Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
A summary of the recent discovery of gravity waves generated during the massive inflationary period of the Big Bang.
Matt Strassler also goes into what we know about what happened before inflation (we don’t know) and after inflation (we’re living in it).
Our steam distillation apparatus for extracting lavender oil started off fairly simply — a steamer connected to a glass tubing running under the cold water tap to a collection flask — and evolved from there. One of the final tweaks we attempted, was to make a coil in the glass tubing so the steam would have a longer transit through the ice-water bath to enhance condensation.
We heated the glass using a small butane burner until it became pliable, then bent the tube into shape around a piece of wet wood. Using the wood was not as effective as we’d hoped because the glass tubing is fairly thin and cools down quickly when in contact with the water.
You also have to be very careful when bending the tubing to make sure you don’t pull on it. Pulling stretches the glass, making the walls thinner, making it more likely to break. My students discovered this the hard way.
Ellen Holderman has an excellent post about “24 Apps, Games, and Websites Teachers are Using in STEAM Classrooms” that are mostly free. (STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics).
They’re mostly aimed at a younger audience–middle school and below–, but there are things like Khan Academy that’s useful for all ages. Quite a number have to do with introducing coding.
↬ Ms. Lannert.
Last week, my middle schoolers did a set of experiments on electricity and magnetism. They answered the questions:
Each question is designed so that students have something to measure and will be able to use those measurements to make predictions. For example, once they’ve measured the voltage across four bulbs in series, they should be able to predict the voltage across the bulbs in a series of ten.
Some of the experiments, like the nail electromagnet, should have simple linear trends, with students choosing the advanced option having to find an equation to fit their data for the predictions. And I’ll challenge the students in Algebra II to find the equations for the inverse relationships–I’ve already asked their math teacher (Mr. Schmidt) to help them out if they need it.
This has also provided the opportunity for them to apply what they’ve just learned about drawing circuit diagrams (we use this set of symbols).
Balloons are the best way to demonstrate static electrical forces.
While steam distillation is the recommended method for extracting oils from herbs, we’re trying a quick an dirty method of simply heating up the lavender leaves in water (up to 40 ºC) and seeing if any of the oils float to the top. If this does not work, we’ll still have produced some lavender scented water for our soapmaking.
The lavender leaves came from the large bushes out by the preschool that the outddoor group trimmed for Ms. Dicker.
Ms. Mertz’s class is studying DNA–replication, translation, transcription, etc.–and she gave them the option of making a model or creating a game to test each others knowledge. There were some interesting projects:
Last weekend was not the optimum time for transplanting berry bushes. The top five centimeters of the soil was still frozen, and the air temperature was below zero Celsius with a cold breeze on top of it. However, we needed to get fourteen blueberry bushes moved, and, with a lot of help from some parents and a couple students, we were able to get the bushes and enough soil laid out to give them a good chance of success when the soil warms up.
