Science at Bangor & in the News
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. We continued to discuss particles moving & colliding in chemistry. This week we shifted from thinking about particles in general to how gas particles moving & colliding causes pressure. We learned about how much water the atmosphere can support (over 30 feet) and what causes gas pressure to change. We started a lab that will show us the relationship between pressure and number of particles, temperature, and volume. We will spend next week finishing the lab & analyzing the data.
In Science 9 we wrapped up our measurement & ratio unit with a lab where the students obtained the volume of a shape in two ways: measuring with a ruler & then calculating volume in cm3 and filling the shape with water and measuring the amount of water the shape held in milliliters. We will open our third unit, graphing, taking a look at the data & using our data to find a conversion factor between ml and cm3. In the second chemistry unit we will be looking at energy & particles moving. We had two demonstrations that showed us that particles can move. First, I opened a bag of popcorn in one corner of the room. After a few minutes, people that were far away could also smell the popcorn. Since the smell moved across the room, we decided that the particles had to be moving. The second demonstration used a very warm beaker of water and a cold beaker of water. I dropped food coloring into both beakers at the same time. The coloring in the warm beaker quickly spread throughout and became evenly distributed, but the coloring in the cold beaker wasn't spread out even by the end of the hour. The cold beaker actually looked more like a lava lamp. From this we concluded that not only do particles move, but they must move faster in warm temperature than they do in cold temperature. We call the particles moving from an area of high concentration to low concentration diffusion.
In Science 9, we continued to practice our measuring skills. This week we added area and volume into the mix. We made sure to talk about the area of a circle so that we could find the best pizza deal for the money. Anyone in class that day should always be able to make the most economical choice for pizza. Next week we will get more in depth in examining volume & we will wrap-up our unit on measuring. This week in Science 9 we entered the Metric zone. While the metric system is unfamiliar because the US is one of 3 industrialized countries that still use the English system (Liberia & Myanmar are the other 2 countries, if you were wondering), the students started to come around to the ease of converting to larger and smaller units in the metric system compared with the English system. We also talked about the importance of measuring precisely & accurately. As we continue this year, we will exclusively use the metric system. Hopefully the metric system will become less foreign & strange as we keep measuring & using it more.
In chemistry, we wrapped up our first unit this week. Our last experiment allowed us to calculate how thin aluminum foil is. We also determined that heavy-duty aluminum foil really is 50% thicker than regular foil. At the end of lab, we calculated how many particles thick regular foil is & found that regular foil is over 500,000 aluminum particles thick! While we were reviewing, each group made a whiteboard about everything we learned in the unit. As we were discussing, I wrote a summary whiteboard (pictured below). We will be moving on & starting a unit on energy & particles in motion. In chemistry we continued to explore the idea of density this week. In addition to applying what we learned mathematically, we investigated if boys or girls were more dense. Student volunteers hopped into a (clean) garbage can full of water so we could determine their volume by how much water they displaced. The volunteers also told their classmates their mass so we could then calculate their density: amount of mass for every milliliter of water displaced. For a video, check out my Twitter feed. The week wrapped up by experimentally determining the density of the gas that Alka-Seltzer produces when dropped in water.
Science 9 started a new unit this week. We started by using everyday objects as measuring tools, which works as long as the objects are standardized. Unfortunately, most objects (paper clips, pens, pencils, etc.) are not always standardized. We began working on converting measurements in one unit to a different unit and will be practicing this skill throughout the year. We left off by beginning to look at the history of measurement systems and will be using that as a starting point to enter the metric system. Both classes had a busy week between what we learned and the strange schedules on Wednesday (count day assembly) and Thursday (PSAT/practice SAT). I'm looking forward to a regular week this week and the beginning of Academic Wednesday. If anyone is having difficulties, please come see me on Wednesday morning during the academic hour! In chemistry, we had a double-lab week. We first explored the idea of volume--the amount of space something takes up and learned that the milliliter (mL) and cubic centimeter (cc or cm3) are equivalent units of volume. We also began learning about density, how much stuff is in a unit of space. We were able to graph data from both experiments and see that there was a linear relationship between ml & cm3 as well as ml & mass (in grams) for a given substance. During graphing, we started to use our science vocabulary to describe the meaning of the slope of the line. Needless to say, it was a big week for us. We will continue to use the ideas of mass, volume, and density as we develop a particle model.
Science 9 wrapped up their unit on experimental design last week. This week we will start our second unit on measurement & ratios. I also want to say a huge thank you to the Bangor Alumni Foundation. They funded my grant proposal which allowed me to purchase a classroom set (30) of TI-30X IIS calculators. The calculators will go into service tomorrow (10/5) & will be a huge asset to everyone in the classroom. Homecoming Week was certainly eventful! It was great to see and participate in the week's activities. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. Chemistry spent the week learning about how measurements should be taken, the importance of accuracy and precision in measurement, and ways we report measurements. This was the first time we have really dug in to some math-heavy work in class, so there were definitely some growing pains. I'm confident that as we continue to practice these skills they will become easier. Science 9 continued exploring variables by testing what affects the speed of a pendulum swinging. We had a conference about what we learned through testing and then put our learning to the test. Each group of students chose a song and then the groups tried to match the swing of the pendulum to the beat of their chosen song for 15 seconds. Aside from feeling like I was running a dance club in my classroom, the challenge was a fun one for me to watch the 9th grade scientists take on.
In chemistry this week we started out talking about the idea of mass: the amount of matter (aka stuff) something has. We investigated the idea of mass by completing a series of 6 lab experiments. The image below is from the fan favorite: touching a 9V battery to a fluffed pad of steel wool. We started analyzing our data at the end of the week and will wrap up what the lab means at the beginning of this week. Science 9 used our experience from the pasta lab as a starting point to talk about characteristics of science and learning about different types of variables in experiments. We will continue to talk about these ideas for the entire year, so our practice in identifying variables was time well spent. This week we will put our practice to work as the scientists investigate how changing one variable in an experiment can affect the outcome.
The big splash in the news lately has been the discovery of fossils of a new human ancestor: Homo naledi. The new fossils were found in an cave complex in South Africa. The opening was so small that the only scientists who could recovery the fossils were a team of small women. One exciting aspect of the discovery for me was that one of the lead scientists is from my alma mater, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor John Hawks reported that the bones indicate that Homo naledi was short (adult height of 5'0"), built for walking long distances and climbing, and had a smile that was probably more human than ape-like. He also said that it appears the bodies were intentionally placed in the cave and not trapped. Scientists still have years of analysis ahead of them to determine the age of the fossils and other information about what our ancient ancestors ate, how they aged, and where they may have lived. |
Ms. Lyons
Science is amazing, check it out! Archives
May 2016
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