This year in science has been even more awesome than last year. We did so many spectacular things this year that I don't even know where to begin! But I shall try to capture it all in this final blog.....
At the beginning of the year we started out with Chemistry. By the end of the unit we were all like mad scientists in action.
We studied the periodic table and even made our own, out of cereal boxes. Each person had an element to contribute. This was a fun class project and it helped me learn some new facts about our elements along the way. We also made our own Bohr model of an element. I am glad I did not get an element with tons of electrons and protons. In this unit I realized how small an atom is and how even smaller its nucleus is.
We did lots of crazy science experiments that you probably shouldn't try at home. Even the chemicals had warnings on the box! One of my favorite labs we did in chemistry was the lab we did to test the chemical and physical changes of experiments. This lab was one of my favorites because it involved many stations. Each station had a chemical or physical change and we had to determine which one it was. One of my favorite stations of this lab was the baking soda and vinegar. The two chemicals combined exploding in a plastic bag and creating a pretty cool chemical change. I would advise doing this experiment outdoors. We could surely tell you the difference between a chemical and physical reaction from all the labs we did with them.
One of my favorite days we had in the chemistry unit was mole day. This day celebrated the unit of mole which is 6.02x10^23. We celebrated the day with mole day themed food and created t-shirts to wear. I had the honor of making the hats for mole day! Mole day was the first time I had tried guacamole. We even paid a dollar to play human whack-a-mole with the teachers being the moles. The whole day was like a mole day party in celebration of a pretty cool number.
We did some things this year that most middle schoolers would be afraid to do. Even I thought that some ideas were a little crazy but with some convincing I eased my way into believing it would work. We dunked a live person in water to determine their volume and density. This is a perfect example of one of the skeptical labs we did. In the end it worked but it resulted in someone getting wet.
When we went into our physics unit I was very nervous because I did not want to solve long equations to find out how a ball rolls. I enjoyed physics much more than chemistry because we were less likely to get blown up in physics and we learned why and elephant and a feather do not land on the ground at the same time. Thanks to air resistance they don't!
I was wrong about people getting blown up because for one our labs we broke a cinder block on Mr.Simon's chest. This demonstration proved that if force is applied evenly throughout the cinder block that the cinder block will not crush someone's internal organs.
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| DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME |
One of my favorite labs we did was the Egg Drop lab. This was one of my favorite labs because we got to watch a helicopter go up into the air. At first when I heard the idea for this lab I thought Mrs.G was insane. I thought there was no way that an egg could survive a four story drop. Our group was not successful at first with the saving of the egg. Our device to enclose our egg broke and was very heavy. We started brainstorming and came up with the idea to use two car wash sponges to sandwich the egg inside. This idea ended up saving our egg from the helicopter drop. Surprisingly most of the eggs dropped did survive. Sometimes physics seems to make the impossible, possible. One thing I learned from this project is that when constructing a device to protect a falling egg, the number of layers doesn't matter, it's the effectiveness of each layer that matters.
This year was also a big year for Science Olympiad!! We did better than we ever imagined by swooping up a first place trophy at Regionals. We spent a ton of hours preparing and studying for our events. At the end of States we took home a fifth place trophy and our teacher/coach extraordinaire Mrs. G, earned a coach of the year award for the entire state! One thing I hope to improve on next year in terms of Science Olympiad is getting first in all my events and hopefully the team will move on to Nationals next year. Our pink shirts rocked! Pink shirts will rock again in 2016!!!!
The last few weeks of school we had our final for science. The Chemistry portion of the test was a lot harder in my opinion than the Physics part of the test because physics was a lot easier for me. Overall I did okay on the final but I definitely hope to improve next year.
Towards the end the year we took a trip to defy gravity to relieve some stress and defy gravity. I had lots of fun and am excited to see what they have planned for us next year. We also had the annual boat regatta which unfortunately I could not attend. I heard it was lots of fun and congratulations to the winners.
My outlook on science changed throughout the year because of the constantly changing and thought provoking labs we had each week. One week the labs seemed practical and the next we I thought we would need a safety permit or a waiver to participate. One goal I have for next year is to take first place at state in all my events. I plan to work even harder next year at science and science olympiad. The thing that I am most looking forward to next year is the field trips planned. I am sure that Mrs.G has created some great learning opportunities for next year...she never disappoints!!!!.
Hope everyone has a great summer and I can't wait for science camp and Earth and Science next year!!!!
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