Today we started our lab on electromagnetism.

Here’s the lab handout and problems that you need to have completed by the end of class tomorrow:

Electromagnetism Lab Procedure

After this lab, we’re starting on another lab that is more complicated but will also involve electricity and magnetism.

Should be fun!

We’ll be continuing our studies of sound tomorrow, focusing on the components of a sound wave.

Additionally, we’ll be starting work on our own sound creations (or songs) in class.

If you’d like to get a head start, here are a couple of good online song editors (free):

- Myna from Aviary (My favorite)
- JamStudio (What We’ve Been Using in Class)

There’s also GarageBand on the Mac as well as Audacity (free) that works well on PC’s, Macs or Linux.

If you’re the enterprising sort, also check out Fission if you have a Mac.

See you (and hear you) tomorrow!

Next week, we’ll start our studies on “Fluid Dynamics” which is Chapter 11 in your book.

That’s just a fancy term for how forces affect fluids.

Sounds boring?

Nope, it’s fun. You’ll see.

How are Pascal’s, Archimedes’ & Bernoulli’s principal applied at a water park?? – Yahoo! Answers: “How are Pascal’s, Archimedes’ & Bernoulli’s principal applied at a water park??”

We’ll be taking Pascal, Archimedes and Bernoulli to the water park next week.

Bring your Dihydrogen Monoxide Coats!

Balloon Racers are due on Friday in class.

Make sure you know:

1) Your racer’s mass
2) The best set up for your balloon racer

If you’re in 8.3 and would like to try out a balloon racer, I’ll give some extra credit if you can successfully make the 5 meter challenge and figure out your racer’s mass, acceleration, velocity and force.

Here are a few things we’ll be covering for the rest of our (sadly short) time left before you move on to the Upper School:

Forces
Title: Newton v Einstein
Unit Question: Who is right? Newton or Einstein?
Area of Interaction: Human Ingenuity
Culminating Task: Newton v Einstein Court Case
Assessment: Knowledge and Understanding (Criterion C)

Energy
Title: Knock ‘em Down
Unit Question: What does oatmeal have to do with bowling?
Area of Interaction: Health and Social Interaction
Culminating Task: Wii bowling tournament
Assessment: Communication in Science (Criterion B)

Work and Machines
Title: Archimedes’ Claw and the 1st Presbyterian Soup Kitchen
Unit Question: How can we use the works of Archimedes to help our work at the soup kitchen?
Area of Interaction: Community and Service
Culminating Task: Demonstration of simple machines and understanding of efficiency by moving items at the soup kitchen during Humanitas Day
Assessment: One World (Criterion A)

Waves
Title: Verse Chorus Verse
Unit Question: Do you study better in a well lit quiet room or a dark and noisy room? What about your earbuds?
Area of Interaction: Environments
Culminating Task: Collection of data related to personal or group study habits with reflection on personal preferences/needs based on science of light and sound.
Assessment: Processing Data (Criterion D)

Should be fun!

Greetings from sunny Los Angeles (I haven’t seen many cardigans yet, but the butterflies did fly away).

I hope you all had a great Friday and finished up on those quizzes. Let me know if you had any trouble with them.

As you know, I won’t be in class on Monday either as I’ll still be here in the Sunshine State.

**So, please make sure you have materials you need to work on your balloon racers!**

I don’t have a formal lesson for you all on Monday with Mr. Ohlmer, but I’m sure you will know how to behave yourselves etc with the freedom of the activity (right?).

I’ll be back on Tuesday (hopefully) and we’ll start doing time trials to see your progress.

Get in touch if you have any questions over the weekend. I have my laptop, iPhone, Skype, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Good luck!

Ben H. and Evan present Newton’s Laws via Halo

Awesome.

Go out and look at the stars tonight (if it’s not too cold/cloudy), and thank Galileo

The Galilean Revolution, 400 years later | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine: “Four hundred years ago tonight, a man from Pisa, Italy took a newly-made telescope with a magnifying power of 33X, pointed it at one of the brighter lights in the sky, and changed mankind forever.

The man, of course, was Galileo, and the light he observed on January 7, 1610 was Jupiter. He spotted ‘three fixed stars’ that were invisible to the eye near the planet, and a fourth a few days later.”

Yay Science.

Entertain your family and friends (but as always, be careful and use proper saftey!) during those long holiday gatherings:

Fun stuff!

I love the carbon dioxide trick.

I’m working on the Journal Article grading this weekend (even though there’s a fantastic marathon of Godzilla movies from the 1960’s playing tonight that keeps distracting me).

Nevertheless, I will have your articles graded with comments and responses by Monday or possibly Tuesday at the latest.

I’ve really been impressed with some of the projects I’ve seen and read today.

In the meantime, have a great weekend and start reviewing for your exams that start on Friday!