My classes finished the Mars Habitats last week. Everything turned out super. Here is a small video of the final day. Click here to visit my school web site and see a more detailed video.

It’s a fun project that all students can do. First, we begin by blowing up a balloon to about the size of 10 or 15 cm in diameter. Then, rip thin strips of  newspaper maybe one or 2 cm wide and 10 or 15 cm long. Dip the newspaper strips into the solution and wrap them around the balloon. The paper mache is made of water and glue. I have found in the past using this simple mixture makes great paper mache. It’s also easier to clean than using cornstarch or other powders.

By the second day, the students should have two or three coats of paper mache around their balloon. It’s best to have five or six coats of paper mache as this will give the eyeball strength. After the paper mache dries we paint the whole eyeball white, this represents the sclera. Next, they paint the iris color blue, green, brown, or turquoise in the classroom and the pupil is painted black. When this is done I test the students orally and by pointing out the different parts of the eye. I also asked them what are the part of the retina and what is their function. The two parts of the retina are the rods and cones. The rods detect lightness and darkness and the cones detect the color. Also, I ask why do we have a blind spot? The answer is that this is where the optic nerve is located.

This is a nice project for seventh grade science as it takes about three or four days to complete. The whole time they are making the eye, I am circulating around asking about the different parts and discussing how the eye works. The students enjoyed making it and they can take it home when they are done. Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Some of the students also took turns going into the bag to experience the air pressure. It was quite an interesting day in science class.

The rockets are made with two, 2-liter bottles. The top bottle is where the astronaut egg is located. The goal is to keep the astronaut safe and secure by designing an enclosure around the egg so it doesn’t crack.  All types of materials are used and must be accounted for in the final cost.

The bottom bottle is the engine. We fill the bottle about half full with water and I pump it up with about 60-70 pounds of pressure. I have a specially designed rocket launcher that keeps the rocket set until I pull the pin. The students work in groups of two and this project takes about a week to complete.

I had some time to play with the Thesis theme and I just couldn’t load a header picture. A knowledge of css and programming is required to do this simple task. I have since switched over to the Headway theme and this theme is easier to work with. I hope to get back to posting about science and mathematics teaching. I think three times a week will be the goal as I have limited time and resources.

I also have some new ideas I would like to try. Being a Graduate Gemologist from the GIA, I have some jewelry that I would like to sell on Siyensya. Also, my Bisaya lessons are still ongoing and I hope to continue to the full 60 lessons. I’ve changed lots of diapers lately and I’ve have had some sleepless nights with my son, but I have a new theme that works pretty good so far and the posts will be coming.

The flash drive will only hold a few megabytes of data so have another flash drive handy. Here area few pictures I took today, my first day with the EyeClops. I hope to explore more this week and have an updated post by this weekend.

Here is a piece of bread at 100x. All of these pictures were imported into iPhoto and given a quick edit using the enhance magic wand.

The second picture is an onion skin at 200x.

The third picture is the same onion skin at 100x. The fourth picture is a closeup of a pineapple at 100x. The last is a small video of a state map.

After I took these pictures, it was easy to hook the EyeClops into the VCR using the S-video and project it onto the Smartboard for the whole class to see. I bought mine for $24.99 at Amazon and it is worth the price, even if you just play around with it. We had a fun day in science class today.

After a while, someone in class usually gets the correct answer. The students are amazed to find that a person would have over 21 million dollars. This example shows the power of exponential growth.

The other day, I saw a good video about how bacteria communicate with one another given that they are so small and only one cell. Seems that they put out certain molecules to help them communicate. Check out the video from TED, it’s very interesting.

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 place to find relevant science content and I go there often.

I introduce this topic from my experience of scuba diving. As one goes deeper, light is absorbed and everything gets bluer. As you can see from this picture, I am down about 25 feet and the water is already all blue. This photo was taken in the Florida Keys a few years back. It’s at the Christ of the abyss dive location. I also tie this topic together with photography and how light and lighting play an important role in photo composition.

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 1 teaspoon of salt, and the top layer has no salt, just yellow food coloring. We used 100ml of water for each layer. Put a piece of cardboard on top of the red layer to decant. The class did a great job.