too far so we don’t get too little.  The waves, tides, and currents along with the winds and climate all come into play because of the Earth, and where it is located.  The waves, tides, currents, winds, and climate all take part in making the Earth habitable.

            The ocean is a major influence on weather and climate, which is one of the reasons that make Earth habitable.  The oceans in the world are important to heating the planet.  The winds and currents move the nutrients and the heat around the world.  The areas of land and atmosphere absorb some of the sunlight, while the Earth’s oceans absorb the majority of the sun’s radiation.  The areas around the equator are the warmest on Earth, and the ocean acts as a heat-retaining solar panel.   If it wasn’t for Earth’s atmosphere, all the heat we get from the sun during the day would quickly radiate into space after sunset, so the atmosphere plays a huge part.  Along with solar radiation, the ocean helps distribute heat around the globe.  Evaporation happens when the water molecules are heated, and they exchange freely in the air.  Since the ocean water is constantly evaporating, so the temperature and humidity is increasing of the surrounding air which is how rain and storms are formed,  and then are carried off by the winds and can go very far distances, maybe all over the world.  Most of the rain on land starts out in the ocean, and the tropics have so much rain because of evaporation.  Weather patterns are mostly caused by ocean currents.  Ocean currents transport precipitation and warm water around the world in a specific order, which causes the currents to regulate the climate of Earth, which evenly distributes the solar radiation of Earth’s climate.  Without the ocean currents, Earth’s land would be much less habitable.

            The oceans around the world and the people on Earth are inextricably interconnected for multiple reasons.  Humans cannot live without the ocean.  The ocean supplies fresh water for humans, and almost all of our oxygen.  The ocean gives humans food, medicines, and energy resources.  The ocean provides a variety of different jobs for humans, and serves as a global transportation for countries all around the world to trade goods and such, acting as a highway.  Not only does the ocean affect humans, but humans affect the ocean, as well.  Fishing, pollution, and building are all ways that humans affect the ocean.  All living things on Earth depend on the ocean, so it is up to everyone to care for it.  Explorers also have a big part in the ocean.  The European’s were the most famous ocean explorers, but there were also the Polynesians, Phoenicians, etc.  The explorers used the ocean to discover knew parts of the world, like how the Europeans discovered the Americas.  If it wasn’t for the ocean, then they would not have been able to do that.

            The ocean shapes the features of the Earth.  The ocean affects the places that we live in.  A lot of the rocks and minerals that form our planet come from the ocean.  The beaches are made and changed by the effects of the ocean waves and its currents.  The changes in sea level have also literally shaped the surface of Earth’s lands.  The deep ocean trenches are an example of features that can form along plate tectonic boundaries.  From the result of the ocean, the plate tectonics move a few centimeters each year.  That shapes the Earth because it causes the land on Earth to move, as well as creating mountains and volcanoes, which changes the land areas.  The ocean is very powerful, which causes the features on Earth to change.  The breaking waves form and shape the coastlines on Earth.  Waves deposit and carry away the sediments on the land areas.  The coastlines all around the world are different from the different oceans and waves, but no matter where it is, the ocean has a major effect to the coastline, shaping it to how it is.
            The Earth is habitable all because of the waves, tides, currents, winds, and climate.  They are all very important to the survival of all life on Earth.  All of these fundamentals of physical oceanography and meteorology correspond in order to make Earth habitable.  Without just one of these, it could have a major impact of life on Earth.  I think for in order to keep Earth how it is, or even better, we need to make specific changes for the better connecting to each individual fundamental.  If it wasn’t for the major influence on weather and climate, we would not have the winds and currents move nutrients and heat.  If it wasn’t for the ocean and the people and how they are inextricably interconnected, we could not have had the explorers who even founded other continents in the world, along with food from the ocean, and oxygen in order to survive.  If the ocean didn’t shape the features of the Earth, we wouldn’t have tides, waves, coastlines, and plate tectonics.  All of these fundamentals tie things together, and we need to keep things the way they are in order for Earth to stay habitable for much longer.  

