Physics working on the newest Rube Goldberg Machine

This year the Physics class is again working on a Rube Goldberg machine.

Last years class posted their machine video on you tube.  

Go to  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMUEjPKPpfU to see last years machine that waters a plant.  

This years class is contemplating building a machine to pass a note (fly a paper airplane)

Chemistry learning how to use a bunsen burner

In this lab, students used a copper strip to test which part of the flame was the hottest.  At the hottest part, the copper will have a green flame in just a second while in other portions, there is no flame until 2 or 3 seconds.  Students also learned how to transfer solids from a weigh paper to a test tube, that measuring liquids needs to be done with a graduated cylinder and not a beaker, and how to adjust the bunsen burner to get a blue flame.  Incomplete combustion was also discussed and the evidence was shown when they created an orange flame on the bunsen burner and held an evaporating dish over the flame observing a black coloration on its bottom.

Chemistry learning how to use the equipment

Students are measuring the mass and volume of a metal.  Then they calculated the density of their metal by dividing mass by volume.  They also compared their value with the true value by calculating their experimental error.  A value less than a 20% error is acceptable for high school.  Students also found the density of water by measuring the mass of 50 mL of water and again dividing mass by volume.  Data collection goes right into their computers and they put their finished lab reports in the drop box on schoology.

Mind Node is a great organizational tool for mind mapping

Chemistry is studying matter which can be either  a pure substance or a mixture.  This is a mind node document created by one of the students in chemistry.  All students were responsible for creating a mind map

Earth youtube. very impressive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU&feature=player_embedded

Pythagorean theorem

visual Pythagorean Theorem

jigsaw puzzles are lots of fun just click on the arrow at lower left

Chemistry end of year

Chemistry ended the year studying acids and bases.  They made a set of standards which enabled them to determine the identity of an unknown acid.  They also analyzed the neutralizing capability of an antacid tablet.  Finally we made original hand cream and had a test trial to see which hand cream was the best (texture, smoothness, smell, etc.) and some groups made a rainbow based on density of sugar solutions.

Identifying an unknown acid

Analyzing an antacid tablet

Hand Cream

Rainbow

Landscape projects by Algebra 2

Landscape Projects by Algebra 2 students.  They used http://v3.planningwiz.com/ to create a scale drawing of their project.  They also did keynote presentations complete with a graph paper scale drawing and an itemized price list of items in their design.

City park design

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Front of school design: fountain has horses in it!

This design is for the old trailer court on the west edge of Newell and was created on SketchUp.

Another design for a back yard.

3-D graphing in Calculus

This sphere was created on Grapher which is part of the Mac OS X bundle from Apple. It can be manipulate and rotated.

This is a hyperboloid of one sheet also done on Grapher.  We did several other graphs such as an ellipsoid, a hyperboloid of 2 sheets, an elliptic cone, an elliptic paraboloid, and a hyperboloid paraboloid.

my advisory

experimenting with special effects on photos and putting them in a collage.  Used http://www.fototrix.com/  for special effects and http://www.photovisi.com/collage/create?template=template8 for the collage.

Chemistry vocabulary words

Chemistry students put their vocabulary words on http://www.wordle.net/
 and then define them.

Boyle's Law in chemistry lab

In this lab the students discovered that pressure and volume are inversely related; as pressure increases, volume decreases.  This lab also had students working with numbers of greater magnitude than they were used to working with.  The graph of volume vs pressure is a hyperbola and 1/V vs pressure turns out to be a straight line.

M.C. Escher

Making GeoGebra tools in Geometry.  Some reminded me of M. C. Escher's work.  Took time to look at some of his pieces.    Used   http://www.photovisi.com/collage/create?template=template8 to do the collage of M. C. Escher.

Repeated designs where made by constructing a geometric shape, making it a tool, and then using the tool many times to create a design.  Collage was again created using photovisi.

Algebra 2 exploring GeoGebra (a graphing utility) Happy Pi Day!

This is an experiment with making a tool in GeoGebra.  Students can do many constructions and graphing using GeoGebra.  They can also make their own tool to do a special construction.  With this tool, they only have to plot 2 points and the tool will automatically create an equilateral triangle.  They can also turn off all the labels, but I thought you'd like to see everything that went into making this snowflake.

Calorimetry lab in Chemistry

Click here to view a chemistry lab about Calorimetry