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

Chemistry Careers

Chemistry Lab

Click here for the latest Chemistry lab.   See how students are working with gravimetric methods.

Physics and the Law of Reflection with drawings

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Physics students in action:  Law of Reflection

Chemistry

Chemistry students did an experiment that identified an unknown solution. They set up a spot plate with 6 ionic solution and how they reacted with each other. When two colorless solutions are mixed and a white cloud is formed, this is a double displacement reaction. In this experiment, of the 15 reactions, only 6 formed precipitates. They tested their unknown with the same six solutions and using the way they reacted and comparing with their standards, they could identify their unknown.

Geometry

You have to see this! There is a cryptography project by Andrew Mueller on youtube that is a must see. Go to Youtube and search Learning Cryptography with Andrew. It is about a 10 minute video on what Andrew learned about cryptography, the art of writing and solving codes.

Physics

Physics students are wrapping up the semester with the study of angular and tangential velocities. Here students designed centripetal force apparatus. As the weight on the end of the string increased, they had to increase the speed of the stopper to maintain a constant radius. They timed 30 revolutions and measured the radius. From this information they could analyze the circular motion and compare angular velocity with linear velocity. Patrick Kelly was the king of all twirlers! :D

Geometry

Chryptography is the topic for a mini unit in Geometry. Students are taking on the role of a secret agent and transmitting secret messages to their partner. All this fun also involves learning how to multiply matrices using a coding matrix, finding the inverse of a matrix, and decoding their secret message.

Chemistry

Students are now studying covalent bonds and an introduction to organic chemistry. Their lab this week was to build several organic compounds. When done with the required models, students asked to do more, so they were given some challenge molecules to build and many were very successful in building and identifying the benzene ring, cyclohexane, ethanol, and dimethyl ether. Very fun and exciting for the teacher!

Statistics

Statistics students are now collecting data for their final project. They will be analyzing this data and applying nearly everything they have learned this semester. They will be doing mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, frequency distribution, many kinds of charts, random sampling, confidence intervals, error, and many more. As they progress, you will be informed of their results.

Calculus

Calculus students are using calculus to maximize or minimize functions. This activity was maximizing the volume of an open box using a piece of 9x12 inch construction paper.

Physics

Physics students are learning about conservation of momentum (momentum before and after a collision). They had to design their own lab, collect data, analyze their findings, and make some conclusions about what happened in their lab.

Chemistry

On November 20, chemistry students are working on finding molar masses and percent composition. They have done a lab that enabled them to determine the formula for copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate and determine whether it would make a good moisture indicator in a box of electronics.