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&M and we all waited for a minute and a half then measured the spread of the dye. After conducting this experiment and gathering the data from every student we noticed that there were several differences in the numbers that did not seem right, so we did the experiment again. This time we talked about the disparities and why they might be occurring such as the amount of water, distance from where we were measuring, and how we dropped the candy. After conducting the experiment again after controlling some of the variables we noticed less of a difference in the data and came to the conclusion that color does not affect the speed of the dye. 

We then split up into table groups and tested if the results would be different if we manipulated the temperature of the water and sugar in the water. 

We found out that the amount of water in the plate did not affect the speed of the dye, the hot water melts the dye faster and there is little difference between the room temp and cold water, and lastly the sugar water makes the dye spread slower than the regular water. 

Lastly we made a particle model to help explain our findings. After this lab I felt much more confident in my understanding of particle models and was left with no questions. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 13, 2021 at 6:48 AM

    Thanks for the posts. I hope we have been able to give you some ideas that you can use with students.

    Cheers,

    ReplyDelete

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 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