Groovy Lab in a Box {Shake It Up} - Part 1: It's Not My Fault!

Our first science unit this semester is geology. We begin by learning about earthquakes with the help of Groovy Lab in a Box, a subscription based STEM project kit. 

This Groovy Lab in a Box is called Shake It Up. The ultimate challenge in this box is to design and build a skyscraper that can withstand and earthquake.

Zoey is concerned about how earthquakes affect a city, so this experiment is perfect because the goal is to learn how engineers build structures to withstand the movement an earthquake causes. 

But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

First, we learned what an earthquake is:

The next question is why earthquakes happen. To answer that we had to talk about tectonic plates and fault lines. Japan is the intersections of four separate tectonic plates (this was very exciting to learn since one of our next units is all about Japan). If an earthquake happens on the west coast of Japan, Tokyo could feel it 160 miles away! That's a long way.

It is time to bring that closer to home. The western coast of the United States follows the edge of a tectonic plate. [Check out this tectonic plate map]. We determined this was why Washington gets so many earthquakes. Though ours are small in comparison to many. 

We learned California has a fault line going straight through the state called the San Andreas Fault. That explains why California has has earthquakes out of the continuous United States. 

Zoey kept asking questions and we kept finding answers...

But then how do we measure how big an earthquake is? The waves of energy are called seismic waves and calculated by the Richter Scale. We broke each of these parts down and learned more, including that Charles Richter, an American sismologist and physicist, created the Richter magnitude scale. 

Once we had an idea of what an earthquake is, why it happens and how we measure it, the experiment could begin!

Our first investigation was called "It's Not My Fault!" and showed how movement within the earth effects the surface and the buildings on the earth's crust. 

Getting materials together 

Zoey loved coloring rice, which we eventually layered in a cup to show the layers of the earth. She also loved the creative task of creating a house our of model clay. Anything that is artistic and building is fun in Zoey's book!

Making some colored rice

 

Mixing it up...*shake shake*

Laying the colored rice out to dry

Zoey moved a card that rested on the bottom of the cup to show how movement, even far down the earth's crust would shift anything on the surface. Zoey wrote down her observations that the little house fell over and the represented earth layers also shifted.

Time to experiment :)

As we went through the scientific method with this experiment, we also had a few things that didn't go to plan. One thing was we forgot to put the card all the way down in the cup, so it didn't work at first. We poured the rice out to try again, but then the layers got all mixed up, so it was harder to see the shifts in the "earth" as the movement occurred.

Still, we understand what the lesson is trying to show and learned a lot more about earthquakes in general. It was a fun lesson and a productive experiment.

Back to School, Back to Swim

Today was the first day back to school from winter break. Though reluctant to get back into a schedule, we had a great day.

We worked on math and science today. It took us a little bit to get going, but once we did all was well. It is amazing how quick you can get rusty on multiplication tables. We got through them, but not as fast as we once could. I even had to look up a few products.

We are learning about aquaponics in our science unit. This is largely brought on by our family Christmas present - an aquarium and aquaponics grow bed. We got the system all set up and are working on the balances and learning about the system.

Today was also the first day for swim lessons. She was a little frustrated that they are repeating a lot of the things she already knew, but she still enjoyed being in the water. 

It was a great first day back. I am thankful for the amazing opportunity to homeschool and for these wonderful experiences we have together.

Vampire Bats Study

In honor of Halloween, we've decided to study the dreaded Vampire Bats. One of the things we learned is that there is actually not much to worry about because Vampire Bats do not feed off of humans.

Zoey filled out this Animal Fact sheet as we learned more and more about this intriguing animals.

Zoey was surprised to learn that bats are mammals. Each mother has one pup a year who is dependent on her for two to three months. Turns out, bats are pretty dedicated mothers. To learn more about the life cycle of a bat we did this cut and paste activity thanks to Twink!...

We used another Twink! resource for a reading comprehension activity and to learn even more about Vampire Bats. [Fourth Grade Vampire Bats Reading Comprehension Activity]

Some of our best resources about Vampire Bats came from YouTube. We watched three very informative and interesting videos regarding Vampire Bats:

1. All About Bats - Free School
2. 3 Fun Facts about Bats! - SciShow
3. The Case for Vampire Bats - Skunk Bear

We looked up several definitions including nocturnal, echolocation, microbat, megabat and insectivore.

