The Path of the Marble Activity

Hello everyone, we've been doing a lot of labs lately (as you've probably seen from my blog posts) so Mrs.M decided to give us a little bit of a fun activity. This time we were blowing at different sized balls to see how far they would go! This is still kind of like a lab so there are still questions to answer...you'll understand everything once you see the lab below!

THE PATH OF THE MARBLE 

Guiding question: Does the mass of a marble affect how it moves? When given a force, what happens to its motion?

Hypothesis:My hypothesis is that the heavier the ball, the least distance it will move. If there is a lot of force on an object, then it moves further than if there's less or no force. The force affects the motion because if the object is light and there is a lot of force, then its motion will be affected by going further and faster.

GOLF BALL

SMALL MARBLE

BIG FOAM BALL

SMALL FOAM BALL

SMALL METAL BALL

TENNIS BALL

BIG MARBLE

PING PONG BALL

Data Analysis: As you can see from all my pictures, we tried all eight balls twice. If you look on the left side of each picture, you'll see that the force is coming from the same place, where as if you look on your right, you'll see how much force it took to move that particular ball. On the bottom of each square you'll see the distance the ball moved where as if you look at the two circles (one filled in one not) and the line in between, that shows in which direction the ball moved. If you see any bumps that looked like if the ball was jumping, it is just where we put the measuring tape, but you can see where the ball wanted to move. I can see from the pictures that each second test was different from the first, whether it was movement or distance. I can also see that three of the balls, the big marble, the golf ball and the tennis, took a much harder force or breath to move. By the way, we were blowing through straws and I was the only one blowing (for my group) so it is more accurate than if two people blew. From what I recall, the ping pong ball and the small foam ball were the easiest to move because they were so light and they barely needed a little air to move them. From what I saw, it looked like most of the balls were trying to fall off the table on the right side from where I was blowing!

Conclusion: My hypothesis for the first question was, "My hypothesis is that the heavier the ball, the least distance it will move." I think I was pretty correct except I left out one part, the fact that you need a harder force to even move heavier objects. If with a normal breath the ball doesn't even move, then the distance doesn't even matter anymore. I conclude (for this first part), "The heavier an object is, the more force it will take to move it and the less distance it will move." For the second part, my hypothesis was kind of divided in two, "If there is a lot of force on an object, then it moves further than if there's less or no force. The force affects the motion because if the object is light and there is a lot of force, then its motion will be affected by going further and faster." The first part is very true, if there is a lot of force on an object, it will move further than if there is little force on an object. The second part is also true, but I didn't explain what happens with a heavy ball. If the object is heavy, and there is a lot of ore, the object will make an attempt to move or move more than with little force because it needs stronger energy to have a motion. I conclude (for the second question), "If a lot of force is put on an object, it moves faster and longer than with less force. If the object is light and has a lot of force, it will move quickly and get further. If a lot of force is applied to an object which is heavy, then it will take an attempt to move although not moving as fast as a lighter object."

Further Inquiry: Maybe to improve my lab a little bit I would take of the measuring tape so the ball could move where it wants to go. Maybe I could also use a bigger surface like the floor in the hall way so it can go as far as it wants to.

From Feet to Fathoms Lab Activity

From Feet to Fathoms Lab Activity

History:  English units are the historical units of measurement in medieval England which evolved as a combination of the Anglo-Saxon and Roman systems of units. They were redefined in England in 1824 by a Weights and Measures Act, which retained many but not all of the unit names with slightly different values, and again in the 1970s by the International System of Units as a subset of the metric system.  (From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_units)

Guiding Question:  What is the importance of having an International measuring system?  How accurate are old measurements using body parts?

Hypothesis:  (What do you think?) 

It is a lot more accurate than using body parts. Body parts are all different on everyone, so you’ll never get an old English measurement that is the same as the people next door to you if you use body parts.

Materials:

·         Partner

·         Objects in the classroom (whiteboard, desk, hallway, SPACE book, Peep, Crayon box)

·         List of ways to measure: 

Pace:  legs outstretched =1 yard approximately or 1 meter

Egyptian cubit= elbow to tip of the middle finger= 18 inches or 45 cm

Fathom = middle finger to middle finger across the body = 6 feet, 180 cm, 1.8m

Palm = across the palm of the hand = 3 inches or 8 cm

Hand including thumb = 4 inches or 10 cm

Span = from tip of thumb to tip of little finger= 3 palms or 9 inches or 24 cm

English yard = from fingertip of arm to nose = 36 inches or about 1 meter

Foot = 12 “or 30 cm approximately

Fingernail = tip of pinky =1/2 inch = 1 cm.

