Earth History

We finished up our unit on astronomy the week before last and watched the movie "October Sky" last week. This week we are starting on our Earth History unit. We are going to be learning about how the Earth has changed and is continuing to change. I will be making some suggestions for individual projects in the next week or so. I am especially looking for students to work on a geodesy project. See me if you think you might be interested.

Messages to the Stars

Last week we discovered how difficult it is to figure out what to say to beings outside our solar system and even more so how difficult it is to find a way to get our ideas across without any language or symbols from Earth.
Next week we will be reviewing our astronomy unit and getting ready for the final exam. Then it's on to Earth History.
For extra credit, look up "geodesy" and come tell me what it means.

Messages From Distant Stars

Last week we learned a little about constellations and built star-finders to help us find the constellations we learned about. We ended the week by watching the movie "Contact." This week we will finish watching the movie and look at the message sent from Arecibo observatory in 1974. We will attempt to create our own messages that can be understood by any being sufficiently advanced to receive them and will convey the meaning we want conveyed.

Scale of the Solar System

Last week we got a chance to see how big the solar system really is and how small we are when we created a scale model of the solar system using a volleyball for the sun and a peppercorn for the Earth. We overlaid the planet orbits on Google Earth and were surprised to find that Pluto would be a pinhead 1000 yards away and the nearest star other than the Sun would be 4000 miles away in that scale.

The Solar System

This week we will be looking at the solar system. We will review the names and locations of the planets and we will create a scale model to help us visualize the distances between planets.

Science-7: Out of Classroom Experience

Wednesday we will have the first Meeting of the Experience. Come with your lunch to room 16 as soon as you get your food. We have a lot to do: electing officers, planning fund raising for the Halloween dance, deciding what other kinds of field trips and fund raisers to do.

On to the eclipse

Next week we will be wrapping up our study of Moon phases and learning about eclipses and tides. We are finding out that the Moon has a big effect on our lives.

Phases of the Moon

This week we will be exploring what causes the phases of the moon. We have been noticing and drawing what the moon looks like for the past two or three weeks and now we are going to use the data we collected to help us understand Why the moon looks different on different days.

Sept 12

This last week we learned about what causes seasons. Next week we will start by reviewing this before moving on.
We added two more animals to the classroom this week. We already had a California King snake, two golden tree frogs and a tokay gecko. We added a day glow corn snake and a large tarantula. The snake came from my house, but the tarantula was a volunteer who just showed up and wanted to join our class.
Next week is parent teacher conferences on Wednesday and Thursday which means early out for students.

Moon Observation Sheets

Remember to notice the Moon. Homework this month is to look at the Moon at least every 2 or 3 days and draw a picture of what it looks like. Be sure to write what day and time you saw it.
At the end of the month we will look at how the Moon appeared to change during that time.

Starting on Space

On Tuesday we will begin our unit on space. We will be learning all about how the Moon, Sun and Earth affect each other. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the news over the weekend so we can talk about what happened with hurricane Gustav when we get to school on Tuesday.

Cell phones and popcorn

It has been a fun second week. We watched a video that showed popcorn being popped with some cell phones and discussed whether students thought that it could have been faked or whether it might really be possible to do that. We did some research and most students agreed that it was a hoax and that it would not be possible to pop popcorn with cellphones, but there are some who believe that it could be possible and want to set up an experiment to try doing so. On Monday we will run some controlled experiments to see whether we can pop any corn using cell phones.

What a great school!

This is a great school! All the students seem to be excited to be here and ready to learn. I can see we are going to have a great year.
The first couple of weeks we are going to work on getting to know each other and learning procedures, so there really arent any assignments that you can do outside of the classroom. If you are absent and want to do make-up work, go to the make-up section of the website and do a science news review. (We will be going over how to write one of these on Friday.)
If you have a question about anything, whether it is about science or about seeing if you can change your seat, write me an email or write me a note on paper and give it to me. I will make sure that you get an answer.
Keep up the good work!

Welcome to 7th Grade Science!

In 7th Grade Science we learn about Space, Earth History and Ecology.
This year we are starting with space.
The Phoenix project landed a spacecraft near the north pole of Mars just after school ended last spring. This project is run by the University of Arizona from right here in Tucson! Here is a picture of the spare lander.
This is going to be an exciting year in space exploration.
I look forward to meeting all of you in August.