Do you know the process that goes into making silk? Many people over look this fine, luxurious garment. When I first heard that we had to do an I-search, I was overwhelmed by the choices. I made many changes before finally settling on this topic. When I first though of how to make silk, I didn”t think that it would be that hard with the right tools. Although I knew that the fibers came from the silk worm”s cocoon I still didn”t know how they got it unraveled. I also thought that they only made silk in China. There are many things that I didn”t know about making silk.
When I thought of doing this topic I didn”t think that it would be to easy either. I thought that I would have to go to more than one source to get the answer. I have one main goal for writing this I-search. That is because it is an assignment. If I wanted to know about this topic I wouldn”t spend this much time on it. In the begging I wanted to do the topic “Is biological weapons worth the destruction that they cause on the planet? “. Then I thought to myself, “There isn”t a really right answer because everyone will have a different P.
O. V. Now I had to come up with a better question, on that has a true answer. Then I thought to myself again, “Do you know how monorails work? “. I didn”t answer myself because then I would be crazy. But the first book I looked in I found the answer, so I dropped that idea. My last and final I-search topic would be, “How is silk made? “. I think that that answer may be fairly easy to find, but it”s a topic that interested me because my grandma has been to China and has seen that places where they The Chinese make the silk.
She also showed me the cocoons that they take the thread from. On the first day that I started looking for the answer my English class went to the library. From there I combed the library for the answer. My first stop was an encyclopedia. The first random book that I pulled from the shelf was called Encyclopedia America. That one wasn”t much help. It only told me how silk worms are cultivated. That didn”t bother me much, because I was confident that I would find the answer still. In the next day in the library I skimmed through a few more books.
One of which was titled Collier”s Encyclopedia. It was more use full then any past books. This one had a little on how to make silk. On the third day I gave up on the library. I figured that I had checked enough books. Now it was up to us to find the answer outside of school. We had a couple days of class time to write this paper but I didn”t use that wisely. I wasn”t too concerned with this project at the time so I put it on the back burners. After a couple of days I started back up.
My first stop of the day was my Encarda Encyclopedia CD-ROM. That just gave me stuff on how they are harvested. Woo Déjà vu. My last stop was my grandma”s house. I wouldn”t consider her an expert, but she has been to where they Chinese make their silk. She also showed me the cocoons that they make it out of. That was interesting because I got to feel how thin that the strand were. She wasn”t a lot of help with the process, but she had a lot of other good facts. I did not uncover the answer to how silk is made.
This didn”t really disappoint me because I found out a bunch of other cool things about silk. Such as, a strand of silk is stronger than the same thickness of a piece of steel. I also found out the habits of baby silk worms. Did you know that they eat continually for almost 6 weeks? Another thing that I learned while doing this project was that teachers make you write way too much for stuff that you don”t even care about. But I do know that I hated this whole thing a lot because I found it pointless and a waste of time.
