Category: 2016 – 2017

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Phnom Penh Youth Film Festival (2017)

This is year, I got to entre my S-21 documentary for the competition called the Phnom Penh Youth Film Festival. This is the second year of the event. I was inspired to see other students’ short films. It was incredible to see the amount of creativity the young filmmakers put into their work. At the end, my documentary got nominated for the Best Picture. I was proud but also I was thankful to my teammates because without them, I couldn’t made that short film. 

Above is a short video I made for the event. It wasn’t specifically focusing on the event though, it’s just a bunch of footage of the view in Phnom Penh. I hope that’s okay. 

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Digital Painting

 

Digital Painting was an expertise I did during year 5 of Liger. I got to use the tablet to paint something on the computer. I enjoyed doing it because I love art and I got to experience making art without using pencil or paper. I’m not only doing it in class, but during my spare time, I did some art too. Above are some of my art works. For the portraits of my friends, I used a different method, that’s why it looks real (trust me, I’m not that talented).

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DNA testing

There is a block of a science project where we did an experiment with cereal, and some other food in order to find the iron that exist in that food. We then answer some of these questions to check our understanding.

 

For question number 5, I’m not really sure about my research and it might be wrong.

Name: Samady

Eating Nails for Breakfast Questions
19/20 points
Use clear sentences to answer the questions. Think about what you learned from Ben Thorne of Song Saa, the cereal experiment, and additional research. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE ANY ANSWERS. You must use your own words.

1. Why do humans need iron in their diet (in the food they eat)? Great explanation 5/5

Humans need iron in their diet because it can help them to avoid Anemia which caused by Iron Deficiency. In addition, iron help to create more red blood cells. In each red blood cell, there are about 250 million hemoglobin. In each hemoglobin, there are 4 oxygen (O2). Which mean that there are billion of oxygen (O2) in a blood cell that helps us to breathe easily.

2. What are the symptoms of a person who does not have enough iron (iron deficiency)?
YES 5/5
Some of the symptoms of a person who got iron deficiency are: They feel weak, dizzy, their body is pale, really hard to breathe and they got exhausted really fast after doing the work.

3. How could you remove the iron from the cereal?
EXACTLY 5/5
If we want to remove the iron from the cereal, we have to break the cereal into small pieces in the warm water because it helps to remove the other substances around the iron. We then use the magnet to pull the iron from the cereal.

4. Why is the iron attracted to the magnet? (Earth Science – This will require some research)

Actually the electrons line up when the rock is cooling, when it is magma. If iron atoms are in an electrical field it will magnetize the atoms. 4/5

Before the magnet come to attach the iron, the iron atoms are random, but when we use the magnet to attract the iron, the electrons of the iron started to line up with the flow of the magnetic, which means the iron is magnetized as well.

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Pygmalion Play

Literacy – Pygmalion
Pygmalion was a play that we learned in the past English literacy class. In this play, we analyzed the play, and with the same time, we focused on our writing skills. I think I improved a lot with my writing in this class and I did a lot of planning before writing the paper. Here is my argument essay for the play Pygmalion.

A man can change how a girl look, but does the look can change the girl’s internal identity as well as her external identity? Well, in the play of Pygmalion written by George Bernard Shaw explains how Eliza’s internal identity revise along her exterior personality. When the experiment of Higgins on how he could turn a poor girl into a proper lady in less than 6 months was over, two important things happened in the play and both of the scenes are clearly shows how Eliza changed her internal identity in a very short time.

 

In act IV, we recognize the lacking of Eliza confidence made her look very weak and that she needed someone to rely on. Higgins was thanking God that the experiment was over and that Eliza can go anywhere she wants and do what she wants to do. Then Eliza started to yell, “What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What’s to become of me?” Eliza quickly responds to Higgins about what should she do with her life because she was so confused. This clearly shows how Eliza automatically got emotional and kept asked so many questions because she’s doesn’t know what’s happening. At last, we understand that she is afraid to leave the wimpole street, and that she is not confident enough to live by her own.