·         Meter stick or measuring tape

·         Calculator

Procedure: 

1.       Make a data table in your notebook with 7 columns and 7 rows.  (See below).

2.       Choose one of the six objects or distances you will measure.

3.       Determine what form of measurement you will make with the first object. (For example:  Length of the 6^th grade hallway with paces, book with palm or hand, fingernail for crayon box, etc…)

4.       Measure it with the determined form of measurement 3 times, and then find the average. 

5.       Measure it with the meter stick/or measuring tape and find the actual measurement.  (IMPORTANT!!!!!  BE SURE THAT THE UNITS OF MEASUREMENT STAY THE SAME, either inches or centimeters or yards or feet or meters and the average needs to be in the same units)

6.       Repeat the same for each of the five objects that are left and measure it with a different type of measurement, 3 times, find the average and again the actual measurement.

7.       Compare class data results.  Find the average of these results. 

Record & Analyze

Data Table:

Material	Measure-ment Type	Measure-ment #1	Measure-ment #2	Measure-ment #3	Average	Actual Measurement
Peep	Fingernail	12 cm.	13 cm.	14 cm.	13 cm.	14 cm.
Book	Span	40 cm.	40 cm.	40 cm.	40 cm.	32 cm.
Hallway	Foot	38 ft.	45 ft.	39 ft.	40.6 ft.	32 ft.
Whiteboard	Fathom	12 ft.	9 ft.	9 ft.	10 ft.	8.3 ft.
Crayon box	Fingernail	7 cm.	6 cm.	6 cm.	6.3 cm.	7 cm.
Desk/table	Foot	5 ft.	6 ft.	5 ft. 3 in.	5.43 ft.	4.5 ft.

Data Analysis: 

What patterns or relationships do you see between the forms of measurement, the averages you and your partner got and the actual measurement for each object? 

They were all rather close, but still a bit off because we all don’t have the same length of arms and feet. The two that were the least accurate were the hallway and the book! I think it was mainly because our feet are not 12 inches long, and for the book, we weren’t being very clever so we said two spans for everyone even though it was probably something like one and a half. The most accurate was the peep because fingernails are accurate on small things.

Conclusion:  How effective were the old English forms of measurement compared to using the meter stick or measuring tape?

The old English forms of measuring are very inaccurate compared to the meter stick. Think about it, have you seen any group of people that have exactly the same size of body parts? Probably not, mainly because we’re all different and none of us are an exact replica of someone else. There for when you want to measure something, an adult measuring it would probably have half of what a child would get when measuring with the same technique.

What is the importance of having an International measuring system? 

The important thing is that wherever you are measuring from and whatever you are measuring, it will be exactly the same as someone else’s result so you can compare the two different things you measured without being worried that somehow you are wrong or have a different system.

Answer the guiding question here. Was your hypothesis correct in the beginning?  If no, what do you think now?

 Yes, my hypothesis was very correct, because if you use pure logic and nothing else, you can figure out that no one is the same and that measuring with any body parts would get you a different result than your classmate.

Which objects were the easiest or most accurate to measure?  Which form of measurement did you prefer the most?  State why for both questions.  Give examples to help you explain.

The peep for me was the easiest because using the finger nail on a small object is easy. My favorite type of measurement was using the finger nail because it is the most accurate and when we used it (as you can see on the chart above) it was the one closest to the real measurement!

Further inquiry: What improvements would you make next time?

For some of them, we were tired of being precise so instead of saying six and a fourth we just said six, so it had some differences with the average and the real measurement. We should have actually taken every inch/cm./meter/foot seriously so our average could have looked more like the final measurement.

What errors did you and your partner make? Do you have any further questions about measurement?  If so, what were they?

My two partners and I didn’t make any mistakes other than the ones above. My only questions are, ‘When did they invent the metric system and the American system?’, and, ‘How did the teachers correct something if they used old English measurement, since everyone’s answer would be different?’

KWL: Forces And Motion

K W L  :  F o r c e s   a n d   M o t i o n

Finally, you might say, that girl is starting a new unit. It’s true, and even I got tired of all those reflections about minerals, although I did learn a lot! This unit is all about…forces and motion! You’re probably as confused as I am, but if you’re a professor or something write comments that might help me and the awesome people who read my blog posts but don’t understand what’s going on. Here is the first thing we do when starting a new unit: KWL, Know, Want to know, and Learn. Of course, I can only do the first two because I didn’t learn anything yet.

