Second Week of School

     After a long Summer it is always so hard for me to transition back into school time. During Summer my brain does not do work so I guess school is a nice break for my usually lazy brain. The first week of school was super hectic so we were not required to blog.  The first week of school we started a lab about baking cookies which would some how refresh our brains on the scientific method and use of variables. I thought this lab was going to be fun at first but then I realized I was going to be blind folded and a bunch of people who I "TRUST" are going to be giving me directions. That did not sit well with my brain that was still half asleep. For this lab to be considered a learning experience and, not just baking cookies, we had to change the amounts of one ingredient. The ingredient we changed was our independent variable. Our group changed the amount of baking soda and halved the amount.

    On Monday one group member brought back the cookies from being baked over the weekend and we filled in our data table. When tasting our cookies we found that what we varied didn't really change anything. For some reason our cookies were salty and I take none of the blame because I was blindfolded. Tomorrow we will find the density and hopefully finish the lab. In addition to the lab, we also took notes on a brief introduction to unit one and completed our note cards in class.

      Tuesday is usually not my favorite day of the week, but science class this Tuesday happened to be pretty fun. To start the class we finished our note cards adding the words precision and accuracy. This was a review from last year but Mrs. G did a demonstration  to help us remember the difference between the words. A volunteer shot foam dart bullets on to a bulls-eye and after they were shot we had to determine if they exhibited accuracy or precision. The shots were so off that they did not really represent either. After our crash course on precision and accuracy we finished our cookie lab. All the groups calculated their cookies' density and shared our results. Last year I vowed to improve time management with my studying so that is what I hope to do this week.

      On Tuesday we started a new lab. Mrs.G must really like cookies because in this lab we are comparing the creme in Oreo cookies. You probably have all seen the double stuffed Oreo in the grocery store, but are they really double stuffed? This is what we are trying to figure out in this lab. By comparing regular Oreos with the double stuffed version we will try to determine if it is really double or if it is a rip off. We collected data from both cookies by weighing a cookie, a single wafer, and the creme. The results showed that the double stuffed version is significantly higher, but is it double? Through this lab we are are getting practice with our variables , which we so need, and learning how to collect proper data. In this lab we finished about half way and will continue to work on it during the week. If any of you were wondering ...I did not eat the cookies we used for our experiment . Would you eat cookies 8th grade boys have been touching with out washing their hands first?

      On Wednesday we did some review for the upcoming test that was on Friday. This review was not super detailed but we reviewed some of the key things on the study guide. For our science starter we reviewed varibles. I have a good understanding of my variables but I could always use some extra help. In addition to the review we worked on some lab questions for our Oreo lab. If the double stuffed Oreos have less than half the filling I won't really be that mad because a cookie is still a cookie. I hope I do good on my test tommorrow and am going to study the heck out of my notes.

On Friday  we took our science test. I thought the test was very easy because it was mainly a review. It wasn't has hard as I thought it was going to be and I studied very hard the night before so I hope I get a good grade.

Another thing I had to include in this blog is the upcoming Science Olympiad year. We are all super stoked just putting together the team so I guess it shows what lies ahead. With all our hard work we put to the table it was definitely worth it last year.

Dart gun demo

Oreo cookie lab

Blind folded cooking