Chemical Reactions

After a few chemical reaction labs, students are realizing that reactions can be endothermic or exothermic. Breaking and making old and new bonds can absorb energy or release it. Many times that energy is heat.

Steps needed for a Conclusion

You need three things in a Conclusion.


1. Restate the Problem Statement and your Hypothesis, indicating whether your hypothesis was correct or not.

2  Summarize the Experiment and the Record and Analyze. (ex. According to the graph........)

3. Develop a plan that would improve the Experiment  or  advance the Problem Statement to a higher level inquiry.

Adding Energy

 Adding energy to matter makes it expand in volume, but not mass. We know this...........but why?
  We need to stand together as a group and add energy to see what happens!

Scavenger Hunt v-sci

   This week we work towards finding answers to important topics throughout the website. Students will try to find these answers through a myriad of media.
   Also we are developing individual experiments to prove what happens when matter is heated. Students will use the scientific method  and create this proof.

Freddie Flour meets Penelope Pumpkin

This week we start a new quarter and take our first Science NWEA of the school year. We will focus on designing experiments and understanding the variables within those experiments. With volunteers, Freddie Flour and Penelope Pumpkin, we'll test Newton's 1st Law as it pertains to wearing a seatbelt!

Seatbelt and Newton's 1st Law

This week we'll try to demonstrate Newton's 1st law as it relates to wearing seat belts. We were able to shoot video of  a basketball moving forward as it was thrown out of a moving car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZQeXsKxqDc&list=UUS4K_cz4_DvxbpasbZvAfbA

Air For Sale

Logic and the Pig-pile Below Everest!

This week, we continue building  a density column with liquids and solids and hopefully find the mass of air. Yes that's right, air. We'll discuss climbing Everest and ultimately ending up in a pig-pile. But in order to understand, we'll need to think through some logic. Click the link below.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/63vLHt/1eflGs$7z:h10ekxZZ/www.mycoted.com/4_men_in_hats

Density Column

This week students will be building a Density Column after calculating the density of different liquids and making hypotheses to the position of each. Students will also add a few solids and while I'm typing this, I just thought we should inject a few gases also. Why not right? What could happen?

Tangent for Height When You're Dealing with a Right!

Students will be finding the height of their rocket through Trigonometry. Using a right triangle we can measure the distance from the launch pad and utilize a clinometer and a calculator

to find the height as students must also provide video evidence of Newton's Third Law.

Rockets!!!!!!!

We've started motion towards the design and completion of bottle rockets in the study of Newton's laws. Students will use a Nasa simulator to investigate different masses and pressures along with fin and nosecone designs.

Mass and Volume

This week we continue to discover the differences between 'volume' and 'mass' through labs in the classroom. Students will be measuring using triple-beam balances, graduated cylinders, metric rulers and computers. The interesting data that we gather will lead us to density. We'll also work with new spreadsheet style tables to develop programmed computation.

51 Word Wednesday

With the new schedule  and "Late Arrival Wednesdays' (LAW),   v-sci will incorporate an automatic Extension called "51 Word Wednesday". Students will research a new topic in science and present an explanation of what's new in a 51 word essay due on each Wednesday you happen to have Science class. Consider the extra time you have for the assignment!

Off to the Future

Welcome back to ........... the Universe! This year our exploration in physical science and remnants of biology thread us through the unknown. We will focus everything we discover  and re-focus as it pertains to the Universe. Are we really here or somewhere else? Off to the future!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/video/is-our-universe-a-hologram-video/

Bike to Body

It's time to ride! But.... before we do, we need to identify the components of our bike and explore the function of each. Students will bring in their bikes, ride in their bikes or use someone else's  to compare the functions of human body parts to the parts of a bike! Bikes will be covered in sticky notes by the end of the week!

Relationships

Symbiotic relationships between living organisms, whether they are plants or animals of bacteria or just about anything with a cell, exist everywhere. We are talking about organisms that can harm, help or not affect another organism in the same habitat. This week we'll investigate these relationships by playing a game with examples of mutualistic, parasitical and commensalistic relationships.

http://www.physicalgeography.net/

Medical Issues

Now that the Artificial Body Systems are coming together, we've incorporated some bad news.  Various medical problems have cropped up and students are rushing to find answers to curing these maladies.  Some diseases and traumatic injuries include: Kidney Stones, Spinal Cord Severing at C5, Arteriolosclerosis, Tension Pneumothrorax, and various fractures and cancers. We have much work to do.

Artificial Bodies!

The artificial bodies are coming together nicely as students also research the function of various organs. Take a look!

Succeed!

It's time to build our body systems. Don't be a waiter, a person that waits for others to do it for them. Try different ideas with just about anything to make this work. Ask me for supplies, look for recycle products, bring stuff in to school. The best ABS systems are made from .......creativity.
Also, remember there is a time limit. We need to complete this project very soon. So, when a partner is absent or a part is missing.... improvise, adapt and succeed!

ABS

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 We can build an Artificial Body System. We have the technology.