Know:

I’m going to do this in bullets because I don’t know a lot.

i)      A type of force is gravity

ii)   There are three laws of motion

And that’s pretty much it.

Want to know:

i)      What is the exact definition of force and motion?

ii)   How are force and motion used to help humans?

iii)Can you overcome the force of gravity?

iv) Who invented/discovered motion?

v)    Who invented/discovered force?

There are many more things I can add, but I don’t know anything about force and motion yet so I might have more questions if I learn I little bit more about it. Of course, at the end of the unit I will add the learn!

Earth's Inner Secrets Unit Reflection

Earth’s Inner Secrets Unit Reflection

Hello everyone, and here I am back to feed you and excite you with new (or old) facts about anything (that has to do with science)! These last few months we have been working on Earth’s Inner Secrets. Plate tectonics, volcanoes, minerals and mining are all part of inner Earth. You have seen a lot of blog posts on all of these things, but this is the final one and I hope I remind you of some of the things you might want to search more about in your free time! Here we go…

Have you ever thought that humans have discovered everything and that of course there are many more things they could find out but what they know about now has no more secrets? Well you are mistaken. They might know all about what pencils are made up of, and what is inside an eye, but what how about what is inside the Earth. Have you ever met anyone who said that they can explain everything that’s going on inside of our Earth without hesitation? Definitely not. And if you have, call them up and ask them what exactly is found in Earth, and how deep have scientists actually gone compared to how deep (they think) Earth is. You’ll find that they have dug very little, and no one (yet) can describe what is found in the Earth because we’ve never gone so deep!

The things that we have found, of course are many. For example you should all know about the Earth’s layers, how many there are, and what each one has inside. There are five layers; crust (the strip or thin skin of the Earth that is the piece we walk on), the upper and lower mantle (composed of liquid magma that moves with convection), the outer core (still liquidy but getting harder), and finally inner core which is solid iron!

Another thing that we know a lot about are some minerals, as you must already know, are created deep under the Earth’s surface when steaming hot magma cools creating some minerals such as diamonds! These minerals are igneous. How do people, scientists, get the diamonds when they are formed very deep inside our world? Volcanoes!!! Some people say that volcanoes are the opening to the secret world under our feet because they give a passage way that can go very deep, straight into the mantle. Of course, the only thing missing is the ability to send machines or humans down there without burning them! There are three main types of volcanoes; shield, which is low and open, cone, which is higher and thinner, and composite which has many layers of magma which have piled on year after year, eruption after eruption!

Going back to the minerals, we learned a lot on how minerals are identified as minerals, not only which ones are found below earth’s surface. The thing that helps people remember how you identify a mineral is SNIFC. It’s not nonsense, as most of the people from my class thought when they first saw it. Each letter stands for something. So, a mineral has to be; Solid, Naturally occurring, inorganic process, fixed chemical composition, and have a crystalline structure! Now it makes sense, right? Moh’s hardness scale also helps a lot when you are trying to identify a mineral.

MINING! A lovely word, but what does it mean? Mining is when you dig for minerals either underground or relatively close to the surface. Those were the two types of mining. There are laws to mining or else the world would be in a big mess. They are all stated in the reclamation act, and the main one is that after you mine you have to clean up your mess!

The last important thing we learned in this unit was rocks. Rocks are one of the most common things found on this planet! There are three types of rock: Igneous (made when magma/lava cools and hardens), sedimentary (made up of sediments that joined and compressed), and metamorphic (rocks that were once sedimentary or igneous and transformed into something else). Rocks are made up of minerals sometimes, which is really cool!

Thank you for joining me again on my awesome science blog posts. I really appreciate the time you took to read through this, because I know it’s kind of long! Good bye!

Group Discussion: Who Owns The Ocean's Minerals?

 Today, in science class, we had to create a proposal or idea to who owns the ocean's minerals. We got in groups of three or four and answered a few questions that you will see below, and then created a proposal. Each one of us had a role: Anja was timer, Francesca was group leader, Alek was reporter, and I was typer! Below you will se our discussion and what we came up with in the end.

Group Discussion:

Why are minerals important?

Answer: Some minerals can contain proteins, used in daily life; for example, buildings, spice up food, kitchen items, glass, jewelry, clothes, tablets, etc.

What minerals are found in the world’s oceans?

Answer; Oil, salt, potassium, Magnesium, sand and gravel, limestone and gypsum, phosphorites, placer gold, tin, titanium, water.

Who should have the right to receive them or the profits?

