Exploring Heat Transfer

This week's inquiry experiment was fairly simple on paper; fill four identical mugs, pour some hot water into them and cover each with a different insulator found around the house. Leave the covered mugs on the counter for 30 minutes and then measure the temperature change with the thermometer from our science kits.

There was no stipulation as to how hot the water needed to be so I put each mug in the microwave for 2 minutes each, then covered them and left them out. Half an hour later I attempted to measure the temperature and discovered that my little thermometer could only reach 50 degrees Celsius. Sooo....I had to toss that experiment. Unmeasurable= Invalid.

Next, there was a lively debate between my fiance, my fiance's son who is an AP student in science and myself. We went back and forth on whether I should microwave the water or use hot tap water, if I should do all the mugs at once or one at a time and what insulators I should use. That's typical for my house, being surrounded by smart people is lively if not informative.


I decided to do it my way. I usually do. I heated tap water to its hottest, measured one cup of water, put it in the mugs and topped them. I came back half an hour later and checked the temperature. Strange, how on earth could the plastic baggie be the best insulator? Something had to be wrong, I had also used a 1" piece of Styrofoam, a piece of foil and a wash cloth as my insulators. Surely the washcloth or the baggie had to be poor insulators but no, it didn't work that way at all.


So I sighed, and did the experiment once more. It sounded so simple on paper!


This time when I measured the results, the water for  the Styrofoam, the baggie and the wash cloth all measured in at 36 degrees Celsius. What was up with the Styrofoam? It ended up that the foil won out with a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius.


I decided to leave my experiment at that. Maybe foil as an insulator was something I could look into later on in my free time. It also occurred to me as I was pondering the results that this experiment had no control and to get truly valid results, I would have included a control.


My conclusion: I wouldn't have my students do an experiment like this having tried it on my own with three widely different results. If I was instructed to have my students do it despite my objections, I would give more specifics; give a starting temperature for the water, and to make sure they used a control.


And now for a question from my professor:
What, specifically, would you like students to learn from this experiment?

To answer that question, I pulled up the Sunshine State Standards for Fifth Grade-

The Nature of Science
Standard 1:
The student uses the scientific processes and habits of
mind to solve problems. (SC.H.1.2)

Standard 2:
The student understands that most natural events occur
in comprehensible, consistent patterns. (SC.H.2.2)

6. knows ways that heat can move from one object
to another.

Did you achieve this goal when you engaged in the experiment?

To be honest, I did not. The experiment shows that insulators work to contain some heat, but does not show where the heat went nor how it escaped the coffee mug. 

LOL - Physics

How do different surfaces affect the momentum of marbles?

My assignment for this week was to select a topic and create a guided inquiry experiment to suit the topic. I decided that this would be fairly simple; chose a marble, get a ramp, chose a height for the ramp and find a measuring tape. I next decided to try the marble roll on carpet, tile floor, concrete and sand. (Living in Florida we have Lots of sand). 

First trial, I sent the marble down the ramp. Our cat was watching in rapt attention and pounced on the ball as soon as it hit the carpet. As we all know this introduced a new variable (add cat?) and we can only have one variable in our experiment. So I put cat in the bathroom and finished up with the carpet trial.

Second trial, I sent the marble down the ramp to see how it did on my tile floor. It hit my front door and bounced back. I tried twice just to make sure.  I had visions of my students running all over the classroom, leaping over desks and hollering about catching marbles so I decided to skip the trial on tile. 

Third trial I went outside with my little ramp, box, measuring tape and marble. I’m certain by now that my neighbors wonder about me, with my having checked out 14 little solar cars previously on the sidewalk in front of my house (I had to make sure they were all working, of course). I’ve noticed that my neighbors tend to veer wide of the sidewalk when I’m out doing my experiments. 

Fourth trial was on the sand across the street, now my neighbors were avoiding me completely.

Now my trials were done and I went in to write up my paper. Here are some questions from my professor with replies:

How could you make this experiment more fun, interesting, or engaging for your students? Actually any time they get to play with marbles is good with them. Fifth grade students believe they are the ‘big kids’ but they still like to play. One thing I would do is to put them in groups of three, with a leader, equipment manager and a secretary. They work better with assigned roles rather than every man for himself.

How might you design this experiment so that it is relevant to students’ lives? I would do this with a class discussion about friction and momentum on highways, why it is important to have some friction and what would happen if there were very little. How would it affect the momentum of cars? 

