Friday, April 25, 2008

Clay is Almost done!!!


The clay has now been drying in my garage for about a week now, so I'm very excited that the process is developing nicely. Mr. Sheidenhelm didn't know much about working with clay but he just kind of chilled and gave me some pointers when he could. We also spent a long time, correspondingly, talking about my presentation and the importatn similarities and differences between a person with a psychopathic tendency, a violent tendency, and a comparitivly "normal" tendency. Most of my trouble now is with finding the time to finish up my hours with Dr. S, and completing my displays. As AP and college exams near, I'm finding myself spread very thin, especially with Dr. S's tight schedule. I've really loved getting to physically demonstrate the graveness of the differences in these different kinds of "people." One thing I've always known is that murderers and rapists must have some kind of capacity or "guts" that I simply don't have. It's just been fascinating to finally find out the true biology and neurology behind the criminal mind.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

First check point


As of this point, I have begun the clay portion of my product, which is creating aproximately three renditions of hypothetical SPECT images in 3D. These models will depict the differences in a violent persons brain activity, and a passive persons brain activity. Hopefully these models will help the judges to get a firmer grasp on my subject and the intresting data it has to offer, without sounding too complicated. The clay will take a few weeks to dry and then a day or two to cool after it is fired, so I seem to be running short on time, however, I'm sure I will pull it off. My mentor has been great in helping me find un-copywrited material that I can use in my presentation. At this point I'm becoming more stressed than I was before, and typically I work better that way. I have really spent the most time in research for this project, due to all the obstacles with confidentiality. It seems that I could have chosen something more available and easy to work with, but the fact is, this kind of information is what I am facinated with. I truely want to take this information and pursue more on this subject in a career field.