What's that sound? Let's go look for it! Just follow your ears! We're learning all about sound in science. We learned that sound is made by vibrations. Not only that, but you can hear them because the vibrations are going through the air. We have explored with different sized nails, tuning forks, and Boomwhackers, and a glockenspiel (xylophone). We discovered that the bigger the object is, the lower the pitch is. The smaller the object is, the higher the pitch is.
Pssssshhhhhhh! Watch out! Air is on the loose! Did you know air is powerful? Well we do, because we've studied air in science. When you compress air, it makes a force called air pressure. In science centers, we did five experiments about air and air pressure. At one of the centers, we launched balloon rockets! We had a bag on a string, and we had to pump up a balloon to make it go. At another center, we pumped up balls with different amounts of air to see which one bounced better. The more pumps we put in, the higher the ball bounced, AND the faster the balloon rocket went. That's air pressure!
Meet our friends, the milkweed bugs. We got them two weeks ago, when they were still in their eggs. The eggs were teeny tiny. They were smaller than a jelly bean, smaller than a grain of rice, even smaller than the tip of a pencil! They started out yellow, and the instruction book said they would turn dark orange when they were ready to hatch. But they actually turned red! We were super excited! We couldn't wait for them to hatch! We made some predictions about how they would look. Then, over the weekend, when we had a snow day, they finally hatched. We were surprised that they looked different than we thought. Check them out! Are you ready to hear more about the bugs we are studying in science? Well, last time we wrote about meeting the mealworms, but we didn't know much about them. Now we've learned that mealworms turn into beetles! We did a Zoom-In with a life cycle diagram. First, we saw the egg, and we had to guess what it was. Next, we saw a larva, which was a mealworm. We didn't know it was called a larva yet. Next, we saw a bigger mealworm, which still was a larva. Next we saw a pupa. Some of our classmates thought it was a dragonfly, because it looked like there were wings on it. We were on the last stage. A lot of people thought it would turn into just a bigger mealworm, but, surprise! It turned into a crawly beetle. Then we got to look at the real ones again. And now we know all about their life cycle.
Welcome to the Entomologist's Corner! We are not just super second graders anymore... now, we are also excited entomologists! Do you know what entomologists do? If not, we'll tell you. Entomologists study insects, and that's what we're doing in science now! Well, not right this minute. We're writing a blog right now! Anyway, back to the bugs. We met real live mealworms on Friday, and we got to look at them up close with a magnifying glass. Some of us thought it was gross, but it was still AWESOME! We don't know a lot about the meal-worms yet, but we are going to keep them in our classroom and keep learning more about them. We'll let you know what we find out!
In our class, we love science! We love it because we get to make cool stuff. But yesterday, we made the COOLEST thing ever! We made a roller coaster. But it wasn't a roller coaster for us, it was for a marble! So don't get confused. We made the track out of styrofoam runways. We had to tape them together to make the roller coaster go all the way across the classroom. We made loop-de-loops and hills all along it. We had to tape it to the SMARTboard projector to make it high enough to make it around the whole track. We learned that if it starts high, then the marble will get enough force from gravity to make it. Then we tried it. Zoom! A marble came zipping by! We had to try a few times, and it didn't work. Each time, we had to figure out what went wrong and fix it. But at the end, it was AWESOME!
Today, we made it rain INSIDE OUR CLASSROOM! We used a crock pot to be the sun. The sun evaporates water from oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, puddles, and the soil. So, Mrs. Freeman put water in the crock pot and heated it up to evaporate it. Then, Mrs. Freeman passed a pan around for us to inspect and make sure everyone was satisfied that there were no holes. Next, she put ice in the pan to represent the upper atmosphere, where it is very cold. She held the pan with ice in it over the crock pot. The water vapor that was evaporating from the crock pot condensed on the bottom of the pan. That means it turned from a gas back into a liquid. We could see the drops, and we knew they must be from the water vapor, since there were no holes in the pan! When the drops got too big, they dripped off the pan - it was raining! Mrs. Freeman dripped a rain drop on each one of us! And that's how we made it rain.
WHOOOSH! What's that sound? A balloon-powered car goes whizzzzzing past! Up, up, and away! A rocket takes off into the air at lightning speed. Shhhhhhhhhh. Watch out - a hover craft is heading toward your feet! Jump over it! What do all of these things have in common? Two things - they are all powered by air, and... we made them with our buddies this week! Each of us got to make a balloon-powered car. Then, we either made a rocket or a hovercraft. We learned that when you trap air, you can use it to push things. The best part was testing the toys with our buddies! Go air power!!!
There we were, adding the finishing touches to our kites. When we were done, we took them outside to fly them. We were so happy! we ran and we ran and we ran around the front lawn of Schroeder, and the kites flew! Whee! But, that wasn't our only mission. We were trying to think like scientists and figure out how our kites work. What makes them fly in the air? We will leave you hanging for now. If you think you know, leave a comment below!
As you know, we are studying weather. This week, we learned about a lot of tools that meteorologists use to predict what kind of weather is coming. The anemometer measures the speed of the wind, and the wind vane tells the direction the wind is blowing. The thermometer measures the temperature. Knowing the different types of clouds can also help you know what kind of weather is coming. And a rain gauge is used to measure how much precipitation there is. That one isn't in the picture, though, because it's outside measuring rain! |
AuthorThis blog is maintained as a collaboration between all students and myself. Each week, one student has the classroom job of "Blogger". That student helps decide subjects for our posts, as well as writing one blog post about him/herself. Archives
June 2016
Categories
All
|