Heat Insulators

This week's assignment was to select several different items to use as heat insulators. I chose newspaper, cotton cloth, nylon, and aluminum foil. I placed 140 degree water in four ceramic coffee mugs. I then placed an insulator on each of the mugs. After thirty minutes was up, I took off the insulators and measured the temperature of each mug. Mug 1, with the cotton cloth was 112 degrees. Mug 2, with the nylon pantyhose was 104 degrees. Mug 3, with the newspaper was 110 degrees. And mug 4 with the aluminum foil was 112 degrees.
I was pretty surprised at my results. I really wasn't expecting the mug with the aluminum foil to be so warm because aluminum is such a good heat conductor. If I were to do this experiment again, I think I would choose plastic wrap, some type of foam, and I would like to use rubber as well.

Guided Inquiry

It is a little hard for me to do some of these projects or investigations in my classroom due to the fact that I teach life science, and we are a standards based school. I have to follow the state standards in the classroom, but I try to do some of these investigations after school.

The question I selected for my guided inquiry lesson is: Which pendulum will come to rest more quickly—a lighter pendulum or heavier pendulum?
In this lesson, I made two pendulums using 18 inches of string tied to the shower curtain rod. On one I hung a one pound lead weight. On the other I hung a three ounce wood block. I pulled them back the same amount and let them go at the same time. The results are as follows:
Lead weight Wood block
Attempt 1 58 seconds 40 seconds
2 50 seconds 40 seconds
3 60 seconds 38 seconds


A heavy pendulum swings longer, but I don’t know why. A heavy weight does not fall faster than a light one when dropped, and surely gravity acts on the pendulum the same way. The fact that the pendulum is moving through an arc rather than straight down may have something to do with it. I tried to keep all the other variables the same-length of the string, letting them go at the same time, doing it in the same place so air currents or temperature wouldn’t affect the results.

This type of experience reinforces learning for students, and makes them remember the results much better than reading from the text. The issue I have in my classroom is that we can not breed fruit flies to study genetics, or go into the field to learn about ecosystems. We just do not have the resources. More than any other field, life science should be inquiry based, but I don’t know how to make that happen yet.

Inquiry Lesson

For my inquiry lesson this week, I chose a lesson on genetics. Because school is still out here where I teach, I am using my daughter, niece, and nephew for this lesson. They were given six genetic traits. They had to determine if they had dominant or recessive triats for these particular triats. They then had to predict the outcome of their parents traits, and then find the actual outcome. They combined their findings finding the ratio and percentage of each trait. They then drew a bar graph for each given trait. They chose one trait to draw a punnett square, and one trait to do a pie chart. The pages that I used for them to gather this information would not upload for me on here. Below are pictures of them doing the project, and then the project once they completed it.

Ice Caps

I know I am a little late with this, and I do apologize. I had a close family friend pass away, but here is my post:

I found that in my experiment, I had no water flow out of the bowl. The only water that I had coming from the bowl was from the condensation. I did the experiment twice just to make sure I had done it correctly and I got the same results both times. I feel that the displacement of the ice was the reason for this.

Maybe I am wrong, but I feel that the global warming issue is hyped up way more than it should be. I am not saying there are not issues or problems. What I am saying is that I do not think that it is as bad as some people make it out to be. Like I said...I am not an expert on this matter by no means, this is just my opinion.

Lesson Plan

I found the lesson plan template to be very extensive and a little challenging as well. Although I include most of the areas on the template in my unit plans, they are not nearly as extensive as this template is. I am very thankful that I do not have to do all of my lesson plans on this type of template. I could see this template being useful on certain projects, but not on daily lesson plans.
I really enjoyed using the 5 E’s in my lesson plan this week. I found it to be very helpful in planning the lesson on bacteria. I have not used them in the past, but I feel that this is something that I will start using in my unit plans. I find that incorporating all areas of STEM in all lesson plans is not always possible. I find it hard to implement mathematics and engineering into many of the lessons that I teach in life science. Math is easier to implement, however, it is not always going to go with a lesson.
The lesson that I planned this week was on germs and bacteria. The students would use bread and cheese (dampened) and check on it every other day for bacteria growth. Students would use microscopes to indicate the start of bacterial growth. Students would record their findings each time they checked on the bacteria. Students would have previously hypothesized an outcome. They will compare their hypothesis with the actual outcome. I would show a video on how germs are spread and illnesses that can occur from the spread of germs. The goal is to make students want to wash their hands more frequently and/or use hand sanitizer to prevent the spread of germs and bacteria.

New Blogger

Hi! I'm a new blogger! This is all new to me.