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Courtney Culpepper 1
Courtney Culpepper
Dr. Sandra Flowers
CENG 106-WS
April 30, 2011
“Term Research Paper”
In class we are each building a project in second life. For my term project I decided to
research the ancient Greek Gods. These deities were worshiped by ancient Greeks because they
believed that the Gods control everything in nature and their most important values. So in
recognition to these Gods I am building a Grecian garden in which statues of the Greek deities
will be displayed. I choose this topic because Greek mythology has always been an interest of
mine. The stories and movies portraying the Greek Goods and Demi-Gods always fascinated me.
As a result of this project I hope to allow my classmates as well as other second life users to
share my interest in this topic. I hope that everyone that enters my garden will learn at least one
new piece of information about my topic. Also I’m displaying this information in a garden so
that visitors and enjoy a beautiful and tranquil environment. I have always been interested in
Greek mythology and this project has allowed me to embellish on this. This project is important
to me because I get to take an idea that I’m interested in express it in a virtual world. Also by
being allowed to research a topic I choose it will be easier for me to take an interest in my
project.
We were asked multiple times to search second life for objects that could be helpful to
making our dream a reality. So after doing
some research on the internet I decided
that in my parcel I wanted to display
Figure 1: fountain
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statues of the Greek Gods .I also decided to include elements
of ancient Greek architecture such as a fountain. Once we
were given our designated piece of land from the IT’s I
began to shop. I located a garden where I could get beautiful
flowers for my garden, then I located a statues of the
Olympians on second life market place, I couldn’t find two
of the lesser known gods but I went on with my research.
Then I went on second life market place and located a fountain that I used and place at the back
of my garden to display an example of Greek architecture. I placed my items in a specific way
the bulk of them
lining the outskirts
of the garden. I
placed the three
brothers Zeus,
Hades, and
Poseidon in the
middle of the
garden in front of the fountain to draw visitor’s eyes to them first. After conducting a site review
Figure 2: Zeus, Hades, Poseidon
on my own
project I decided that in order to enhancing it before grading it would be best to create note cards
stating the name of each god and goddess and what they do. In order to do this I had to assess
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what I already knew and what I needed to know. Prior to this project I knew that there were 14
gods, they lived on Mount Olympus, and that they were the children of the Titians. After
conducting research I found out that there were 14 God in all who are Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares,
Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Dionysus, Hades, Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Hestia, Poseidon, and
Zeus. The three main Olympian Gods were the three brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades born of
the Titans Rhea and Cronus. The story is said that the brothers destroyed their parents the titans
and divided power between the heavens which Zeus ruled (Mount Olympus), the seas which
Poseidon controlled, and the underworld
which Hades ran. What I also learned
about the Olympian Gods, which they are
also called, is that each one has a power
over some aspect of nature or of a value
that was important to the mortals. This
lead to mortals praying, making sacrifices,
and building temples to the Gods hoping
that this will make the gods favor the
mortals and provide them with for example a good harvest. Also before making my project open
to the public I decided I should put some garden lights there in order to make it easier to view the
site at night.
Bibliography
Hatzitsinidou, Evangelia. Greek-Gods.info N.p., 29 Nov. 2010. Web. 30 Mar. 2011
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