Reporting on your Bubble Lab last week and reflecting on the way you designed your experiment are both important steps towards understanding how scientists do good work. What you experienced was the "scientific method", but we missed one crucial piece - developing your own question to test and predicting what the answer could be. You will have a number of chances this year to do just that - follow your interests, ask questions, & search for answers.
As we start up this week, you will be creating your own website using Google Sites. You will use this as a digital portfolio for science this year and will post the work you are most influenced by. Continuing into the rest of the week, we will begin our Astronomy Unit by taking a deep look at gravity and how it manipulates the universe. After school help will be available Monday and Thursday. Mornings before school this week are also available, just email Mr. Bowles beforehand. Stay curious and keep looking for answers! We will kick off the week with the Bubble Lab during which you will be answering the question: Which type of soap (Palmolive or Ivory) makes the biggest bubbles? You will be provided with materials which you can use in any way you'd like. Accurately measuring a bubble's size can be a challenge, so it may take some creative thinking to figure out a way. To reflect on the effectiveness & limitations of your experiment's design, you will be creating a presentation and receiving peer feedback this week to gain a broader perspective on how you can find out which soap makes the biggest bubbles.
After school help is available Monday, Wednesday, & Thursday this week. Please make sure to check your grade in PowerSchool and email Mr. Bowles with any questions. Stay curious and keep looking for answers! The beginning of every week in Science class will start with the Weekly Update, which runs through the plan for the week ahead - science topics, labs, activities, projects, exams, etc. Last week you kicked off the year by creating a test to prove a theory about why a ping pong ball hovers even when it’s not directly over a hairdryer. Among all the science classes, over fifteen unique ways were used to test similar theories. Scientists often design tests that don't work or lead them to unpredicted outcomes. The whole point of this lab was to help you think like a scientist - to understand what it's like to try to prove to others why things work.
This week, we will do an overview of this year's topics, classroom expectations, and how you will be graded in Science class. We will also have our first official lab, during which you will design a test to figure out what type of soap makes the biggest bubble. Before this though, we will cover safety features in the classroom and how to safely work during a lab. In order to participate in the lab, your safety contract (that went home last week) needs to be signed and turned-in. If you have any questions at all as we roll through the week, please don't hesitate to ask. Stay curious and keep looking for answers! |
The Weekly UpdateThese posts are updates of weekly topics, events, and experiments. The most recent posts are at the top. Archives
March 2020
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