Work Cited

http://www.neosec.org/ol6

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/climate.html

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/

http://www.neosec.org/ol2

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/shaping.html

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/tectonic-features.html

http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/students/waves/waves4.htm

Sand: A Grain of History

When people think of sand, usually the first thing that comes to mind is a sandy beach.  Sand is the pulverized, weather rock including some fragments of tiny shelled creatures, which are tossed up by the waves and are also sediment from other inland areas.  Sand is basically the breakdown of rocks.  Some minerals are very unstable and decompose, while other minerals are much more stable.  The minerals that are more stable tend to get left behind.  All of the variables come together to create different-looking beaches.  Sand has been around for a long time, so most of the sand that is on the beaches, especially on the East coast and the Gulf coast, are about 5,000 years old.  Sand doesn't reach beaches today like it used to, so most of the sand is old.  One reason is the general rise in sea levels.  The rise in sea levels over the last 12,000 years has flooded river valleys and created large estuaries.  The estuaries trap the sand that would of reached the coast and gone onto the beaches, but instead stays trapped in the estuaries.  After major storms, beaches have to be replenished, by having sand off-shore be dragged up to the beaches.
There are so many grains of sand in the world, more than anyone could ever imagine.  With all this sand, where could it possibly come from?  Well, a lot of this sand is poop.  Key players in regulating algae and reef life is the Parrotfish.  The Parrotfish have additional teeth in their throats to help break down all the coral they eat into sand.  Parrotfish don't even have stomachs, so when they digest the sand, in comes right out exploding into a cloud of sand.  840 pounds of sand can be created alone by a larger parrotfish.  Besides the parrotfish; worms, sponges, and oysters also produce sand in the Pacific ocean, but no animal can do it as well as the parrotfish.  Sand has a very interesting history.

Dynamic Earth

The moving of tectonic plates is when the plates slide up against each other or away from each other.  What causes tectonic plates to move is the Earth's internal heat, which causes convection in the mantle, which we learned in class.  The movement is with rocks, and it is very slow so the process happens over time.  The movement of plate tectonics is the largest force that changes Earth's surface.  It can create earthquakes, cause mountains to grow higher, and oceans to grow wider.  Tectonic plates move about 2 inches per year, so we don't even notice the difference, but over time, one can see a huge difference.  Millions of years ago, Earth had a super continent called "Pangaea," which was when all of the continents were conjoined into one.  Something had happened which made the continents break apart, but there is evidence that they were once together because the continents can fit into each other like puzzle pieces, and there were fossils of the same animal on more than one continent, where the animal was non habitual to that area.  According to the theory of plate tectonics, it is believed that changes will occur to the oceans and continents over the next millions of years.  Since ever year, plate tectonics move about 2 inches, that means in about a million years from now, they would have moved so much that the continents could have completely shifted.  Also, with the continents moving, most likely moving together in the idea of Pangaea again, it would cause the oceans to get wider because there would be so much more space with the continents put all together.  No one knows for sure what could possibly happen within the next millions of years, but with all the information we have about plate tectonics and how the earth moves, we can guarantee that in so many years, the earth could have completely changed.

