Spring Semester Week 4 - Januray 31, 2019 Newton's Laws of Motion

This week we will start the physics portion of Physical Science. I wanted to start off physics with some hands-on lab stations therefore we will be starting off our unit with Newton's Laws of Motion. Below are the notes and a short video to help students prepare.

Newton's Laws of Motion Notes

We began class with a discussion of Newton's Three Laws of Motion and a graphic organizer that reviewed this information.

We had a fun time in class with lab stations that covered Newton's three laws of motions. At the first lab station covering Newton's Law of Inertia, students used their fingers to knock a penny into a stack of pennies and observe what happened. 

Next, they knocked a pie pan with an egg on top off of a jar of water. In both instances, student's observed that objects resisted changes in motion. 

At the second lab station, students reviewed Newton's second law which covers the Force = mass x acceleration equation. Students rolled a large marble and a smaller marble down an inclined plane. They also dropped the large marble and a smaller marble from the same height into a pan of flour and observed the impressions that were made by the marbles.  In both cases they observed that heavier objects require more force to move the same distance as lighter objects. 

At the third station, students launched a balloon rocket and made observations as to how the momentum of the rocket changed in response to a change in the starting height of the rocket. 

They also made a Hero's Engine which models how rockets are propelled into space. Both of these activities illustrated Newton's Third Law which says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reactions.

The fourth and final lab station had students review all three laws and then sort a series of pictures according to which Newton's law it illustrates. We enjoyed Newton's Laws of Motion and these concepts will help us as we take a closer look at motion in the upcoming weeks.

Spring Semester Week 3- January 24,2019 Acids, Bases, and Salts

This upcoming week

This week we will learning about acids and bases. We will learn what acids and bases are, what properties are associated with acids and bases, and what is produced in a neutralization reaction when acids and bases are reacted together. Additionally, we will be using red cabbage indicator to identify common household acids and bases and defining their strength based on the pH scale. 
Below are the notes for this week as well as an introductory video:

During class students used cabbage juice indicator to identify whether common household items were acids and bases. The cabbage juice indicator changed the household items to various shades of pink and green. We discovered that chemicals that resulted in pink/red colors were acids and chemicals that turned blue/green/purple were bases. 

Next, we used pH paper to test a second set of the same household items in order to assign a pH number on the pH scale to each item. Finally, we developed a pH scale of common household items that we placed in our interactive notebook. We also identified strong acids/bases and weak acids/bases.

Below is the link to the graphic organizer:
pH Scale Graphic Organizer

Spring Semester Week 2- January 17, 2019 Balancing Chemical Reactions

Now that we have covered the Parts of a Chemical Reaction and reviewed Counting Atoms, we are ready to learn how to Balance Chemical Equations. Below are the notes for this upcoming week to prepare:

Balancing Chemical Equations Notes

I was so proud of how readily the kids understood the principle of balancing of chemical equations. We briefly reviewed the Law of Conservation of Mass and then began to learn the steps of balancing equations. We began by counting the atoms on the reactant side and the product side of the equation. We made note of which atoms were unbalanced. We then used coefficients to balance the equation, understanding that adding coefficients to certain compounds in order to balance 1 specific atom also required us to re-count and adjust the other atoms in that particular compound. Once the equation was successfully balanced, we then practiced reading the chemical equation with the new coefficients. 

Students were then broken up into groups of three. They were given banner paper with two chemical equations and manipulatives they could use to visually see a color-coded version of the individual atom counts. The groups worked to balance their two equations, then presented their results to the rest of the class.

Below is the answer key to the graphic organizer we completed in class as well as blank additional copies just in case someone needs an extra.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a8wsTIlewZmxXb-SZ9Pey7Dma80AUOfl/view?usp=sharing

Spring Semester- Week 1- January 10, 2019 Parts of a Chemical Reaction

This week we will be reviewing a few of the concepts we covered last semester in order to build up to this week's unit covering balancing chemical equations. Therefore, I thought it would be best to provide some preliminary notes and review material for students to study prior to class this week.

In the above video, I cover how to differentiate between elements, the parts of a chemical reaction, and how to count atoms. Additionally, the link to a worksheet on counting atoms that we did in class, but will be helpful when we balance equations.

Counting Atoms

Lastly, below are the notes for this week that need to be included in student's interactive notebook. The first two pages of notes are for Parts of a Chemical Reaction. The last page of notes covers Balancing Chemical Equations.

Chemical Reactions Notes page 1

Chemical Reaction Notes page 2

Update:

We had an awesome class last week! We started the class with a video that introduced The Parts of A Chemical Reaction (see below):

Then we used gum drops to build molecules so that we could have a visual of how basic chemical compounds are structured. This also helped us as we reviewed counting atoms.

Next, we went over the parts of a chemical equation and how to read a chemical equation. We used the graphic organizer page in our notebooks shown below to cover the states of matter, reactants, products, subscripts and coefficients.

Here is the link to additional copies of the graphic organizer for those who missed class or need an extra copy.

Parts of Chemical Reaction Graphic Organizer