Mystery Canisters....

Experiment testing density, volume, and mass....

Super Structures Groups Compete!

Mystery Canisters and the Sunday Search

Remember the days of 35 MM film? And those film canisters that the film came in?

Well, there are many fun labs that one can do with these canisters. (read: labs that could be done with other materials too, but the canisters are FREE, and teachers LOVE free)

Anyway, I am doing a mystery canisters lab soon with my 6th grade crew, during which they have to design canisters that will sink, float, and "suspend" in water. I need a total of 35 canisters. Yesterday, I must have gone to 6 different Targets, Walgreens, and CVS pharmacies. They were very nice about allowing me to dig through their recycling, but all I came up with so far were 20 canisters!

Luckily, I started early. In a plea to get some from parents, I posted it on my homework website. Who knew these would be so hard to come by. I guess it makes sense given that so many now shoot digital....

Oy!

More Fair

They left me with your shadow,
saying things like, "Life is not fair..."
and I believed them for a long time....
But today, I remembered the sound of your laugh,
and the heat of your hand in mine

and I knew that life is more fair than we can ever imagine
if we are there to live it.

It has been nearly 22 years since she died, and I still have days when I yearn to talk to her. The memory is a phenomenally complex thing. One scent, or sound, or experience, can stimulate a number of things from one's past. Today it was smelling her perfume as I passed the perfume counter at Macy's. French with white floral undertones. After she died I used to go into her jewelry box to smell her jewelry. By the next year, her scent had faded, but never left my memory. I miss her.

Gummi Bear Lab Day 2

Ewww! The kids noticed a huge increase in length, width, thickness, mass, and volume of their gummi bears. The one thing that decreased was the density of the bears. Discuss.

Gummi Bear Lab Day 1

Gummi Bear Lab: Day 1

Today we measured our bear's length, width, thickness, mass, density, and volume. My favorite was the mass, because we got to use the old-school triple beam balances. Will return for an update once we view our results on Friday. Stay tuned...

Gummi Bear Lab and Gummi Bear Wiki

The Gummi Bear lab is taking place tomorrow in 6th grade.  We are studying measurement, so we will be measuring the length, width, mass, volume, etc, of a gummi bear, thereafter submerging it in water overnight.  Now, you might not think that anything would change, but you are wrong!  I tried it in advance (as all good scientists do) and was amazed at the results.  Will def take pictures for you all to view.  

We will use the following materials:

--Black Forest brand gummi bears (best results....shhhh)

--Haribo brand gummi bears

--Black Forest brand gummi worms (ewwww!  these had CRAZY changes)

--Black Forest brand sour gummi worms (lack of results due to sugar coating)

One of the cool things about this lab is that there is an online wiki where we can submit our data.  So the kids will get to compare to results from around the world!