Graphing in Excel

Today, we took the data from our It's A Stretch experiment and turned it into a graph:

By now, our lab report should have a plan, a method (including diagrams/pictures), a results table and a graph.

The Bunsen Burner

Today, we learned about the best piece of lab equipment - the Bunsen burner!! We also researched other equipment, completing pp9-10 in our Scipads

Accidents

No matter how safely we act in the lab, accidents still sometimes happen. We looked at safe ways to act in the lab by going through pp7-8 in our SciPads, then we researched what to do if an accident does happen:

For homework, we have to complete the SEQUENCE activity above.

The Laboratory

First, we identified some important features of a school laboratory:

Then we started on our homework. We had to decide whether the school lab is "just another room", or if it is a really special room:

This homework has to be submitted on Moodle and is due on Sunday.

Which Acid?

Today, we used the Scientific Method to answer this question: Which lab acid is the most dangerous?

We did some research and most groups decided came up with the hypothesis that sulfuric acid would be the most dangerous.

Then we designed a simple experiment to test this hypothesis:

1. Add each acid to separate test tubes (half-filled)
2. Simultaneously, add a piece of marble to each test tube; ensure each piece is about the same size.
3. See which one reacts completely first.
4. Compare your results with other groups.

Our results do not match our hypothesis! Hydrochloric acid reacted the fastest, followed by nitric acid, while sulfuric acid did almost nothing.

The next step in the Scientific Method would be to do more research and more testing, but we ran out of time. I wonder why our results were so unexpected?

Nature of Science

Once we worked out that Science is more a way of thinking than just a set of knowledge, we looked at the Scientific Method. Finding (and understanding) the Scientific Method was another part of our homework for tonight.

Am I a Scientist?

We started today's lesson by writing down the types of things scientists do, where scientists work, and the names of some scientists we know about:

Then, we had to evaluate whether we are already scientists in our everyday lives. Most of us do behave like scientists, but are we really scientists already? This was our first piece of homework for tonight.