Science Week 21

Monday or January 20, 2015 A.D.:

No School! :)

Tuesday or January 21, 2015 A.D.:

Today in Physics class we went over some vocabulary. We went over motion which I already know, but we went over Frame of Reference which I have never learned. Frame of Reference is an object that you use to measure motion of a different object. If someone runs on an American Football field and we say that he ran 10 yards, we compare it to the field and say the field is not moving. Because we are basing the motion of the player who is running down the field on the field, the field is the Frame of Reference. We also went over the difference between weight and mass (weight is the net force of gravity and mass is how much matter). At the end of class we learned about Scalars and Vectors. Scalars are a number and a unit like 4 meters/second. A vector is a scalar with direction. (4 meters/second left )

What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?
Nothing! You cannot combine a scalar with a vector.


Wednesday or January 22, 2015 A.D.:

We went over more vectors and combined two vectors and made a new vector called a Resultant vector. We then learned some more vocab and I learned that Displacement is the shortest distance between the origin and a point that an object was or is. After this we started a new lab called Super Worm Average Speed Lab. We used actual worms or larvae that looks like a worm, yes, but they don't have any super powers nor are they super heroes. In the lab we had to write statistics of how far etc. the worm moved on a piece of paper into a table. We would put a dot on the paper where the worm's head was and let the worm crawl for 10 seconds. We would then put a dot where the head of the worm now is. We repeated this process 5 more times so the worm traveled for one minute total. Then we found the distance between the dots and the displacement between the dots and the origin. Because we knew that between every dot the worm traveled for ten seconds, we made a rate of speed. Ex. 6cm/10sec. which if converted to a Unit Rate = .6cm / second. By the way our group's worm's name is Tofu.

Super Worm!

Thursday or January 23, 2015 A.D.:

Today we worked on our lab group graph sheet. We made it really nice and colorful and drew very many worms. We also worked on our lab questions and made two graphs. One graph was for the displacement for each dot that the worm traveled through and the other graph was for the total distance the worm had traveled until that point. Ms. Trainer was our substitute and because she is a math teacher, she was able to help us with the math involved in finding the average speeds and things not unlike that.

Friday or January 24, 2015 A.D.:

Mrs.Giacomelli was back today and we reviewed what we learned this week. She helped us with our lab if we had any questions and I was glad she did because I interpreted a question wrong and I was able to fix my answer. In our worm project we put on our finishing touches and I think it looks great now. Ben and Keira did the graph decorations, Anna made the graph dots and made sure they were all in the right spots, and I told Anna what the statistics where and colored the lines with the help of Ben. Teamwork!

Summary: This week was really fun and I really liked learning about physics. The thing I liked the most is that I learned that vectors and scalars are not as scary as I thought they were in the past 2 years. I believe I should work on always having a back-up pencil because I didn't have in Science class on Monday and I had to do my notes in erasable colored pencil. <===" that was supposed to be a pencil...

Science Week 19

Monday or January 5, 2015 A.D.:

Review for the dreaded midterms started today which made me feel both good and bad. I felt good because the reviews will help me do better on the midterm, but I felt bad because now I know how close the midterms really are! Today we studied Unit 1 which I was not here for so I will not be graded on it, but it was still interesting to learn some of what was in the unit. I learned that a control group is the group you do nothing to and that you can only have an accurate experiment if you change one thing at a time.

Tuesday or January 6, 2015 A.D.:

Review happened today again, but this time it was more fun than yesterday. We partnered up to solve 6 questions together. The 2 groups who got them all right in the shortest amount of time got to participate in a Minute-to-win-it match. In the first match you had to fan a tissue paper fish into a basket. In the second match you had to move 10 beans from one part of the room to a cup on the other side. In the third match all of us could participate and we had to eat a vanilla wafer balanced on our Frontalis with only our head and facial muscles.

Chad won with 00:00:23.00

John Steward came closest to winning with 8 beans at the end of the minute.

Wednesday or January 7, 2015 A.D.:

Mrs.Giacomelli reviewed Unit 3 with us by splitting us into two teams. A person on each team was asked a question per round. Every time a person gets a question right it's team gets one point. Every time a team got three points a players on that team got to try a minute to win it game. On our team Delaney got to do it and she had to keep 3 balloons from falling down. She was not successful so our team did not get an additional 2 points. The other team got 3 points that same round and also played a minute to win it game. In this game Will Golder strapped a Yo-Yo to his back and had to demolish several mini towers of soda cans and cups. He went berserk, almost tore down the school, and broke the outside of the Yo-Yo off.

Thursday or January 8, 2015 A.D.:

Today we had another day of review and this time on Unit 4. We were put in groups of 3 and were given a sheet of paper with a grid 5 by 5. I was put with J.S. and Emma J. The first 4 columns of the grid were for 20 questions of 5 points each. The last column was element trivia and was 5 points altogether. The last question (not in the grid) was a question where we had to wager 0-5 points. After answering all questions, we wagered 3 points and got it right by reciting the first ten elements by atomic number and thus winning candy and the competition with 105 points. Yippee!

Friday or January 9, 2015 A.D.:

Today we played the same game as yesterday just with new groups and it was on Units 5&6. The game was really exciting and I really enjoyed it. My group did not do well, but it was fun and that is what matters. I really hope that this review will help reduce unnecessary stress because I believe I can do well on it, I just can't get that into my head.

Summary: This week provided the opportunity to have fun as well as to learn, because I realized how much material I forget over such a short amount of time. In the future I will try to both retain more information and to remember to study everything, not just the material I know enough to remember to study. In other words, study everything instead of studying what you know you don't know because there is probably something you are forgetting that you know just as badly as the things you know you don't know. Sorry that probably didn't make much sense (but it makes sense to me :)).