 

However, everything changed near the beginning of Act VI, we recognize that Eliza become a girl who is having enough self-agency to make a decision, very self-confidence and not relying on Higgins. One scene that we can say it is supporting the central idea is when Higgins and Eliza got into a really big argument, where Eliza understand that all Higgins wanted to do was to get rid of her. When Higgins told her to get out of his way, Eliza immediately stand up for herself. She said, “So you are a motor bus, all bounce and go, and no consideration for anyone. But I can do without you, don’t think I can’t.” Eliza reply back to Higgins with anger because she knows Higgins was totally wrong about her personality. She certainly knows that she can live by her own and she dares to say she can do things without Higgins’ help. From that part, we know that Eliza meant to leave, so she will not be a needle in Higgins’s eye and by responding to Higgins, she wants to prove Higgins that she will not depend on him. This demonstrate that Eliza is now a girl who is believing in herself, she will do what she wanted to and if someone trying to get around her, she’ll defence herself.

 

To sum up, Eliza does changed her internal identity as well as her external identity throughout the play based on the reasons explained above. We can spot the differences between what’s happening in act IV and at the end of act V.  Eliza has changed from a poor girl to a lady who well educated, wearing proper clothes and at the same time her internal identity which is about self-confident and self-sufficient has grown along the way.

 

 

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Investigation – Oobleck

Investigation – Making Oobleck

This is another investigation that I did with corn starch. It was such a fun experiment and I did learn a lot. It strange why this object are liquid and solid. I also share the experiment with friends, and they kept sharing until everyone felt very interesting with the experiment. Here is a report for my investigation project.

Project Name : Why Oobleck act the way it does?
Name : Samady Sek

Question
Why do cornstarch act solid and liquid when it mixed with water?

Background Information
Oobleck are made up of the tiny particles of the cornstarch suspended in water. It is count as one of the non-Newtonian fluids but act a bit different from the rest such as shampoo, paste, paint or ketchup. Based on the Scientific American, applying force on the Oobleck make it increase its thickness, but if you slowly push the Oobleck it actually act as the normal liquid because the particles has more time to move away from each other and it is called Jamming.

Hypothesis
Before my research, I did not do any prediction of why the Oobleck are solid and liquid when it mixed with water but I expected that when I do the experiment, it will act the way it does.

Experiment
All I need for this experiment were

Cornstarch    2 jars
Water              ½ jar
Plastic Bags   1
Jars                    2

Steps
1. Measured cornstarch and water into different jars
2. Put cornstarch into plastic bag
3. Add water into the plastic bag
4. Mix both water and cornstarch until you see it blend together

Results
After I mixed everything up, it looked liquid. When I tried to push the Oobleck, it was actually become harder than I thought it was. I made a ball and tried to push as hard as possible. When I let the ball go, it flew through my fingers. I did added more cornstarch because it was too liquid. I learned that once I leave it to sit alone for a long time, the cornstarch will come together in one big solid, so that I need to add more water and mix it again.

Conclusion
In conclusion, Oobleck is a non-newtonian fluid which is a solution of cornstarch with water. Oobleck act the way it does because of the particles of the cornstarch are suspended from water, and another reason it is called Jamming which explain about when it is liquid, or solid. I believe scientists should research more about Oobleck because it might help to save life or benefits to humans and or environment in the future.

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Investigation – Astronomy Camp

This is a competition opened for people ages 15 or above. It is basically a camp to learn more about astronomy and how it affect human daily life. The camp happen at Thailand which was the neighbor country. By applying to the camp, contestants must write a-300-essay or make a 5-minute-video about the topic “How Astronomy affect your daily life”. My teacher encourage me to make a video but because time limits I decided to write the essay. I actually spent my investigation time to write the paper with the help from Karen, our science teacher – she’s amazing. Anyway, I chose Mars as my topic that I am going to write about. Mars is such an interesting topic for me and I enjoy learning about it. After my research, I ended up with a lot of information and after writing the paper, it ended up with more than 300 words. I had my friend, who was also tried to apply helped me with reducing all the words. I gave it to my teacher for a finally look. She also help to cut out some unnessary information. At the end, I got to apply to the camp. Unfortunately, I didn’t passed, but one of the Liger students did get to go to Thailand for the camp. But it was okay, and we should be proud of our work. Read my essay about Mars below! Please apologize for any wrong statistics or information, I got it through research from NASA, Mars-One and many more.

