Alexa's Elementary Science Methods Blog

 What did you do in lab? What was the big question? - One of the first things we did in lab was attempt to answer these questions with our table group using only any prior knowledge we have: 1. How the phases of the moon occur:          -       How much the sun is covering the moon 2. What causes the seasons?          -       How the Earth is tilted. When it's tilted towards the sun it hotter and summer and when it's tilted away from the sun it's colder and winter. 3. What causes a lunar eclipse?          -       Happens with the moon.  - We learned that in geocentric, the Earth is in the middle of the universe, while in heliocentric, the sun is in the middle. We learned that the sun has always been in the middle and that the Earth circles around the sun. We also learned that proximity to the sun is not what creates seasons, but it is the tilt ...

 1. The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did          -      How can we design a safe and durable playground surface?          -      This week in lab our goal was to gather materials that would create a safe landing for an egg. One of the first materials we started with was sand. We weren't sure how much of this to put in as we didn't want the surface to become too hard. Another idea we had was to add hay to the sand, along with a small piece of saran wrap that we thought might make the landing a little softer. When attempting to drop the egg for the first time, a problem them kept occurring was that the egg would bounce out of the bowl and onto the table, where it would then crack. Once we overcame this problem, we moved on to dropping the egg from a greater height. To add more support for this height, we decided to add in pieces of rubber. Once we dropped it, the egg ...

 1. The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did          -      What affects how long it takes a swing to go back and forth?          -      This week in lab we tested the question listed above. The variable my group tested was the length of the chain/string of a swing. The question we were attempting to answer was "How does the length of string affect how long it takes a swing to go back and forth?". Before we began our testing, our hypothesis was that if the string/chain of a swing is shorter then it is going to take a shorter time to go back and forth. To answer our question, we tested three different lengths of string. These were 60.5cm, 42.5cm, and 24.5cm. We tied a washer to the end of the string and pulled it back to a height of 29cm. From there we let go of the string and timed how long it took for the swing to go forward and back. The average times from the longer strin...

 1. The big questions discussed in lab, and a description of what you did          -      What affects a rider's speed down a slide?          -     During lab this week we picked a variable to test to see how it would affect a rider's speed down a slide. The variable we chose to test was the weight of a rider. In this experiment the two independent variables were the height and length of the slide. The height was 86cm, and the length was 252cm. The dependent variable was the weight of the three riders, which was represented by cars. To increase the weight of each car, we added washers on top. The three weights were 54g, 72.4g, and 94.7g. We put each car down the slide three times and took their average speed. From the lowest weight to the highest weight, their average speeds were 1.28s, 1.43s, and 1.51s. In the end we concluded that as the weight increases the longer it takes for the rider to reach the ...