March 14th (3/14) : Pi Day

Today we celebrate math, focusing on what Pi is. We started off with a challenge of figuring out how much fencing in needed to fence a circular garden. Although many good strategies were used, even putting a string around the circle still produced answers that were not quite correct, as the string kept slipping as they measured. Putting this aside until the end of the day, we read a story book that helps students remember what diameter, radius, and circumference definitions are. Using this, we reversed the formula for finding circumference and instead tried to use it to find pi. Student groups measured the circumference and diameter of a variety of pizza "pies" in class then used calculators to see what happens when you divide circumference by diameter. Low and behold, our answers all produced numbers right around 3. Finding the class average, we ended with 3.13. Taking this further we discussed that the circumference is about 3 times the diameter, as this is what it showed us. In fact, it was taught we can get closer and it is about 3.14 times the diameter. The rest of the day will focus on extending this and using the formula Circumference= pi / diameter to solve problems. A challenge will occur to have students try to memorize as many numbers of the irrational number pi for a grade-wide contest on Thursday. We will read about how mathematicians came about to discovering pi, following the math of ancient Babylonians. Finally, we will end with completing the challenge of the circular garden again, but this time using the formula to see how much easier and accurate it is. Happy Pi Day!

Mass vs Acceleration vs Gravity

Our final lab in our "Gravity Unit" deal with mud puddles. We wanted to make a model that could be tested which involved throwing different weights of "rocks" into "mud". Obviously, this would be not only messy, but hard to collect accurate data on to see if more mass impacts how deep it goes due to gravity. After brainstorming in class, ideas such as jello, pudding, corn starch, and pancake batter came up to represent the mud. Walmart has the best price on flour, and just about every bag was purchased. For the rocks, Home Depot had different sized bolts that would work well. Megan had the idea on attaching a string to each bolt so that we could accurately measure how deep it sunk into the flour, while also making it easy to pull out. Our lab took two days. The first day we explored and collected data on different mass bolts and how far they sunk into the flour due to gravity after being dropped from 1 meter above the rim of a five gallon bucket. Averages were found for each group and then a class average was found. Patterns emerged and students used the data to predict the depth of a 80 gram bolt being dropped from the same height. Some groups were only over 3 mm, while everyone in the class fell within 1.5 centimeters of the actual depth. Discussions took place with models showing how it isn't that the heavier mass object falls faster, but the gravitons emitted by objects with more mass were being pulled down more by gravity.

Law of Conservation of Energy

As we have been learning about gravity and gravitation the past few weeks in science, today we connected in the Law of Conservation of Energy. Students saw first-hand that energy can't be created or destroyed, but can only be transferred. Using "Seismic Accelerators", we saw that energy can be transferred from several balls into a smaller one, making it bounce over 5X as high as it normally would.

Antler Lamp Art

We have started our class art project, which will be auctioned off at the Fund the Arts Auction. We are making an antler lamp. First, we had to figure out how to attach 3 antlers in a way that it will support a lamp shade. We drilled holes and glued in some nails. Next, we had to figure out how to get the electrical cord through the antlers, so it looks more professional. We are still working on that, but think we have the holes drilled through 2 antlers, we just can't get the cord up...yet. Below you can see one student pose with the drill that we had to use. The teacher braced the antlers as different students carefully drilled hole to hole.

Paper Rockets

Today we continued our exploring science that deal's with earth's gravity on pulling things towards earth's center. We shot our paper rockets and analyzed their flight and collected some quantitative data. This will help us redesign new rockets for, hopefully, even better flight that tries to counter-act gravity as best they can.

Discovery Museum Visit

We had a great educational visit to the Discovery Museum today. We had the opportunity to explore the museum in small groups for almost and hour. Following this, we had a hands-on lab dealing with "survival of the fittest".