The end of the quarter finally came!!! As you can tell, I'm very excited to be in the final stages of the school year... as is your student, I'm sure.
Over the last 8 days or so we've been discussing 2 general topics. First, about how mass, weight, gravity, and motion are interconnected and how they relate to each other. We took some notes, I showed a few video clips (hammer and feather dropping on the moon), and I did a few demonstrations. The most notable demo showed how inertia affects objects at rest. (Inertia is the resistance matter has to change in speed and direction... an object at rest/motion will stay that way unless acted upon by an unbalanced force). To see a more professional demonstration of what I did in class, go to Steve Spangler's website.
The other topic we've discussed is how we use our senses to detect changes in energy. We took notes on how the eyes and ears work. They also found their blind spots and observed the other function of ears - balance. We did a short lab as well that demonstrated how the nerves in the skin are distributed unevenly for feeling pressure, hot, and cold (you could do the same experiment to find pain sensors, but I didn't think poking each other with pins would be appropriate for this particular age group... but you're welcome to try it at home!). If your student came home with a 6x6 grid on the back of their hand, it was because of this lab. I usually don't encourage them to draw on themselves, but this was for the sake of science.
We will be quizzing today on mass, weight, gravity, & motion.
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