Samady’s Astronomy Essay_Mars

 

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Khmer Rouge Exploration (round 3)

Khmer Rouge (round 3) was one of my favourite Explorations. In this class, at first, I learned about different genocides around the world including, the Holocaust, Bosnian Genocide, Rwandan Genocide, and Armenian Genocide. I continued learning more about the overall history of Cambodia.

Cambodia has been rebuilding from the massive genocide called Khmer Rouge that killed approximately 2 million people between 1975 – 1979. Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge and he believed all Cambodians should be equal. However, no one could have seen what he meant by that and when he started to take control over the country, things started to go wrong. During this regime, people were forced to leave their homes and families to work as slaves and soldiers in atrocious conditions. Over just a few years, Cambodians lost their family, friends, property, dignity and even identity. In 1976, a high school located in Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh, was turned into a prison where the Khmer Rouge soldiers tortured the victims. It is known as Cambodian Genocide Museum or in short, S-21.

I was shocked after seeing all of the things in S-21. I saw different cells where they put the victims. It was small, some were made from bricks, and some were made from woods. I saw the black chain that stuck out of the floor, which used to be the chain that tied the victim’s leg so they couldn’t escape the prison. I still could see the blood stain that left from the torture.

Other things I could see was skulls of the people who got shot, or hit by something on the head. There were some arts painted by Vann Nath hanging on the wall to display all the torture methods he saw the soldiers did. In the museum, they also display the weapons used, and all of the victims portraits. They all looked so sad, some were man, woman, and even children. It’s insane how people could just killed all those little child, and their nation.

I hope Cambodia doesn’t go through this again. I wish more Khmer people get to come to S-21 to learn more about the genocide. Genocide is crazy to think about, it destroy everything, and brings no good to the country. At the end of the day, this genocide was a sad thing, but we all should keep moving on, and try to change this developing region in a positive way.

 

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Sam’s Inspiration Class

Every week at Liger,  some Liger senior students will have an inspiration class which is 1 hour per day, and we had 2 days to do it. I am one of the students who participated in the Inspiration Class.  Basically, it is a class where a senior do/teach something to the junior students. I got an idea and went on with it.

I told all the juniors to think about something they wanted to change when they grow up. Like they could find a problem of the country and or the world, then came up with a solution. They will design a poster based on the topic they chose.

I then filmed all of them, making and showing their posters. Above is a short video about Samady’s Inspiration Class.

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Waste Management Exploration

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This is a business Exploration, to be honest I hate learning about business but I found it is very important for me to learn about it in able to success in life and one thing that encourage me to keep going is that it will help this community to reduce the waste that they throw, burn or bury. I learned that before we could start a business, we need to know the feasibility of it. The feasibility study are focusing on Technical, Economical/Financial, Legal, Operational, and Scheduling. Each of us in class need to explain each of the section into a report which will be our business plan. We got the information from interviewing the people around the community and researching on the internet. My reflection about the interview, was that I got to ask questions and took notes. It was fun but there are always problems happen along the way, for an example – the interviewees does not understand what the questions mean. When writing the feasibility study, I was doing okay but the complicated parts were that it was hard to communicate with the other students on the report because all of these sections are related. One of the sections that I was working on was the organizational feasibility, it was hard to predict or estimate the cost of the materials that we will need for the business, and finding the land, location, facility, labour to do the business. I hope this business will work to help reducing waste in this village and to take care of the environment.

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TEDx expertise

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This class happened every Monday. We took this time to prepare for our upcoming TedxISPP which had already passed. We sometimes watched Ted videos so that we could get some ideas on how the speakers speak, show their impression and about their speech. It was so interesting and the speakers are very brave. Most of the time, we took this time to write our speech, or edit them. We also spent outside class time to prepare because one hour per week is not enough for us. But at the end, we finished and we did the TALK at the International School of Phnom Penh.