Students work on news article about Great Salt Lake and the salt imbalance. What is the problem? What is a solution? Article is to be shared with Mr. W via Google Docs and be in the form of an online article.
Causeway at GSL--the cause of the problem.
Students are assigned to groups and then divide the work on the Great Salt Lake (GSL) Project. Each student takes on either water, human impact, or salinity. At the end of the week an article will be produced using Google Docs about the problems at the GSL and a recommended management plan.
Finished the NOVA video on Making Stuff Stronger. Amazing part about placing spider genes in goats to produce the silk protein in milk!
Part III of NOVA’s Making Stuff. Class watches great episode on “Making Stuff Stronger.” There were truly some strange new discoveries like carbon nanotubes and goats that produced milk that had the protein for spider silk! Absent? Watch the video and take notes.
Watched the second in the “Making Stuff” series on NOVA. On Making Stuff Cleaner the emphasis was on biofuels, cleaner cars, and burning trash to make electricity. Great part about growing parts for cars from fungi and using vegetable oils (like soy) to make foam! Good mentions of closed systems (trash burning) and molecular structure of plastics (carbon chains and sheets). Absent? Watch the video online and take notes.
Students accessed the York Water Company site to view the diagram of the water processing flow chart. How much water is delivered to each person per day in the York Water Company System? Students worked on the questions found on this handout Water Systems.
Continued work on the predator-prey activity (Smartboard notes 3-23-11) from yesterday. Homework on relative dating and radiometric decay is a good review for Friday’s quiz. Note the question and information about the release of radiation from the Japanese nuclear plant.
Last day to wrap up cubium activity (see 3-15 and 3-16). Results needed to be graphed and questions answered in lab notebooks. Notebooks turned in. Best graphs will get displayed on the blog next week!
Student continue with the Cubium activity (see 3-15-11). Should have three complete trials.
Students modeled radioactive decay in two ways. In the first exercise they cut an index card in half to show how 1/2 of carbon-14 decays to nitrogen-14. The students realized that 10 cuts or more made seeing (measuring) the carbon-14 difficult. At a half life of 5700 years, carbon-dating is only good to about 50,000 years. In the second activity they used an element named “cubium.” One side of each wooden cube was marked. When shaken in a box the cubes that ended with the marked side up were daughter atoms. Multiple trials will produce decay curves and the half-life will be calculated.
Index card cut to show decay of carbon-14
Cubium activity to model half-life