What specifically would you like students to learn from this experiment? I want them to learn that different surfaces affect the momentum of things that come in contact with them. Some surfaces hasten momentum and others slow it down. Essentially.  Did you achieve this goal? I don’t know as I haven’t done this with my students. I imagine that they would understand it, especially if I keep the focus on the topic and give all students a way to connect to the experiment.

CO2 and You...whew!

I created a fabulous lesson plan using guided inquiry for my science class this week. The overarching idea was about CO2 output- how does it happen, is it true we breathe it out and plants take it in, and what is this thing called a carbon footprint?

The first thing I did was assign my students into groups of three and assigned tasks to each; leader, secretary or equipment manager. Each group was to first take a sheet of paper and write 'green house effect' in the center. Next, they silently added what they knew to the paper passing it from student to student until all had created an entry.

I expected them to know about greenhouses perhaps, but some of their responses were interesting. Here's one group's responses:

As you can see, they knew a greenhouse was for growing plants - they also knew it had something to do with Carbon Dioxide. This surprised me as I have not taught them yet. The comment about cow poo was funny and unexpected. I believe the student may have heard about methane gas and knew too much was harmful to the environment.

This one was a little harder to read. It says; make plants grow, different plants, plant models, the study of plants and the ozone layer/global warming. I suspect that the latter response was written by my gifted student

I then demonstrated how blowing into a clear plastic cup filled with BTB solution made the solution change color. Next I handed out a worksheet and had my students create a hypothesis to the question- Why do you think the liquid turned from blue to gold?

After that, students were instructed on what they were to do and who was to do it. I think they liked the idea of being given specific jobs to do- and that leaders were not self selected or chosen within the groups.

Each group got the equipment they needed and proceeded with the experiment. The first half went very well  as I demonstrated how to proceed and all students did as I showed them.

They were fascinated when the solution changed colors.

The next step- I should have done the next day but it was Friday and the assignment was due on the weekend. I had an unexpected IEP earlier in the day and had hoped to get test tubes from our science teacher, who had the day off much to my disappointment.

I proceeded with the next step, believing that my students would actually follow the written directions word for word, but alas a few did not. They were to create a solution of BTB and water, then pour that into their test tubes or cups.

Some of my students poured the concentrated BTB into the test tubes without mixing with water and wondered why their solution looked black. When you have 22 noisy happy active students it is hard to monitor everything. Therefore the need for demonstration the next time I do this.

This student's group followed the directions and he was proud of their results, as you can see he has one tube with the mixed solution and one tube with the plant in the BTB and water solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 After my students cleaned up their experiments and settled down, it was time to write a response. Once more I had to rush them due to time constraints and once more I realized that it would have been better to take my time and done this lesson over two days rather than one.

Writing results

 

 

 

 

Here is a sample worksheet with answers:

I thought it was interesting that Ana would consider trying the experiment with mild acids like orange juice and coca cola. CO2 is a mild acid and that is essentially what changed the BTB solution. Her answers were accurate if short. 

After we got back from lunch, I talked to my class about how each of us has a carbon footprint and what we can do about it. I look positively haggard in this photo, no wonder as I was! The students were fascinated with the website I have on the board, I demonstrated how to measure your carbon footprint using my own data then my students took turns on our three working computers to discover theirs.

We had a short 20 minutes to talk about our carbon footprints, all of my students were extremely interested and engaged during this discussion. I don't mind if they come close to my smartboard, it shows that they were interested and wanted to see.

I loved teaching this lesson although it was a bit of work to set it up for the first time. My students were totally engaged and worked together beautifully. I have never assigned tasks to my students and doing this kept all engaged. Two students came into my classroom while we were doing the lesson and marveled that they never got to do this 'kind of stuff' with their teachers. 

I will definitely do more inquiry based lessons in the future. Although it was exhausting, it was well worthwhile to see my students come up with their own conclusions and participate in the project willingly and eagerly.

Here's what I would have done differently; 

I would have done this lesson over three days rather than one.

I would have made sure I had ALL of the equipment before we started.

I would have demonstrated the second part of the lesson rather than assuming my students could follow directions without my going over them.

All in all, it was a well worth while experiment. I learned quite a bit about teaching science and my students have internalized how they create CO2 and how plants take it in, 

Topic: What happens if the Polar ice caps melt?

I had believed global warming was absolute fact until one day when a classmate in a course I was taking for my Bachelor’s degree (Earth Science) asked our professor if global warming was fact. She adamantly said it was not, and several hands shot up- students that wanted to disagree with her. She replied to a couple of questions then stopped, claiming that she was there to teach the class, not to debate an issue that was not on her agenda. 

