Ask a Scientist

I was really excited to find out there was a website available to post questions on and get answers from real scientists! I was a little disappointed that I posted my question over a week and a half ago and never got a reply. My question was as follows: If cells are constantly performing mitosis to repair dead or damaged tissue, what causes scar tissue to build up & why do some cuts repair themselves leaving no scar behind, while other cuts leave scars?
Since I didn't get an answer form the website, I went to my own real scientist for an answer; my supervisor! I told him the situation and presented him with my question. He explained to me that when a cut is fairly superficial, the cells are still in close enough contact with one another to communicate proper healing and are able to repair the tissue so that it looks as if a cut ever happened. However, if a cut is very deep and/or wide, the cells in the surrounding area are not close enough to be able to communicate and you are left with scar tissue. Makes sense to me!
I'm not sure I would be willing to use this website since I never got a response. I'll be curious to see if others heard anything back. I love the idea of this site and would like to use something similar because I get questions regularly from my students that I can't fully explain and I could post their question immediately and hope for a response.

Web 2.0 presentation tools

The two presentation tools I'm reviewing are Prezi & PowerPoint. After watching the Prezi tutorial, I was excited by some of the presentation tools that come with Prezi and feel it would be a good tool to use for my Course Project. It seems easy enough to use & I like the idea of being able to have my students add to it from their own computers. My biggest concern with Prezi is based on the email we got from Dr. Lyman about the stability of Prezi. I worry that because I am not yet familiar with all the components associated with Prezi, if I run into any issues, I'll loose all my work. I also read a few on-line reviews from other Prezi users who had some similar complaints, although most liked the Prezi interface well enough.

For this reason I'm going to use PowerPoint for my Course Project. I use PowerPoint almost daily in my classroom and am very comfortable with it. I already know how to insert text, pictures and videos. Since I already have it installed on my computer, there is no additional cost to me. (unlike the fee that Prezi requires to register.) I post alot of my PPT presentations on my school website so that mys students can access it from home for additional review help. I worry that I used Prezi, most of my students are not familiar with its uses.

21st-century learning tools

In this week's application, we were asked to explore an online tool that could boost student’s interest in science. The topic I chose to explore was new ways of looking into the electromagnetic spectrum. I found a great website by The Smithsonian http://americanart.si.edu/education/pdf/Conservation_Electromagnetism_Lesson.pdf

What I liked most about this lesson is that it allows students to explore practical uses of the electromagnetic spectrum in a less traditional way. I have only taught the electromagnetic spectrum and its uses in the scientific realm in the past, but this lesson looks at how it is used in the process of art conservation; something I had never considered before. Students will look at how X-rays are used by art conservationist to look at possible cracks in sculptures that can't be seen by the naked eye. They explore how UV radiation can be used to identify the material in the artwork, and Infrared radiation is used to determine if there are any underdrawings under the painting we can see with visible light.

Students are presented with 3 different pieces of artwork, and their potential flaws, and must determine which type of electromagnetic spectrum wave should be applied. They will then see before & after pictures to really see the significance these tools have.

Because we are so lucky to live outside of NYC, we take our middle school students on a trip to The Metropolitan Museum each year. Our principal has asked us to find a lesson that would relate to the field trip, and is the past I've struggled to find a connection between science & The Met. Now I can teach this lesson prior to our field trip and tie the two together. The only challenge I might face with this lesson is some extra prep work on my part. I would need to find out, before our trip, if there are any paintings or sculptures that the Met might have used such applications on so that I could inform my students of this before we go.

Exploring heat transfer

For this week’s experiment, we looked at what type of materials are the best insulators. I set up the experiment by taking 4 identical ceramic coffee mugs and filled each with 8oz. of hot water. I covered each mug with four different materials; Aluminum foil, paper, an over mitt & a down comforter. My initial readings indicated that each mug contained water that was over 120 degrees, but since my thermometer only went up to 120 degrees, I can’t be sure what the exact starting temperatures were. After thirty minutes I took another reading, but the thermometer still went up to 120 degrees so I decided to let the mugs set for an additional fifteen minutes. So after a total of forty-fiver minutes, I found that the Aluminum foil worked best, keeping the water temperature at to 118, while the paper allowed the water to cool down to 110 degrees. Both the oven mitt & down comforter kept the water at about 115 degrees. From these observations, I would say that all worked well at keeping the water hot.

If I were to teach this lesson in class, I might use the above set-up, but then do a follow-up lesson where students could look at the container instead of the material is was covered with. Since most places like Starbucks use Styrofoam or paper cups, I feel like it would be better to test those materials against a ceramic mug to determine which are better insulators, as it is more likely that those containers would be used more often in real life. I also feel like I would need more accurate thermometers, perhaps digital ones that would give more valid readings.

Momentum lesson

For this week's application, I chose to investigate how the steepness of a slope and mass affect a collision outcome. I took 3 steel balls of different masses and rolled them down a ramp, colliding with dry erase board erasers on the floor. Based on what I know about the properties of momentum (mass times velocity), my hypothesis was that the ball with the largest mass would push the eraser the farthest. My hypothesis was correct, but I wanted to explore the lesson further so decided to change a few more variables. I chose to perform the same experiment, but changed the height of my ramp several times. I then conducted the experiment again, but this time instead of the collisions occurring on hardwood floors, I moved to carpet to observe the role friction might have. On the carpet, the collisions sent the balls flying off in every direction and not really moving the eraser at all.
I feel like by testing so many variables, I could anticipate what variables my students would want to look at.
This lesson could be modified to be any one of the four levels of inquiry depending on the age or skill level of students. To engage students further, we could change the type of objects that are colliding to make it more relevant to their lives and discuss how collisions in sports result in injuries.

Inquiry lesson reflection

For my inquiry-based lesson this week, I worked with a small group of students in doing an owl pellet dissection. The students appeared very engaged as they attempted to find out what the owl pellet was (I didn't tell them prior to starting, only that they knew a little something about the animal that created it). We had a lot of discussions about what the object was based on what they found inside the owl pellet. Once I told them what it was, we spent time looking at what type of prey the owls ate based on the type of skulls found inside the pellet and the role of Barn Owls in an ecosystem.

Melting Icebergs- Question 9

In class this week, we were asked to set up an experiment to demonstrate what will happen if the polar ice caps melt. I have a lot of concern when it comes to global warming and have had many discussions about it with my students. My biggest concern is not that there will be world wide flooding, but more about the effects on wildlife in these regions and long term effects on humans. We already hear about larger mammals in these areas having to search longer and farther for food supplies; penguins being found dead miles from their normal hunting grounds, polar bears starving, etc. This is so heartbreaking to me. I'm a huge animal lover and feel it is unfair to them if this truly is a result of human actions.

I was actually really excited about this week's experiment because I'm always looking for new activities for the environmental component of our curriculum. I have to say I was very disappointed with the actual experiment. I ended up doing it twice, because I thought I did it wrong the first time because I was expecting different results. Both times I did it, it took over an hour for the ice to fully melt, which would not work in my 45 minute classes. I filled the glass all the way to the top, but barely any water flooded when the ice all melted; it was more condensation on the outside of the glass and bowl. I'd like to hear about how it went for everyone else. Maybe it was too cold in my house for the ice to melt fast enough. Should I have used hot water? I was expecting more actual "flooding