Week 6

 


Week 6 Blog Post 







What questions are we investigating?

The question we investigated this week was How are things in our world interrelated? This weeks lab was super hands on as we investigated several things deer population and how environmental factors impact it, blood functions, owl pellets, and food chains. 

What did we do in lab to investigate these questions?

We conducted several simulations or activities to learn about each of these concept that related back to how things in our world are interrelated. The first activity we did was to see how our body reacts to getting injured and fighting off bacteria. We each had a title as a red or white blood cell, bacteria, or platelet. We walked around in a circle and the door being opened signified a cut with the dirt and bacteria entering. It was the white blood cells jobs to attack the bacteria, and the platelets job to block the red blood cells from bleeding out the door. The next activity we did was focusing on deer population. We were all deer and it began with two deer trying to find shelter, water, or food. We would match up with someone signifying that same symbol and it would go on and on until there were more deer than shelter, water, or food. Then the simulation would be over because deer would start dying. The last thing we did was discuss food chains and how they worked. We dissected owl pellets to see what was in side of them and the bones of other animals. 

What did we figure out?

There are several things that we found out this week. We learned how the flow of blood occurs and what happens when we get injured. We also learned about carrying capacity when it comes to animal populations and how certain environments can no longer provide for a large amount of animals because they have recached carrying capacity of shelter, food, and water. By dissecting the owl pellets and finding mice and other animals, we also figured out that food chains all lead back to plants and the sun. 

What are new or remaining questions after this investigation? 

What is the difference between a food chain and a food web? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 4

Image
  Week 4 Blog: Monarch Butterflies  What question are we investigating? This week we investigated Monarch butterflies, as well as what makes a question "good" according to the NGSS. Our class had several questions about Monarch butterflies such as, how do Monarch butterflies know where to travel, how does the super generation reproduce, and how do they travel so far.  What did we do in lab to investigate this question? We used the acronym KEWL to begin setting up our investigation. Starting with what we know, our evidence, what we want to know, and lastly what we learned. There were 5 different stations set up in the classroom to help us investigate these questions. The first was different diagrams of the butterflies life cycle, the second was parts of real Monarchs under a microscope, the third was looking at the caterpillars, the forth was analyzing the chrysalis, and lastly watching a video of the growing process and looking at learning materials.  Chrysalis Cater...
Read more

Week 13: Testing M&M's

 Week 13: Testing M&M's What are we investigating? What is fundamental? Why the colors mix?  Does the color affect the speed of the dye? How did we investigate this? This week we continued to investigate different things and learn how to use particle models of matter in order to explain phenomena. In learning how to use particle models of matter to explain different phenomena we also learned the importance of using models to help students understand concepts, and also pushing them to create their own models. When investigating the questions we had in lab we conducted several different experiments as a class. This experiment rather than being done in small groups was done as a whole class to begin with. Each table got a different color of M&M that they would be conducting the experiment on. Each student got a plate with water in it. As a class we were investigating the question of does the color affect the speed of the dye. The professor told us all when to drop the M...
Read more

Week 12: Properties of Matter

Image
 Week 12 Properties of Matter What are we investigating?  How do properties change when objects are broken into pieces? What we did to investigate this? In this lab we explored the properties of matter, we did this by discussing what we noticed about some of the observable physical properties of these objects. We made a list on our white board that included mass, density, malleability, hardness, conductivity, and more. We had ten different objects such as crayons, wood, straws, foil, paperclips, corks, and more. Use materials such as graduated cylinders, a light bulb, and a scale we tested all of our different objects to figure out what was on our list. Each object had a small size and a big size of it that way our tests were more extensive.  We found out many things some of the data was affected by the size of the object, but others were not. We also found out which objects conducted electricity, which were dense, which was malleable, and many more. Majority of our predi...
Read more