Tyler's Science Methods Blog

    1.       What did you do in lab today?             In lab today we began by taking a formative assessment asking “what is a rock?” I took the assessment with my assumptions being that rock had to be made by nature and could not be metal. After the assessment I learned that a rock could be a metal ore, and could also be something that was carved from rock or stone. We then discussed activity mania and our homework from last week. We talked about how we need to make our science instruction rich in learning while also being hands on, not just science-adjacent activities. We then talked about how convection currents work and tectonic plates move. We also talked about the evidence we see in our daily lives, like volcanoes and earthquakes. The final piece of our lab was learning how different rocks are formed with an activity. I learned how sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks ar...

1.       Convection cells video:  Convection Cells Video                       What did you do in lab today? a.         In lab we began by thinking about when, in geologic time, certain major events happened. We compared when the moon was created to when life first appeared as well as when humans and dinosaurs began to roam the earth. We then talked about how we think humans have been around forever, but how if the history of Earth was a road trip across the country that all of human history would only take up the last inch of the trip. We then split into our table groups and researched a section of Earth’s history and presented it. I learned that the history of Earth started very slowly, and in the last 500 million years big events have been happening significantly more frequently than the time before it. 2.       ...

  1.        What did you do in lab today? a.        In lab we gave our presentations. We learned about the origins of the universe, galaxies, black holes, lifecycles of stars, origins of Earth, and exploration of space. We also discussed the Coriolis effect and how, because of the tilt of the earth, water will spin in a different direction depending on where you are on the equator. We learned about the Big Bang theory and how the universe was created from a single tiny particle expanding into everything. We discussed galaxies, and how they are giant spinning collections of trillions of stars that move all over the universe. We learned about how stars are created from space dust, and grow as they gather dust and particles until they supernova and explode creating black stars or black holes. We learned how Earth was created from space dust just like this. 2.          What was the big qu...

  1.        Lab a.        In lab today we began with a formative assessment and started discussing more about the moon and its phases. We then discussed our homework of private universe. We then talked about all the standards and discussed how some schools just don’t teach Earth science, which is crazy. Our big activity was making a giant scale model of the first four planets and the sun, our planets were super far apart from each other, about 55 meters total, and our sun was about 33 cm in diameter b.         c.        I’m personally really surprised and a little scared at how small of a scale I really am in the universe, but it makes me feel better knowing we haven’t found any life. 2.        Big question a.        Our big question: Why is the Universe so large and how do we contemplate size w...