English & Math

I would just like to take some time to discus English and Math within the Open Program. It was our primary duty at the start of the second semester in Open to gather knowledge as a whole and venture through Algebra II and English II at our own pace to obtain standards as proof of mastery. The standards are the very same Common Core standards that the rest of the students outside of the Open Program must acquire conclusively at the end of their classes. It is at our own will and our own way we must complete these standards to pass our classes.
Every student chooses to learn in his or her own manner. For math, I find it easiest working from the pretests and taking the much larger math concepts and breaking them down into smaller, understandable ones. I usually work in a small group (most likely consisting of Alex and Kaden) and when we run into questions we result to Mr. Davidson. We gain most of our standards through the chapter texts like most students choose to do.
For english, things are not as black and white as they are in math. In english, we have a portfolio of writing that we must keep that proves to your teachers that we can write over the course of time and improve as a writer. Along with this portfolio, we also must meet all the English II standards. The cool part is, we can meet these standards by writing (essentially) over whatever we wish.
Both english and math have been exceptionally better than previously; the new style of learning has been quite exciting! As always, if anyone has any questions over absolutely anything, don't hesitate to ask!

A Peek Into the Code (And What it Looks Like)

So I've had a few questions about the code, and I just would like to clear up some confusion and let everyone know kind of what this looks like. The code I'm working with now looks something like this:

Note that the "code" portion is on the right-hand side of the screen, as the PythonShell is on the left. Also note that this is not nearly the code in it's entirety (this is actually quite a small portion as the entire program, as of now, it has about 700 lines of code) and is, in actuality, much larger. The code, when executed, runs the GUI (graphical user interface) which is depicted in my previous blog and is the program. On the left-hand side, you have the Shell, which is where errors are displayed and things can be printed. If something were to be broken, the shell would shoot you an error and I'd have to debug it and make it run; if something doesn't work the code cannot execute and an error will be displayed. Neither the shell nor the code will be visible when a user would be actually using the calculator.

I don't want to venture too much into explaining how the code works due to the fact that it gets really intricate really fast. I did, however, want to show people exactly what I'm doing when I say I am "coding" or "programming." This is pretty much it. Just typing the code on the right side and running it, fixing and tweaking as I go. As always, if you have any questions concerning anything please ask!

The Idea: Adding Compounds Verticaly Could Be The Selling Point

So this is what I have thus far concerning a working calculator.

And if you were to execute a problem:

Now, this example is fairly simple. You get your answers in the right side of the window. You get your answers in three units as well as what the limiting reactant is. Above, you may notice the button to switch between types of problems, and when the contrary is selected a new group of boxes (the boxes which make up a compound for a second product) appear to the right of the last group. This is what the program has looked like in my head for the past year now, and it's super exciting to see it working and running; the pieces starting to fall together! However, whilst proceeding through the writing of the math for the 2 reactant/2 product problems, Mr. Larsen and I realized something:  we need to go bigger. At this moment in time we saw a much bigger picture...a picture that looked something like this: 

  

 A calculator that can add up to 5 reactants and produce up to 5 products. Instead of adding compounds horizontally, we will now be adding them up vertically. The sky's the limit with this. Things to come are input boxes on the sides of each compound to enter the amounts of each compound as well as a drop-down selection for what unit the user's amount is in. I'll also be adding a giant arrow between the reactants and products for effect. One major downfall of doing the calculator like this is that math. The math application towards the solving of the problem only gets more intricate as one starts adding more products and/or reactants and odd combinations could plause issues in the near future. However, this is way too exciting to just get scared off by a few mountains I'll have to climb! I'm excited to see how these new ideas fall into place once the math starts coming together more and more! Again, if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask!