This week we will be completing our chemistry unit on chapter 5 and Pressure from the Conceptual Physics website.   They will design polymers of glue and sodium borate to create the bounciest ball.  Further in the week we will create microrockets using various chemical reactions.  Also, the unit test will be Friday.

This week in science we will continue our study of Ch. 5 in the active chemistry students should be completing their very cool assignment on how different things work on Planet X.   Ask your student about this.  On Wednesday, we will make water boil by pouring ice water on it.   The test will be next Friday, Jan 29th.

This week in science we are continuing our study of ch. 5 in the Active Chem book.  We are concentrating on pressure, the gas laws, and how pressure effects boiling point.   Students should be able to use this information to describe how refrigerators and air conditioners work.  On Friday, they will have  a major assignment called Planet X.  They will describe how various machines, sports, and daily activities would work on planet X, a planet w/o an atmosphere, but the same gravity as Earth.

Dinner table conversation:  Ask your student to explain how water can boil below 100 deg C.

Last week we completed Ch. 1 on the Periodic Table and this week we are starting Ch. 2 –Movie Special Effects.   Throughout this unit the students will be studying various processes in chemistry with the goal of using these to create a 1 minute movie using some chemistry special effect.  They will then be required to explain the chemistry behind their special effect.  In this unit, we will be covering the electrolysis of water, phases of matter, density, solutions, suspensions, and colloids, polymers, and flame testing.

Dinner table conversation:  On Thursday will be using electricity to break water apart into its orginal components (hydrogen and oxygen) and then testing the properties of these gases.  Ask your student to explain why explosive hydrogen and flammable oxygen combine to make water, what we use to put out fires!!  Hopefully, you will hear the word compound used.

This week your students will be jumping head first into understanding how the periodic table is set up.  Unfortunately, this week will involve more “paper labs” than normal.  This is mainly because we are studying protons and electrons and these are a little small to do a lab with.  After this week, the “real labs” will come. I like to add a little thing called Dinner Table conversation to help you see how well your student understands what is going on in class and it give you an opportunity to see what we are doing.  On Friday, Sept 11, we spent a lot of time on Rutherford’s Goil Foil experiment.  Ask your student to explain to you what Rutherford actually did in his experiment ( the macro level) and what he theorized about the structure of the atom from this experiment (the nano level).

Welcome back.  We are starting our Eggonaut Challenge this week.  Students will be designing, building, and testing their Eggonaut Water Rockets.  Their goal is to design a rocket that will stay aloft for 10 seconds and land without the raw egg payload from breaking.

This week we continue our study of the periodic table.  Students should be able to determine what period and family any element is in, describe if it is a metal or nonmetal, and describe some of its properties.  We will be starting small subunit on Carbon chemistry with an emphasis on crude oil and its fractions and the properties of polymers.

Dinner table conversation: Be sure to ask you students how crude oil is separated into its various fractions later in the week after we do our fractional distillation lab on Wednesday.

This week in science we will be wrapping up our unit on electricity and magnetism. Students will be studying the properties series circuits vs parallel circuits and the advantages and disadvantages of each. On Tuesday they will explore the field of magnetism with an emphasis on how magnetics is used in the real world through Lenz’s Law and the interaction of electric fields with magnetic fields. On wed, they will prove their understanding of electromagnetic induction by designing and building an operational telegraph. Thursday will conclude when students analyze and construct the World Simplest Motor.

This week we started our study of electrostatics (static electricity).  Unfortunately, static electricity doesn’t work well in humid environments and Tues and Wed. are scheduled to be much more humid than is typical for winter.  Because of this we will be shifting our gears a little and doing the Physics Quest for 2009 sponsored by the American Physics Society.  Focusing on the Nickoli Tesla and his competition and eventual defeat of Edison to power the Chicago World’s Fair.   The experiments range over a wide area, but most focus back on electricity and magnetism the unit we are currently in.   The students may be a little confused on Tuesday because we are changing units right in the middle, but the humidity would dampen the electrostatic labs.  We should be back on track at the end of the week.

We are wrapping up Stellar Evolution this week. They have studied most of the high energy objects in our galaxy and the surrounding galaxies. Also, students understand how all of the elements are made in the universe. We will be wrapping this unit up this week and moving into electrostatics next week.

Feel free to email me to if you have any questions about science placements for high school.