Ocean Navigation

Navigation is a huge part of oceanography.  In oceanography, we as a class have learned so much about ocean navigation.  The biggest part of ocean navigation is the compass.  The compass was invented in about 206 BC by the Chinese, Han Dynasty.  It was a magnetic compass used for maritime navigation.  Another thing we learned about was the earliest recorded sea voyage, which was the Egyptians, at about 3200 BC.  According to the Bible, Noah's Ark was before the Egyptians first sea voyage, but there is no official record of it happening, but I truly believe that it did happen.  Ocean's have shaped humanity's past, and oceanography is connected to the world's overall history: commerce, warfare, resources, weather, etc..  The Phoenicians traveled incredible distances, and they established the first trade routes throughout the Mediterranean and went as far as to Great Britain.  They traveled at night in order to see the constellations, which is what they used to tell direction.  The Polynesian people were in Hawaii, and they were from 2000 BC to 500 BC, and they used open canoes cut from tree trunks.  They settled islands before Europeans.  The Greeks discovered the mathematics principle and developed sophisticated maps for seafaring.  Pytheas was a Greek explorer who created the Pythagorean theorem.  Eratosthenes had two major contributions that furthered Pytheas' work, which was that they calculated Earth's circumference, and invented the first latitude and longitude system.  The Ptoloemys created a map of Earth that showed a portion of Earth as a sphere on flat paper.  They produced the first world atlas.  They then improved the latitude and longitude system.  The Vikings improved ship building, and had trade and colonization through the North Atlantic.  The Arabs currents associated with seasonal monsoon, and discovered trade routes to China from the Persian Gulf, they preserved and improved the Greek and Roman knowledge, and improved water tight compartments and the central rudder.  Along with the compass, the Chinese developed a trade route to the Persian Gulf.  Europeans increased knowledge of navigation, tide tables, and use of the Arab and Greco-Roman knowledge to improve navigation.  Along with all the information we learned, oceanography as a class learned ways how to navigate for ourselves.

Newton's Law Assesment

1. What are the relationships between forces and motion? 

The relationship between forces and motion is that net force is required to accelerate an object or change the motion of an object.  F=MA. F=Force. M=Mass. A=Acceleration.  Force is needed to create motion.  Newton's first law, the law of inertia, says that an object at rest will stay at rest unless there is some kind of force put on it.  So no object can move unless there is a force, and that's the relationship between force and motion, because when an object is moving, that's the motion, only because of the force.

2. What are the variables that affect motion and force?

The variables that affect motion and force is mass and acceleration.  When you multiply the mass of an object by the acceleration, that's what creates the force.  Then with the force, that's how you create the motion.  An objects' motion if affected by the acceleration and speed, along with the forces that are involved.

3. How does Newton’s three laws describe the motion of a moving 
object? 

Newton's three laws describe the motion of a moving object because they all involve force.  His first law talks about how an object in motion will stay in motion unless an outside force interferes with it.  That talks about the object and its motion.  His second law talks about the direction the object in motion will move.  His third law talks about that when we leave an object, the object will go in the opposite direction, talking about that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction of the object in motion.

4. How does gravity impact objects?

The greater the mass, the greater the gravitational pull.  Mass is attracted to anything with a mass, and it's a force at a distance.

Museum of Science Field Trip

On February 7, 2014, the physical science classes at Pentucket Regional High School took a field trip to the Museum of Science in Boston, Massachusetts.

Fantastic Forces

In the Fantastic Forces show, we saw many different cool things.  We saw a magician's tablecloth, a pencil-gun, and the Newton's Cradle.  The magician's tablecloth was when the woman who was doing the show for us, put dishes and glass cups on top of a tablecloth on a table.  She stacked them on top of each other, and she even eventually filled the cups up with water.  She explained to us that if she pulls the tablecloth fast enough out from under the dishes and glass cups, they dishes and cups will stay where they are and will not crash to the floor.  She proved us right by experimenting with friction.  With the pencil-gun, originally the woman just tried to stab a pencil through a block of wood with her arm.  It obviously didn't work.  Then, she took out the pencil-gun, and by force of acceleration by all the pressure in the pencil-gun, the pencil went right through the block of wood.  Lastly, the woman showed us Newton's Cradle.  Every one of us had already seen a Newton's Cradle, but this was a much bigger version.  It dramatically demonstrated relations between force.  If you pulled two of the bowling balls out, two would go in.  If you brought 3 out, 3 would go back in.  That's how force works.