We have the capability to make the world's first ABS that actually works.

Better... stronger... faster.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-D99_UBhaU

Blood Moon or maybe just Orange.

A possible Blood Moon starts the week of Tuesday morning at 3:06 a.m.. What's a Blood Moon? Well it certainly has nothing to do with the Circulatory System. It's all about us! Yup! We have a tendency to get in the way and when I say,"we" I mean the Earth.
    The Earth will be in line between the sun and moon and much of the light that strikes the moon will have refracted through our own atmosphere. If we have a lot of volcanic ash in the upper atmosphere we'll see a more reddish moon, but if the upper Stratosphere is clear right now so we'll probably see an Orange Moon!

NWEA

   This weeks starts the NWEA test for Science. It's the second time students will have taken this test this school year.  This type of test adjusts, as the the user answers correctly or incorrectly. Students who do well, will most likely see questions that might even be found in college.

   The test will make the next question harder as the user answers correctly and also make the question easier as he or she answers incorrectly. As a teacher I'm excited about how my students take this test seriously. I'm looking for students to improve a few points from the last test, which to me illustrates growth. But...... sometimes we all have a bad day no matter how hard we try and I'm confident that my students are developing scientists no matter what score appears at the end of one test.

Carbon Dioxide versus Pizza

How does our digestive system relate to global warming? It's simply CO2. With more of a blanket covering the Earth (CO2), our Earth's weather changes, which changes where we need to grow certain crops. Humans are seeing longer droughts and unusually high or low temperatures where they really haven't seen them before. These changes might make it harder to balance our daily food intake like the graph below.

What can you do?

Let's take a close look at what we eat. We'll be using FoodTracker to determine our daily intake for the next week. Here's a quick picture of my intake on Sunday March 23rd. Looks like I need to make some adjustments. Create a profile at SuperTracker

Variables

When we hear of the word 'variables' we think math or least I do, but variables are very important in designing and recording experiments. This week we'll discuss three types of variables:

controlled- things we keep the same.

independent- the one thing we change.

dependent- the measured result.

In order to perform valid experiments like the "Save the Snow" project, we must use these variables correctly or the experiment might not be true.

Save the Snow

    After a successful chicken dissection we noticed that the snow outside is beginning to disappear. The two thoughts seem distant until your freezer breaks down.
    Students will use the scientific method to answer this
                                                 Problem Statement:

              How can we save snow from disappearing outside?

Show Me Chicken!

  This week we dissect chicken wings! We will identify the skeletal muscle, tendons, and fascia of the Muscle System. From the Skeletal System we'll identify the bones, hinge joint, cartilage, and especially the ligaments since Mackenzie had her ACL replaced! We'll also go for red blood cells in the bone marrow along with an artery and a vein from the Circulatory System.

Organizing Your Life.

   As some of you organize your day making sure you have your work done or bring the right stuff to class, scientists are constantly organizing new discoveries! One way we have to make science more understandable is to place what we know about things in groups. That's why we working with Kingdoms in Classification and Body Systems in the Human Body.

    Notice how we organize much like "Sesame Street"!

What makes skis go fast?

Well, the Olympics are over and I must say they were fantastic. One of the big issues concerning the ski events was the snow conditions.  Some days the snow was melting (moving from a solid to a liquid) and some days it was freezing ( moving from a liquid to a solid).
Course managers would add Calcium Chloride in warm conditions to condition the snow, but what did the ski techs do to make the skis fast? What do all the chemicals do?

Check out the link below, it's science!

http://dominatorwax.com/sites/default/files/dominator/wax-science-demystified.pdf

The Winter Olympics are Almost Here!

Since we have been discussing Evolution and Natural Selection, it only makes sense to compare that to the Winter Olympics. The Olympics have evolved from one event back about 2790 years ago to what they are today.

The interesting thing however, is that the records keep breaking. People are faster, stronger, and more skilled than ever before. Why is that? Is it technology, genetics or something else?

Dissection and Investigation

When I vomit I prefer not to pick through the vomitus, unless I see something spectacular. This last week in January will involve such a fantastic activity, only we'll be picking through something an owl threw up! (Notice the words 'through' and 'threw' used in the same sentence) We call this owl expulsion......, a pellet.

The idea is to put whatever came out of the owl back together and then identify what it may have been before its untimely death

   We are now investigating the Big Bang Theory and it's dispersal of the four Fundamental Forces of Nature. It's hard to imagine a time without time, 13.7 billion years ago. We plan to find key points in history and place them on a super huge timeline outside in the snow, starting from 14 billion years to present day.

    At the same time we are discovering how our cells work together to form body systems that work together to form us. And to think, it all started with the Big Bang!

We're Back!!! 2014

    As we enter the new year, students will focus on understanding the function of their body systems. We'll be identifying organs and creating artificial working systems that may someday replace ...............well maybe they'll work.
   Also on the Universe front, we'll be measuring time in the snow. Sounds crazy, but I'm looking forward to being outside in the cold winter wonderland we call........ the playground.