Katie Miller

Aug 28, 2014

Dr. McKenzie
Educ
Journal #2

This week was filled with very interesting and beneficial lessons. On Tuesday
we did the egg in a bottle activity; this taught pressure. To students I would explain,
that changing the temperature inside the bottle also changes the pressure. The heat
from the burning paper inside the bottle creates more pressure. This is why the egg
was jumping. It released some of the pressure until the pressure was the same
outside the bottle as inside the bottle. Then when the flame went out and the air
inside the bottle started the cool the pressure started to decrease. This made the
pressure outside of the bottle greater therefore pushing the egg in the bottle. I
would do the demonstration with students acting as molecules to help them better
understand how temperature correlates with the speed of the molecules, which
would all help explain pressure.
On Thursday we worked with scales, which then led to teaching mass and
density. We constructed many different boats out of clay and tried to get as many
bears to float onto until the boat went under. This is important for students to
realize things that may not be able to float in shape of a solid ball, as the clay, can
float when the mass of the clay is spread out into a flatter surface. The boat that held
the most for us had a deeper bottom and sides to keep the water out. This can be
compared to a real life situation of someone doing a cannon ball and someone diving
into the pool. The cannon ball like the ball of clay will go straight to the bottom,
unlike the diver and the boat of clay, the diver doesnt reach the bottom and can
start swimming immediately. This will help the students realize that the shape does
matter and reshaping the object spreads the mass out, which is why items can float.
The Archimedes Principle is when an object is placed in water that displaces more
and more liquid until a balanced is reached between the mass of the water displaced
and the mass of the object. This can be explained through the clay boat activity.