Bobsled Activity

For the bobsled activity, I built a bobsled with Nick B.  We made a bobsled hoping to get the fastest time, but unfortunately failed.  We used a very soft silk that we were hoping would slide down very fast down the chute, and we also had 4 batteries in it to make the bobsled much heavier.  Our sled ended up getting stuck at the top, and finally making it to the bottom at 4.85 seconds.  Nick and I got the best record for slowest time of the bobsled, and we actually got our time on the boards.  We named our bobsled "A&N" standing for "Adriana and Nick."

Lightning Show

The lightning show was very cool.  I went to the Museum of Science in fourth grade for a field trip at Bagnall Elementary School, so this was my second time seeing the lightning show.  My favorite parts were the lightning symphony where there was music with it and the lightning was loud.  I learned a lot about lightning safety, and what to do if I am stuck in the situation where it is lightning out.  I would recommend this show to anyone who is interested in severe weather such as lightning, because it's very interesting.  The only thing I disliked about the show was that the lightning symphony thing wasn't longer.  I also disliked the fact that the man running the show was only focused on the people in front of him, and didn't look around the room at anyone else.  I was sitting with a group of people on the side because there was no more room, and whenever he was looking for volunteers, we all raised our hands wanting to go up, but he wouldn't even look over at us, so it wasn't very fair.  Other than that, though, it was a great show.

Archimedean Excogitation Audiokinetic Sculpture

This was an art sculpture created by George Rhoads.  It is 27 feet tall, and it illustrates that relationship between potential and kinetic energy.  The sculpture uses a list of simple machines, including: the lever, the inclined plane, the screw, the pulley, the wheel and axel, and the wedge.  There were many pool balls in the sculpture, all going different ways to get back to the bottom.  They would all experience unique ways.  

Chemistry of Life

Carbohydrates:

Carbohydrates are made of C, H, & O in a 1:2:1 ratio.  Carbohydrates are the main energy source for living things.  It's a breakdown of sugars supplies. Monosaccharides are a single unit of sugar, and the smallest of the CHOs. Disasaccharides are molecules made up of two sugars joined together by dehydration synthesis.  Polysaccharides are large molecules made of many sugars, and make ideal storage products.

Lipids:

Lipids store more energy that CHOs because the chains are longer.  The important parts of biological membranes are the water proof coverings.  Steroids are lipids that act as a chemical messenger.

Proteins:

Proteins contain C, H, O, plus nitrogen.  They are formed from amino acids and joined together.  More than 20 amino acids can be joined in any order or number to make countless proteins. Chains are folded and twisted, giving each protein a unique shape.  Van der Waals forces and hydrogen  bonds help maintain the protein's shape.  The shape of protein is important to its function.  Proteins provide structure, they aid chemical activities, and help fight diseases.

Carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids are a huge part of a humans everyday life, and we need them to survive.  We need chemistry to survive.

Chemical Reactions

"A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the transformation of one set of chemical substances to another."

You know a chemical reaction is happening when there is a: color change, heat change, there is gas produced, or a precipitate formed.

The parts of a chemical reaction are reactants and products.  General types of reactions are: synthesis, decomposition, single displacement, double displacement, and combustion.

Trends In The Periodic Table

The difference between a group and a period is that a group is also called a family, and it runs in columns. All those elements share the same characteristics.  Periods run in rows.  The periodic table is organized by an elements' atomic number, with 18 columns and 7 rows.

Flame Test Lab

I wasn't here when my class completed the flame test lab, so instead, I looked it up online.

"A flame test is an analytic procedure used in chemistry to detect the presence of certain elements, primarily metal ions, based on each element's characteristic emission spectrum. The color of flames in general also depends on temperature."

A flame test involves the elements on the periotic table, and what makes up the elements.  From what I've seen online, all the elements basically have a color and when one does the experiment with the elements, it causes all the flames to turn different colors.

A flame test is used to determine the identity or possible identity of a metal or metalloid ion found in an iconic compound.  It's used to visually determine the identity of an unknown metal of an iconic salt based on the characteristic color (like what I said before, all the elements have their own colors), then the salt turns the flame a different color on the Bunsen burner.

