Day 5, 6, 7, 8--Unit 4

It seems I have lost steam here--I had such great plans to post every day.

Well, lets catch up on the class lately. We are studying the periodic table now--looking first at what is found in every box on every table--atomic number (number of protons), atomic mass (the average of all the mass numbers of all the isotopes found in nature), the symbol, and the name of the element. Students have this down pretty well. We have been drawing the Bohr models of the isotopes and writing out the nuclear notation for any given isotope. Pretty impressive stuff, I'd say. We took a quiz on the 25 elements I had given them two weeks ago when we started the unit. The average was about a B, but many students got A's and even a few A+'s.

Now we will talk about the groups and families on the chart, and about periodicity, how the properties of the elements repeat themselves periodically throughout the chart. We are also coloring a chart in lab--two weeks on this and then we will have a test on it worth 50 points. Time is moving fast, though. Only two and a half weeks until Thanksgiving break.

SJ.

Day 1,2,3, 4--Unit 4

Welcome to our new unit on the periodic table and the elements. I apologize for being behind here--nothing to blame except my absent-mindedness. Our newest unit is starting well. Students made flashcards and did two homework assignments so far. The flashcards are on the 25 elements that I want students to memorize. They need to know names and symbols. Knowing atomic number is optional. We took a practice quiz in the O section and they did pretty well.

The 27th, today, is actually my birthday. Colleen Duran of the S section bought me a cake, which was so nice, and we ate it together, all 30+ of us. Yum. Mrs. Nolan cut the cake up into the appropriate number of pieces, which was amazing using her plastic knife.

So, what are we learning right now? Isotopes and atomic mass, atomic numbers, protons, neutrons, electrons. It is mostly new, so I consider it a tough unit. On day 4 I showed students how Hydrogen has three isotopes, each only different because of how many neutrons they have. We looked at how the atomic mass is an average while the mass number is a whole number (the number of protons plus neutrons).

Tomorrow, the 28th, is the big vocab test 1. There is a practice test online--lets home many, many students are using it to get ready.

Sweet justice.

Lab 6--Density roundup

We did a round the lab trip for density stations this week, the seventh week of school (thus the 6th lab). We saw moth balls in vinegar get raised with air bubbles, saw that hot water is less dense than cold water (with a density ball--a ball with a density very close to 1 g/cc), ranked cylinders from least dense to most dense, and tested antifreeze concentrations. I had students wear safety goggles and aprons, which they don't like that much, but which is much, much safer and better practice for a scientist.

Sweet j.

Lab 5--density

Catching up a bit with labs . . .

Lab 5 was a density lab where we computed mass and volume at 8 different stations. It was the first chance to use the new digital scales. It was also the lab where one was stolen. Yikes. Now I only have 7.

Not so sweet j.

Day 4, 5, 6--Unit 3

Well, where did the time go? How did I get to day 7 already in class, but I haven't blogged days 4, 5, and 6 yet?

I will blame the magazine dance, as well as my wife running the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco this weekend. Both kept me off of my game after school, so to speak, the time when I normally devote a bit of time to this blog.

I will also blame the YouTube/Google connection at school which prohibits me (for some reason) from connecting and uploading pictures. I have a video from the O section to post, but cannot get it on. I will persevere.

Day 4 was a bit different for each section. The W, L, and S sections got to see the vacuum pump in action, showing how Boyle's law works. As the pressure around the outside of the marshmellows/peeps/balloons got less, the volume increased. Pressure up, volume down and vice versa.

For the O section, this was dry ice day--finally I was able to put together a system that actually created dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) in class. I made bubbles with it, put it into acetone, tried to freeze a bouncy ball, and all in all showed how sublimation looked. It is a bit confusing to know that when you see a cloud or fog, you are not seeing a gas, you are seeing the condensation in the air. Tricky.

Sweet justice.

Day 3 Unit 3

Studying phase changes is not quite as interesting as it might sound :) Actually, depending on the demonstrations I am doing that day, it isn't so bad. On this particular day, the thrill was simply talking about how a toilet works, which, on the hole, isn't actually a phase change, though it does involve at least a couple of phases, and sometimes all three.

The principle we were looking at was how a siphon works. It is actually pretty amazing to watch when a siphon takes over. I have a tantalus cup in class that shows the basics behind the siphon tube in a toilet's bowl. When the siphon is completely full of water, it drains itself and the bowl. Pretty slick.

SJ.

Day 2 Unit 3

I have started a new tradition (assuming it lasts) of letting students work on that night's homework while the homework for that day is checked. Mrs. Nolan and I like the system so far. First, it reduces the workload for our overworked students. Second, it is a quiet time where I am sure that students are actually reading the material themselves and attempting to answer the questions themselves. This is so important. On parents' night I talked about our effort as a team to reward and encourage effort above sheer ability. I think that students want to make the effort but too much HW curtails their attempt and makes them take shortcuts. This is a little way to pay into that system of rewarding effort.

SJ.

Day 1 Unit 3

Ah, the start of a new unit. You can almost feel the excitement in the air. Or maybe that is the smell of mothballs from this week's density roundup lab. I can't tell, myself, being colorblind.

This unit is on solids, liquids, and gases. What are their main differences and what are their similarities? First, they are all just different phases or states of the same substance. For water, the substance we know the best for these three states, it is easy to tell differences in volume and shape.

I also talked about the fourth (actually the fifth) state of matter: plasmas. The first state of matter, from least amount of thermal energy on up, is Bose Einstein Condensates. Have fun reading about them.

SJ.

Day 14 Unit 2

I am rapidly falling behind on my goal to blog everyday. My apologies.

This was test day. Not really a fun day like I try to usually have, but a necessary one. Test scores overall were good, I thought. Some students need to spend more time studying, especially taking my online practice tests.

SJ.

Day 13 Unit 2