Leashed Puppy

Here is another math problem that I made up.

A puppy has a leash on that is 2 yards long. He climbed up a chair 1 foot from where he is tied. The chair is 2 feet tall and a half of a foot wide. With the amount of leash he has left, can he jump down the other side without hurting himself or breaking the leash?

Zoo Break-Out

This is a math problem I wrote for my mother to solve. It was too hard for me,but I didn't have any problem writing it. I tried to write one too hard for my mom, but it was pretty easy for her. Maybe if I would have accounted for acceleration time it would have been too hard for her. If you would like to, try to solve it and leave your answer in a comment. Have fun solving!

A 2.2 meter long zebra, named Stripes, breaks out of her pen, when she’s getting fed. The zoo-keeper just happens to be on a racing bike. Stripes got a 3 meter head-start and is running 40 mph. The zoo-keeper has to get in front of Stripes to catch her. The zoo-keeper is biking 45 mph. Will the zoo-keeper ever catch her? If the zoo-keeper does, how long will it take in seconds? When you’re done convert the seconds to minutes.

P.S. Don’t worry about acceleration time. There is none in this problem.

Hammurabi takes Assyria

Hammurabi was a very powerful king in Southern Mesoptamia, but up north there was another king building a different empire. He was Shamshi-Adad. He didn't want to be fair and make good laws like Hammurabi. He wanted to rule the whole world. Shamshi-Adad lived in Assur. Assur was a city in the north part of Mesopotamia by the Tigris river. Shamshi-Adad became ruler of Assur. He thought that Assur should be the center of a new empire.

The god he worshipped was the god of wind and storms. He made a temple for the god out of cedar logs with silver and gold. Shamshi-Adad rubbed the foundation with butter, oil and honey so that his god was happy and would be on his side to give him more power. When his temple was finished, he told the people of Assur "the god of wind and storms loves the temple. He will give Assur power to win control over other cities."

Shamshi-Adad conquered other cities and made them follow him. How did he do this? He cut off the heads of the rulers of the cities and burned down buildings. Each time he conquered a city he put one of his sons in charge. Most times as soon as Shamshi-Adad came,rulers came up to him and surrendered and said that they would follow him just so that he would let them live. Shamshi-Adad would say that they could live as long as they followed all of his rules. But Shamshi-Adad never bothered southern Mesoptamia where Hammurabi was ruler. He knew Babylon was too strong for him.

One day Shamshi-Adad died and put his two sons in charge. He hoped that they would keep his cities strong and keep control. But the brothers fought with each other and Hammurabi took over. Hammurbi was much nicer and let the rulers keep control as long as they followed his laws. The people all thought they would be free again and be back in power someday but still agreed to follow Hammurabi for the time-being.

Hammurabi's Code

As you probably know from my other essay on Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia was not a peaceful place to live. Leaders fought other city-states to try to gain power. Sometimes one leader did not hold power for very long, before another leader took over. Other times leader held power for longer like the one I'm going to talk about today. About 500 years after Sargon, another leader took control of Southern Mesopotamia. His name was Hammurabi. Hammurabi was a very important leader, just like Sargon. In time, he started to conquer other cities around Southern Mesopotamia.

Hammurabi was a very religious man, and he didn't want people to listen to his laws just because they were forced to. He wanted them to follow his laws, because they were fair. He didn't want just some people to follow his rules, he wanted the whole empire to follow them. So Hammurabi wrote down the laws he thought were fair on a piece of stone [called a stela] showing the god Shamash handing him the laws. Hammurbi was very important, because he came up with the first written laws.

He encouraged his followers to leave offerings for the gods and to learn about them. They believed that they could find out what the gods were doing by watching the planets and stars, so they spent lots of time studying the sky. They knew all of the constellations and even knew the difference between stars and planets. They knew that the Earth moved around the sun. When it went around the sun once, they knew it had been a year. They also were the first people to divide the year into 12 months and to divide the day into 24 hours.

If you haven't read my essay on Sargon and want to know more about him, scroll down.

My Cube

"Hi, look at this fantastic cube on the What Makes Me website.Click here..."

Cuneiform Writing

     Today for Social Studies I learned about Mesopotamia, which means between rivers, and the first Sumerian Emperor, Sargon. As an art project to go with it I thought it would be cool to write everyone in the immediate family's name in cuneiform. The picture above is of me writing in cuneiform. You may think it's so cool that I get to write in cuneiform during the school day, but, trust me, it's a lot more work than you may think. First we had to make the clay tablets. My mom did that. When she was done, I took the clay tablet to the computer and translated a person's name into cuneiform. Then I carved it into the wet clay. Trust me, it was really hard to erase when I made a mistake, and I kept running out of space on the clay tablet and my mom had to add more clay to the end. Once I was finished with all of them, my mom and I were both exhausted, and I'm still pooped.

     Now I'll tell you a little something about Sargon. Mesopotamia used to be divided into a bunch of different city states. They always fought between each other. There was one person, named Sargon, who wanted them all to live in peace. There is a bunch of stories about Sargon, but the one I'm going to tell you is about where he grew up and how he became emperor. Some people say that Sargon had no parents and that one day he floated down the Euphrates river in a basket when he was an infant. He got stuck in the reeds near the city of Kish. One of the servants of the King was down at the river getting water. He heard a sound, and the servant saw a basket stuck in the reeds. The servant looked down inside the basket and saw a little baby crying. The baby was Sargon. The servant took the baby up to the king and the king said that he could raise him. The boy grew up in the palace, and served the king wine everyday. The king trusted Sargon, but he shouldn't have. The king didn't know that he had the army on his side. One day Sargon ordered the army to kill the king. Once they killed the king, Sargon became king. He didn't want to be king of just one city. He wanted to be king of all of the cities. He fought the other cities to gain power. He fought 50 wars and finally he was in control of all of Mesopotamia. Some people didn't like Sargon being king. They wanted to have their own rules and their own laws like they had before. When Sargon heard about this, he ordered the army to start a military dictatorship, and some of the army lived in every city to make sure they followed Sargon's laws.

    

Pyramid at Giza

This is a diagram of Cheops' pyramid (pronounced "key-ops"). Cheops was a Pharoah in ancient Egypt. After Cheops died, priests started collecting things to make Cheops into a mummy, like salt, spices, oil and linen. They washed his body with wine and spices. Then they took Cheops' organs out of his body and covered them with special spices to preserve them. They believed that in the afterworld that the god, Osiris, could tell if the heart was good or bad. If the heart was good, Cheops could live in the after life. If the heart was bad, a monster, part hippo, part lion and part crocodile, would eat the heart. They put his organs in more spices and put them in special jars with animal heads so that other gods could protect them. They wrapped his body in linen and brought him to the pyramid that workers had built during his lifetime. Cheops was also known as Khufu. His pyramid was the tallest building on Earth for over 4,000 years. This tomb also had another protector that they built for him- the sphinx. I drew the picture above with pencil, pen, and colored pencil. I REALLY REALLY hope you like it and learn a little something about Egypt and Kufu. 

Uranus

I painted this in Adobe Illustrator. It is the Greek sky god, Uranus.

Foal on the Beach

Color Pencil and Pastels