A few more pictures

A few more pictures from our experiments and observations today. Looking from above after adding salt to the water and oil mixture, you can see bubbles within bubbles.

Class Update

Monday, December 14. Today we did an experiment and observations with water, food coloring, oil, and salt. We made observations and used what we knew about surface tension, density, solubility, and immiscible liquids to explain what was happening. Homework is due tomorrow. Read about Matter and Energy and answer questions 4, 6, and 8. We will have a short quiz on Wednesday, December 16th.

Class Update

Thursday, December 10. On Tuesday we finished coloring in our periodic tables to highlight the different families of elements and learned about some of the characteristics of each family (Alkali Metals, Halogens, Noble Gases, etc.). We watched a short video and listened to the music of Tom Lehrer: The Elements and They Might Be Giants:Meet the Elements (Check it out on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0zION8xjbM).
We went onto Teacher's Domain as well and watched some excerpts from Nova that told how the elements were created in Stars and Supernovae and took notes on how this process works.

Radio Projects

Here are a few of the Radio Projects that we worked on the last couple of weeks:
Flowers 2nd Period.

Bananas 2nd period

Class Update

Friday, December 4. Today we reviewed some basic chemistry definitions. We looked at how matter is anything with mass and volume and the variety of units of measurement for these qualities from gills to liters to gallons and carats to pounds to kilograms. We looked into compounds, mixtures and solutions as well. Homework for Tuesday, December 8th is to finish reading the handout from page 17 to 21 and answer question 5.

Class Update

Thursday, Dec 3rd. Today we continued our investigations into chemistry and the nature of matter. We tried floating paperclips on water, making careful observations and then explaining how this is possible based on what we know, what we have experienced and observed and what makes sense. We shared and critiqued ides as a group. Some ideas that were discussed included surface tension, density, floating and sinking, the "stickiness" of water, attractions between water molecules and other matter, and the attractions between water molecules themselves.

Class Update

Wednesday, December 2. Today we started our unit on Chemistry. Actually, we sort of started it yesterday. But today we did a little review of molecules, atoms, compounds, elements and the three states of matter. We followed this with an investigation of how many drops of water will fit on the top of a penny. We shared results, attempted to explain the differences in our results and started investigating how this much water could fit onto a penny. More to follow.
Monday and Tuesday we finished listening to our Radio Projects on imported products from Latin America. As soon as I figure it out, these will be posted on the blog.