Science Methods II Blog

 Olivia Langosch 1. How the phases of the moon occur?  - The phases of the moon occur by the way the sun is shining on the moon. If only half of the moon is showing, only half of the sun is shown from the other side of the Earth.  2. What causes the seasons?  - The season occur because of the Earth, it's tilted on the axis and depending on how that axis is to the Earth, near, or far. When the Northern Hemisphere is tilted closer to the sun, that is our summer because it is closer to the sun.  3. What causes a lunar eclipse?  - A lunar eclipse is when the sun and moon align at the same time, the sun's rays peek out behind the moon.  ^^^Some of these might be wrong.  The big questions from lab were:  1. How the phases of the moon occur? 2. What causes the seasons? 3. What causes a lunar eclipse?  We got to experiment with our table groups, with a globe, light (representing the sun), and a styrofoam ball (representing the moon). We tried to...

 Olivia Langosch We started out with straw and sand, straw on bottom and sand on top, and the egg fell out of bowl. We tried to make an indent in the sand to make it stop from falling out of the bowl, and the egg ended up cracking. we switched the order, and put the sand at the bottom and the straw on top, and it landed perfectly, at one meter.  For two meters, we started out with the sam design, sand at the bottom and straw at the top, but added a bit more straw. it ended up falling out again, and it cracked a little bit. We tried it again with less straw, and the egg ended up cracking through the bag.  The big question that we talked about in class was " How can we design a safe and durable playground surface?" By practicing and coming up with different ideas with each other at our table group, we figured out that creating a surface that had some cushion, but not too much was the best way to make sure the egg was safe. We figured this out because we created that indent ...

 Olivia Langosch In lab, we looked at the question, What affects how long it takes a swing to to go back and forth? In our small groups, we tested the weight of different things, and timed the item from when we let go to swing it, and when it came back to that side, measuring back and forth. After testing a few items, all different weights, the smallest object was a paper clip, which was 1.2 grams, we timed it to be 1.53 seconds for it to go back and forth. The heaviest item we had was a rock, which we weighed it to be 311.7 grams and we timed it to be 1.68 seconds. With all of the objects we measured, we found out that weights has no affect on how long it takes a swing to go back and forth.  In lecture, I learned more about gravity in general. I also learned about the other variables that people tested in lab. I found it interesting that the longer the rope/chain is the longer the period. I also found it interesting when we talked about how the collisions with air particles t...

 Olivia Langosch The big question addressing in lab was what affects a rider's speed down a slide? The variable that our group tested was height/slope. We did the height of each person in our group because we thought it would be fun if we did this in our future classes for the students to measure each other. The picture below is our final calculations. We noticed that the taller each person is, or the taller the slide, the faster you go down the slide.  In Thursday's lecture, I learned about each variable we tested in class, looking at other people's findings, and each variable. I really thought that a larger weight would make a rider go faster, but when talking about everyone's findings, we found out that weight really does not affect the rider's speed at all, which was shocking to me.  In the textbook reading, I learned a lot more about friction. I was always confused about this when I was growing up in school, and the textbook gave a good definition of "a fo...