Week Five

This week did probably one of the coolest experiments I've done. We found the density of a girl and a guy in our class. To brainstorm ideas on how to do this the whole class talked using google docs. We came up with using the ice bath or just using a pool because we knew we were going to have to put the person in water. We ruled out the pool because it would be too big and the pool would have to have measurements on it to find the volume of the person. We then saw a big trash can in the back of the room and thought about that. We decided that a person would fit into it but we needed to think of how much water to put into the can. We figured that we would fill the can to the top with water that way we knew how much water was in it and when the person got in and water spilled we would put a baby pool under it to catch the excess water. After putting a plan together then came experiment day. When class first started it was a little crazy. We started by filling up the trash can with water. To do this we used the emergency shower and directed the water into the can with a shower curtain. After it was filled to the top we were all ready for the first person to get in. We gently helped her into the can and as she went into the water we watched it fall into the baby pool. Once she was completely under water we got cups to start filling pop bottles with the water that had fallen into the baby pool. We had to collect all the water from the baby pool so that we could subtract it from the volume of the trash can so we could find the volume of the person. After we got her volume we did mass over volume to find her density. We then repeated the same thing for the guy classmate. In this experiment I think that there is a lot of room for error though. With water spilling on the flour and maybe some people not filling the pop bottle up all the way.
This week we had our second assessment. I felt better going into this one because I had taken one already so I knew what it was going to look like and the format. Although with this assessment I didn't really know what the questions were going to be about. I studied all of my notes and Mr. Abud's notes but I'm not sure I did that well on it. I thought it was challenging.