Law of Conservation Mass

1. Color changed, it thickened, and produced a gas

2. It changes with the changes with make to the reactant.

3. The mass is not conserved because with each experiment and each time we tried it, it was a different mass every single time therefore it was wasted because it was never the same.

Scientific Skills Lab - 1

1)      The water turned blue because we stirred vigorously after about five minutes after putting the copper chloride in the water.

2)      When solutions are made, different results could come out.  A solution is whenever you dissolve something into a liquid, in this case, the water and the copper chloride.

3)      I think what happened is that when the aluminum reacted with the copper chloride, the copper chloride was eating away at the aluminum, forcing it to change into a copper form.

4)      When the nitric acid reacted with the precipitate, I think what happened is that the nitric acid made the copper turn into a liquid, forcing it to bubble and become clear, like the nitric acid was cleaning or filtering the copper precipitate.

5)      The solution turned blue at the end of the experiment because it was bubbling into the blue after we put in the nitric acid.

Oreo Cookie Lab

Adriana Santos, Pentucket HS.

Lab conducted on September 12, 2013.

Oreo Cookie Lab

Students measured the filling in three types of Oreo cookies to determine if filling amounts matched advertising.  My group's hypothesis was: each cookie will have different measurements and different masses because they all have different amounts of fillings in them. Some students did it differently, but my group peeled the filling off of the Oreo and weighed it in the Triple Beam Balance.  We took the filling off of the original Oreo, the Double Stuffed Oreo, and the Mega Stuffed Oreo.  We weighed them all and subtracted the weight from the paper towel they were with and all that.  Then when we found the mass of all three of our Oreo's, we compared.  

Original Oreo - 11.1g

Double Stuf - 11.3g

Mega Stuf - 17.7g

The comparison with the original and original = 1.

The comparison with the double stuffed and original = 1.01.

The comparison with the mega stuffed and original = 1.59.

The advertisement that the Oreo's use for the original, double stuffed, and mega stuffed aren't 100% of what they say they are, because there is not that much of a difference.  But yes, there is a difference between the filling in all 3 of the Oreo's, but not as much as the Oreo company says there is.

Work This Week

In physical science, we did 3 "Do Now's" and a bowling ball lab, and a gummy bear lab.  The first "Do Now" this week was finding the mass and volume of 3 items that were on the front table: a dice, a block, and some metal.  The second one was finding the volume of pure solid copper.  The last "Do Now" was to explain what a "variable" in a science experiment is, which had a few different answers.

The Gummy Bear Lab we did was fun.  My group with Colin had a red gummy bear, the length of 2 centimeters, the height of 1 centimeter, and the width of 1 centimeter.  The volume was 1.3 mL and the mass of the gummy bear was 2.34 g.  The final density was 1.95 g/mL.  We let our gummy bears soak in water over night, to see the difference.  My hypothesis was that I thought that if we left the gummy bear in water, the gummy bear would get all mushy and lose some density, then float to the surface because the gummy bear would probably sink.  Then the next day when we checked our gummy bears, they were completely dissolved in the water, and the water turned a lighter color of whatever color the gummy bear was.  We think that they dissolved completely because it was so hot over night that they just melted because it was in the 90's F°.  We might try the lab again by putting the gummy bears in over night on a cooler night to see the actual outcome.

Why Study Science?

Why I Took This Course ...

I took this course because I wasn't able to make it into chemistry.  Now that I'm in this class, I want to learn chemistry and physics together in one year in a more simple matter.  Also, I wanted to take this class because if I pass, I don't have to take a year of chemistry then a year of physics.

I hope to gain knowledge of chemistry and physics by taking this course, and pass so I'll technically be ahead of my class in science.

I want to understand science better because I've never been good at it, and physics looks like it's really interesting, so I want to understand the labs and experiments.