Answer: The landlocked countries should get a share, poor countries/developing also should get some from wealthy. Wealthy coastal nations should get most profits, but also share with poor/ landlocked/developing. Everyone should have the right to own a little bit of the profits because the ocean doesn’t belong to anyone.

What are the problems with mining in the ocean?

Answer: It’s very expensive to get to the bottom and extract the mineral deposits. Landlocked countries can’t get to the ocean and only the wealthy coastal countries have enough money to get to the bottom. Mining can ruin the environment sometimes. The reclamation act should be valid for ocean mining too. Spilling (toxic, oil) from boats is also a problem.

Who owns the oceans minerals?

Answer: It’s everybody’s property and it goes to anyone who gets there and takes it out first. On the coast of a country then that country has the right to get it but should share with landlocked countries.

What are the rights?

Answer: Law sea treaty states that ocean mineral deposits are property of all people and must share with all nations. Some people think that because of the treaty the wealthy coastal Nations should share their technology and profits.

Do you agree with that?

Answer: We agree with that as long as the wealthy coastal nations should share all profits/technology/money with landlocked/developing nations. We think that 200 miles (EEZ’s) are good as long as they share. Trading but the developing countries get more.

Proposal: We propose that wealthy coastal nations should share/trade profits with landlocked/developing countries because the profits are everyone’s and some people don’t have the money to get the minerals. WE agree that all minerals are everyone’s property and that anyone who gets some of the profits should share or trade at least a little bit.



Reflection:
I think our group was a well organized grouped and we worked very well together, and very fast. The only thing which was a bit slower was when Alek had to practice to present and he was nervous and everything, but it turned out really good when he actually presented it! I enjoyed working in my group, and we were very affective. Everything, the words, the ideas, the work, was all good, but when Alek presented it turned out a bit longer that it should be. Maybe to work that out we could of written a little summary that he could read because he only had all the ideas and had to make them smaller in his head! Good job, our group!!!!

Ireland's Most Famous Minerals

Hello again, to continue and make sure we know what minerals are, how they are found, etc., Mrs.M decided to assigned us an interesting blog post; find the most mined minerals in a country and answer a few questions about them! If you are interested in the country I chose, Ireland, then this is the right blog for you!

The Mineral;

Zinc's Largest Mine

1. Zinc

Information:
 

1. Zinc
• How is it mined?

Zinc Mineral

• Zinc ore is mined using underground and surface mining. Ireland now ranks 7th largest producer of Zinc concentrates in the world.
• After the ore is mined, they do something called flash smelting where they heat up the ore until it makes zinc oxide.

• What are the mining companies?
• Ireland currently has three underground zinc-lead mines
• The following are both surface and underground mines;
• Ballinalack
• Bula
• Galmoy
• Lisheen
• Tara
• Where do the materials go-are they exported to other countries to factories?  
• Zinc as well as lead is the main export of Ireland.
• The majority of Tara's (the mine) production, however, is sold to third parties in Europe.
• The mine supplies part of its zinc to Kokkola, Finland and Odda.
• What is it used for?



Zinc Penny

• Zinc’s typical lifespan can exceed 100 years, which is exceptional for a roofing material.
• Zinc is used world-wide:
• In paints
• For coating steel
• In automotive parts
• Electrical fuses
• Batteries
• Roof gutters
• Pennies
• Rubber
• Deodorant
• Pennies are made of zinc covered with copper. 
• Zinc is used to cover metal that will rust.
• Zinc is needed by animals and humans to stay healthy
• More than 90% of zinc used in the building industry is recycled.
• Is it valuable?
• No, Zinc is not very valuable.
• Does your country depend on these minerals being mined?
• Exports form a big source of Ireland's economy. Zinc is one of the main exports so Ireland kind of does depend on it being sold from them around the world.

Conclusion –

Have you ever wondered, what is the main mineral of my home country? Probably not, but I was assigned by my awesome teacher a blog post on minerals in my home country – Ireland – and I chose….zinc! Zinc is mined in a few places such as; Ballinalack, Bula, Galmoy, Lisheen, and Tara. Zinc is mined using both underground and surface [open-pit] mining. Zinc is not a very valuable mineral, but if you sell a lot of it you will get a lot of money. To show this, Ireland has made zinc one of its main exports and the country depends a bit on it to get enough money. Ireland is the top producer of zinc in the European Union, and the seventh largest producer of it in the world! Also, one third of the mine Tara’s production I sold globally. Finally, zinc can be used in paints, ‘copper’ pennies, rubber, and since it can last for more than 100 years it is perfect for house roofing.