Jenna Dyer

  What did you learn this week? This week in lab, we did many experiments to try and figure out how we can  support elementary students in learning about matter and its behavior. My group did many experiments with baking soda and vinegar to try to prove that even with a chemical reaction, the weight of the baking soda and vinegar would be the same. At first, we did it with a balloon and did not know what we were doing wrong. We figured out it was because even though we were tying the balloon really fast, air was still getting out. So instead, we put baking soda in a skinny tube in a 2-liter bottle with vinegar and made sure they were separated, then weighed it, then we shook it up, and even mixed together it was the same weight. This is because we put the cap on the bottle before we shook it up so no air was able to escape during the experiment.  In the end, our experiment showed that the total mass stays the same, even during a chemical reaction. This helped us learn mor...

  What did you learn this week?  This week in lab, we looked back at some of our first experiments to understand them better. One of the activities we talked about as a class was the plunger experiment. We tried to figure out why a plunger sticks to some surfaces but not others. We learned that it sticks because there's no air between the plunger and the table, which creates suction. We also talked about the different states of matter, like solid, liquid, and gas, and what makes each one different. We looked at how the particles in each state are arranged and move. Later, we worked in small groups and made short videos about two experiments including one about why ice melts faster on metal than on wood, and another about why water forms on the outside of a soda can. My group focused on condensation and figured out that it happens when warm, wet air touches something cold and turns into tiny drops of water. That’s why a cold soda can gets wet on the outside, even though nothing...