Friday, August 1, 2014

Our last day, we finished by presenting air pressure and static electricity demos. Students also heard from Susan Dahl who is the president of Friends of Fermilab and director of the Teacher Resource Center. She informed all of the teachers about the wonderful education opportunities available to teachers. These include, programs, scholarships, and science curriculum development. We finished the day with an Electromagnetic spectrum wave activity. This year's class was extremely fun and curious and I know their students will benefit from the week long experience.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

We finished  heat and light activities this morning before going on a field trip. We began by testing the heat conductivity of various materials. The race to melt a pad of margarine was won by aluminum with brass in second followed by steal. Wood never finished the race!
We then discussed solar energy and how important shadow lengths are when telling time.

 We used the fermi sundial and then retreated to the lab to model the passage of time across the United States using a flashlight and golf tee. We trekked from the science center through the forest to the Minos and Minerva projects. Upon our arrival we met a brilliant Brazilian  scientist named Mateeus Carneiro (mateusfcarneiro@gmail.com ) Mateus took us 300 feet underground and showed us several detectors and explained in detail each project's purpose and what they hope to learn. 
In the afternoon we began our exploration of magnetism and electricity. we created magnetic fields.
We even reproduced the fermi lab symbol; the quadrupole. Students identified materials that interact with magnets and what magnets can be made from different materials. They also have varying strengths. We learned that all metals are not attracted to magnets and that Canadian nickels change their metal content over the past 40 years. From there we moved onto learning about electricity. We made a human circuit and then made our own circuits with wires and aluminum foil. The push of electrons is called voltage and that volts have an additive property.

Wednesday July 30, 2014

Today we explored the properties of light and heat energy. We started by investigating how light travels. We played reflection relay with a light beam. We then used flashlights and tag board with slits to tighten the light beam. Next we used colored gels to create colored light beams. We learned that mixing color pigment is a subtractive process while mixing colored light is an additive process. Teachers used light boxes and mirrors to mix light beams. We also explored refraction and diffraction of light. Later in the day we learned about heat energy.  Ice melting blocks were used to demonstrate the transfer of heat energy. We conducted an experiment that illustrated the difference between temperature and heat energy. We will continue our exploration of heat energy tomorrow morning.