Montessori Muddle – Page 32 – Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View

Using Simple Machines to get a Car out of a Lake

Application of a lever and a wheel and axle to get a car out of a frozen lake.

Biochemical Art

Hydrophobic art. — The art of hydrophobia.

A beautiful demonstration of the interaction between detergents and fats (in milk). The food coloring acts as a tracer.

Ms. Hahn shared this with me because, “This video — in all of its girl awesomeness — reminded me of your recent Rube Goldberg blog entry and my visit to your classroom to see your middle school students’ “machines.” Entertaining.”

Choosing Their own Work

One of my students asked me, “Can we spend next week working on our machine?” And I said yes.

Students choose to spend their time building a complex, Rube Goldberg machine with pulleys, inclined planes, motors, and microcontrollers.

This was a week and a half ago. I’d planned on to starting the discussion of conservation of energy as we transition from mechanical to thermal and electrical energy. However, I find it hard to resist when students ask to pursue an area of work. Students learn a lot more when they’re intrinsically motivated.

So, after the request to continue working on the machines I did an informal survey to see if the rest of the class were interested. They were quite interested, and the vast majority really wanted to continue on their projects — or something similar — rather than just having an opportunity to slack off.

I, therefore, let them have the time. My only requirement was that they state an objective for the week.

One group’s goal was to build a complex machine with 500x mechanical advantage. Another student — I let them choose their own groups or work alone — simply wanted to build a working pulley system; something he been having trouble with all month. A couple of other groups wanted to build robot projects.

And they went at it. All week long students would come into class eager to work. On Wednesday I got back into the science room a few minutes late for class, and they were all in there working away. It is a wonderful thing to be able to walk into a classroom with the whole class on-task and combining their new knowledge with their creativity.

Of course, after the first few days the projects evolved. I gave one group a Lego microcontroller and a quick lesson to help them activate the second part of their pulley system.

Another group quickly finished their robot and wanted some sort of track that it could follow. I did not have a track, but digging around in the store-room uncovered our track building kit — one of the ones with loops and jumps that’s great for learning about inertia, and conservation of energy. I also helped them out by giving them a fire pit (with green flames) for their marble to jump.

In retrospect, I realize that I should also have had them keep a daily diary of their work — I had to settle for summary at the end of the week instead — but they did some really exciting, self-directed work that I was really proud to see.

Proteins – via Food Science

An excellent overview of proteins from Dr. Kiki Sanford of Food Science. Of particular importance: denaturation.

Proteins can be denatured (unfolded) with heat, acids, bases, salts and solvents. — Proteins can be denatured with heat, acids, bases, salts and solvents.

Methionine: A Visit to Novus International

The amino acid methionine, aka 2-amino-4-(methylthio)butanoic acid.

During the last interim, we paid a visit to Novus International, a large, multinational, animal nutrition company. And now that we’re talking about proteins in biology, there’s some extra relevance because students are aware of Novus’ major products that are precursors to the amino acid, methionine (they sell about a billion dollars a year).

Solid and liquid forms of the methionine precursor MHA.

I particularly liked the set of speakers they chose for us, because they covered such a broad span of the company: from business, to marketing, all the way through to the science. They also gave us a tour of their highly energy efficient building, and grounds that they’re landscaping with native plants and vegetable gardens.

It was definitely a worthwhile trip. Thanks to Ms. Mertz for arranging it.

Novus' metaphorical metal cow. — Novus’ metaphorical metal cow.

Fall on Campus

Transit

This spring I was nominated by my head of school for a small, Teacher of Distinction award offered by the Independent Schools of St. Louis (ISSL). I proposed to get a survey transit that our students could use to map ecological change on campus. My outdoor group has been slowly cutting down the invasive Bradford pear saplings on the slope and I’ve been curious to see if mapping their locations would help us better understand where they’re coming from.

Measuring the distance down to the creek.

The transit would also be a great tool for math. Geometry, algebra, and pre-calculus classes could all benefit because surveying can require quite a bit of geometry and trigonometry.

View through the transit. The middle mark on the reticule allows you to measure elevation change, while the upper and lower marks are used to measure distance. There’s a 100:1 conversion from the distance between the upper and lower marks and the distance from the transit to the measuring rod.

So, I’ve started training a few of my outdoor group in making the measurements. They’ve spent a few weeks learning how to use the transit; we only meet once a week so it goes slowly. However, we’ll start trying to put marks on paper at our next class.