So I wonder. Do you?

What is the inside of the Earth made of? How hot does it get? I wonder…..

Then we combined ideas from all the classes, asked a few questions of each other to clarify thinking and selected what we (students) thought were the top 5 most significant factors causing water to move through the oceans. Here’s the list (6 listed because of variations between classes):

• Wind
• Temperature
• Earth’s rotation
• Moon’s gravity
• Plate tectonics
• Water Cycle

This is a great list! It shows your ability to apply prior knowledge to new situations, think logically, evaluate various options and engage in debate. I am proud of how well you did.

Lastly you had to do some textbook research into these and present your findings to the class. This had mixed results some very good and others not so good. Textbook research doesn’t seem to be a mastered skill yet, but we’ll work on it. If you were perfect at everything what would you need me for?

Now let’s have some more fun — “scientific messing around”. Let’s play with water!

The famous water cycle drawing (click to enlarge)

While some of you are working on your creative version of the water cycle song (dance?), which we’ll post here, we are moving on and looking more closely at the mechanisms of the water cycle.

The basics of the water cycle, those marked in red, should be familiar to most students. But how well do you really know the water cycle? Take a closer look, what’s happening? I wonder…..

Over the next several days we’ll conduct an investigation into what affects the rate of evaporation and perhaps try to answer another student’s question “Is rain clean?” If the water is polluted on the ground does the pollution go with the water when it evaporates? How do we get acid rain?

Are you still wondering about the water cycle? Have you begun your own investigation? Here is a great resource on the Water Cycle.

That’s the theme for science this year. Somehow I hope to rekindle the child-like wonder and amazement at the world which surrounds us. Throughout the year I’ll encourage you to wonder — “I wonder why this happens” “I wonder how this works” “I wonder what would happen if”. Then we’ll build the skills to answer those questions.

As I’m writing this and finishing up a re-design of the class website, I wonder what our first week will be like. Currently tropical storm Fay is off the coast of Cuba and computer models predict its path to include Central Florida. Right now classes on Tuesday and Wednesday are questionable. So if there is no school does the learning stop?

• I wonder if tropical storm Fay will turn into a hurricane.
• I wonder what affects the paths of storms.
• I wonder how computers predict the path.
• I wonder what causes storms to strengthen.
• I wonder what you wonder.

Leave me a comment, just click “response” below.

Brainstorm some ideas, narrow your focus, research your topic, and then design your experiment. Be practical; this must be something you can actually conduct in class with simple materials. I have a few items you can use but anything else you’ll need to provide. It must be safe and have measurable results that answer your key question.

• To develop an understanding of the distribution of salt and fresh water on the earth (how it’s spread out or separated)
• To learn what sources of water we use in Winter Garden
• To create a model of how water moves between reservoirs (places that hold water) within the water cycle
• And to create a method of calculating the amount of fresh water that could be collected from the roof of our classroom building.

We have finished the first 2 and are now going to move on to the hydrologic or water cycle. Here’s a short movie clip showing the cycle in motion.

Follow this link for more information. This site will require registration if you have not already done so. Give it a try!

Speaking of comments, I just read a new comment left tonight on an old post from April. When you post a comment it is emailed to my home email account and I read and approve it before it actually shows up on the site (called moderation). In fact I read more than just your comment I go back and read the original post and all the other comments. This post was about grades but in the comments a student asked about independent and dependent variables in a lab we were doing.

Can you determine the independent and dependent variables in the interactions between spheres we’ve discussed in class? Here’s the comment and my response in the post from April, see if it helps.

Comments:

Anonymous said…

Mr. Grant i was working on the mentos lab and i ran into a problem. I think the dependent variable is the types of soda in liters. And i thing the Independent variable is the mentos in meters due to the information my partner gave me.
4/26/2007 6:05 PM
Mr. Grant said…

Let’s go back to some basics:

Question: What’s a variable?

Answer: A variable is an object, event, idea, feeling, time period, or any other type of category you are trying to measure. There are two types of variables-independent and dependent.

Question: What’s an independent variable?

Answer: An independent variable is exactly what it sounds like. It is a variable that stands alone and isn’t changed by the other variables you are trying to measure. For example, someone’s age might be an independent variable. Other factors (such as what they eat, how much they go to school, how much television they watch) aren’t going to change a person’s age. In fact, when you are looking for some kind of relationship between variables you are trying to see if the independent variable causes some kind of change in the other variables, or dependent variables.

Question: What’s a dependent variable?

Answer: Just like an independent variable, a dependent variable is exactly what it sounds like. It is something that depends on other factors. For example, a test score could be a dependent variable because it could change depending on several factors such as how much you studied, how much sleep you got the night before you took the test, or even how hungry you were when you took it. Usually when you are looking for a relationship between two things you are trying to find out what makes the dependent variable change the way it does.

Many people have trouble remembering which is the independent variable and which is the dependent variable. An easy way to remember is to insert the names of the two variables you are using in this sentence in they way that makes the most sense. Then you can figure out which is the independent variable and which is the dependent variable:

(Independent variable) causes a change in (Dependent Variable) and it isn’t possible that (Dependent Variable) could cause a change in (Independent Variable).

For example:

(Time Spent Studying) causes a change in (Test Score) and it isn’t possible that (Test Score) could cause a change in (Time Spent Studying).

We see that “Time Spent Studying” must be the independent variable and “Test Score” must be the dependent variable because the sentence doesn’t make sense the other way around.

Now try this with your independent and dependent variables.
4/26/2007 7:46 PM

Enjoy your year of discovery.

• Have you figured out how heat was used? Remember that heat is the movement of thermal energy.
• Besides the changes in temperature what other observations did you make? Do you recall taking any notes that might relate to your observations?
• What was the purpose of the salt?
• Can you draw a picture showing the flow of thermal energy in your experiment?
• Were there any anomalies (unexpected results)? What might have caused them?

In this lab you were to examine mechanical advantage using a simple machine called an incline plane. That means you were going to investigate, experiment and play with an inclined plane to see if changing it in someway had an affect on this thing called mechanical advantage.

Our approach was to start with things we already knew. Some of this came from notes on work, and ideal and actual mechanical advantage. Other things came from prior labs where we used an incline plane and/or where we measured different forces. This gave us some ideas on how we might conduct an experiment.

Next was to do some background research. This is where you go exploring. Look information up in your textbooks, other classroom resources and the internet. The more you know about incline planes, ideal and actual mechanical advantage, work and efficiency the better. Part of your research should also have included “playing” with the equipment — doing some testing to see what happens and how to best set it up.

Out of this comes your experimental design, how you will conduct the experiment, what you will measure, and your hypothesis. Skimping on the research and design results in poor quality and wasted work. Planning is very important.

Now you are collecting the data and calculating various things like work, mechanical advantage and efficiency. You’re also making graphs, drawing conclusions, looking for patterns and making comparisons.

Some of you are doing an excellent job — keeping up with your classwork and doing some extra at home. It pays off by giving you some time to discuss your findings with me and confirm that you have done the write-up properly.

Keep up the good work. There is more pleasure in succeeding at something that is difficult than there is when you take the easy route.