We also used an article in Scholastic News to learn about the Tolga Bat Hospital in Australia that takes care of Fruit Bats and rehabilitates them when they are injured or lose their mother's care too young. This was a great addition to learn how helpful bats are to the environment by eating insects (microbats) or help pollinating plants as they eat fruit (megabats).

We learned a lot of interesting facts about Vampire bats and Bats in general. Bats are fascinating creatures and I am glad we took the time to learn more about them. If you have more resources, I'd love if you would share in the comments so we can learn even more.

Happy Homeschooling!

Candy Catapults

In the spirit of Halloween, we created Candy Catapults to launch candy corn, candy pumpkins and other various candies.

Our first step was to build the catapults. We chose a simple design and followed the directions on this YouTube video thanks to Specific Love Creations:

The build went well. We used large Popsicle sticks, rubber bands and Menchie's Spoons (thanks to our favorite frozen yogurt franchise).

We made three different launchers, each of different heights for the base. The first one had 8 sticks, the second had 12 sticks and the third one had 16 sticks. Our goal was to compare and contrast how the height changed the launch data.

Now it was time to try them out...

It took a little bit of practice and adjusting, but then she figured out how it worked.

At this point, we should have made a hypothesis and planned out better what kind of data we were trying to collect. Honestly, we got so excited about the project that we just started chunking pumpkins (candy that is). 

We lined up a tape measure along the edge of our table and let the candy fly. We kept track of how far each type of candy went from each of the three sizes of catapults. 

Then it was time to start graphing! We quickly realized that we needed more data. Unfortunately, we had already put everything up for the time being, so we just worked with what we had. In future experiments, we will be a little more prepared.

We were lucky because on the day we completed the graph, Stephen was working from home and offered a few more statistics to track. He suggested we also find the range of the catapults to determine their accuracy. 

The project was a lot of fun and Zoey learned lots about how graphs work and ways to better make visual representations of data. 

We drew several conclusions from this experiment. The 8 stick catapult launched the least distance, but had the most accuracy. The 16 stick catapult launched the furthest, but it was also unpredictable in distance or direction. 

We also came up with several things we could do differently next time. For example, collect more data points, alter the catapult design including changing the fulcrum point during launch. We also thought to try different types of candies or ammo. 

We are interested in doing this experiment again, maybe around Christmas time so we can enjoy some of those candies too!

Happy Homeschooling!

Fruity Ice Slush Experiment

Zoey chose the "Fruity Ice Slush" Experiment from her Usborne "50 Science things to make and do" book. She was really excited to see how she could make slush simply from using ice surrounding her juice. 

First, we collected our materials. We needed: a large bowl, lots of ice, salt, a glass container and fruit juice.

Then we made a prediction. Zoey hypothesized that it would make a little bit of slush, but not the entire glass full.

Now it was time to get to work...

First, Zoey filled the large bowl with ice.

Next, she sprinkled salt on top of the ice cubes and stirred it in. (The directions suggest three tablespoons of salt.)

Next, Zoey put the glass jar in the middle of the ice, making sure non of the salt got into the jar.

Then, she added her fruit juice. (We didn't have any fruit juice in the house, so we tried it with V8 instead. In hindsight, we decided we would try Kool-aid next time.)

Now it was time to wait. Every 10 minutes, Zoey stirred the juice with a spoon. After about an hour and a half, we began to look for the slush to form.

We realized here, that it wasn't really working at all. There wasn't even a little bit of slush in the jar. We continued to stir it every five minutes for another half an hour.

Even after the extra time, we realized this experiment didn't work.

Zoey's Experiment Notes

The result: The V8 was cold, but there was no slush. We concluded that we may have a different result using Kool-aid or proper fruit juice instead of V8. Zoey declared the V8 was too thick and didn't contain enough water in the liquid for it to form slush. She also observed that there is a lot of salt in V8 that could have changed the result since it had a lower freezing temperature, just like the salt she put on the ice.

We learned about the science behind this experiment too. Adding salt makes the ice melt at a lower temperature, which absorbs heat from the fruit juice eventually making it so cold it will turn to ice. Stirring the liquid helps the cold liquid stay a slush instead of turning to ice.

It was a fun experiment, but we will have to try it again to see if it works better with a different liquid.