Science at Bangor & in the News
After some technical difficulties last week, we were able to do our experiment in chemistry on Monday. We chilled water to 0 degrees Celsius, then heated it up to boiling, and recorded the temperature over the course of the experiment. Nearly every group hit a point in the experiment where no matter how long the water sat on the hot plate, the temperature would not increase. We learned that there are a couple of reasons the temperature stopped increasing: 1. We would have needed a special chamber to measure the temperature of the steam coming off of the water. 2. The energy that the hot plate was providing wasn't going into the thermal account anymore (used to increase temperature), it was going into the phase account instead (used to increase the space between particles). We also talked about how the meaning of heat scientists use (heat = energy) often gets confused with how we use heat outside of the classroom (heat = warm temperature), so from now on we will not be using the word heat so we can be clear when we are talking about our observations. In Science 9, we started talking about mass, the amount of stuff in an object, and particles. Each group of students took a pair of objects that were the same size, but one of the objects was lighter than the other. We decided that the heavier object had more stuff, and probably had a higher number of particles, than the lighter object. We will continue to explore more about mass and particles this unit. Our first experiment examining what happens to mass when we change things will be on Tuesday.
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In Science 9, the groups presented their survey results at the beginning of the week. Some of the surveys were dominated by one or two responses (5th hour loves Fridays & Saturdays), while other survey questions were more evenly distributed. The posters each group made looked great & will adorn my ceilings as soon as I can get a step ladder tall enough. We spent the later part of the week reviewing & taking the Unit 3 assessment. Next week we will begin our unit on particles, so get ready for some experiments & drawing many dots & boxes.
Chemistry also wrapped up a unit this week. Our second unit was all about how particles move & applying that knowledge to solve math problems. We began our next unit on energy & states of matter on Thursday. On Friday I had a lab planned, but that got postponed until Monday due to flipping the breaker with hot plates. I've got some homework this weekend to figure out how many hot plates we can use so we can actually do the lab. Instead we discussed the article from Thursday & talked about different energy accounts & how energy is transferred. Remember, energy is energy, so don't use the word heat anymore! This was a super short week! In chemistry we spent the week taking what we learned from our particle lab and applying it to problems with numbers. For instance, we learned that pressure is directly proportional to temperature. So if we double the temperature, the pressure doubles as well. Since we know how pressure, volume, temperature, and number of particles are related, we can figure out what the end result for one of those variables will be if we are given enough information about the other variables. We will spend the beginning of the week solidifying this idea and reviewing what we learned about particles moving so that by Wednesday we are ready for the Unit 2 assessment. This week all of the Science 9 groups wrote survey questions and then each class took a survey containing each group's questions. Each group then took the responses and is working to create a bar graph and pie chart from the data they collected. They will finish making the graphs early this week and then will present the graphs to the class. Our assessment on graphing will take place at the end of this week. This weekend I attended a fall reunion meeting with the teachers I attended a chemistry teaching workshop with over the summer. I really enjoyed getting back together with all of those teachers as well as being put to the test with our own lab challenge. We had to dust off some skills that many of us hadn't used in a while and worked through some common challenges we face in the classroom while being put in a similar situation we put our students in daily. Get ready for Monday everyone, we'll be trying a few new things as we review for assessments and start new units. VICTORY! We found the concentration of an acid & then figured out how much acid we needed in a reaction to make enough carbon dioxide to exactly fill a ziplock bag. We are wrapping up our unit on moving particles in chemistry. We used a PhET simulation to show us how changing temperature, volume, and number of particles affects pressure. We used the Gas Properties simulation to capture quantitative data that we could graph using Excel. A benefit to doing this lab as a simulation was that we could actually see how the gas particles behaved under the changing conditions. We used our data to figure out three different gas laws and used our particle model and kinetic molecular theory to explain why the gas laws work the way they do. We'll be wrapping the unit up by calculating what happens to temperature, volume, pressure, or number of particles when you change one (or more) of the other variables.
Science 9 spent this week working on our graphing skills. The beginning of the week was dedicated to making scatter plots, drawing lines of best fit, and calculating the slope. While there were definitely some overwhelming moments, the scientists in class pulled together & worked through the challenges. Thursday & Friday were spent learning about, & then making, bar graphs & pie charts. Pie charts presented another challenge, but I think once the first few sections were calculated and drawn that the process started to make a bit more sense. Next week they will put their skills to the test by taking answers to a survey question & making graphs to display the data. |
Ms. Lyons
Science is amazing, check it out! Archives
May 2016
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