This week in science class we made an eyeball from paper mache using water, newspaper, and glue. Currently, we are learning about the eye and vision. I have my students know the different parts of the eye and a general overview of how vision works. The vocabulary for this topic is the retina, rods, cones, [...]
Philippine-American Life Through a Scientific Lens
Category Archives: Science
The Great Bag of Science
This past week I had the opportunity to go inside a large plastic bag and have the air sucked out. Why would I do this? I did it because this demonstration was about air pressure. When the air is sucked out of the bag, one feels the combined air pressure of 14.7 psi. It [...]
Rocket launch
My eighth grade classes launched their water rockets last month. I took video of the students and their rockets and now have it posted to our school’s website. I made an iMovie from all the video clips. I originally had it as a twenty minute video, but I edited it down to about four minutes [...]
Starting again
It’s been quite a ride these last few months. Our son was born in July and my wife had some serious childbirth complications. It was almost August before we were all home. September was difficult with the new baby, starting school and caring for my wife. We are now just getting back to normal and [...]
A Review of the EyeClops Microscope
I bought the EyeClops video microscope last week and it arrived yesterday. I took it to school and my students had it up and running in no time. I was interested to see the quality of the images and video and to see if this would be something I could use in the classroom. The [...]
Bacteria can talk to each other
Bacteria reproduce by binary fission. They break in half and one becomes two. I use this topic to link math and science when we study bacteria and viruses. I start off with the question: If you start with a penny and double it every day, how many dollars will one have in one month? Let [...]
The Study Of Light
Let there be light.
We are studying the properties of light in science class and this brings us to the study of the electromagnetic spectrum. I found a good powerpoint on this subject from Slideshare. It’s hard getting your mind around the dual properties of light: both a wave and a particle. Slideshare is a good [...]
Obama’s Science Advisors
Today, President-elect Barack Obama selected John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco as science advisers. Obama said “It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.” Also joining Obama’s science team is Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harold Varmus and professor [...]
A Three Color Density Lab
The class did a density lab where they change the density of water by adding different amounts of salt. The hard part is to decant the solution so the different densities don’t mix. We used food coloring to show each different density layer. The bottom layer has 2.5 teaspoons of salt. The middle layer has [...]
Liquid Colloids Lab
Here is a good lab to check the observational skills of your students. I do this early in the year so I can check my class procedures for lab clean up. The students will also see something that is not expected, which adds to the excitement. The students will also have some practice measuring with [...]
