Author: Lensyl Urbano

Elephant Rocks

Students explore the massive, spheroidally weathered boulders at Elephant Rocks State Park.
Students explore the massive, spheroidally weathered boulders at Elephant Rocks State Park.

We stopped at the Elephant Rocks State Park our way down to Eminence MO for our middle school immersion trip. The rocks are the remnants of a granitic pluton (a big blob of molten rock) that cooled underground about 1.5 billion years ago. As the strata above the cooled rock were eroded away the pressure release created vertical and horizontal cracks (joints). Water seeped into those joints, weathered the minerals (dissolution and hydrolysis mainly), and eroded the sediments produced, to create the rounded shapes the students had a hard time leaving behind.

This was a great stop, that I think we’ll need to keep on the agenda for the next the next trip. I did consider stopping at the Johnson’s Shut-Ins Park as well, but we were late enough getting to Eminence as it was. Perhaps next time.

Exploring the spaces between the rocks.
Exploring the spaces between the rocks.

Plate Tectonics on the Eminence Immersion

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The picture of a convergent tectonic boundary pulls together our immersion trip to Eminence, and the geology we’ve been studying this quarter. We saw granite boulders at Elephant Rocks; climbed on a rhyolite outcrop near the Current River; spelunked through limestone/dolomitic caverns; and looked at sandstone and shale outcrops on the road to and from school.

An oceanic-oceanic subduction zone. The subducting plate melts producing volatile magma.
The subducting plate melts producing volatile magma.

CHICKEN MIDDLE’S FIRST EGG!!!

The first egg from our chickens.
The first egg from our chickens.

Last year, our middle schoolers named their business Chicken Middle. I was a bit skeptical, but the name stuck. This year, thanks to a lot of help from the school community (thanks to the R’s for the Ruby Coops), we finally have chickens (thanks to Mrs. C. for fostering chicks for us over the summer).

And today, we had our first egg. The students were a little excited.

It looks a little lonely sitting there by itself in the egg carton (thanks to Mrs. D., Mrs. P., and everyone else who donated egg cartons), but with a little luck it will have lots of company soon.

A student hand-feeds crickets to the chickens.
A student hand-feeds crickets to the chickens.

Relativity in a Canoe

The world moves around the canoe.
The world moves around the canoe.

Perhaps not surprisingly, my middle school students have a difficult time wrapping their heads around the idea of multiple frames of reference. We were in a canoe on the Current River and I asked the student paddling in the rear of the boat to look at me and answer the question, “Are we in the canoe moving, or are we steady in one spot and everything around us moving?”

This resulted in some serious cognitive processing. And she still has not gotten back to me with an answer.

Another student, faced with the same question, thought it over overnight and concluded that it was a riddle. He figured the correct answer was that the canoe was moving and the land was still. I asked him to think about it a little more (because he was only half right).

Interestingly enough, I’ll be teaching my Advanced Physics class this block, and the first chapter has a neat little section on coordinate systems. I’m curious to see if the 11th and 12th graders have an easier time with the concept.

The canoe moves.
The canoe moves.

Updated Atom Builder

A couple of my students asked for worksheets to practice drawing atoms and electron shells. I updated the Atom Builder app to make sure it works and to make the app embedable.

So now I can ask a student to draw 23Na+ then show the what they should get:

Worksheet

Draw diagrams of the following atoms, showing the number of neutrons, protons, and electrons in shells. See the example above.

  1. 14C: answer.
  2. 32K+: answer.
  3. 18O2-: answer.
  4. 4He2+: answer.
  5. 32P–: answer.

I guess the next step is to adapt the app so you can hide the element symbol so student have to figure what element based on the diagram.