Since then I have been a bit skeptical concerning the issue of global warming. I wanted to find documented evidence on both sides of the issue but I know that simply because data is published, it may be skewed in favor of the author’s viewpoint. 

I started out with reading articles from the National Geographic. I like how they are ecologically aware, yet conservative. I believe this is a responsible magazine, hence my choice. 

Some facts from the National Geographic (2011): In 1895, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius discovered that humans could enhance the greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a third since the industrial revolution. Changes this large have historically taken thousands of years, but are now happening over the course of decades. 

This seems to be causing a domino effect. Once the world temperature rises, change happens everywhere- and it is happening far too rapidly to be of natural causes. “According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), eleven of the twelve hottest years since thermometer readings became available occurred between 1995 and 2006.”

After reading from the website for the IPCC, I used this link to find arguments for and against Global Warming: http://www.pbs.org/now/science/climatedebate.html. 

The E.P.A., the I.P.C.C., scientists, environmentalists and meteorologists worldwide all agree.
From my reading I have seen some excellent arguments concerning what is happening to the atmosphere of the world and how our use of CO2 has affected it. I am now leaning on the side of the ‘believers’. The skeptics have good reasons why Global Warming may not be happening, but from what I have read they have not analyzed the data in nearly as much depth as those that are convinced.

Now to address the original question: What happens if the polar ice caps melt? Everything will be affected. The temperature increase IS happening, it may be only 1% increase in the long run or it may be up to 5% increase. Either way, all life is affected. Here is a graphic from the I.P.C.C. report: 

http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/syr/figi-1.jpg
As you can see, if the climate changes, sea levels rise. If sea levels rise, ecosystems and water resources are affected. If ecosystems and water resources are affected,  our socio-economic development will be affected. If our socio-economic development is affected, we come back to the issue of climate process drivers and the concentrations and emissions of greenhouse gases. Which is us. Which really is All of us are responsible for. 

It is a chain of responsibility that starts with all of us. To impact the future, we as teachers must pass on the importance of being ecologically responsible and aware to our students. If we do not, we are contributing to future damage on a global scale with enormous negative impact. 

What will you do?
What can we do together?
Is it possible to make any kind of impact on this as individuals? Or does it all depend on the auto manufacturers, the factories and industry? 

International Panel on Climate Change Climate Change (2007): Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis.9.1.3. The Basis from which We Begin. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-1-3.html.

National Geographic Society (2011).What is Global Warming? Retrieved from http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-overview

STEM lesson plan writing and me

As stated in my previous blog, I have had some difficulties with this lesson plan. Initially I thought it would be easy but it was tricky trying to pull together a historical benchmark from the 2061 collection, the idea of meshing the STEM topics into a lesson and finding something appropriate for diverse learners.

The five E's are an excellent tool and when I teach I naturally incorporate many of these ingredients in my presentation and in interactions with my students. Making a lesson personal, connecting science with real life experiences, giving the students questions that lead to critical thinking and dynamic group discussions, and creating assessments that show me my students have learned in a variety of formats- I use all of these when teaching, although they may not be written into my lessons per se.

I believe that writing these into my lesson plans would help me consider what I do and how I do it before going into the classroom, rather than winging it from time to time (although we all do!)

When I was writing my lesson plan, I wondered if it was practical to have my students do as much math as the lesson requires. It's simple mathematics and all scientists must use math to prove their work- perhaps this is good real life practice. Not all of my students are good with math, so I will include calculators (they love calculators).

Difficulties, argh!

Difficulties...argh!
STEM lesson plan writing and the miasma of difficulties that have followed me like a dark cloud... This has been quite an experience. I have changed my topic several times, initially I had a fabulous lesson plan but I could not fit it in with the 2061 initiative, then I had one that suited that beautifully but did not follow STEM and finally I had a lesson plan that would work with all of the above. 

Then I got to work. 

Things seemed to flow, my lesson concerned having my students look into the expense behind the electricity of appliances in the home. Math, science, cooperative learning, group discussions, personal applications, beautiful.  I sat down to fill in the template.

It didn't work with MS works.
It didn't work with Open Office.
It didn't work with word pad.

When I finally got it to work with some adjustment via MS works, my computer froze when I pulled up page 8. I lost quite a bit of data.

So I tried it again.
Computer froze again.
Lost data again.
It has been three days now and I have three-fourths of my lesson plan completed. I am disheartened. But I will persist. I have decided to purchase a code for Microsoft Word so I can do my homework on the days that it is due and not after that. So. I will write my proper blog entry next, as I can at least do this much at this time. Has anyone else run into this problem with templates?