week of october 19th

At the beginning of this week we had a test!!!! FUN!! On Tuesday we dissected cow eyes!! I was the only one in the class that hardly went near the eye.. it was kind of gross if you ask me.  It was also very interesting to see what it was made of.  I can't really describe it to you in detail but what i can tell you is that there was this goo that came out of the cow eye.  There was also this clear ball that came out after we cut the eye open.. that was PLEASANT!!! ewww no it wasn't.  On wednesday we started a new unit.  MOTION.  At the beginning of class we made cute little paper telescopes.  Mr. Seagan held a ball in his hand and walked across the room.  We found that even though the ball itself wasn't moving,  it still was in motion because Mr. Seagan was in motion and he was the one that was holding the ball. We learned that the initial orientation was where the ball was to begin with.  We found out that one way to tell if an object is moving is if we look at the backround and see if it is changing.  If it is changing then it means the object is in motion, or it is moving.  To know if an object is moving or not you would need something to compare to.  On thursday i was absent... darn... i hate missing my favorite class!!! hahahaha anyway....  On friday we started a lab or an experiment type of thing.  We used an electric car.  We had to test if the car sped up, slowed down, or stayed the same as it traveled along a straight, flat surface.  I predicted that it would stay the same speed the whole time. Then i tried to mark where the car was every second... i found that it stayed at the same speed through the whole test.  SOOOOOOOOOOOOO the main subject that I learned this week was MOTION.  motion is so important because mostly every living thing moves in some way or another.. and it is something that we do ALL the time ( even when we are sleeping).  We breath all the time and that means we are constantly moving.

K bye

KATHY:) 

Week of october 12th

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The first thing we did this week was talk about why light bends. Then we went to all of these stations "carnival".  We went on the internet and looked at different videos of waves. The first video that I saw supported the Wave Model because the waves bounced off the wall and crossed over the other waves.  The second video I saw didn't support it because it moved too fast.  The third one did support it because it bounced off the wall but it also split and went around it.  The last one, like the first one, supported it because it bounced back.  For homework we answered questions on the review sheet.  This helped me to review for the test.  We drew a Ray diagram.  It showed where the light would go if it reflected off of and and if there was a wall in the way. We also drew a lot of rays and then put in pieces off wall to show why the light was going in all different directions.  I drew a helicopter because we were testing if there would be a big shadow or a small shadow when the helicopter was 1000 feet in the air.  It was a small but clear shadow because a lot of light was getting between the helicopter and the ground.  I also found out that when light hits a surface it reflects or refracts (one, other, or both).  This is because it depends on the surface.  We learned three key terms this week: opaque, transparent, and translucent.  Opaque means no light can go through (reflects).  Transparent means light can go through (refracts).  Translucent means it reflects and refracts, a little bit of light can still pass through.  We drew a line and had transparent on the far left, translucent in the middle, and opaque on the far right.  Then we reviewed how we see an object.  Light bounces off the object and the rays cross right at it hits the eye and then the brain flips the object.  For homework we tried to predict what will happen when light bounces off a prism.  I thought that the light would bounce around inside the prism, come out, and go in all different directions.  We watched an experiment on the computer.  There were two slinkies, a less dense one, and a more dense one.  My hypothesis was that the slinkies were like light waves.  The experiment was to have two slinkies attached and make a wave out of it.  My prediction was that the less dense slinky should wave more than the more dense slinky.  The result was that my prediction was correct and that the bigger wave was always the less dense slinky. The conclusion was that we failed to disprove our hypothesis.

I am now going to study for the test!!!!

-Kathy Gagliano

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week of october 5th

hi:)

This week we started talking about analogies.  An analogy is a comparison between two things. We compared light to all different things such as: a cheetah, a bouncy ball/basketball, and sound. Light is like a  cheetah because it travels fast!!! Light is like a bouncy ball and a basketball because it bounces off of things. Light is like sound because it travels in waves. We also talked about the difference between a hypothesis and a prediction. Hypothesis: can be proven and disproved. It is a very general statement. Prediction: is the expected outcome. It is a very specific statement. We then talked about the particle model of light. It shows that light travels in packs of particles!!! (WOW). After that we talked about the law of reflection. The law of reflection is that the angle of reflection=angle of incidence. After we learned that we did a test with a laser and a pitcher of water. There were two predictions left after we finished crossing stuff out (C&E). Both of the predictions showed that there would be two laser dots in the pitcher. Then we did an experiment with a ruler in a tub thing of water. The ruler had the image that it was bent. When it hit the water it looked like it somehow reflected or bent. The ruler wasn't actually bent, it was the light that bounced off of it that made it look like it was bent. Then on wednesday we made a venn diagram. It was Particles vs. Waves. Isaac Newton was the man that believed light traveled in particles. Christiaan Huygens was the man that believed light traveled in waves. They both thought it reflected. We then discussed how the light travels through the prism (like in the video that we did for homework). It supports the Particle Model Model of light because it reflects off objects. It also traveled in a narrow straight line. The video showed that the light was bending when it hit the prism and when it was leaving. Then we we talked about what the light waves do when they hit a rooftop.  We found out that they go around the roof because the waves can't go through it.  We did an experiment with the water coming out of the faucet when there was a block blocking some of the waves. Even though the block was blocking some water (waves) the end of the tub was rippling. I learned that after the wave hits an object, it spreads out. It is so important to learn these ideas because light is everywhere and it will always be with us!!!! FORREEVVVEERRRR!!!! 

The particle model of light is confusing because you can't actuall see the particles. You can't touch them either so it's hard to understand it.

okkkaayy, thats all

bye:) 

K.Gagliano

september 28-october 2

This week we learned many important ideas about light. First we wanted to see how light travels when it bounces off of water. We found out that when it hits the water the rays bounce in all directions. It then bounces off of us back into the water so that we can see ourselves. Secondly we wanted to see what objects reflect light the best (high or low focus). One of my objects with high reflectiveness was a mirror, i gave it a 10 which means it can reflect the most focused light. The object that was very bad at reflecting light is a sweater, I gave it a 3. We also wanted to find the angles that the light bounced off the mirror. We tested this by shining a laser at a protractor and we saw the angle that it was at. We then saw that it came in at the same angle it came out. There were two angles that we wanted to find, the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection. These two angles were also known as angle A and angle B. We also learned what an assumption was: it is something that you guess about. If you want to be a good scientist you have to guess and then discover a test to see if your assumption was right. One assumption i made this week was that i thought that the angle lights hits and object is the angle it leaves. I also assumed that A+B=180 degrees. This will help us because we know how light bounces in our eyes.